500 edits is '''a lot''', especially if you compare it to the other requirement for being extended confirmed (30 days). For example, I've been on Wikipedia 2 months and only have 89 edits. Sure, I've been inactive a bit, but if you were on, say, every 2 days, and made 3 edits per day, it would take a whole year to reach extended confirmed status. Plus, it's not about edit count, it's about quality of edits. I propose to decrease the edit requirement to 150-200. That way, it would only take 3-4 months rather than a whole year. Another requirement could be that you should not have more than 5-10 reverted edits (excluding self reverts), to encourage people to make quality edits rather than bad edits. [[User:InterstateFive|InterstateFive]] ([[User talk:InterstateFive|talk]]) - just another roadgeek 21:33, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
:Any admin may grant any new user extended confirmed without them having to wait 30/500. So, if you're really doing good work and need to edit a [[WP:ECP]] page, all you need do is ask on [[WP:AN]] for somebody to grant you the right. -- [[User:RoySmith|RoySmith]] [[User Talk:RoySmith|(talk)]] 21:49, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
:There's no minimum requirement for extended ''confirmed''. Extended ''autoconfirmed'' has a minimum of 30/500, which is probably about right. Perhaps we should make [[WP:PERM]] more visible, so editors who need and can be trusted with extended confirmed don't need to wait for it to appear automatically. [[User:Certes|Certes]] ([[User talk:Certes|talk]]) 23:19, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
:::I think InterstateFive's idea is short-sighted, but well-intentioned. The problem is that we have so many dedicated sockmasters on this website, and lowering the standards for full editing privileges just makes their jobs easier, and ours harder. --[[User:Hunan201p|Hunan201p]] ([[User talk:Hunan201p|talk]]) 14:22, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
*EC protection is rare, by design. There are about 3600 pages that require EC to edit, of over 55 million. The vast majority of these pages are so due to arbitration remedies, which is where the threshold came from. While the committee somewhat recently weakened the restriction to "ecp" instead of literally "500/30" ([[Wikipedia:Arbitration_Committee/Procedures#Extended_confirmed_restriction]]) I think in general we should not be easily weakening this - mostly because I don't want arbcom to get "creative" an invent a new massive protection scheme ''again'' that we have to scramble to build technical controls for. Yes there are reasons to early promote someone, but so they can edit remedied pages is a weak one at best. — [[User:Xaosflux|<span style="color:#FF9933; font-weight:bold; font-family:monotype;">xaosflux</span>]] <sup>[[User talk:Xaosflux|<span style="color:#009933;">Talk</span>]]</sup> 19:11, 7 February 2022 (UTC)
*I '''oppose''' lessening the requirements for extended confirmation. I'd be more inclined to support strengthening the requirements to 1,000/60 but accept leaving the requirements as they are.--[[User:John Cline|John Cline]] ([[User talk:John Cline#Top|talk]]) 00:20, 17 February 2022 (UTC)
*'''Oppose''' The current requirements for extended confirmed are reasonable, and the protection is supposed to only be used to enforce arbitration remedies, or be used on particularly contentious articles. Lowering the requirements would make the protection easier to game, and would also allow newer users to participate in these topic areas than before, which is not the point of extended confirmed protection. [[Special:Contributions/2601:647:5800:1A1F:B59F:66D4:2C8D:EA30|2601:647:5800:1A1F:B59F:66D4:2C8D:EA30]] ([[User talk:2601:647:5800:1A1F:B59F:66D4:2C8D:EA30|talk]]) 00:08, 26 February 2022 (UTC)
:{{Withdrawn}} I see your points. Also, this isn't going to benefit me any longer, as my edit count has '''''boomed''''' since I wrote this. [[User:InterstateFive|InterstateFive]] ([[User talk:InterstateFive|talk]]) - just another roadgeek 00:30, 26 February 2022 (UTC)
Consensus for Option 2 should be followed up in a separate discussion.
[Updated 15:35, 9 September 2021 (UTC)]
CONSENSUS TO CHANGE THE ICON, BUT NO CONSENSUS YET ON WHAT TO CHANGE IT TO
Seems pretty clear that most participants want to change the icon from its current form File:Icons-mini-file acrobat.gif, with typical arguments being that the current form is tied to Adobe (and thus advertises for the company, or is tied too much to a company) and outdated. There was some discussion on whether an external link icon for PDFs was needed at all, with reasonable arguments presented on both sides but most people are supporting a different icon not "no icon at all".
What's not so clear is what to replace it with - many of the editors who support a change did not specify what to change it to, and some comments are ambiguous. The main point of discussion about each of the numerous proposed files is the legibility of each icon at the size of an external link logo and whether to use SVG or PNG (apparently nobody demands GIF). On balance it looks like the most popular option is File:Icon_pdf_file.png () but there are a lot of people who didn't specify what they wanted or preferred something else. Thus there does not seem to be a clear consensus for a particular option, so we need further discussion to determine the outcome.
Technical implementation details: As noted in the discussion the file is used through MediaWiki:Common.css, row 314, which as a .css page will need to be edited by an interface administrator. I note that there is a bit of uncertainty if the files used there can be SVGs - apparently the URL cannot be .svg but it can be .svg.png? - among the participants. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 16:41, 11 January 2022 (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.
Option 1. Clean look and close enough to the original. I would also be open to moving away from the Adobe Acrobat logo if someone comes up with a different icon, since the company no longer holds a monopoly over the format. Yeeno (talk) 🍁06:01, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Since this option is proving popular, but some have correctly pointed out that the "PDF" text is hard to read, I've created a version which is better optimised for small sizes: File:PDF icon.svg. Please feel free to tweak it further. – Joe (talk) 12:37, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option 2, and concur with Joe that the Adobe logo is mega fail. The icon he posted in the comment above this one seems good, and it's an SVG, which is better than the tiny GIF being used currently as it can be rendered at any size without looking terrible. jp×g06:34, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option 2 The icon must change. The old thing is a relic of the dark ages. Initially I thought ooh the adobe svg looks great. But Adobe are no longer the pdf overlords, and I don't rather like Adobe, evil empire of tech that it is. Joe's suggestion of the generic PDF SVG is the perfect solution. CaptainEekEdits Ho Cap'n!⚓06:42, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment is licensed as copyright free but is licensed as GPL which could make a diffence as to how it can be used without any linking back to the file. -- WOSlinker (talk) 07:36, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option 2: PDF is no longer specific to Adobe, so let's remove their logo. Option 1 (File:Icon pdf file.svg) looks ideal when enlarged, but the letters are hard to distinguish at icon size. I suggest a new copyright-free SVG with even larger letters (They won't occupy many pixels.) Certes (talk) 11:40, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Given that someone added the "ditch it entirely" option 4, put me in that camp as first preference with a fallback to 1, 2, or any other reasonable icon that isn't the old one. I am not strongly persuaded, as below in re to Ivanvector, that we must make these icons more accessible. What I would prefer to see is the block of CSS in Common.css removed and for everyone to enjoy a marginally faster page load. --Izno (talk) 19:07, 9 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Still Option 2 (even after addition of an Option 4, edited 20:28, 9 September 2021): Although "oppose any changes" seems pretty strong, I was leaning toward Option 3 since the proposal seemed to be based on the argument It's a .gif made over 16 years ago, with no explanation of why that's bad. Personally, I'd rather use a 291-byte file than one 6 KB in size, ceteris paribus. But then, despite the weird threading, I noticed the replacement suggested by Joe Roe. It doesn't have the Adobe logo or (*gag*) name on it, it's clearly for PDFs, and it's only 2 KB in size. So if we're going to change, let's change to something like that. This one (, 707 bytes) works for me, too. — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits)12:04, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think the file size matters here, because what is actually downloaded by your browser is a server-rendered bitmap of the appropriate size, not the original SVG. That's approximately the same for all the files,[1][2] and less than 1 KB. Also, "weird threading"? – Joe (talk) 12:18, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Did not know about the different download file, thanks. And it wasn't actually so much weird threading as it was confusion on my part from JPxG's contributions. My too-quick reading saw the big file image at the upper right, which wasn't either the current icon nor the proposed replacement. When they wrote concur with Joe that the Adobe logo is mega fail I thought they were agreeing with the proposer (which you're not) that the icon was mega fail (although that wasn't clear why). Then JPxG also said there's some pretty great icons in that category [sic], which would have been more appropriate, IMO, as a reply to your 06:15 post, not as a reply to themself. I got a bit lost. Confusion on my part from scanning too quickly, and thinking too slowly. — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits)14:52, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This is untrue in the context of CSS-loaded images (I am not sure whether you meant to distinguish). SVG images are sent as SVGs to the end user when loaded by CSS. In the context of this proposal, we would be making modifications to the CSS, so the end user would receive an SVG at the size of interest.
In the context of any old generic file wikilink, yes, SVGs are rendered to bitmap and served as PNG automatically. Changing that behavior – to use SVGs more directly – is ancient phab:T5593. Izno (talk) 19:11, 9 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I suppose the problem isn't directly that "[i]t's a .gif" but rather that it has a fixed resolution looking pixelated on modern screens, while a vector version would be rendered in an appropriate resolution on any device, as Joe pointed out. ~~~~ User:1234qwer1234qwer4 (talk)15:22, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Unstriking my !vote above, as I find I still prefer Option 2. The target proposal in Option 1 is now even less appealing, as the new target File:Icons-mini-file pdf.svg looks even worse at 16px on my device than the old target File:Icons-mini-file pdf old.svg. The newly added Option 4 is okay, I guess, after Option 2, but I personally appreciate having an indication of PDF-ness. I sometimes use a different reader than the one my browser tries to use by default, or I can choose to save the PDF file somewhere for later perusal. — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits)20:28, 9 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
JohnFromPinckney, in citations there's already "(PDF)" as an indicator, seemingly added by {{Citation}}. Exactly how this is stylized is up for debate (Ahecht made a suggestion below), but the indication is already there without any icon. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 20:50, 9 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, thanks, Alexis Jazz. That means we get icon and "(PDF)" with a CS1|2 template (<ref>{{cite web |title=With cite template |url=https://example.com/Adobe.pdf}}</ref>),[1] and just the icon without one (<ref>[https://example.com/Adobe.pdf Without cite template]</ref>).[2] What would be good for me is to drop the icon but replace it with the textual "PDF" indicator, which I guess would be an Option 5. — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits)19:19, 11 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option 1. That logo is still the most widely associated with the PDF format, and anything else is just making things less clear for our readers. There doesn't seem to be a clear alternative being posited (the letters in the version proposed by Joe are illegible at this resolution), and most of the reasons above seem to hinge on people's person feelings about Adobe, which shouldn't enter into this debate. Either leave well alone, or adopt the new clearer version proposed by the OP. — Amakuru (talk) 12:14, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
"Personal feelings" is a bit dismissive. We're an free knowledge project and have a long history of supporting free software, free licenses, and free formats wherever possible. I highly doubt that the generic 90s software-looking acrobat squiggle is more widely recognised than the letters "PDF", but I agree the legibility of my first suggestion could be improved. – Joe (talk) 12:22, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
If someone comes up with an alternative that actually works, then I might support it. But I'm not going to give a blank cheque to swap an easily recognisable logo for one which might not immediately convey its meaning to our readers. "Option 2" involves dispensing with the current logo without any consensus as to what we're swapping it for, and I can't support that. — Amakuru (talk) 12:31, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option 2 - some generic PDF logo (i.e. not the Adobe 'squiggly triangle') to be determined later. SVG > GIF, of course, but I think we should take this opportunity to swap it for a more generic logo. firefly ( t · c ) 12:25, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option 2 or 3 Option 1 is a non-starter due to license. We need something that's public domain or CC0 to avoid a requirement to link back to the file description page for attribution and/or notice of license. I wouldn't oppose an identical image with a proper license; while it's annoying to have the Adobe software's logo in there, it's also recognizable. As for that several people above seem to like, all I see at that size is a document icon with a red bar over it. The text "PDF" is not visible. Again, I wouldn't oppose an alternative that's more legible. Anomie⚔12:26, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Striking as the concerns I raised seem to have been addressed, the new image for option 1 has a usable license and people have suggested as a better choice for option 2. I don't have enough of an opinion on the current options to !vote. Anomie⚔16:57, 9 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option 2 per Firefly and others. There is nothing wrong with using a 16-year-old icon per se, and the proposed replacement's only advantage is in file format and that's not enough reason imo to justify a change. However what does justify a change is using a generic icon that doesn't require someone knowing what the logo of a private company represents. Whatever icon we end up choosing, we should probably consider including it as an example in the PDF article. Thryduulf (talk) 15:07, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option 2, PDF files are no longer the sole domain of Adobe and we shouldn't be using their logo, but none of the suggested icons have been readable. I modified one of the existing PDF SVG icons on commons to make it more readable (), but if the intent is to use this at 16px, pixel art is always going to render better than an SVG, e.g. . --Ahecht (TALK PAGE) 15:37, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I have to admit that the 16px PNG rendering does look like a usable option and also looks way less pixelated than the current icon (where even the border displays very blurry), at least on my end. ~~~~ User:1234qwer1234qwer4 (talk)15:48, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Nope. The GPL seems particularly weird when it comes to images, and even more weird when it comes to SVG images. The bottom line is that we need to clearly distribute the image along with the author's copyright notice and the notice that it's under the GPL, which we satisfy by linking the image to the file description page that has all that information. Hiding a comment in a CSS file, where it'll be hard to find and may be minified out, won't cut it. Anomie⚔21:55, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option 2 I find the PDF text version quite promising. The one I think is the most legible is (show) (File:Icon_pdf_file.png) which is easily readable on both mobile (both vector and mobile version). There are of course scenarios where it wouldn't be legible, but I feel the current icon would be non-distinctive under the same circumstances and I could see many readers not knowing what the acrobat icon means now a days. --Trialpears (talk) 17:03, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option 4 get rid of it altogether. No GPL license, no trademark (US #3652386 and #3652388, I have no idea how to link these from https://tmsearch.uspto.gov/ so search yourself, it's the squiggly triangle), no BS. The document icon with "PDF", even Joe Roe's improved version, is hard to read and ultimately provides no additional information over just the text "(PDF)". This is currently defined in MediaWiki:Common.css#L-510 btw, it's not template specific or MediaWiki default. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 19:55, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Opposed to any GPL-licensed image or image restricted by trademark. Would prefer CC-0 license. No strong opinions on the design itself, I'm open to a new one but don't see a serious problem with the existing image. — Wug·a·po·des20:29, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not an expert on trademark, but I presume so. My understanding is that having a trademark isn't a problem per se as long as we aren't using it to mislead readers about brand identity or disparage the trademark holder. The issue isn't a legal one, but a philosophical one: I'd prefer we use free equivalents that do not have copyright or trademark restrictions whenever possible. But unless we have consensus for an option that is free of copyright and trademark, I'd rather we have some graphical representation of the PDF over nothing. So by no "serious problem" I mean that it's not enough for me to say get rid of it immediately, but I do think there is room to improve. If we are going to improve, I want us to also move in the direction of copyright- and trademark-free images, but if the option is do nothing or remove the icon without replacement, I'd rather do nothing. (NB I do like Ahect's idea of just using stylized text instead of an icon.) — Wug·a·po·des21:40, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Wugapodes, I'm fine with stylized text too. The text "(PDF)" already gets added, seemingly by {{Citation}}. I just think the icon should go away. Trademark is possibly a theoretical legal issue. The squiggly triangle in the infobox of PDF is fine because there is clearly no connection between Adobe and Wikipedia. When used as system icon of sorts, like we have it in MediaWiki:Common.css#L-510, it could cause people to believe there is a connection between Adobe and Wikipedia or MediaWiki, like us relying on Adobe software or being endorsed by Adobe. It's a theoretical issue though, this may or may not actually be a trademark violation and Adobe is unlikely to try and crack down on this kind of unauthorized usage. My main issue is also philosophical: try to avoid trademarks if possible, particularly when they're not being used for commentary. 1234qwer1234qwer4, I think traditionally this kind of indication (not just on Wikipedia) was provided to warn users to get a cup of joe while their computer chugs along for 15 minutes to load Adobe Acrobat Reader. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 22:33, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@1234qwer1234qwer4: PDFs are a bit of a weird file format. Sometimes when you click a link it will automatically download a file on your device, but other times it can just open up in a new tab. The biggest concern, however, is that not all mobile devices support PDFs across the board. My phone can just barely do it (and requires a download everytime I view one.. which can be a problem for larger files), so I have always found these icons helpful. –MJL‐Talk‐☖05:06, 9 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option Alexis Jazz - WP:ACCIM recommends that information should not be conveyed using only images, and while the revised icon with plain text is a slight accessibility improvement over the corporate logo version, it's still a long way off from meeting that standard. Alt text would help, but a simple (PDF) alongside the link is frankly much better and more useful than a small icon with tiny, barely-legible text. Ivanvector's squirrel (trees/nuts) 20:40, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I see this as a case of progressive enhancement given broadband speeds and the compression of PDFs (which has gotten better since PDFs stopped being all-image files), as the size was predominantly the rationale for ever indicating that a URL pointed to a PDF. Separately, CS1/2 already auto-indicates whether something is a PDF. I don't really see much cause for anyone to generally indicate something is a PDF. (This is not an opinion on this RFC per se, just making a comment about whether we should need to indicate something is a PDF.) Izno (talk) 19:02, 9 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
There is an old-school web best practice to indicate if a link doesn't take you to a web page, since that's the general expectation (and, yes, size was part of the concern). I'm not sure of the current consensus on this matter in the web design community. isaacl (talk) 19:46, 9 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I haven't designed web pages since the mid-90s so I can't really comment on standards, but I'd prefer if there were some kind of indicator, text or otherwise. Compression has improved for sure but PDFs are still multimedia, even a single-page plain-text PDF can be several megabytes. Not everyone who reads Wikipedia benefits from the expansion of broadband in wealthy countries, and third-party software is still generally required to open a PDF or use their full functionality, and this can be severely prohibitive for someone on say a 14.4kbps dialup connection, or using a 2G mobile device. We still warn when a link goes to an external website, and we should do the same with multimedia. Ivanvector's squirrel (trees/nuts) 20:52, 9 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
"We still warn"? We don't (I assume by "we" you mean MediaWiki software, please be precise if otherwise), at least not "accessibly", in the same way we don't as the would-be "replace with 'PDF' in text". Izno (talk) 21:22, 9 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
If you look at the web, I'd say that mostly doesn't happen any longer. I mostly don't think it should, especially with the advent of "the browser does everything (video, audio, PDFs of late in e.g. Firefox, yadda yadda)". Browsers are monsters not far off from being their own operating systems (oh wait :). Izno (talk) 21:24, 9 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Although links to PDF files often lack indicators (with the ubiquity of the format, probably due to both happenstance and successful Adobe marketing), links to video and audio generally still provide some kind of indication. Users generally want to know in advance if they're going to see some kind of audiovisual presentation. Their current browsing environment (such as alone in a room or within a crowd) and personal desires at the moment influence what type of interaction they want to have. isaacl (talk) 00:56, 10 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, by "we" I did mean the MediaWiki software, with the little "arrow escaping the box" icon beside all external links (like this, which is, indeed, not accessible). Remember that while progress marches on, it marches past many people who read Wikipedia but don't have access to cutting-edge tech that we do in developed countries, and something as minor to us as loading a couple-megabyte multimedia file could be an outright ordeal for them. On a trip to Cuba a few years ago I turned my phone on when our plane landed, and didn't even get out of the airport before I had a text from my carrier saying I was up to $100 in roaming charges and they had disabled my data. I remember the not-too-distant past trying to edit through Opera on a flip phone, and recently made one edit from my Wii's embedded browser just to see if it would work - it did but it was frustrating. I still see more Windows XP than ChromeOS in checkuser results, and rarely even older OSes. Ivanvector's squirrel (trees/nuts) 16:43, 15 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
With apologies to those who already knew, the choice of icon is implemented in MediaWiki:Common.css line 510. Help:External link icons#Custom link icons informs us that The image must be 16 pixels wide and cannot be SVG format. (That's in an example about adding a custom icon for .xls, but I assume it applies to .pdf too). From my rather basic knowledge of graphics, .png may be the best format for this use case. Certes (talk) 22:52, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Normally, yes, but the software doesn't seem to accept SVGs here. Also, if it's shown at a fixed 16px, we should probably optimise for that, e.g. align the paper edges and the orthogonal lines of the letters mid-pixel. If the day comes when MediaWiki renders an SVG at 128px on our 16k holodisplays, we can replace the icon again. Certes (talk) 10:19, 9 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The "restriction" is outdated. We have been serving SVGs via TemplateStyles for CS1 for a year or two now. My guess is that it is related to IE8 and lower, which MediaWiki no longer supports. The page pointed to by Certes should be updated. Izno (talk) 18:58, 9 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
But if you're using the png rendering of an SVG file, you get all the downsides of an SVG (e.g. blurry lines and fonts) with none of the advantages of it being scalable. --Ahecht (TALK PAGE) 13:14, 24 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment This may seem like an odd question but, why is the file in a .gif format anyways? Aren't .gif format files used for animated images? But I support Option 2, per the above discussion. The current file makes it seem like the file is in Adobe Acrobat (which, a few years ago, that was probably the only way to view PDFs) when really it can be viewed in many places besides Adobe Acrobat. Blaze The Wolf | Proud Furry and Wikipedia Editor (talk) (Stupidity by me) 19:06, 9 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
GIF format was long used for images on computer networks, pre-Internet, pre-Web, and up to now. Due to patent issues (which are no longer applicable as the patent in question has expired), there was a push to move to PNG format, and JPEG became popular for photos due to better compression and appearance (both due to higher resolution colour not being limited to only showing 256 colours and its compression algorithm being a better fit). GIFs remained in use for animated images as the original PNG specification did not support this capability. The current image being a GIF is reflective of how long ago it was put into place. isaacl (talk) 19:27, 9 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not going to pick an "option" because at this point there are too many icons going around, but I support using some sort of SVG icon (preferably without the Adobe logo) that's CC0 (or similarly) licensed. I don't prefer any particular icon. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 21:14, 10 September 2021 (UTC)\][reply]
Does it matter? If we don't want to use one vendor's logo for an industry-wide standard, whether they want us to use it is irrelevant. Certes (talk) 22:32, 10 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option 2 (use MediaWiki? fallback). I used inspect element to disable the current icon pulled from Common.css, and discovered that the fallback pdf icon is evidently [3]. This is the visual counterpart to the external link icon [4]. I suppose this is a !vote to remove the text in Common.css, and let this fallback icon take its place, since it establishes a nice visual consistency, and doesn't stick out as much as the ones that have been proposed so far, which I don't like. — Goszei (talk) 04:46, 11 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
For the sake of illustration in this discussion, I have uploaded the icon I am proposing to Commons; it looks like this: (for comparison, here is the external link icon that appears all over Wikipedia, part of the same MediaWiki set: ). — Goszei (talk) 03:43, 20 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I support Option 2 () because it seems the best visual indicator of a PDF. I oppose just using text; the image makes it stand out that it's a PDF. ― Qwerfjkltalk19:04, 13 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option 2. Concur about change from corporate logo; but there's a problem, because we don't seem to be moving towards any consensus whatsoever about what is the substitution. I believe the PDF Google PDF icon is the most legible and does not cram white letters into a red background, which the colour-blind may not see, and that against a white sheet of paper with abnormally thick black margins. Keep it simple, really; there is no obligation for us to keep that red stripe. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 09:46, 14 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
we don't seem to be moving towards any consensus whatsoever about what is the substitution that's not a problem because this discussion is explicitly not intended to determine that. If (as seems likely) option 2 gains consensus there will be a second discussion to determine what the replacement should be. Thryduulf (talk) 12:23, 14 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option 2 Any icon containing the letters PDF. The best so far seems to be PDF icon.svg, followed by PDF icon bold.svg, but perhaps a version with black/dark blue lettering could be better? — GhostInTheMachinetalk to me08:35, 15 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option 2. Perhaps the new symbol, to be determined, could be a piece of paper with a folded corner (As is seen in most file format icons) with the letters "PDF" on it? Clear of copyright concerns and adobe attachment. (EDIT: Just learned that the comments below indeed have this idea covered) Plutonical (talk) 14:55, 29 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option 2 - PNGs including a 2x resolution version for HiDPI displays. I like with its crisp, white-on-red "PDF" banner across the file, but it needs to stay crisp on high-res displays and that PNG will look bad. User:GKFXtalk17:16, 11 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option 2. The svg is good work, and an improvement over the gif. I don't dislike it, but I like supporting "undisputable" non-commercial generic work much more. So, please go with a generic svg version that has a readable PDF acronym on it. (This one looks best: ) Thanks. Huggums537 (talk) 03:31, 16 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option 2 - clearer than the original and is an improvement (especially since it drops the logo attempt). Oppose option 4, as I believe there is usefulness to pointing it out in both image and text form (see WP:RICHMEDIA, among other things). Hog FarmTalk06:19, 21 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option 2 – the most sensible choice, we should not be tying ourselves to adobe if we can avoid it. HF above sums up my sentiments as well. Aza24 (talk) 00:31, 25 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option 2: get rid of the Adobe logo as first choice, anything with the letters "PDF" will do but is the best. Second choice is to update the extremely pixellated Adobe logo to the new one. — Bilorv (talk) 12:00, 26 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option 4 Most modern browsers can handle PDFs without difficulty, so I think it might be time to eventually remove the icon altogether. Oppose any lettered icons as looking too 90s-esque compared to the sleek Adobe-triangle. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 22:03, 29 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment restored from the archive. While I am involved here, it's very clear that "no change" (option 3) is not the consensus so someone uninvolved should determine what the consensus is and take the appropraite next steps. Thryduulf (talk) 23:10, 10 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Option 2 (can't close - don't know how to execute), using the letter option mooted above by numerous others. It's clearer, which is really the only basis for decisions we have here Nosebagbear (talk) 15:48, 11 January 2022 (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.
There are 15 icons in Commons:Category:PDF icons under Public Domain that are not based around the Adobe Acrobat logo (which was rejected above), listed below in alphabetical order of file name; the ones in italics were mentioned in the above discusison
Option 1: File:.pdf OneDrive icon.svg -
Option 2: File:Document-303123.svg -
Option 3: File:Icon pdf file.png -
Option 4: File:Icon pdf.svg -
Option 5: File:Icon-354355.svg -
Option 6: File:Ilovepdf.svg -
Option 7: File:PDF icon black.svg -
Option 8: File:PDF icon blue.svg -
Option 9: File:PDF icon bold.svg -
Option 10: File:PDF icon.svg -
Option 11: File:Pdf link icon.png -
Option 12: File:Pdf-155498.svg -
Option 13: File:Pdf-2127829.png -
Option 14: File:Pdf-47199.svg -
Option 15: File:Pdfreaders-f.png -
I think that is too many options for a single RfC so we should try and narrow it down first. Unless anyone has better suggestions I propose a round of approval voting first to find the top 4/5 that people could support, with those being the options in a full RfC? Thryduulf (talk) 18:09, 11 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Seems like a good plan, as I agree that 15 choices is too many. (As an editorial aside, the list could get quickly pruned somewhat by eliminating those which are unusable; some of these are indecipherable to me.) Do we need to first clarify .svg/.png formats? Or do we know that both are equally good (although that seems in some conflict with the note in the RfC close above)? — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits)04:52, 12 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
At their current sizes, I find all but 3, 9 & 10 nearly impossible to read. 7, 8 and 11 are a stretch, but I can make out the letters. I would have no idea what 6 means to indicate without context. Aza24 (talk) 05:15, 12 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
On my device, with my eyes, I can read option 9, and with difficulty 3, 4, and 10. Since I know I'm looking for "PDF", 5, 11, and 12 are on the boundary of recognizability. I could plausibly make out some of the others by removing my glasses and bringing my phone nearer my face, but I'm unconvinced that is the solution we're seeking. Folly Mox (talk) 05:50, 12 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
3, 9, 10 are the clearest in terms of legibility and actually conveying meaning. Since I'm aware that I'm on team-letters, one other option should be included which is option 14 that is both legible and would probably be understood over time. The issue is that it makes me think it's powerpoint, but that argument could be had in the 2nd RfC. Nosebagbear (talk) 11:55, 12 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
To clarify for any reviewer, 3 is the best of these Nosebagbear (talk)
Yes, let's put one contender forward against the incumbent. Legibility is key here; I find 9, 3, 10 easiest to read in that order. Is it worth considering another alternative with the letters in red on white rather than white on red? That could save a couple of pixels at the sides, enabling the letters to grow slightly. I've tried playing around and can't make anything worth uploading but someone with a clue about graphic design probably could. Certes (talk) 14:31, 12 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think any colored text makes it harder to read the letters at such small size. I prefer something like 11, perhaps 9 with plain black text. MB14:48, 12 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Looking on a smaller (and dirtier) laptop screen 3 is by far the clearest, 9 is readable but not as easily. 10 and especially 11 I'm not convinced I could read if I didn't know what they said. Thryduulf (talk) 22:58, 17 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I don't have clear preferences on what should be the one we should adopt, but I have some arguments against 2, 6, 7, 8, 11, 12, 14, 15.
The word "PDF" in 7 & 8 are simply not legible at all, and have an overall bad contrast.
11 & 12 look good on zooming in but on my screen, they can be easily overlooked if one isn't searching for a logo on there.
14 & 15 are not quite associatable with PDFs in general. The huge "P" in 14 makes it appear more like MS PowerPoint logo than PDF. In option 15, the average person will associate the green very closely with spreadsheets rather than PDFs (thanks to Excel & GSheets), plus the word "PDF" on it is too small to be legible.
2 appears more like a basic Windows notepad app, again the word "PDF" is not legible either.
6 is the logo of ilovepdf.com and shouldn't be used due to the very reasons some editors already raised regarding the Adobe relation in current one. Also, what does a reader coming across a random heart symbol in a certain external link understand of it? ---CX Zoom(he/him)(let's talk|contribs)19:25, 12 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
On my laptop, I find 3 the easiest to read, then 10, then 9, then 11. 7 and 8 possess bad color combinations, options 4 and 12 are too small, and the others just don't look right, especially option 6. ResPM (T🔈🎵C) 00:01, 13 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
3 if we're going to use an image, but I think of a Google-like text tag is still better. If we are using an image, there's no advantage to using an SVG if mediawiki is going to convert it to a raster image anyway. --Ahecht (TALK PAGE) 18:40, 13 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This has been open a few hours short of 10 days and we have three clear favourites so is seems an appropriate time to close this round. Allocating 1 point for a first or equal first choice and 0.5 for a second or equal second choice the scores are:
Option
Votes
1
1
2
0
3
10
4
1
5
1
6
0
7
0.5
8
0.5
9
7
10
5.5
11
2
12
0
13
1
14
1
15
0
As 3, 9 and 10 are clearly the most supported, they should be the options for the formal RfC. I did initially say "4 or 5" options, but while there is a clear 4th choice (option 11) it is a long way behind and it doesn't seem sensible to make the RfC more complicated just to include it. I don't have time now to set that up, I might later today but after that it will likely not be until about Thursday so someone else taking point would be good. Thryduulf (talk) 10:57, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Might want to count how many people opined in general. When folks are not treating a RfC as an either-or choice and supporting more than one option, the ratio of "support for a given option"/"total amount of participants" can be an useful metric to gauge consensus. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 11:05, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Jo-Jo Eumerus by a quick count, 13 people expressed an opinion about 1 or more of the options before the summary. The discussion was explicitly set up as approval voting to find the options for an RfC, it was not intended to determine consensus for a final option. Thryduulf (talk) 11:31, 21 January 2022 (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.
There is a consensus for Option A. Option A was the clear favorite among images and there was a consensus that there should be an image. A minority of editors would prefer to only have a text notation for PDF files (no icon), with this group of editors also largely preferring A if there had to be an image. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:26, 3 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Which icon should replace the currently used ones for PDF files? At #RFC: New PDF icon there was consensus to replace the current PDF icon (File:Icons-mini-file acrobat.gif) with one that is not based on the Adobe Acrobat logo, but not on a specific replacement. At #Further discussion (PDF icon) all the public domain icons currently available at Wikimedia Commons that are not based on the Acrobat logo were considered and three identified as clearly better than the others, this RFC seeks to determine which of those options should be used. Thryduulf (talk) 09:37, 29 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I oppose no icon, because highlighting that a link is not an HTML page is useful information for accessibility - not every device can (easily) read PDF files. Thryduulf (talk) 18:28, 29 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Update following Thryduulf's note below: Still sticking with A. C is marginally better than B, but A definitely looks by far the clearest. — Amakuru (talk) 11:38, 29 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Further comment: I've checked on my phone too, and actually C is indeed very slightly better than A there, which might be what others are seeing, but A still looks fine on mobile, so A remains the clear victor overall given the much better rendering on my Windows 10 / Chrome setup. — Amakuru (talk) 11:42, 29 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Option A, C is second, B is nope. In general C seems to be a better file, but when scaled down to 16px for this use case, A seems clearer while C gets a bit of a blur effect. At larger resolutions, I'm seeing the reverse. — xaosfluxTalk11:27, 29 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Option A or C: A hard decision for me. On my PC, A is clearly the best, whereas on both my phone & tablet (using mobile version), C appears to be the best. B is last on all platforms though. ---CX Zoom(he/him)(let's talk|contribs)11:58, 29 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
For whatever reason, mediawiki renders the SVG as a 16x18 png on desktop browsers (which looks like crap) and a 32x37 png on mobile browsers (which looks fine). --Ahecht (TALK PAGE) 14:53, 9 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Option D: get rid of it. Links to files can be indicated with the text "(PDF)", no need for any icon. The option to get rid of it was introduced too late in the first discussion so it couldn't gain enough traction. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 12:37, 29 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Option A or B: A looks slightly better on my laptop. Surprisingly, B is clearer on my mobile. C is a close third on both. I suspect this is very device- (and perhaps eyesight-) dependent; any of the three would be an improvement. Certes (talk) 12:45, 29 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
D (no icon) - My preference remains to use a non-icon, text marker, like (PDF), or even stylized text, like this: PDF. Icons are more taxing, client and server side, than text, and while PDF icons won't make a big difference on the client side, and we can handle it on the server side, this website is only going to get bigger, and I see no reason to burden it with image icons when text will do. Option A looks better on my desktop; it's a PNG. C looks better on my iPhone; it's an SVG. But on my iPhone, I can't see any of the icons clearly enough to make out "PDF" because of the small screen, unless I zoom in. Also, text is word-searchable, where as icons are not. I just don't see any benefit to using any icon over text. Levivich16:42, 29 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Option A or D (no icon): Option A if icons are preferred, but they aren't that necessary. "(PDF)" is five characters, direct and concise. ResPM (T🔈🎵C) 16:54, 29 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Option A or D (stylized text: PDF as suggested by Levivich) I think "A" is the best icon if we have to use an icon, but I believe the idea of stylized text is even better, and it should be presented as one of the options in these discussions. Huggums537 (talk) 17:07, 29 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
What I mean is the stylized text should be presented as an option if there are future discussions as you indicated might happen per your original post by option D. So, we still have yet to see if that discussion will take place or if consensus will call for that option to be presented. Huggums537 (talk) 14:29, 30 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
"No icon with '(PDF)'" is not technically feasible for generic old links to PDF, so it would need to be policy mandated somewhere or another. "No icon and nothing else" of course is quite feasible. :) My preferences are "no icon at all" (and I don't care about whether it becomes policy or not, but good luck getting that into MOS where it would likely live) followed by A or C (slight preference to A). Preferences exclude B totally. --Izno (talk) 17:52, 29 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Levivich What makes you think it would be technically feasible, given that some PDFs do not live in a CS1/2 template or any other template, of which someone or another might have been thinking when they made that proposition? :) Consider WP:CONTEXTBOT in context of any response you might have. Izno (talk) 18:26, 29 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Izno: We have a robot helicopter flying on Mars, is one thing that makes me think it is technically feasible to add "(PDF)" after a link to a PDF on a website. Are you using the words not technically feasible to convey the meaning that a bot that changes PDF icons to text would violate WP:CONTEXTBOT? Because that is not what I think of when I think of the words technically feasible in the context of changing how a website works. Levivich18:31, 29 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
That is precisely what I mean when I use the word technically feasible, as in technologically feasible, if that makes it easier for you to parse the words. If you think a change to MediaWiki for this would be accepted upstream, I am here to tell you that you are simply wrong, for the same reasons as CONTEXTBOT says. A bot would run into contextbot of course. That leaves a gadget to add it at any given edit time, or editor willpower to do so. Either way, it is not technically feasible to add the words after a link of interest automatically in such a fashion. Izno (talk) 18:41, 29 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
That is not what I understand "technically feasible" or "technologically feasible" to mean: both those phrases mean there's a technical problem, as in, a software or hardware limitation. A policy prohibition is not a technical problem. I'm glad you've explained it, because heretofore, I understood you to be saying the software can't do it.
No. There is no CSS that will do this for you accessibly, which I presume is the reason you want the parenthetical PDF in the first place. Izno (talk) 18:58, 29 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Again, can you explain, rather than assert, why this cannot be done accessibly? What's inaccessible about :after and content: ? Levivich19:00, 29 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, thanks for that explanation. Isn't the way it's done currently, with a CSS background image showing a PDF icon, also not web accessible? (It's Failure Technique 3.) So whether we change the icon, or we use text, it makes no difference to accessibility? Levivich19:56, 29 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Correct, no external URL icon is accessible. There is an argument that can be made that this is a case of progressive enhancement of course, since the CSS icon/text can be argued are extraneous to a well-titled URL. Izno (talk) 22:13, 29 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I prefer SVGs as a concept so option C. The image is not blurred at all, but may have been rendered as such on some browsers. Stifle (talk) 10:59, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Stifle: AIUI, the icon has to be a raster image and so if an SVG is chosen it will be a PNG rendering of the SVG that is displayed. I don't know if that makes a difference to your view. Thryduulf (talk) 12:10, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Option A or D, as what there have been good arguments for both sides. Low-res text and Plaintext are both good ideas for cross-platform readability, and I am having a hard time choosing between them. ☢️Plutonical☢️ᶜᵒᵐᵐᵘⁿᶦᶜᵃᵗᶦᵒⁿˢ12:01, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Still-unanswered question regarding.svg/.png formats: do we know that both are equally good (although that seems in some conflict with the note in the RfC close above)? I get different results depending on my device. The SVGs are better on my phone; the PNG is better on my desktop. — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits)12:13, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Option A. These appear slightly differently on different browsers, desktop vs mobile etc. probably due to the SVG scaling. I've tested a few and A looks acceptably clear on all of them. C is maybe slightly better when using Safari on mobile, but looks blurry on Firefox desktop. B has the same problem and the bold text is a bit overwhelming. Option A looks good everywhere I tried. It's also the smallest file size of the three, by an order of magnitude. Modest Geniustalk14:06, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Option A, with weak support for Option D, looks less blurry than Option C, however I have weak support for D since, if implemented correctly, it just saying (PDF) is fine, however as just plain text it looks weird. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#654514:47, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Option D per the Ahecht example. A-C are all blurry to me with my normal browser and screen size and I can't really read the letters. I can recognized it means PDF by the red band. I would prefer not to go through that mental conversion and just have something clearer. A icon should be as discernible as the rest of the page. MB15:42, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Option C/A (don't care which) but also I am still bitter that Option 1() didn't pass from the first RFC (so sorta Option D). It's a lost battle though. Whatever gets us done with the dang gif file faster is basically what I support (except Option B which just looks too silly in my opinion). –MJL‐Talk‐☖00:18, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Option A - Definitely looks better on desktop, slightly fuzzier than C for me on mobile but not bad. B doesn't look great on either. Not a fan of "(PDF)" in text but the stylized text suggested by Levivich seems like an ok secondary option. Retswerb (talk) 04:32, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: Building on Levivich's text-based proposal and combining the pictures' visual elements into it, I made one that looks like this: PDF The text on it is sharper than it is in pictures, while also retaining the visual elements typically used to denote pdfs. Any suggestion from the community? ---CX Zoom(he/him)(let's talk|contribs)13:44, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
My initial reaction on a desktop (not looked on other devices yet) is that it's significantly larger than any of the icons, more dominant of its surrounds (not a good thing in this context) and no clearer than option A. Thryduulf (talk) 15:55, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I see the same as Thryduulf. I think this idea could be better than A, B or C and is worth pursuing, but that particular implementation isn't a winner. Certes (talk) 18:05, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Option B – Nice bold text, perfectly visible. Especially on higher density screen like mine with scale set to 125% it looks okay and is perfectly readable. — Polda18 (talk) 19:05, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Option D ~no icon + text, per Levivich and others; if we have to have an icon, Option B is the only one readable on my screen. Happy days ~ LindsayHello09:15, 5 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Option A as the one that's sharpest, and thus most visible to me without reading glasses. (Sadly, I have become old!) The softer definition on B makes it liable to bleed. Guettarda (talk) 15:50, 9 February 2022 (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.
WP:REFILL is a popular citation maintenance tool with great power, and likewise power to cause great harm. It has been largely abandoned for years, in terms of fixing bugs. The number of errors it creates is increasing with time. Its usage is increasing with time. The talk page is full of bug requests. The home page is full of warnings. The GitHub page is full of bug reports.
These are countless examples of bugs, here are two:
edit and fix required (note the user in this case has only ever edited Wikipedia in one article)
Many editors like reFill, when it works. However, many editors are also not fixing the problems it creates. The errors are increasingly complicated and difficult to determine. By letting the tool run rouge we are causing significant damage to the project. Blocking does not need to be permanent, restoration only requires someone to actively maintain and respond to bugs.
Alternatives to blocking are only for approved users, similar to AWB due to it's powerful ability to cause harm, only proven responsible editors should be allowed. How these things might be technically implemented (block, approved users) is unclear but I believe both are technically feasible with some investigation depending what the community wants to do if anything.
Option A - Do nothing.
Option B - Approved users only.
Option C - Block until most known bugs are fixed.
Option D - Something else.
Poll (block reFill)
Option C. Per nom. This is more a vote for more robust software than anything else really. Old enough to remember a time when no software with known bugs would ever be put, or continue to be, in production. It is true, such software policies did use to apply. 50.74.109.2 (talk) 01:27, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
A or B ReFill or Reflinks are helpful tools in getting at least some of the info filled in and reducing the repetitiveness of manually filling in references. I do go over the results because they often need fixing and none of these errors seem so major to me that we necessarily have to restrict access. If we do choose to, I think those of us who have proven conscientious enough in how we use the tools should still have access. – Muboshgu (talk) 17:18, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
A or D. ReFill is not perfect, and never will be. It has always come with a health warning. Its value outweighs its problems. To withdraw it, in any shape or form, will damage the project more than continuing to use it as-is. The 'D' would be to advertise for experienced developers, with the right technical knowledge and spare time to onwardly develop the tool. While there might be some quick fixes, the learning curve given little-to-no documentation and zero handover from the tool's author mean that making even the slightest change comes with too much responsibility for someone not already used to toolforge, and the whole developer stack. Curb Safe Charmer (talk) 23:13, 25 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Option A or D -- it's hard to get behind blocking the use of ReFill, since I often use it to write articles. While I've written software to generate full-featured proper citations from Newspapers.com, for everything else I use ReFill. It's an unimaginable pain in the ass to fill out citations manually, and I check all of my ReFill cites by hand -- I'd estimate about one out of every ten will have a couple fields that are erroneously filled in, but even then it saves me several minutes. For example, oftentimes the article's title, publisher and author are fine, but the date is messed up -- this only takes a couple seconds to fix, versus typing in all of this information or copying it from the webpage by hand, which takes forever. At the same time, I understand the importance of fixing the tool, and the possibility that doing something drastic could force some action to be taken; I certainly haven't been devoting any effort to it, despite the fact that I could probably make a couple fixes, because it works well enough for my purposes. Perhaps it would be a useful compromise to block ReFill from being used in articlespace, which wouldn't affect drafts or userspace pages (and if you really wanted to use it in a mainspace page you could copy the source into a userspace sandbox to use it there). jp×g07:33, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Options B and D. I use ReFill almost daily. Being aware of the bugs, I adjust results accordingly. I think this is rather like a chainsaw—very effective for the job it does, but dangerous for the person using it without knowing how. Those who know how should not be restricted while work is undertaken to remove the bugs. BD2412T17:54, 6 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
A or B. I use ReFill enough that I would miss it. Checking for errors is not a burden, although it would be nice if the bugs are fixed. - Donald Albury21:06, 6 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
A or B/D, it's a tool for humans, not magic. Yes, it would be good if someone tried to fix it. Nonetheless, its results generally range from marginally improved, to improved, imo, and with care, better than that. As for process, it should not be removed from anyone, unless there is a showing of continued problems after discussion with the person. I suppose any "new" access could be restricted like a perm, were B adopted. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 21:27, 6 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Discussion (block reFill)
Administrator note we could use the abusefilter to block or warn on these edits as they seem to have a consistent edit summary we could latch on to; we could also exempt certain usergroups (e.g. extendedconfirmed) or users with an editcount above something from such a filter. While possible, I expect there will be significant pushback about making a new local mediawiki usergroup just for this. If set to "warn" every use would require a reconfirmation after getting the "warning" which can say whatever we want. (Please note one of the sample "bad" edits is by a user with 3000000+ edits that is also a member of restricted groups including autopatrolled). We can not easily make an on-wiki discretionary access control list, as we do not control this software - it is hosted off-site. Traditional administrative options are also available - such as placing editing blocks on users that are making disruptive edits. — xaosfluxTalk22:55, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The examples seem to disrespect {{cbignore}}, though one of them has the |bot=medic parameter, which presumably limits cbignore's scope to a different bot. Should a filter warn (or prevent) edits with reFill in the edit summary which remove cbignore (or cbignore without parameters)? Or is the problem more widespread, involving errors other than a failure to respect cbignore? Certes (talk) 23:49, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Certes: that template says it applies to "participating bots". This edit was not made by a bot it was made by a human editor. Is there a reason you think that this utility is otherwise a "participating bot"? It may be possible to code an abuse filter for that though. — xaosfluxTalk00:09, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
On reflection, I may have expressed a good idea badly. Observations: Certain citations confuse bots. Editors kindly mark these with cbignore. The two examples above are also marked with cbignore. Hypothesis: the sorts of citation that get marked with cbignore also confuse ReFill (though as a non-bot it has no duty to observe cbignore). Suggestion: detect edits where ReFill amends lines containing cbignore, and tag/warn/prevent as appropriate. Certes (talk) 14:26, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I would love for some new developers to take over this tool (and Reflinks too), to fix the numerous issues it creates for author/first/last parameters and other parameters. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 01:28, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The problem is getting a modified version live, I submitted a change to fix one of the errors caused by the tool a couple of years ago. If someone could solve this problem, then pogress could be made. Keith D (talk) 19:45, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Also see Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval/BareRefBot. On hold due to ANI thread. It just fills in the bare refs for now, but the script can be upgraded to match the capabiltities of reFill or refLinks. I think a new tool rewritten from scratch is the future (I've looked at the source code of both tools, I didn't like working with it, but that just is me) Rlink2 (talk) 19:16, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yes agree, best redone from scratch. Hope your bot works out and can convert all those refs before editors feel the need to run reFill. A number of people have tried to adopt reFill with little success fixing the dozens of bugs; it was written by a college student and abandoned. -- GreenC20:07, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
To anyone writing a new tool: please plan ahead and get a few more people involved in its development and maintenance. It would be greatly appreciated! isaacl (talk) 20:55, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It is only one of perhaps 100s of reported bugs ignored for years. Is this bug even reported, and if it was, would it matter? -- GreenC20:27, 25 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Monitor for unusual strings by sorting by count and seeing which have high counts and manually skim off into a file the bot can reference. -- GreenC17:02, 26 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Note that CurbSafeCharmer is the maintainer of reFill2 on GitHub [5] . I see very little change in the code for 3 years. In the past 24hrs a few issues were closed as invalid, not due to code fixes.[6] It still leaves many open issues.[7] Plus the many talk page reports (including archived pages). There isn't much happening in the code itself. This is not blaming CSC, as they say, it is a steep learning curve and a difficult project which explains why even the "slightest change" is so difficult and never gets done. -- GreenC17:16, 26 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@GreenC: There were eight issues in the GitHub repo, most dating back to 2015-2017 that the author and previous maintainer of reFill should have closed - I have done so today as it makes it easier to 'see the wood for the trees'. Of the 27 open issues, almost all are enhancements requests, rather than bugs. It is a small but significant distinction. I do not see the issue raised by Rlink2 above as a bug, for instance, as it is a request for reFill to do something new that it was not designed to do - there's no existing code for that which needs fixing. Curb Safe Charmer (talk) 17:50, 26 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for taking a few minutes to close some years old open tickets that are no longer valid. See the talk page and example diffs for lots more (and Phab). The main thing is no one is actively coding, for years, and so this garbage data continues to get added into Wikipedia at scale. Trouble reports for tools like this should be constant, see Citation bot talk page, it's a process of continually fixing issues. The tool has been effectively abandoned by developers. -- GreenC18:22, 26 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I would be willing to try to work on some fixes for the most egregious misbehavior of the tool and submit pull requests -- is there a list of the biggest issues? The GitHub issues don't seem to be prioritized very well. I would also need some instructions for setting up and testing on a local instance. If I had these things, though, I could commit to at least taking a look (although a few have said the codebase is daunting, so it may not result in any progress, but it's at least worth a try). jp×g07:40, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah we've heard this in the past, people say they will adopt it then nothing much happens. Similar to Citation bot, tools like this require constant attention to adapt to changing conditions with CS1|2, MOS, best practices, etc... it's a lifestyle not a 1-time fix. The original programmer was a college student, whose code is apparently not easy to work with, who quit and moved on in life. New programmers frequently paint themselves into corners and realize they need to rewrite and find it easier to quit. Others have looked it said it would be best to start over. -- GreenC02:45, 7 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I think JPxG is a skilled coder and programmer, and is also a very nice Wikipedia editor who is trusted and easy to get along with. I trust he is more than capable to handle whatever might come in his way. And besides, he never said he would take over maintence of the tool (at least that's not the message I got - I could be wrong though). He said he would fix the most pressing issues as of right now,which is important and could be helpful. Rlink2 (talk) 04:12, 7 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oh sure JPxG is great agree. It's been frustrating to see one person after the next promise to help out keeping the tool alive in the process but no real progress is made. It has nothing to do with good intentions. Sometimes it's a lack of skill, sometimes it's a lack of time, or lack of interest. Going on for years. If it was harmless who cares but not harmless. If we do keep the tool alive, there needs to be a stop button of sorts so users can at least shut it down until certain bugs are fixed. Currently there isn't even that basic functionality which every bot or tool should have. -- GreenC05:58, 7 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
A more tenable solution
Over the last few days, I've had the opportunity to download the repository for ReFill and take a look at it. It doesn't seem to be badly written by any definition (in fact it seems quite well-written), although it does seem like it'll be very hard to work with. However, the point made above by GreenC is good -- I foresee a particular problem occurring here, and I think we should come up with some way to preempt it.
So, okay, let's say me and CSC sit down and hash it out and... learn how Vue works, I guess -- we figure out how to implement a couple of the most urgent bugfixes, maybe even modify or extend a feature (like, something that fixes cites for some the websites on BHG's lists). This is great, right? Except now I know how Vue works, which means I get a job where they pay me $99999999999, and stop having time to fix bugs in ReFill. This is presumably what happened to Zhaofeng, the original writer -- you can see on his GitHub that he is still making commits on a daily basis, and presumably his life rules because some of this stuff is really cool. But he is not fixing stuff in ReFill. Now, if I spend a million years learning how the hell ReFill works, presumably some day I will go to NASA to be a front-end rocket scientist, or I will get hit in the head with a meteorite, or whatever, and then this knowledge will be of little benefit to anyone (except possibly my web developer colleagues at NASA).
Anyway, the idea I had is that we could build up a decently useful page somewhere - like Wikipedia:Refill/technical and Wikipedia talk:Refill/technical, and everyone who wants to try and dick around with the code can convene there, to a) figure out what the heck is going on and b) share notes on what the heck they think is going on. We manage to do this perfectly well for everything else -- people get into an argument about politics and we end up with an ArbCom casepage filled with thousands of diffs and tens of thousands of words. I think that if we set this up, and still ended up with no progress being made, I'd support blocking ReFill until it was resolved (if only to get people motivated to help out). Alternately, we could leave it unblocked and make it fill in publication titles with auto-generated controversial statements about American politics ("Apollo 11 was an inside job", "the 9/11 landings were fake", "Donald Trump was actually born in Svalbard", etc) because that seems to effectively get people's attention. But I think if some people can be gotten to that page, if they later become busy, or get hit in the head by a meteorite, at least there will be something useful there for others to go off. jp×g21:19, 7 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
(in fact it seems quite well-written) Good to hear.
FWIW I do have a fix for the broken sites for ReFill specifically. I used it at the very very beginning of my journey of fixing bare refs until I decided to move on to my own stuff. But it might be helpful to you. Let me know if you want it.
Yes, a page like that would be great. Keep everything documented for future maintainers. But, I think the biggest issue is finding someone to work on it. You could have all the documentation in the world, but someone still needs to fix the bugs at the end of the day.
Thanks, JPxG. It is good to hear someone confirm that there's nothing inherently wrong with the reFill code. I would say there's nothing inherently wrong with the software architecture either. And I will stick my neck out and say that GreenC should evidence their claims that it is 'full' of bugs and warnings, or that 'one person after the next promise[s] to help out keeping the tool alive in the process' - who were they? "Others have looked [at] it said it would be best to start over" - who? Curb Safe Charmer (talk) 22:52, 7 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
User:JPxG: I think that if we set this up, and still ended up with no progress being made, I'd support blocking ReFill until it was resolved . Good, agreed, let's do that. I won't be involved as I don't have the time. However, seeing as how hostile this tool has been to my own bot, literally undoing its edits for no reason, I have no choice but to continue monitoring the situation. I don't like being a squeaky wheel, but it's less work than monitoring reFill via Stream and having bot wars, or writing code to fix certain reFill errors which I already do (though not at scale). -- GreenC04:00, 9 February 2022 (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 current speedy deletion criteria has criteria U5: blatant misuse of Wikipedia as a webhost and G11: unambiguous advertising or promotion. A lot of user pages created in user space by new users seem to be nothing more than self promotion attempts. And I have seen it all - people using Wikipedia like Facebook, Tumblr, or their own personal website. New users wanting to contribute an article seem to use WP:AFC to do so. On this page, of the 68 user pages that were deleted on that page, all of them were speedied, 36 were deleted under WP:U5, and the rest were deleted under WP:G11, WP:G5, and similar criteria. Only three user pages were deleted under U1. Given this, and the fact that new users often create user pages without thinking about whether they will actually contribute to Wikipedia, I think restricting new users from creating user pages may be necessary to help cut down on the unnecessary user pages that get deleted every day. Aasim - Herrscher of Wikis00:08, 28 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Poll (restricting user page creation for new users)
Whoa there some processes - such as enrolling in registered education courses via https://dashboard.wikiedu.org/ help you create your userpage, which you would be doing as a very new user. A quick query right now shows that 18 of the last 75 pages created in User space were base userpages of exactly this sort. Also, this doesn't specify "base userpages" and I certainly wouldn't want to stop sandboxes. — xaosfluxTalk01:38, 28 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose In addition to the things this proposition would completely break (like Wikipedia Adventure and WikiEdu), this is a not-as-helpful-as-it-seems proposition because Special:NewPages already makes it very easy to find and tag bad-faith userpages if you know how to use it efficiently. Curbon7 (talk) 03:54, 28 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Having users create their own userpages is a great way to ensure user retention. It worked for me: my first edits were to create my user and talk pages. It was so effective that it ensured that like 4 years later when I actually became an active editor, I didn't just create a new account, I went and found the password to this account so that I could have that user and talk page. The rest is history. CaptainEekEdits Ho Cap'n!⚓04:39, 28 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose This measure isn't necessary. I understand where the idea is coming from, but purely promotional accounts that are WP:NOTHERE make themselves known pretty quickly. If they aren't allowed to make userpages, they'll just make other pages, like pages in article space. They'll cause trouble however they want, and we'll root them out sooner or later. We can't really plug every hole in this dyke. The sad thing is that Wikipedia presents an irresistible lure to spammers and self-promoters; it's a website where they think they can host pages they don't have to pay for. There's really nothing we can do to stop that, short of completely shutting out new accounts from literally everything we would even use as a yard stick to even graduate them to trusted statuses like autoconfirmed users — and that obviously isn't going to work. Zeke, the Mad Horrorist(Speak quickly)(Follow my trail)05:44, 28 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose A good-faith proposal with some advantages, but they are vastly outweighed by the many good points made by preceding opposers. WP:SNOW is forecast. Certes (talk) 12:39, 28 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. In addition to what everyone else has said, when training we strongly encourage users to start with their userpage as a safe introduction to editing. Editors with blue-linked userpages are also often treated better that those without in the event of any dispute about what they are doing so they are a positive for editor retention. The stats about speedy deletion, rather than showing a problem, seem to actually show the system is working. Thryduulf (talk) 19:24, 28 January 2022 (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.
Note: This might not technically be a proposal, but I hope you'll excuse me posting here; I'm doing so in an attempt to make sure lots of people are aware of this upcoming change.
---
Hi y'all – the Editing Team is planning to offer the Reply Tool as an opt out feature to all people – logged in and out – at en.wiki this upcoming *Monday, 7 February 2022*.
The "Deployment Rationale" below is what's leading us to think now is a good time to move forward with this deployment. If this idea brings any concerns/questions to mind, we would value you sharing those thoughts so we can talk about them.
And for people curious about the work the Editing Team will continue doing to improve the Reply Tool, please see this update.
Note the 7 February deployment only pertains to the Reply Tool, NOT the New Discussion Tool (setting name: enable quick topic adding) or Topic Subscriptions (setting name: Enable topic subscription).
EDIT: to clarify, this deployment only impacts people (logged in and out) using talk pages on the desktop site. Said another way: this deployment would have NO IMPACT on people (logged in and out) using talk pages on the mobile site.PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 04:30, 3 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Deployment Rationale
The Editing Team has the impression that now is a good time to offer the Reply Tool as a default at en.wiki based on the following:
People do not seem to have any significant concerns about the Reply Tool being offered more broadly.[1]
The Reply Tool is reliable. Over the past 30 days, 99.9% of the 14,000+ comments 800+ people posted with the tool at en.wiki did not impact any other parts of the talk pages it was used on.[2]
Many people have confidence in the Reply Tool. At en.wiki, 2,800+ people have used the Reply Tool to post at least one comment since the tool was offered as a beta feature on 16 March 2021.[3] And of these 2,800+ people, 25% have used the Reply Tool to post 10 or more comments.
While there is additional functionality that could A) increase the range of comments people can use the Reply Tool to publish (e.g. votes[4] and unindented comments within existing discussions[5]) and B) expand how expressive the tool enables people to be (e.g. stronger template support[6] and signature customization[7]), we do not currently understand the implementation of these additional capabilities as needing to prevent people who are new from benefiting from being able to post comments more intuitively and for the comments they post being signed and indented in ways experienced volunteers expect and value.
Yes, the deployment planned for Monday, 7 February 2022only pertains to the Reply Tool, NOT the New Discussion Tool (setting name: enable quick topic adding) or Topic Subscriptions (setting name: Enable topic subscription).
Generally, I think this is the right direction to head—ever since Enterprisey developed his version of a "reply link" tool way back when, I have long been excited at the prospect of deploying this in a widespread format to help new editor engagement. With that being said, I would be mindful that this would be a relatively significant new feature in the editing interface, and some past rollouts of similarly significant new features have led to tension between the WMF and the English Wikipedia community (see e.g. Wikipedia:VisualEditor/RFC and Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Media Viewer RfC). I don't think the Reply tool is quite as invasive as VisualEditor and Media Viewer were, but because of those dark memories, I would be inclined to more broadly advertise to experienced editors that this change is going to occur—specifically, I'm thinking in MediaWiki:Watchlist-messages. Maybe this is overkill, but the English Wikipedia community can sometimes be really passionate against these software changes, particularly when they have the appearance of being performed without their consultation or consent. I've been using the Reply tool for a while now, and it is quite good—I just hope others see it the same way. Mz7 (talk) 09:43, 2 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the shoutout! I agree with everything you said. I guess it may seem like a silly step (and I think it sort of is). But we should definitely hold an RfC of some sort if we've learned from the history of this sort of thing. It doesn't even have to be that long (a week?) or laborious.PPelberg (WMF) and the team, thank you so much for all your hard work on this! I've been waiting for this day for a long, long time. Would it be possible to get links to some of those "suspicious" edits (I'm assuming that's what "sus" means in that table)? I really appreciate the inclusion of the table in the first place. Enterprisey (talk!) 10:34, 2 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@PPelberg (WMF): we may at least post a note somewhere like our watchlist header when it goes live to help head off any "what's this" confusion posts. That being said, probably should have 2 targets ready: (a) the location any issues should be reported; (b) a description/help page of the new feature (which should include the opt-out directions). mw:Talk pages project/Replying isn't really a good landing page for either of those - it is more of a project tracking page. Are there better targets ready somewhere? — xaosfluxTalk11:14, 2 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Xaosflux, there's mw:Help:DiscussionTools, which could be copied here. (Everything in Help: namespace at mw.org is public domain/CC-0, so you don't even have to worry about licensing attribution.) It might make more sense to put the section about the Reply tool in Help:Talk pages than to create another extension-specific page.
That said... it's already default-on for about half the editors in the movement. Across hundreds of wikis, I've seen about five requests for information on how to disable it and almost no bug reports. There have been some feature requests (e.g., support for voting-style discussions) and questions (e.g., why doesn't it recognize this editor's non-standard signature, or work on this page with a colored background?). Someone even wrote a quick user script (check the VPM archives; I copied it here) to change "[reply]" into the emoji or word of your choice. This experience suggests that we probably won't get that many questions, especially after the first day or two. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:22, 2 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'm thinking a watchlist notice would be good on launch day, something like:
{{Display/watchlist
|until= 10 DaysFromNowMonth 2022
|cookie=n
|text=The [[Wikipedia:Talk_pages_project#Reply_tool|'''Reply tool''']] from the talk pages project has been enabled for all editors. Should you have any issues or feedback, please [[Wikipedia talk:Talk pages project|let us know]].
}}
Making the reply tool opt-out is a big step for beginner friendliness. Wording should be this imo (with relevant links): "The talk page reply tool has been enabled for all editors. If you spot any issues or have any feedback for the Talk Pages project team, let us know at our talk page" ✨ Edtalk! ✨ 03:43, 3 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Suffusion of Yellow good question. The deployment currently planned for this upcoming Monday will only impact people – logged in and out – who are accessing the desktop site.
hi @Suffusion of Yellow – the mw:Editing Team is planning to offer both the Reply and New Discussion Tools on mobile at an initial set of wikis within the next month or so (you can track progress on this work by following along with phab:T282638).
@GhostInTheMachine good question. This deployment does not include the Reply Tool being made available on mobile because we are still refining the user experience for it. We will have a prototype ready to share soon, would you be interested in trying it out and sharing what you think about it?
A tad short-notice for general awareness of rollout, but I've been using it on meta to get used to it, and it's significantly improved from even 3 months ago - especially in its tolerance to the most common thing I did to break it, which was adding ping templates as the first thing in the message. I think the first week will be a bit of a mess, but the general gain will be significant. Nosebagbear (talk) 09:50, 3 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
As someone who is not at all tech savvy… please explain what this is and what it is attempting to accomplish - using non-tech language. Don’t assume people know what you are talking about. Blueboar (talk) 00:24, 4 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It adds a little reply link after talk page talk page posts that you can click on to reply to that particular message. It opens a small editing window below the message you're replying to, so you can reply without loading a new page. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 00:34, 4 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Alright y'all: it's been a couple of days since this discussion started and we thought it would be helpful to articulate the information that has surfaced in the discussion thus far. This way, we can collectively decide what happens next with this deployment with a shared set of ideas in our minds.
New Information
People are supportive: Everyone who has commented in the discussion thus far is supportive of the Reply Tool being offered as an opt-out feature, for all users (logged in + out), on desktop
Awareness is important: A significant number of volunteers who have commented in the discussion agree (and so do we!) that it would be wise to make as many people aware of this change as possible, ideally ahead of time. [1][2][3][4][5]
Announcement needs some more thought: There does not yet seem to be an agreement about what the most effective way(s) are of making people aware about the Reply Tool being made available as an opt-out feature on desktop.
*Please comment if you do NOT think aspects of the above are accurate. It's very possible I missed and/or misunderstood something someone said!
Next steps
With the "New Information" above in mind, I'm going to ping a few other folks who have been involved in testing and providing feedback about the Reply Tool[6][7] to hear what they have to say...
As people who are experienced using the Reply Tool at en.wiki[7], we wonder: what do you think might be effective ways for making the wider en.wiki community aware of this Reply Tool deployment?PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 03:06, 4 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
A question and a couple of comments before as head into the weekend...
Question
@Ed6767, @Enterprisey, @GhostInTheMachine, @Mz7, @Xaosflux: as people who have said this deployment would benefit from many people being made aware of it ahead of time, how do you think this announcement or announcements ought to be made? Would an RfC be valuable? Would a MediaWiki:Watchlist message be effective? Might making more posts on pages experienced volunteers are likely to visit (e.g. a couple relevant noticeboards, Village pump (technical) as @Whatamidoing (WMF)has done) be the best approach? Some combination of these options?
Comments
A couple of thoughts about what the mw:Editing Team is thinking...
We agree with you in thinking that it's worthwhile to make as many people aware of the change before it happens as possible.
We think the deployment date ought to depend on people having enough awareness that it's happening. Said another way: we are committed to revising the deployment date to leave more time for making people aware, if that ends up being necessary.
Next step
At around 16:00 UTC this Monday, 7 February, I'll check back in with you all so we can decide whether we move forward with the deployment on Monday or push it back a few days to execute the plan y'all might've come up with over the weekend.
My only advice is “think in terms of next month rather than next week”. We here at enWP do not like surprises, and we tend to knee jerk reject things when surprised. So go very slowly with the role out. Announce the crap out of it - in as many different forums and formats as you can think of. Give people time to get used to the idea before you go live with it. Blueboar (talk) 02:53, 5 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Considering it is still not clear to me, and other members of the Editing Team, whether y'all (all of the volunteers who have participated in this discussion to date) think an RfC for this kind of change is necessary, in the immediate-term, we are delaying today's (7 February) planned deployment of the Reply Tool.
Next step(s)
You can expect to see another comment from me before 5:00 AM UTC (8 Feb) with a proposed next step or steps.
Of course, if any new thoughts/questions emerge between now and then, we would value you sharing them.
Alright y'all, people in this discussion seem to agree:
1) Some volunteers are bound to be surprised by this change, no matter how many announcements are made
2) "1)" notwithstanding, it's preferable the Reply Tool deployment be delayed until more announcements are posted
Next steps
With the above in mind, what do you think of doing the following?
@Enterprisey: are you able to take the lead on making sure this discussion is added to CENT?
@Xaosflux: are you able to finish the work required to ensure the Reply Tool opt-out deployment is included in the watchlist banner?
And then we can all come back together to talk about the deployment timing once we see what people say in response to the announcements Enterprisey and Xaosflux will have posted. PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 01:37, 8 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Xaosflux ah, I see – thank you for sharing the link to the draft message. Although, what do you think about running the Watchlist message before the actual deployment?
...I ask the above thinking that people in this thread seemed to have agreed that making people aware of the deployment ahead of time is likely to be more impactful than waiting until after it's already happened. This way, people have an opportunity to raise any concerns.PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 20:22, 8 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@PPelberg (WMF): we certainly could do either or both, we generally only put something with a ready to go "call to action" in the watchlist, in that example it would be a "here is what this new thing is, tell us here of any issues". As far as a "before" goes, what is the call to action - if this is going to be a "proposal" that requires community consensus - then it seems big enough to advertise on WLN, a RFC section should be opened below that people can go to to participate in such a discussion. Has this evolved from a "the server owners are doing this thing" to a "should we do this thing" discussion? — xaosfluxTalk22:17, 8 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
...we certainly could do either or both...
@Xaosflux: making announcements before and after the deployment sounds like a great idea to me.
Has this evolved from a "the server owners are doing this thing" to a "should we do this thing" discussion?
This discussion has made three points clear to me [i]:
All of the volunteers who have commented in this discussion thus far agree deploying the Reply Tool as an opt-out feature is a good idea
Many of the volunteers who have commented in this discussion agree there is value in announcing this deployment widely ahead of time
There does not seem to be a clear consensus among the volunteers who have commented in this discussion whether a formal RFC is necessary
Combining the three points above with the fact that we are not yet aware of any objections to the Reply Tool deployment plan, I see the objectives of the "pre-deployment" Watchlist announcement as being to ensure experienced volunteers are aware of: A) An upcoming change to the experience they have using talk pages on desktop and B) Where they can go to voice any question/concerns about said planned change.
So maybe the messages end up looking like this...
Before: "The talk page reply tool will soon be enabled for all desktop editors. Should you have any questions or concerns about this deployment, please join the discussion at Village pump (proposals)."
After: "The talk page reply tool has been enabled for all desktop editors. Should you have any issues or feedback for the Talk Pages project team, please join the discussion at the project talk page." [ii]
...what do you think?
---
i. Please comment if you see anything missing from, and/or inaccurate within, the three points I articulated above!
@PPelberg (WMF): seems fine, once a launch date is determined maybe we activate the WLNotice a week ahead of time, let it run for a week after - and include the launch date in the message. Is there a new target launch date? Banner blindness is a thing, so don't want to summon editors to a discussion where no decisions are going to be made. If this is going to be a traditional process, then sure we do one early. Traditionally we'd open a RFC, for about a month, get comments, determine the results, then proceed if there is established support; in general the "default" for changes is status-quo. — xaosfluxTalk10:28, 9 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I am going to say that I've only noticed one issue with the reply tool and i Have no clue what causes it or if it can still happen. For whatever reason, in the past some sections people created couldn't be found by the reply tool with no real reason as to why. I don't remember where this was happening or who the users were that were causing this to happen, however it appears to be very rare. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#654503:10, 4 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Could you explain what "a bug in Parsoid causing it to render the page differently from the PHP parser" means in layman's terms? ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#654503:30, 4 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
That's not relevant and is a distraction. You are being asked whether the explanation given at that link might match your experience. The explanation is saying that certain listed factors might cause "Could not find the comment..." and if those do not apply, the software might have a bug. If the latter, they would like a report including a permanent link to the page involved along with a description of exactly what you did and what you saw. The "file a task" is an overly optimistic request that you can ignore. Instead, post your findings here or at any noticeboard such as WP:VPT and someone will notify the appropriate people. Johnuniq (talk) 04:32, 4 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Blaze, the core MediaWiki software that renders wikitext to HTML is written in the PHP programming language, but it's a one-way conversion. There is another component called Parsoid that can do two-way, and Reply Tool uses it because ... reasons. Visual Editor also uses the Parsoid service. (Apologies to all the technical peeps reading my mangled explanation.) ⁓ Pelagic ( messages ) 12:21, 6 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This is a visible change. The reply links positioned after every post aren't exactly an obscure UI element tucked away in a toolbar. Will this flip the setting for everyone who hasn't already turned it on then off again? People will notice and say "why weren't we asked?"
Any RFC or banner should run before changeover, not after. Even if it means we have to wait another fortnight or month. Putting it up after the fact would be a very bad look.
On the plus side, a lot of people are already familiar with Discussion Tools thanks to years of fantastic consultation and outreach from Peter and WAID. But enwiki is a big place and we might be surprised to discover how many people still didn't know.
No problem, @Pelagic. The exact date is not important to the Editing team, so if you all think we need to delay, then that's okay. Just please come to some agreement about what should be considered "enough".
To give some context, back in 2013, I personally posted announcements about the visual editor to more than 100 pages at the English Wikipedia, it had been discussed in the village pumps for months, the team ran CentralNotice banners in multiple languages for two straight weeks ...and many editors were still surprised. I remember one person saying that she had been on vacation for the exact 14 days that the banners ran. Most of us in this discussion have probably also seen CENT-listed RFCs that are claimed later to have not been well-advertised enough, because 99% of editors don't follow RFCs or CENT, and they sometimes regret that they missed important discussions. I have also seen an editor participate at length in a discussion about a proposed change, and later ask why there had never been any discussion about that change. All of which is to say: no amount of effort can completely prevent surprises. The English Wikipedia is too big for everyone to know about everything, and we have too much to keep track of to remember even the things we do talk about. I expect that most editors will consider the Reply tool to be a pleasant surprise, but I do expect its appearance to surprise a substantial number of editors no matter what we do or when we do it.
I feel your frustration, Whatamidoing. In my imaginary ideal world there would be a formal RFC that, for once, could come down clearly in favour of change, because of all the great community work you have already invested, and because this is a feature that I believe most people deem beneficial. There's a danger it could get bogged down in "no consensus", which would be a saddening demonstration that participatory decision-making doesn't scale, and that enwiki is something like Conway's Game of Life where interactions are localised to small scale but cause surprising ripples.
As to choice of channel, I almost wrote earlier something like "hey, why not go all out and run a mw:CentralNotice banner, rather than just a watchlist banner or a WP:Centralized discussion listing?" Not knowing that you had been through that before.
Personally, I'd be wouldn't mind if you turned it on tonight. Maybe there's nothing more you can do to influence the amount of pushback. As you say, how much is enough? ⁓ Pelagic ( messages ) 14:17, 7 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sure that the product manager would be willing to wait for an RFC, but the number of times volunteer-me has had conversations along the lines of "There should've been an RFC! – There was an RFC last month; here's a link to it – But there should've been an RFC!" leaves me doubtful that even that would work.
For clarity, I really do want as little surprise as possible. I am just not certain that we can materially shift the needle on that with any non-disruptive means. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:48, 7 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think that makes a lot of sense. I agree that having a up-or-down vote on the matter is probably not productive. Maybe we should give it a week with a T:CENT banner plus a watchlist notice? Enterprisey (talk!) 22:22, 7 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I understand there are those who are suspicious of change, and can find it hard to adapt. Nonetheless, the visual change being proposed is a brief string of text added to the end of comments. Editors remain free to add comments the same way they always have and ignore the new link. I think it's overkill for there to be a large-scale RfC on the matter, absent any indication that there is in fact a significant proportion of editors who object. As an example: once upon a time, the section edit link was right justified. A number of editors raised complaints when it was changed. I could be wrong, but I don't get the sense that it continues to be a simmering irritant to this day. isaacl (talk) 22:40, 7 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Help:Talk pages has had a new section on the Reply tool inserted (see here) (Please don't alter the section heading until rollout has finished, as other pages are now being linked to it).
Hi everyone, I really don't want to see a foundation (or developers) vs community fight here on what seems to be a small feature.
This discussion has kind of gone sideways - let's get back on track. The way I see it there are only two good options:
(HARD BLOCK) This new software deployment should be blocked on community consensus; we hold a normal RFC to get there. (Let's not pretend only the "deployment date" is under discussion - as "never" could be the result). Noting that such an RFC could spin in to debates about opt-out vs opt-in, new editors vs existing editors, default option, ip editor option; carefully setting up the RFC may help guide it.
(Gamma Test period) This is an advisory announcement only. A target date with some lead time is advertised. Anyone with concerns is invited (by way of notices) to test the feature (which AFAIK is not 'easy' to test in isolation?) - however deployment will be delayed if there are open bugs (not feature requests) in phab (link to what parent task should be used).
If the external-to-the-communty groups are willing to push forward (as almost all other software improvements are processed), then I suggest #2 is the way to go. My only concern with #2 is that it seems "tricky" to get people to test this, because the directions are to use a beta option which enables an entire suite of tools, not just this one.(Let me know if I'm missing something?) Directions for how to see the results of the change can be provided.
@Xaosflux: You can enable each beta feature individually. Yes you will still be enabling all discussion tools, however I don't see that as being a big of an issue. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#654515:58, 9 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Just so you know, I myself would prefer #2. #1 makes it seems like this entire process of notifying people ahead of time was a complete waste if the software deployment were to be blocked by the community with the option for it to never be deployed. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#654518:36, 9 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Personally, I think #2 is OK in this use case, but having been around to see mediaviewer, visualeditor, and flow deployment problems respect that the community could be wary. — xaosfluxTalk19:03, 9 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I've updated the deployment ticket (T296645) with this new deployment date.
If/when you notice people reporting a significant issue with the Reply Tool, please ping me and I can add the issue as a sub-task of T296645. You're also welcome to boldly add any issues you believe would warrant the deployment being blocked. Although, I think it's important that the Editing Team review any issues of this kind.
Thanks for starting this. I'm for #2; as I said, I can't really imagine what could be controversial about this (that's jinxing it, heh) besides the possibility of interference elsewhere on the page, but since we have hard numbers for that I'm sure it'll be fine. Enterprisey (talk!) 22:20, 9 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) I'm for #2 as well. I think it's all about not surprising too many people, rather than seeking their permission for a rollout of an effective new tool. Either way, I'm still unclear if a Centralised Notice or Watchlist Notice is a) in the pipeline b) impossible to do c) deemed inappropriate/unnecessary. Personally, I'd prefer to read a banner that affects me, rather than all that fund-raising stuff. Even a non-editing IP visitor seeing such a banner notice would come away with a positive impression that they could participate in discussions should they ever wish to. What's not to like?...and a final thought, how about preparing a Reply Tool Rollout Information page? Aim it directly at en-wiki editors, and summarise all information together in one place. Here's a mock-up of its bare bones if folk think it's worth running with the idea. Nick Moyes (talk) 23:50, 9 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
xaosflux I wasn't sure either. I only thought that if people were concerned about minimising community concerns or kickback, then it could be a sensible 'political' move to directly cater for them with a dedicated page or sub-page just for the rollout issue. I'm not trying to make work; it all depends on what level of concern you and others think there could be. Nick Moyes (talk) 00:17, 10 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Such a big/important change really does deserve a dedicated page. I think it would make sense to start by simply splitting the Reply tool section out of the Talk pages project page and then possibly extend it to cover any further issues related to the deployment. That would also help to segregate any future talk page feedback from the talk page feedback for the other parts of the overall project — GhostInTheMachinetalk to me12:19, 10 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Based on the experience of other wikis, I'm not sure this will feel like a big change, especially after the first two weeks.
I think it's an important change, for those who want to use it, but I think it's also a minor change for those uninterested in it, as it can easily be ignored. I think from a help documentation perspective, having the two ways of replying consolidated under Help:Talk pages § Replying to an existing thread is reasonable. isaacl (talk) 22:52, 10 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Enough community support here should be fine to plow forward with #2 as well. Maybe we pick a date, like March 7th and go with it. @Enterprisey: seems like phab:T296645 is the main ticket, so any possibly discovered bugs can reference it and block it. I'm going to block it with a community-consensus requirement right now, but that doesn't mean we need a "support RFC" - just that this section needs to get a direction. — xaosfluxTalk23:38, 9 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Basically, option 2 is a final Gamma Test period - with the pass criteria being "no unresolved blocking bugs" (so the assumption is that this is ready to go and is bug free - for example if no one actually tests or reports new issues). — xaosfluxTalk23:43, 9 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Number 2 seems like the best option out of the two. This change, although not minor, can be opted out of. Plus I see this change as only benefiting those who want to use the tool. I've been using this tool for a while, and it has saved me a fair amount of time. Dreamy Jazztalk to me | my contributions20:53, 10 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hey PPelberg (WMF), hope all is well. Looks like we have at least a local consensus in favor of #2. Is there anything further you need from us? Does the Gamma Test option work for your team? Let us know if there's anything we can do to help you with the rollout or logistics. Best, KevinL (aka L235·t·c) 18:00, 20 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Looks like we have at least a local consensus in favor of #2... Does the Gamma Test option work for your team?
Wonderful. And yes, the "Gamma Test" option works well for the Editing Team. We are planning for the desktop Reply Tool opt-out deployment to happen on 7 March 2022, provided no issues we collectively see as "blocking" remain unresolved at that point in time. See phab:T296645#7699690.
Is there anything further you need from us?
The work y'all are doing to file tasks for issues people are raising (e.g. T302257, T268558, T302296)[i] and post announcements to ensure people are aware of and expecting this change (e.g. Watchlist message) is a big help and we are grateful for y'all leading this. I think continuing to do those two things will go long a way.
On our end, the Editing Team will be gathering later this week to review the issues volunteers at en.wiki have filed about the Reply Tool. We will use this meeting to identify which, if any, issues we see as needing to be addressed before the planned 7 March deployment. I will post the outcomes of this meeting before this week is over so that y'all can review it and if necessary, we can talk about it.
Please let me know if anything above prompts new thoughts/question.
Of the issues we reviewed, we did *not* identify any issues thus far that we thought ought to block the mw:Reply Tool deployment scheduled for 7 March 2022.
We would value any and all people here reading over the review we conducted and commenting here if you:
Think there are issues we did not consider and/or
Think there are issues that ought to be considered blockers that we determined not to be
@Isaacl I wouldn't call that blocking - since it is a garbage in garbage out problem, correct? High level summary: If someone creates a malformed page with unmatched tags, some of the page will not display right in this situation? — xaosfluxTalk12:16, 26 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
As per request, I raised an issue that I think should have been considered and didn't appear on the list. I'm not convinced it should be a blocker, and perhaps its resolution timeframe makes it moot, which is why I asked about it. But it does introduce a change to existing behaviour, and hides the cause of an error which can make (to the outside viewer, a seemingly random amount of) text on the page disappear. I think it should be discussed. isaacl (talk) 16:36, 26 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@isaacl The fix for T301845 is actually already deployed to Wikipedia, since last Thursday! (For future reference, you can deduce this by looking for the orange tags with the version number like "1.38.0-wmf.23" on Phabricator, and comparing that to the version shown on Special:Version.) Matma Rextalk23:03, 26 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
A non-blocking issue I reported elsewhere, but never got a response to is the annoyance of the Preview shortcut (Alt-Shift-P) being used out of habit (as one does all the time in Source Editor.) I don’t need it to actually work, but I am constantly frustrated by it taking me out of the reply window and opening the print window at the top of the page. So, finding one’s way back down on a long talk page to some point in the middle where the reply window is located is a frequent annoyance for me. Just deactivating this key combination would be welcome. Nick Moyes (talk) 10:03, 26 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It is already implemented on the Dutch wiki for a while: nl:Overleg:Bijlmerramp (without asking me and without having it enabled in the preferences).
One bug I found in the editor was:
If I edit something and after that I copy something by a middle mouse click (on linux), it is pasted top left at the start of the edit. It does not happen with CTR-V. A more disturbing bug is that when I reply to an earlier post in a thread, the reply is inserted after the last edit in the thread. --Wickey (talk) 11:54, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Wickey: regarding the later, that sounds serious, but I haven't been able to replicate it yet. Could you set up a simple sandbox page (e.g. at User:Wickey/replytool) and document that steps that you are doing, what results you got, and what results you expected? — xaosfluxTalk20:56, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Don't know how to do this and if there is a difference between en- en nl-wiki, but I replied to a comment early in a series of comments here and here. My reply appeared as a reply to the last one (or at least one lower in the thread) instead where I replied. I may be mistaken, may be it happens in the preview, but it happened already before. --Wickey (talk) 10:57, 13 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
For many years, Wikipedia used hatnotes at the top of biographical articles for subjects with names that used Eastern name order or other naming conventions likely to be unfamiliar to English speakers. Since 2020, these have been consolidated in {{Family name hatnote}} (examples: 1, 2). Also since 2020, a set of templates has been available that clarifies surnames using an explanatory footnote (examples: 1, 2), although so far their use has been relatively limited.
Emphasis: A hatnote is arguably the single most prominent place in an article after the title, since it appears above even the first paragraph and is emphasized through italics and indentation. However, the information in surname hatnotes is not all that vital compared to the essential biographical information in the first paragraph. Eastern name order, while an interesting factoid, does not relate specifically to an individual person. Further, because we refer to a person by their surname throughout an article, most readers would likely pick it up even if it were not spelled out for them. We normally try to avoid putting trivial pieces of information in the lead, as such information would be undue weight. The same principle applies to layout, where trying to include too much leads to banner blindness (as we see on many talk pages). Overall, the information in a surname hatnote is not as essential as the information elsewhere in the lead and does not seem to warrant a prominent placement if avoidable.
Fittingness: Per the WP:Hatnote guideline, hatnotes have a discrete and clearly defined purpose, which is to help readers locate a different article if the one they are at is not the one they're looking for. Under this core definition, using them instead for surname clarification is a misuse which muddles their purpose. It seems that (as with emphasis), the choice to use surname hatnotes way back in the early 2000s was likely not a deliberate preference, but rather an awkward shoehorn of information that did not easily fit elsewhere at the time.
Surname footnotes address both these issues: they reduce the visual emphasis of the clarification, while still preserving it for any interested readers and converting it to a form that fits its purpose. I therefore propose that we adopt a preference for surname clarification via explanatory footnotes. If passed, this would permit interested editors to transition articles to the footnote format, but it would not override local consensus at any article where editors decide to keep the hatnote format (which could be noted in a hidden comment). Relevant guidelines would be updated to state that footnote clarification is preferred but hatnote clarification may be kept if desired. {{u|Sdkb}}talk05:15, 3 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Footnote a.k.a. Support proposal per nom. I'll also go farther and ask to deprecate surname hatnotes community-wide (if this extra bit doesn't pass, then the proposer's version is still very good). In this case, they would be phased out gradually as editors get around to updating articles.These hatnotes I find to be quite bizarre, giving WP:UNDUE weight to trivia, and violating WP:HATNOTE's well-reasoned direction that such prominent placement is only for navigation. The WP:TRHAT section of HATNOTE especially applies here. Explaining naming conventions, regardless of what it is, is not so important a matter that it deserves to have the most prominent place in an article. A footnote (or failing that, anything else) serves the same purpose much better.The existence of these has also occasionally been used to justify arguments to add hatnotes for other personal information, such as gender pronouns. However, current practice is that any time such in-article clarification is done, a footnote is used, and it works well for these cases. (Example: ND Stevenson.) If that can work for gender pronouns, it can definitely work for surnames. Crossroads-talk- 05:48, 3 February 2022 (UTC) updated Crossroads-talk-05:29, 4 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Not hatnote per OP. No great opinion on the alternative, though I think I would recommend footnote if deemed necessary locally as advisement and not as general expectation. It probably just isn't necessary at all to point out which is the family name, also per the OP. --Izno (talk) 06:10, 3 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Currently not voicing a preference, however I oppose the "preference" wording used in the proposal. If a decision is made that hatnotes shouldn't be used based on the arguments provided, then a a local consensus shouldn't override it. So if consensus arises for footnotes, I support complete adoption of it. This would also make it possible to very easily convert {{Family name hatnote}} (which has 66719 transclusions) without needing to check with the local editors of each page. --Gonnym (talk) 06:25, 3 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Not footnote I'm not particularly vibing with the idea of adding to 66000 biographical articles an entire level 2 Notes subheading consisting entirely of "a. ^ This is an East Asian name. The surname is {{{1}}}." Folly Mox (talk) 07:19, 3 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Allow all depending on level of likely confusion. I like the historically widely used hatnote approach because it sets out the conventions used in an article without impacting on the body. A footnote is the minimum that is necessary, as it is non-obvious which name ordering is used. This is especially confusing with Chinese compound surnames like Sima or Ximen: the family name of Sima Qian is Sima. With names like Lee Kuan Yew, it is hopeless to guess what is the last name, so the article needs to tell you. A reader searching for Cixin Liu needs to be reassured that Liu Cixin is the same person (so there is some navigational use for the hatnote). —Kusma (talk) 10:48, 3 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
For Cixin Liu, both orders are bolded per MOS:BOLDLEAD, which is how we normally handle topics with multiple names and I think is sufficient here. For a name where one order goes to one person and a different order goes to another, I'd support a hatnote. {{u|Sdkb}}talk19:09, 3 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Footnote or other non-hatnote. A hatnote is too prominent and usually applies to the entire article rather than to a detail such as surname clarification. Certes (talk) 11:27, 3 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
More information, please Hatnote Both of the examples given, the family name comes first, so at first glance it looks like the hatnote is worthless, that people should just know that in a Chinese name the family name is first. But I don't think that is the case. In the discussions, editors have already mentioned that sometimes it is unclear which name is the family name. I think to be fair, you should list examples of articles with hatnotes where the family name does not come first. This, I think would give editors trying to weigh in here a better snapshot of the impact/value of these hatnotes. I reserve my vote until I understand this better. StarHOG (Talk) 14:39, 3 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, the article on Raul Neto sealed the deal for me. Thank you Kusma for providing several examples. This along with Mathglot's comments about wanting to know up front how to read an article and have a person's name in your mind correctly. The Antonio Arias (referee) article is also a good example of why we do not want this information as a footnote. It is only the brevity of this article that the reader is given information about the naming almost immediately. In a longer article, that footnote would be lost or never referenced by your average reader. I am now strongly for using the Hatnote to explain to readers the naming convention a person uses. StarHOG (Talk) 03:22, 4 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hatnote per Folly Mox, and the fact this is pretty important information you shouldn't have to dig for when you need it, and names don't often need other hatnotes so it's fine to use it for a non-disambiguating purpose for people. 107.242.121.51 (talk) 18:29, 3 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think Folly Mox, Kusma, and StarHOG make good points. If the way that hatnotes are actually used on thousands upon thousands of articles is inconsistent with WP:HATNOTE, perhaps it is WP:HATNOTE (a guideline, not policy) that needs revising. Should we also eliminate {{correct title}}, since that doesn't direct readers to another article with a similar name? Hatnotes in general resolve possible confusions regarding article titles, and their use in this respect is entirely consistent with that broader purpose. XOR'easter (talk) 19:38, 3 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
{{Correct title}} is the other notable exception to WP:HATNOTE, but it's much less common – <1k pages – and something that we will hopefully one day no longer need once future software improvements are made to MediaWiki. I'd rather reign in the purpose of hatnotes than let it broaden out to the point of meaninglessness, since allowing it to broaden has costs to readers: with a discrete purpose, it's safe for readers who know they've landed at the right page to ignore hatnotes, whereas if we allow them to become a catch-all place for important information, that no longer holds true and opens us to a bunch of sure-to-be-messy discussions about whether to have hatnotes for things like pronouns (see Crossroads' !vote above).
With that said, I do acknowledge that fittingness is more of a secondary consideration than emphasis. The main reason I'm putting this forward is the emphasis concern, and the fact that clarifications would also fit better purpose-wise with footnotes is just an added bonus. {{u|Sdkb}}talk21:01, 3 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The article title would be the same regardless of which of the names is the surname, so I fail to see how this is consistent with the purpose of handling title confusions. The "correct title" template does 'alter' the title, so that placement makes sense - and is ideally temporary until MediaWiki is improved as noted by Sdkb. Crossroads-talk-05:29, 4 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The possibility of title-related confusion exists because readers are not unlikely to come to those pages from somewhere that used a different order. A hatnote is a convenient place to ameliorate that confusion. WP:HATNOTE was made for editors, not editors for WP:HATNOTE. I guess I fall into the allow all, including possible-something-else camp on this one, with a preference against footnotes but a recognition that a one-size-fits-all, across-the-board rule is probably suboptimal. XOR'easter (talk) 00:00, 5 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Allow either per Kusma. There are cases where it's genuinely confusing enough to merit a hatnote, and other cases where it isn't. (t · c) buidhe21:03, 3 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Not sure yet; leaning 'something-else' (Summoned by bot) – I take the point about the original purpose of hatnotes, and that's somewhat persuasive, but otoh, presenting information clearly to the reader trumps just about anything else in my book, and if a majority of surveyees say hatnote makes it clearer, then I'm fine with that choice, too. Otoh, not sure footnote helps as much as I would like. I think a major part of the calculus for me, is I *want* to know how to properly identify someone, and I don't want to have to hunt for whether the Singaporean politician is Mr. Lee, Mr. Kuan Yew, or something else, and a corollary of this is that I don't want to feel like a fool after getting halfway through the article, and realize with embarrassment that I've had it backwards in my mind up to that point. That would be the fault of the article, not my ability to understand, and I would resent it. So, I'm basically okay with any solution that avoids that, and I think at this point, I'd like either a clear statement in the first or second sentence ("Lee Kuan Yew (surname: Lee) was a Singaporean lawyer and politician...") or a usage such as "Mr. James", "Prime Minister Martin" that makes it clear by implication, without necessarily stating it outright: ("Lee Kuan Yew was a Singaporean lawyer and politican. Lee was Prime Minister from 1959 to 1960..."). So basically, just get me the information by sentence #2, don't make me hunt too hard to find it, and I'm good. I'm not categorically opposed to having the surname in a hatnote just because hatnotes were initially designed for disambiguation, because it satisfies the "clarity" issue; but if a just-as-good solution offers itself, I'd vote for the latter. Mathglot (talk) 01:19, 4 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Allow all per Kusma, specifically including Mathglot's something-else. On the one hand I'm sensitive to the slippery slope argument made by Crossroads, the last thing we need is a list of hatnotes at the top of articles. However I also agree with those who want to make sure that it gets communicated right away, and I'm conscious that getting it right - and communicating it right - matters. To inadequately purvey this info is to continue biases already rampant here and elswhere. What to do, then? Let's allow a variety of practices to flourish here and if the benefits of a particular approach eventually become clear we can prescribe/prefer/deprecate as needed. Retswerb (talk) 07:27, 4 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Footnote, but use <ref group=note> to avoid it getting confused with normal references. Hatnotes are overkill for this - they should be used when there is potential for confusion with another article, not minor clarifications of surnames. Modest Geniustalk12:48, 4 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Allow all There is unlikely to be a one-size-fits-all solution to this, and having options for how to handle it best per article is the best option. --Jayron3214:16, 4 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Against explicit preference for footnotes. The current practice doesn't fit well with the overall purpose of hatnotes, but I wouldn't like to see a shift from the misuse of hatnotes to the misuse of footnotes. Explanatory footnotes are used for tangential details, not for information that may be necessary to understand how to read the article. I would like to note that even though I disagree with the proposed solution, I don't question the existence of a problem, but that's part of a bigger issue that we need to tackle. The first sentence of a biography article will often contain a lot of details – nicknames, maiden name, spelling of name in native orthography, transliteration(s), pronunciation (in English or native language) – that create a difficult to parse thicket that stands in the way of readers getting to the bit that describes who the subject is. I think we need a dedicated space for that information: one that doesn't clutter the first sentence but is still prominent enough (the end of the first paragraph? the end of the lede? a new lede paragraph that's visually set off from the rest? a section of the infobox? a dedicated (info)box?....). Once that is done, and we have a space where readers will learn to expect all name-related information, then the content of those hatnotes will naturally fit in there. – Uanfala (talk)15:34, 4 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with that problem statement, though I have no brilliant solutions. Footnotes seem less bad than hatnotes but I hope there's a better way. Certes (talk) 17:02, 4 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hatnote ~ the footnote is a pain to have to scroll down to in order for important information ~ or, at most, allow all. Happy days ~ LindsayHello16:26, 5 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hatnote - the votes are leaning otherwise, and I assume that is because there are a ridiculous number of completely unnecessary hatnotes for names on biography articles that should be removed. Just because someone is from Asia doesn't mean they need a naming hatnote. However, when there is a reason that the name must be clarified, a hatnote is the correct way to do so. User:力 (powera, π, ν) 00:00, 6 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hatnote Understanding a person's name is quite important and so clarification should go at the top of their article, not the bottom. An infobox entry may be adequate and so we shouldn't be rigid about this. Andrew🐉(talk) 14:41, 7 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hatnote much too important to have to go looking for it, and much too hard to explain and re-explain Spanish surnames, and way too many hispanic names that are first, middle and last name the same, so need the fourth surname as per Spanish language customs spelled out right up front. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:54, 7 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@LindsayH@力@Andrew Davidson@Headbomb@SandyGeorgia, if you think that putting the information in a footnote would be insufficient emphasis, I'd urge you to consider @Mathglot's idea above to put it in the parenthetical after the name, where we already put name information like pronunciation and native language spellings, and to adjust your !votes if you'd consider it an acceptable outcome.
I understand where you're coming from, in that names are an inherently important thing, but I think it's important to remember that in many cases (albeit not all), we can clarify a surname easily just by using it in the rest of an article, and we wouldn't want a strict outcome of "hatnote" here to prevent us from using other methods for the articles where they fit better. It's also worth remembering that anything is going to seem more important in a discussion where it's the explicit focus, but hatnotes don't just note the information alongside other things, they prioritize it by emphasizing a generalized note on naming conventions more than even an individual subject's nationality/occupation/birth date. No matter your preferred solution, I hope we can reach a consensus at least that that isn't ideal. {{u|Sdkb}}talk22:12, 7 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
In hispanic names, the parenthetical just wouldn't make sense as part of the text; one's full name is Joe Bloe FatherLastName MotherLastName, and the parenthetical would take up valuable real estate in the middle of the first line to explain how hispanic surnames work. So our text would be cluttered with Thor Leonardo Halvorssen Mendoza (Halvorssen is his father's paternal family name, Mendoza is his mother's paternal family name, according to Spanish naming customs) ... it's just goofy to take up precious real estate for that. Hatnote does the job, is easier, and standard. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:08, 7 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Sandy, I believe this is not the issue we are trying to solve. In fact, Nil Einne addressed this confusion directly below. What we care about in this discussion, if I'm not mistaken, is not *really* what the surname is, but *how we are going to refer to Mr. XYZ in the rest of the article. In that sense, we don't care if "Mr. Lee" means that "Lee" is his surname or first name, we just care that in this article, we refer to him as "Mr. Lee", because that's what the sources do. Same thing with a Hispanic surname, Russian patronymics, or Sitting Bull; it doesn't matter which one is the surname, or if the term "surname" even applies at all. In your example, therefore, there would be no long parenthetical at all; in your Halverson example, the second sentence already solves this, and says: "The New York Times described Halvorssen as a maverick 'who champions the underdog...'" so now we know that he is referred to as "Halverson" in the article, and that's all we need to know. Mathglot (talk) 23:22, 7 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The first (footnote via efn) was so hard to see that I had to go look for it in the footnotes and then backtrack to see where you had placed the efn (meaning, a casual Wikipedia reader will probably miss it, or not go look for it). The second is just what I said in terms of convoluted and cluttering the first line. To Mathglot, consider a common issue (not in this case because they don't have a close relationship, but I digress); father and son do business or politics together and their article deals a lot with both of them and has to distinguish them. If is very common for mothers and daughters, and fathers and sons, to have the same name, and even the same middle initial. Then, per Spanish naming customs, we would refer to them in text as Halvorssen Mendoza and Halvorssen Vellum. The hatnotes are doing a good job educating readers about Spanish naming customs and how they are used in writing; I don't see a way around it, and I consider them a valuable aid to readers. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:46, 7 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Sandy, that's possibly a good use case for keeping the hatnote, it might help in that case. If this is a fairly common situation, can you link a few examples so we can see what they actually do now? I'm particularly interested in how they handle this in the body of the articles. But even here, I can see an argument for dropping the hatnote: partly due to banner blindness, and partly due to proximity: if I were reading one of those articles, I presume that the person named in the article title would be introduced in the lead sentence and paragraph, and I'm not sure how far down the same-named father would be introduced. I think *that* is where I would want to see the explanation; by the time I get there, I won't remember the hatnote (assuming I ever read it, which I might not if I saw a picture or a lead sentence with a bolded title in the first sentence letting me know I was on the right page). When they bring up the father, that is the point where I want to know who is who; if they use words like "Senior" in their culture, maybe that is sufficient; or pere, and so on. In the George W. Bush article for example, his similarly named father isn't mentioned by name in the five-paragraph lead at all; he first shows up in section #Early life and career as "He was the first child of George Herbert Walker Bush and Barbara Pierce." and by that time, the hatnote is a distant memory, if it ever registered at all. Perhaps you are talking about father-son pairs with identical names, not even differing by a middle initial; here, I'd like to see those links and see how the articles treat them now. See also Alexandre Dumas. Mathglot (talk) 00:20, 8 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
My memory won't cough up the example I am trying to recall of two Panamanians who got mixed up on Wikipedia; it will likely come to me when this discussion is over. But the George H. W. Bush example accomplishes same. Do a ctrl-f on the word son to notice how awkward the text is, particularly starting with the Appearances section. If those two had Spanish names, that awkwardness would go away, as we would have clear names for both: Bush Walker is the father and Bush Pierce is the son. Ah, but it gets better in this case, because Jeb is also Bush Pierce. So, this is probably as good of an example as it gets. Gow to move forward with this example: I believe the goal of this discussion is to reduce the number of banners at the top of the article per banner blindness. A different goal is to educate about Spanish naming customs at the very top of the article, without adding clutter to the text. My concern with removing the banner is that you remove something that editors creating articles in the Spanish-language realm will clearly have noticed and can see how to easily use, and serves to educate broadly about Spanish names. We would be replacing it with either a footnote or in-text clutter that offer the potential for inconsistent use. I am sympathetic to your goals and open to being convinced, but we're not there yet. Maybe there's a third alternative, that we could explore with the Bush Walkers and the Bush Pierces. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:50, 8 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I understand what you're arguing (purely in the sense of "discussing") for, but i'm not sure i agree; i have read Mathglot's suggestion and, i'm afraid, in mine opinion that would be far more disruptive to the flow of the lead sentence/paragraph. To take the example given there, i think it is essential that we are clear that Lee is the surname, and just using it in the next sentence is not clear, especially and specifically because the name order is different from that expected by what is probably the majority of our readers; in particular with this name it rather clashes with expectations because "Lee" is sometimes a forename in English, so it has the immediate appearance of being over-familiar, and did i (and therefore probably others) not know i might try and change to what appeared to be a more formal and appropriate usage. As for the first suggestion with this example, putting "(surname: Lee)" immediately after the name is very interuptive (surely there's a word for that?) to the flow of the sentence and i would strongly oppose that. I recognise the argument that it's not what hatnotes are for, but...so what? It works and (if it's essential we use them only as intended) we can say we are disambiguating any confusion over the name. Happy days ~ LindsayHello13:15, 8 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Footnote. There's lots of background information that is often absolutely crucial to understanding a biography. Why stop at naming conventions? Often there's far more significant background detail relegated to a wikilink - if you're reading an article on a Qin dynasty court official, a completely blank slate reader may well need to click multiple other history articles before they can really get it. A hatnote just isn't the right place for this; stick it in text (if the name is expected to cause unusual confusion / dispute) or in a footnote, same as all other relevant content. A hatnote simply isn't the right spot in the same way that a maintenance banner isn't the right tool for the job; hatnotes are for Wikipedia navigation, not explaining background detail. SnowFire (talk) 10:21, 8 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hatnote as it's an important detail which often explains inconsistencies in the article between people's full and common names e.g. why Spanish/Portuguese people have multiple surnames, and why we only use one of them to refer to them. Allowing any type seems sensible too, but footnotes will never be read. Joseph2302 (talk) 00:38, 9 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hatnote per basically all of the above. I don't need to repeat what everyone else already said. I don't object to footnote templates also existing for this purpose, e.g. to use at an article that already has a lot of hatnotes. And we don't need either for a lead like "A B (Chinese: B A) ...". But use hatnote by default. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 05:37, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hatnote for now, as though there's the possibility of a better solution somewhere down the line that this discussion might lead to, hatnotes are the best we have for now. I feel that anyone advocating footnotes or presuming that readers will be able to work things out for themselves just by reading the article is confusing the average reader of English Wikipedia with the average editor, regarding their knowledge of MediaWiki's conventions, those of web pages in general, and their global perspective. When writing for a general natively English-speaking readership, I don't think of what I would understand, I think of what my parents or grandparents would understand. They do not know that Wikipedia has footnotes and that clicking the blue superscript characters leads to them. No matter how many times I explain it to them, they cannot remember that cultures other than their own, indeed all but a minority of the world's population, use naming systems other than <personal name> <family name>. They will read an article about an Icelandic person and be confused why the person is only referred to by their personal name, not by what they think is the person's family name. They will read an article about a Chinese person and be confused by why the person's name is shortened to what they think is the person's personal name. I will explain why they are mistaken, and they will have forgotten my explanation in a few days' time. These kinds of people need these things to be mentioned first of all, every time a name is not in <personal name> <family name>. Hatnotes are good at doing this (even if it's not their original purpose) because they at the same time visually get this information out of the way for people who don't need it, and it avoids making the first mention of the person's name even more complex. Tempjrds (talk) 19:12, 18 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hatnote. Long story short, hatnotes for this particular use enjoy a strong and longstanding consensus. The guideline on them should be updated to reflect this. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 17:54, 21 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hatnote While not perfect, at present this seems to best way to make it clear to our readers (many of which may not even be aware of Eastern-naming order) which name is the surname. At least for me as a mobile reader and editor, I would prefer a hatnote. I would also be opposed to adding something only in the infobox as not every last-first person article has an infobox. Link20XX (talk) 04:03, 22 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hatnote I find the arguments against footnotes more compelling than the arguments for footnotes. To me, the argument over the wording of WP:HATNOTE isn't compelling and seems like wikilawyering over the wording of policy rather than engaging with what's practical---if the OP's interpretation is correct, why have hatnotes endured for a decade? The OP claims that it's trivial information which doesn't serve a navigation purpose, but I don't agree with that interpretation. Joseph2302 says it's an important detail which often explains inconsistencies in the article between people's full and common names, which to me contradicts the claim that name style hatnotes don't serve a navigational purpose. They do. Our articles are titled after names, and clarifying how that name is styled can clarify article titles which may or may not follow the English COMMONNAME. The OP's argument seems self-contradictory as well; it claims that surname hatnotes give undue emphasis, but also that no one reads them because fo banner blindness. If no one is reading them, then it's not a prominent or undue position; if it's prominent and undue then people aren't blind to them. I don't think either is really the case, certainly not a serious problem, and I'd be open to evidence suggesting that one of these is in fact the case, but arguing both seems self-contradictory. Lastly, the argument to put them in a footnote runs into actual practical problems. First, no one reads that far down the page. Second, not all articles have them. We'd be forcing level-2 heading sections on thousands of articles for a single footnote that no on will read. Why? To create artificial consistency with a policy we could just rewrite to reflect the practical reality? Seems contrary to WP:NOTBURO. People have made various proposals to try and remedy this problem, like parentheticals and putting it in infoboxes, but these have their own problems and run into the same issue as the original proposal: the problem with hatnotes is bureaucratic not practical. The closest we get to a practical issue is banner blindness, but there's no particular evidence for that and other support arguments about undue prominence contradict claiming that point. Just rewrite the policy to fit the decade-old reality. Let writers use the efn surname templates if they like, but enforcing an artificial consistency at this point is premature. — Wug·a·po·des22:05, 3 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Tvquizphd and IP, how would you want it to display in an infobox? Make a sandbox mockup if you'd like. I'm not sure how viable that could be as a main method, though, since infoboxes are already trying to cram in a lot of information, and not all articles have them.
If we're exploring alternatives, I think Mathglot's idea of putting it in the parenthetical is the most viable I've heard so far. The advantage is that it'd place the information in the body, in a space that's already communicating name info (typically pronunciation). The disadvantage is that we'd only be able to reasonably fit a very short e.g. (surname: Lee), which would cause problems for the more complicated examples like Raul Neto above or Vietnamese people like Phan Xích Long. {{u|Sdkb}}talk03:42, 4 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The idea of developing this as Infobox information is appealing. It would match the Wikidata P734 family name, which is present for cases such as Sima Qian, Gáspár Miklós Tamás and other interesting cases such as Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink (see also this on the latter's doubling), but seems to be omitted for patronyms that might be associated with Mongolian people,for example. Populating an optional line in Infoboxes from Wikidata could allow a gradual move away from the use of hatnotes and towards more structured information which might embed types of naming? AllyD (talk) 08:44, 4 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps it can display in parentheses after or below |name=. An example would be:
@Retswerb: I appreciate you bringing up the topic of bias in your !vote. One angle to look at this from is that the hatnote convention includes some strong biases about what readers know and don't know. We would never (and should never) put a hatnote at John Smith saying "the surname is Smith", since we assume that readers are familiar with Western name order, but we also assume that they're unfamiliar with Eastern name order and need this explained to them prominently. Granted, on a practical level, this is English Wikipedia and our efforts to take a global perspective need to have some limit. But I think it's worth noting that one benefit of making the clarification less prominent is that it'd also make these names less marked, meaning that we wouldn't be assuming so strongly that readers have a Western perspective in which non-Western names are this exotic other. {{u|Sdkb}}talk07:45, 4 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Surnames in an unfamiliar position is probably the easiest name hatnote situation to solve. Other naming conventions, such as patronymics, or perhaps having no surname, seem more difficult to clearly imply through usage in prose alone. Is this proposal aimed at removing Surname Firstname hatnotes, but leaving other Family Name hatnotes in place? CMD (talk) 07:57, 4 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Chipmunkdavis, any naming convention hatnote can be pretty easily converted to a footnote: just take the text in the hatnote and put it in a footnote. The same general considerations apply.
I think that it's important that we're able to handle edge cases in whatever system we end up with, but I also think we should take care not to focus so much on the most complicated instances that we lose the forest for the trees, as I see happening a little above. It's also worth remembering that this information is going to seem a lot more important here where we're hyperfocused on it than it will in the context of an actual article where it's one of many things to arrange in balance. {{u|Sdkb}}talk08:09, 4 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It does not make sense (and feels like a bit of the bias Retsweb mentions) to treat patronymics and single names as edge or particularly complex cases; they are established and regularly used naming systems. They might be unfamiliar to some or most English speakers, but they're whole forests in themselves. Framing a discussion as relating just to surname firstname order when it is intended to have a wider impact seems likely to lead to more confusion, not less. Footnotes may work for whatever the case is, but other suggestions above that were built in response to the framing of the question, like the "(Surname: Lee)" and the infobox surname parameter, will simply not work. CMD (talk) 08:24, 4 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@CMD It would be nice if the Template:Infobox person could accomodate many naming conventions with many options |surname=, |matronym=,|patronym=, |tekonym=, |laqab=, |nisba=, and even perhaps |mononym=. Some examples might look like |surname=Lee or |mononym=triyatno. If no infobox or too much infobox, I think a simple parenthetical "(Surname: Lee)" or “Triyatno (mononymous, born 20 December 1987)” would do. I’ll post on Project Anthroponymy to see if anyone there has ideas.Tvquizphd (talk) 17:07, 4 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I would not object to that. If it is done, perhaps the relevant wikilink could serve as the communicating text to the reader in place of the hatnote. CMD (talk) 17:59, 4 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Entirely a fair point! My personal take is that our general readership is probably unfamiliar enough with non-Western naming conventions that the value of pointing them out overcomes the detriment of marking them - but that's entirely an assumption on my part. Retswerb (talk) 08:08, 4 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'm slightly confused here. The opening comment etc refers only to surnames. But the template also deals with patronyms although for some reason we still have stuff Template:Malay name. Is this proposal only to deal with surnames? Also the opening comment claims "because we refer to a person by their surname throughout an article" but again that is not the case. We use whatever is the norm to refer to the person so for people without surnames this is often (but not always) their given name. Also we should not forget that even for people with surnames, name order can be more complicated than simple family name given name, given name family name e.g. Carrie Lee Sze Kei, Michelle Yeoh Choo-kheng or Daniel Lee Chee Hun. Nil Einne (talk) 06:45, 7 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Nil Einne: Yes, I can validate that confusion. In fact, I don't think this is really about surnames at all; I believe it's about how to refer to someone via a short name (if any) throughout the article, when we are not referring to them by their long, convoluted name, as in Sandy's example of Thor Leonardo Halvorssen Mendoza. Imho, we don't really care which is the father's name, mother's name or any of that; what we care about, is how they are referred to "for short". This is cleared up in sentence #2 of that article, and the answer is: Halvorssen. Who cares which ancestor bore that name? I don't. In such articles as importance would attach to knowing about their mother and father, because it's duly covered by reliable sources, than by all means, go into it in the body of the article, and even link our articles (not hatnotes!) about Hispanic surnames as appropriate. But I see no reason why the Thor Halvorssen (human rights activist) article needs a hatnote, and I don't care what his surname is. The #Background section explains in some detail his relationship to famous ancestors including a President Mendoza, and for anyone who's interested, they can read that, and follow the links. But all we really need to know about Thor Leonardo Halvorssen Mendoza's name, is that he is referred to as "Halvorssen" in the article, presumably because that's what the sources do. I don't see why a hatnote would be required at all, or even helpful. By the way, what is Sitting Bull's surname? Mathglot (talk) 23:41, 7 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
One more thing that occurs is that in some cases, the current family name template actually servers another purpose although I'm doubtful many readers understand this who didn't already know. If we take Chinese names like Lee Hsien Loong and Chong Sin Woon, it mentions the generation name. This isn't of relevance to how we refer to the person in the article since we use the family name but it conveys an important point.
If you are referring to these people by their given name, it should be Hsien Loong or Sin Woon, never Hsien or Sin. While this applies to most two character Chinese given names too (double characters is sort of exception I guess), it's a special problem with generation names because calling someone Hsien/Sin or Hsien Lee/Sin Chong (as may happen in the west, even if you put the first name as Hsien Loong/Sin Woon in the form) can be confusing when multiple siblings are involved as it's unclear precisely who you're referring to. (If you did want to use one character only Woon or Loong will me more appropriate.)
This is mostly a problem with Malaysian and Singaporean given names as it's where the practice of rendering the two characters as two "words" with spaces predominates. Those from Mainland China generally follow pinyin and don't include a space; those from Taiwan and Hong Kong, and while not Chinese names, those from (either) Korea where there's a similar issue, generally use hypens. Those in Western countries mostly use either don't include a space or use hypens since they're aware of the problem if they don't.
That said, the generation name parameter seems to be hardly ever used (those were the only 2 examples I could find with a space in the given name) and I think it's hard to populate especially without OR since not all 2 character given names include a generation name. Also as said, this is an issue which technically applies to all 2 character Chinese give names even in cases where it's not a generation name; and I'm very doubtful anyone reading our hatnote is going to understand this point if they didn't already know from the name.
And there are plenty of other naming issues which can cause confusion which we do not clarify in each article. For example Karpal Singh was not Muslim and while his name may sometimes be referred to as Karpal Singh al Ram Singh the al is from a/l and is unrelated to the al in Arabic names. (Having trouble finding links talking about this now, but in the past, there were reports of people coming under special scrutiny because their passport rendered the a/l as al since / cannot be used in the name part of machine readable passports and assumptions were made that the al meant they were Muslim. I suspect this is one reason why that is no longer done [8].)
Just pinging User:Primefac to this discussion and proposal, as they were responsible for the family name hatnote mega-merge, and may have something to say either about the somewhat narrower issue in this discussion, or the larger one at the top of this proposal. Mathglot (talk) 01:28, 8 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
As a reply to the ping - I genuinely don't care how this information is displayed (my prior involvement has largely been in standardising template usage and minimising maintenance burdens). If necessary, though, I'm happy to consult on the hows, whys, and "what ifs" so that others may make a better decision. Primefac (talk) 09:23, 8 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Suggestion. Okay, this is going to sound absolutely buck-wild, so I am going to drop this radical idea and walk away: use {{Notice}}. I know; I know.. This is heresy. I'm talking something small like this. Not going to make any arguments for this suggestion since I know it's one of those things that will probably appease zero sides of this discussion. If I'm wrong, then let me know. –MJL‐Talk‐☖19:21, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Alas, I think you're correct that that wouldn't appease anyone. My whole goal here is to decrease the prominence of the information to something more commensurate with its importance, whereas that would increase its prominence. {{u|Sdkb}}talk19:30, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Suggestion I agree that knowing the surname can be helpful for understanding the article (and less importantly for editing the article when there is inconsistent usage). Adding to the infobox doesn't seem practical since they are not required, and there are over 150 different templates that are used on biographies. Coordinates are displayed at the very top right, and that space should always be available in a biography article. What if we use that space for a very short note (e.g. "Subject shortname is foo[a]") with a footnote link allowing the full explanation to be provided in a footnote. I don't know if "shortname" is the best way to collectively refer to all the variations that have been mentioned here, but the concept is to use both a brief hatnote-like statement of the shortname with an explanatory footnote. MB22:53, 19 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Just want to point out that looking cursorily, it seems that many of the person infoboxes are meta- or wrapper templates for {{infobox person}}. In such cases, adding a surname parameter to the core code would make it generally available. 104.247.55.106 (talk) 14:21, 20 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
That's an interesting idea and I can imagine that it can be made to work. But the text will need to be visually more prominent (say, surrounded in a box), otherwise, I'm sure that most readers won't think to look at the tiny text in the top-right corner for that sort of information. – Uanfala (talk)23:12, 26 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'll throw out another, perhaps more creative type of possible solution. This comes from what I've observed sports broadcasters tend to do, e.g. here/here, which is to use capitalization. In our implementation, this could come through smallcaps, e.g. this, or even a combination of smallcaps and tooltips, e.g. this. I'm curious what folks think of these, as my read of the discussion above so far is that few editors see hatnotes as the ideal solution but many also don't like footnotes. {{u|Sdkb}}talk22:18, 23 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
There's no accounting for taste, but I find the caps solution very unappealing aesthetically. These pages will stand out as a sore thumb imo, and applying this format will probably necessitate changes to several established MOS guidelines. 71.105.141.131 (talk) 01:53, 24 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Another interesting idea, but I'm not sure I can imagine people accepting it. It's also not going to work well in all cases (what do you do with Slavonic patronymics?) and if in the end we're going to rely on footnotes (or tooltips) this brings us back to the start of this discussion. – Uanfala (talk)23:12, 26 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I don’t have a problem with adding the AFC template to drafts that are in DRAFTSPACE. I would have an issue with doing so to “drafts” located in USERSPACE. The latter should be thought of as sandboxes - pages where a user is playing around with ideas. Those ideas might not be intended to be viable as potential articles (for example, I have created “drafts” in my userspace that are half formed ideas for a potential new section for an already existing article). Blueboar (talk) 16:23, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I've seen the problem of a user not knowing their draft was not going to get any atttention, recently. But I don't think auto tagging it that way is a good solution. Better would be to leave the creator a talk-page message explaining what to do when they're ready to submit. It would probably be easy to get approval for such a bot. Dicklyon (talk) 17:27, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I disagree. It's better to have a wider discussion on such a thing to establish consensus before doing a bot request, where the review will be much more narrow and technical, and will want to see an established consensus for the proposed changes. Dicklyon (talk) 17:35, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
As a BAG member any such request at WP:BOTREQ would be told to get consensus for the task at WP:VPR (those who actually read WP:BOTREQ would know this, see third sentence for those new to bots), so this is the right place to hold that RFC. Headbomb {t · c · p · b}18:12, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
What part of this task is controversial enough to require an RFC? As far as I can see this is basic maintenance, - these templates are already added to pages in draftspace if you use the article wizard, any of the preload templates, any of the draftification scripts and there's a small army of volunteers running around adding these templates by hand to pages that don't have them. If we've already have had editors running around draftsapace with AWB for years doing the same thing I don't see why this would be controversial enough to require a central RFC, it's certainly going to be less controversial than the bot that was changing indents on every talk page on the project. 192.76.8.70 (talk) 18:40, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
There has been substantial objections from the community on tagging drafts as drafts before. This is another proposal along the same idea. Not saying this will or won't pass, or if even if this is a good or bad idea, but mass tagging drafts with anything is something that requires clear consensus. Headbomb {t · c · p · b}21:26, 16 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
If we are going to have a RFC on this then Yes, obvious support from me since these templates are added to basically every page in draftspace by hand anyway, they're basically required to use the AFC process, a frequently recurring source of confusion I've seen at the teahouse is people not knowing how to submit a draft without the template on it, the template performs a number of other maintenance tasks in draftspace (e.g. tagging G13 eligible pages) and editors who don't want them will almost certianly be experienced enough to use user space drafts, botsdeny or similar. Anything that makes it easier for people to write their first article is a good thing. 192.76.8.70 (talk) 18:40, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe for drafts created by non-confirmed editors who are still non-confirmed at time of bot run, who are effectively going to have to go through AfC, but for everyone else this wouldn't be appropriate, because AfC is not a compulsory process for anyone, and the purpose of draftspace is not solely for AfC drafts, even if they constitute a large number of drafts. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 12:35, 16 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support for pages by inexperienced editors. I took a look at a day's worth of new drafts. We don't want to make difficulties for the experienced editors who use Draft space for translations and other new articles before moving their work to mainspace themselves. I would suggest using extended confirmed user as the criterion. StarryGrandma (talk) 20:02, 16 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support for all new draft pages, regardless of the editor. Much simpler. Experienced editors who don't like the templates can remove them. Also, auto-welcome the editor of they have no non bot edits to their user_talk page. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:52, 17 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support for inexperienced editors or time delayed if applied to all drafts, maybe 1 day from creation delay? The draft could still be worked on by experienced editors even though it is created thus the delay. Some editors may have the habit to do incremental saves while fleshing out the draft. – robertsky (talk) 08:49, 17 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support for non-confirmed editors (or non-XC editors). I'd alternately (maybe even additionally) support a bot message to user talks letting them know how to add the template themselves (with a Teahouse link or some way to ask "can someone add this template for me? I don't understand wikitext"), for non-XC editors only. It is worth a little bit of headache to any cases where an extraneous template is added or message is sent to someone who knows how to revert it, for the cases where a newbie will be unable to navigate AfC when that is the process they should be using. And even though confirmed-but-new editors can move drafts into mainspace themselves, in many cases it would be much better for them and for us were they to go through AfC. — Bilorv (talk) 00:23, 19 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support procedurally, this is in order; procedurally we will discuss, !vote, and approve the proposal here, then the BAG will validate the specific bot doing this. As far as whether this is a good idea: yes, it is. If a non-ECP editor creates a draft, a bot should add the AFC template (but not start the "submitted" timer) in all situations. When it is an ECP editor ... normally probably also yes, but maybe it gets complicated. But BAG won't approve a bot that edit-wars, so it will be fine. User:力 (powera, π, ν) 01:48, 20 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
RfC: Growth features to all newcomers
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.
There is a clear consensus to go forward with the proposal of giving the growth team features to 100% of new accounts and a smaller portion of them receiving the mentorship feature. As this consensus is clear I am closing this now as per Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment#Duration. Barkeep49 (talk) 16:54, 2 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hi everyone – I'm Marshall Miller, the product manager for the Growth team at WMF. I last posted here in September 2021 with an RfC about giving the Growth features to 25% of new accounts, which was an increase from trialling the features with 2% of new accounts in June 2021. That RfC passed, and the resulting data indicated that the features continue to help newcomers make valuable edits with low revert rates, as well as help them connect with experienced users to get questions answered. After discussing this trial period, community members who have been following closely have agreed that the next step would be this RfC to give the Growth features to all newcomers, making it the default onboarding experience on English Wikipedia. Thank you to the many community members who have participated in discussions about the features and helped put together this proposal!
Specifically, the proposal is to give the Growth features to 100% of new accounts going forward, with a smaller portion of them receiving the mentorship feature.
The reason that the mentorship portion of the features goes to a smaller portion is because of mentorship capacity. About 60 mentors are signed up now. Going forward, as we improve the mentorship tools and more mentors sign up, we'll continue to work with community members on whether to increase or decrease how many new accounts receive mentorship.
I tried to keep this RfC brief -- please see the sections below for additional details!
Background (Growth features)
Over the past four years, the Growth team has been developing a set of features meant to improve the experience for new editors. The goal of our work is to help newcomers make successful first edits, instead of them leaving from frustration or confusion. The Growth features are now on all Wikipedias, without substantial concerns from communities, and have been shown in multiple experiments to increase the engagement of newcomers.Newcomer homepage on English Wikipedia
The Growth features include the following:
Newcomer homepage: a special page with useful actions that newcomers are encouraged to visit immediately after account creation, which they can access by clicking their username at the top of the browser window.
Suggested edits: a feed of articles that have maintenance templates such as {{Advert}} and {{Underlinked}}. Newcomers can choose topics of interest to filter the feed, like "Fashion", "History", or "Physics".Help panel on English Wikipedia
Mentorship: newcomers are assigned a mentor from a list of experienced volunteers. A pop-up form helps them submit a question to their mentor's talk page using a simple interface. Whereas Adopt-a-user is meant to be an enduring connection for a newcomer, "mentorship" in the Growth features is meant for quick questions.
Help panel: when the newcomer is editing an article, the help panel is like a collapsible mini-homepage, providing relevant help links and the ability to ask mentor questions.
Results (Growth features)
Since September 2021, 25% of new accounts on English Wikipedia have received the Growth features by default, with 5% of them receiving the "mentorship" portion of the feature (because we did not want to overwhelm the limited numbers of mentors who signed up on this page.) In looking at the data from these past months, we see similar patterns as with the original 2% test (see a data analysis focused on January 2022 here):
If the Growth features become the default onboarding experience for all new accounts, it might be important for the community to think about updating the various other welcome templates, documentation, tutorials, and help content to incorporate the Growth features. For instance, a tutorial that currently says, "Find some simple edits to get started!" might be updated to, "To get started, visit your homepage by clicking on your username, where you will find some simple edits to do." I don't think that updates like these should block deployment, but could be something to discuss and adapt in an ongoing way.
There are many more details and background to this work, which can be discovered in the project page and talk page. Thank you all for weighing in. I'm looking forward to hearing everyone's opinions and answering any questions.
Discussion (Growth features)
Weak Support with the tiniest possible reservation that I'd prefer "100% of newly autoconfirmed accounts, upon autoconfirmation" (if so stipulated, my support would be unreserved). Thank you.--John Cline (talk) 00:03, 17 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Would that not rather defeat the whole point if, for four days, a new account user could neither seek the help they might need, nor be guided to make simple suggestions of edits to make via this feature? The RfC already states the evidence has shows that 50% fewer new user edits get reverted from those who have the Homepage enabled than who do not have it, so waiting to be autoconfirmed would be a lost opportunity for newcomers to engage constructively from day one. Nick Moyes (talk) 00:57, 17 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support This is a well-thought out tested and proven feature, so anything that guides and helps a new user from the first moment they create their account is to be welcomed. (The Homepage can always be ignored or disabled in Special:Preferences if it's not wanted, too.) Nick Moyes (talk) 01:06, 17 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support we need to help keep new editors since the implementation of Help:Introduction all over that has cause us to lose thousands of new editors. The more the help intro is linked the worst it gets...... hope this works and retains more editors.Moxy-
Support, however I think some things should be improved, for example I got a suggested edit for Luxor Evolved that said it was an easy edit that just required copy-editing. However when going to the actual article the issue is much larger than simply just a copy edit, so improvements need to be made to the rating of suggested edits that factor in the amount of tags on the article to determine the difficulty. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#654517:56, 17 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hello @Blaze Wolf -- thanks for thinking critically about the features. Yes, I agree that the way we're suggesting edits right now is rather blunt. Like you discovered, a given maintenance template may not really convey the full extent of the article's needs. In the guidance we give during the edit, we try to tell the newcomer that they don't need to fix the whole article, and even just one small change is valuable. But I agree that a newcomer could easily be intimidated by a weak article.
Another issue exists in the other direction: sometimes an article will have a maintenance template on it, but the problem has already been fixed without the template being removed. In those cases, the newcomer is confused because they don't see anything to change. We've thought a little about whether to encourage the newcomer to remove the template, or to encourage other more experienced users to review the edit and remove the template.
As an effort to address both these issues, the Growth team has been working on our newest initiative: structured tasks. The idea is that we could use algorithms to identify articles that have clear issues and then point those specific issues out to the newcomer so they know just what to do for their first edits. We've built two of these suggested edits so far: "add a link" (being tested on 10 Wikipedias) and "add an image" (being tested on 4 Wikipedias). These are going well so far, and I plan to discuss them more on this wiki once they're a little farther along. I would appreciate your thoughts on the talk pages for those projects! MMiller (WMF) (talk) 19:16, 17 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@MMiller (WMF): Hello Miller! Glad to see that these issues are indeed being addressed. I will certainly check out those projects and provide any feedback I may have on them. I remember one time I was just looking at the newcomers tasks for an edit to make and saw a copy-edit task that was easy, but when I looked at the article, the issue extended far beyond just copy-editing. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#654519:29, 17 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Support. These new features really make things much more friendlier and has proved to have benefits. While mentorship features need some additional kinks to be worked out, they will still work perfectly fine at a small fraction. Panini!🥪18:00, 17 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Firstly, nice work on this one so far. What are the other implications of enabling for 100pc? There are a few templates that you mention that need to be updated. Are there any other pre-works that need to be thought through prior to enabling for 100pc? I see the mentor assignment feature as well. What is our mentor to mentee ratio? Would we be able to keep up with the 4x demand? Also, what are our measures of success? It seems like the revert rate is one measure. Are we adding any metrics around editor sustainability. i.e. how many of these new editors stay on versus dropping-off. Ktin (talk) 18:06, 17 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hello @Ktin -- thank you for looking over the proposal. Regarding the other implications of enabling for 100%, I think we need the eyes of many community members on it so that we can think of everything. As an example, the left navigation menu on desktop has a "Learn to edit" link, which leads to Help:Introduction (I know @Sdkb has been heavily involved in that content), and we would want to think about whether that link should continue to be there, to say what it says, and to lead where it leads. Another aspect is for in-person/virtual events. Edit-a-thons frequently start with, "Okay, everyone create an account!" After this change, all those new account holders will be prompted to go to their homepage to edit, and event organizers will need to be aware of that prompt and decide how they want to address it.
Good questions regarding mentorship! We've talked about the scalability of mentorship this a lot on this page, but I did not include a lot of detail on it in the RfC so that it remained more focused. Right now, mentorship is only being given to 5% of new accounts because of the limited number of mentors. During the month of January, there were about 50 mentors and they each got about 5 questions per month, which is the load that people seem to feel comfortable with. To scale that up to 100% of newcomers, there would need to be 1,000 mentors, which might require more complex management systems from the community. So we decided that in taking the Growth features to 100% of newcomers, we would increase the share getting mentorship to 10%, and continue to increase (or decrease) as needed while more mentors are recruited and the features improve. Does that make sense?
Regarding measures of success, there are several things our team looks at. First is the edit count and revert rate, which helps us see whether newcomers are using the features and whether they seem to be making a positive or negative impact on the wikis. But more importantly, we look at "activation" and "retention". "Activation" refers to whether the features cause newcomers to make a first edit when they otherwise would not have. In multiple contexts, the Growth features have been shown to increase this number -- in our most recent experiment on several other Wikipedias, using the experimental "add a link" feature, it increased the chance that a newcomer would make an unreverted first article edit by 17%. And these experiments indicate that "retention" (which you referred to as "editor sustainability") is increased by a similar amount. We're continuing to analyze experiments like these to understand the impact of the features. And finally, a really important measure of success is community reception: do these features fit in with how communities work or are they disruptive? So far, this has gone very well: the features are on all other Wikipedias and none have requested that they be removed. Please let me know if you have any thoughts or ideas! MMiller (WMF) (talk) 19:26, 17 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
We're on standby to update the tutorial series however is needed when this rolls out. The useful links page will need an added line, and we may want to suggest that users try out the suggested edits feature at the start rather than just toiling in a sandbox. Overall, I see separate roles for the tutorial series and Growth features: the Growth features help out newcomers as they're trying to do something, and hopefully do so well enough that there's no need for them to consult a manual. The tutorial, meanwhile, serves as a newcomer-friendly manual for the times when our interface still fails at making a task easy enough to do without aid, plus as a way for particularly eager newcomers willing to devote half an hour or so to learning the ropes to jumpstart their journey. Different people like to learn in different ways—some through experimenting, some through asking questions, and some through reading—and it's good we cater to each. Over time, I hope the amount of things we'll have to cover in the tutorial will shrink as the interface improves. For instance, the upcoming rollout of the Reply Tool will allow us to simplify the talk pages modules. {{u|Sdkb}}talk19:46, 17 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support. And some questions for you MMiller (WMF) ;) It is very interesting to see the type of edits. Do you have any generalization or write up on the types of edits, and are there any enhancements based on the observations? Looking at the first couple dozen (not a useful sample) I noticed some changes of UK to non-UK spelling, adding an Oxford comma... exactly the kinds of things someone might revert (I didn't check if the page was UK spelling indicated or not) in a way that would turn off a new user... other thoughts on how to guide to a great start? And thanks for the work... Chris vLS (talk) 21:30, 17 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hi @Chrisvls -- thanks for checking out some of the suggested edits! I just want to make sure -- hopefully you did some constructive and valuable edits in the sample you looked at, right? What did you notice about those?
One of the biggest challenges we've faced in the Growth team's work is this tension: On the one hand, it's important for newcomers to quickly make a valuable edit so that their "wow, I just edited Wikipedia" lightbulb lights up. If they can't make an edit quickly, many of them leave in confusion or frustration. But on the other hand, editing Wikipedia can be so subtle and tricky that they need to learn guidelines and rules before they can do it -- and requiring them to learn before doing turns a lot of people away. The approach we've taken in the past has been to make help materials available from the editing experience via the help panel, but we don't require newcomers to consume it before editing.
But the approach we're trying now is bolder, which is to guide newcomers step by step through doing a very specific edit. This is the "structured tasks" idea that I mentioned to Blaze in a comment above. We think that if we hold newcomers' hands through their first edits, they'll develop an understanding and respect of our rules and policies. We don't know yet if that hypothesis is being borne out -- we do now that people are doing a lot of these edits and that they're helping people edit who would not have otherwise. We're still trying to figure out if those edits lead to other edits and to learning. Definitely interested in your thoughts on this approach! MMiller (WMF) (talk) 02:53, 18 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, @Sungodtemple, that's right. @AssumeGoodWraith -- I agree, though, that there is not a clear way to turn off the homepage from the homepage. Which is the part that might cause one to want it turned off? I am thinking it's the part where clicking your username takes you to your homepage instead of to your userpage -- is that right? Because without that aspect, it's just a tab that appears (and is easily ignored) when you are on your userpage or user talk page.
Regarding the idea of adding different inks to the "get help with editing" menu, this is actually something that we've enabled communities to configure for themselves! Administrators can alter those links from Special:EditGrowthConfig in the "Help Panel Links" section at the bottom. The idea is that communities would discuss which links should go in there, and then make the change, which would affect all users. MMiller (WMF) (talk) 17:02, 18 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support: well-tested, provably effective and few to no drawbacks. We have a much-too-steep learning curve for newcomers and desperately need more volunteers. — Bilorv (talk) 12:09, 18 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support increase, certainly an effective feature to help newcomers. As a mentor I would not mind getting more questions from mentees. Pahunkat (talk) 12:30, 18 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support As an event coordinator, I find it confusing when new editors' interfaces behave differently, depending on their experience, preferences and other choices. So, it would be best to get everyone on the same page. As for mentors, it might be better to have these assigned when requested so that the limited pool is not confused and burdened by accounts that are not really serious. The home page might have a button to request a mentor. Andrew🐉(talk) 13:14, 18 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hi @Andrew Davidson -- it's valuable to hear the perspective of an event coordinator. Regarding mentors, you're mentioning an idea that we discussed in this section about how to lower the burden: we're already building a way for users to opt-out of mentorship in case they don't want to have a mentor, or don't like their mentor. What if we defaulted all newcomers to being "opted-out" of mentorship, and required them to click a button to opt-in and "get a mentor"? Here's a mockup of what that might look like. You can see in the conversation that people were divided on whether it would be harmful or helpful to increase the barrier to entry for mentorship. What do you think? MMiller (WMF) (talk) 17:06, 18 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The events I support typically have lots of new women editors. They are usually quite cautious and may scare easily. It therefore seems best to give them visible control over the mentor feature so that they don't feel that they are being rushed into a subordinate relationship with a stranger against their wishes. The opt-in button therefore seems appropriate to give a feeling of control and security. Andrew🐉(talk) 18:40, 18 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Seconding this - I think randomly being assigned a mentor can easily be confusing/alarming ("who is this person talking to me?! did I do something wrong?") or feel like an imposition ("I just wanted to make an account idly and now I feel pressured to edit because this mentor is watching me"). But you don't want new people to miss out on this, either, so an extremely obvious DO YOU WANT A MENTOR? CLICK HERE! DO YOU WANT TO LEARN MORE ABOUT MENTORSHIP? CLICK HERE! button on the homepage would be a good idea. -- asilvering (talk) 06:41, 23 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This is a good idea, however I feel that it might also cause some harm if the newcomer doesn't actually know what it might do or some other things. That said, this will definitely fix the issue of users signing up for accounts, and then never making a single edit with them. This clogs up the mentor dashboard with a lot of users who won't make a single edit. I feel a better solution might be if a user registers for an account, they're assigned a mentor. IF they don't make any edits after a certain amount of time they might get a notification that says something like, "Having trouble editing? Ask your mentor and they might be able to help you!" and then if they continue to not make any edits whatsoever or ask any questions, then they will automatically be unassigned a mentor and have to click the button again to assign themself a mentor (could possibly be the same one they had previously if that info could be stored somewhere or a new random one). ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#654518:59, 18 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support I've seen firsthand that this really is a great asset to the encyclopedia, and it's probably the click we've needed after a bit of stagnation recently with regard to integrating new users (especially with a huge burst in new users due to the pandemic). I wish this was a feature when I was starting out! Curbon7 (talk) 09:03, 20 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support: I was a guinea pig for the dashboard, and while I don't think it's perfect, it's certainly far better than nothing. It would have been cool to get a mentor too; from the perspective of a newbie editor, this looks like a great feature. Thanks to the growth team for your work on these features! (And for being friendly when I showed up with questions and comments.) -- asilvering (talk) 06:34, 23 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@xaosflux Er, are you sure? There is nothing about that on my newcomer homepage, I never asked for a mentor (indeed, I learned that mentors were even a thing at all by having googled to find the growth team talk page to leave the comments I mentioned in my vote), and I have no idea how you came to this conclusion. -- asilvering (talk) 02:17, 25 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@xaosflux Can you please answer my question about where you are finding this database report? I've described what my newcomer homepage looks like, obviously I have it enabled. -- asilvering (talk) 18:31, 25 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Asilvering literally by invoking that #mentor parser function I quoted above, the "Elli" test up there is not text, it is the live output of that parser function. I believe you, but didn't know if you could go to homepage if following the link, while also not having it enabled in preferences. There are several "opt out" tasks open, but I didn't think any of them were live. So, I don't know why you can't see your mentor there. Think there was a typo above, I was trying to say "that's what the database reports", not that there was a 'database report' to read. — xaosfluxTalk18:37, 25 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@xaosflux Ok so it's not just randomly picking a mentor for funsies... weird. Well... it would have been neat to know I had one, I guess! But as I've said above I would definitely prefer for it to be an opt-in thing with a very obvious opt-in option. -- asilvering (talk) 18:45, 25 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
RfC: Categorise male footballers in the same way that we categorise female footballers
Yes. If we categorise people by gender, the category for one gender should not be a sub-category of any other gender. This should apply across the encyclopaedia not just in sports. Thryduulf (talk) 20:44, 19 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, and though I tend to agree with Thryduulf I think it will be easier in sports, where men and women are in operationally distinct categories for the most part, than it may be in some other occupations. It does work in acting and singing. Rathfelder (talk) 20:49, 19 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This is only relevant where people are categorised by gender. Whether people should be categorised by gender is an entirely different question, and not one with a single answer as it is a clearly defining characteristic in some topics (e.g. footballers), clearly not-defining in some topics (e.g. violinists) and not unarguably one or the other in some (e.g. heads of state). Thryduulf (talk) 21:01, 19 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
No - men's football is significantly more popular and established (in wiki-parlance the primary topic) than women's. That is why we have England national football team for men but England women's national football team for women. The same applies for categories. This might change in the future - hopefully it does - but it is not for Wikipedia to determine that. We reflect what sources do. Just look at BBC which is 90% male coverage. GiantSnowman20:50, 19 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@GiantSnowman: I understand where you're coming from - men's football is much more popular than women's football - but I'm not convinced that we should wait for external sources before we change our category structure to something that is gender-balanced. We have established categorisation for other sports, why not adopt that here? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 20:55, 19 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I wondered how long it would take until "sexism" entered the argument, didn't expect it to be so soon! If that's your tack, why split categories by sex/gender at all? GiantSnowman21:04, 19 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
? maybe? And maybe this will be sport by sport. A quick read suggests that women are not allowed to play association football, and are only allowed to play Women's association football. In some other sports there is often a women's league, restricted to women, but the "primary" league isn't sex restricted - but as it is competitive women rarely or never get a spot (though they could). — xaosfluxTalk21:27, 19 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Mike Peel: My understanding is that "association football" and "women's association football" are different sports, so the categorizations of players would be about which sport they play, not really about their own sex - it's just that it happens to be that they are exclusive. In the future perhaps "association football" will become open, in which case a woman could be an "association footballer" or they could be a "women's association footballer". — xaosfluxTalk23:21, 19 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Xaosflux: - My understanding is that "association football" and "women's association football" are different sports - this is 100% untrue, no idea where this suggestion came from. It is the exact same sport, played with the same rules, same equipment, etc, just by players of different genders. And here is a news article about a couple of women who played on "men's" teams...... -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 08:22, 20 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
If that is true (I don't know) then the category for players of "women's association football" should not be a subcategory of players of a different sport in the same way that categories for Rugby League players are not subcategories of categories for Rugby Union players. Indeed there should be a whole category tree for "Women's association football" in Category:Football codes (or possibly parallel trees for "Association football (men's)" and "Women's Association Football" in Category:Association football). Thryduulf (talk) 23:28, 19 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Thryduulf: - If that is true (I don't know) then the category for players of "women's association football" should not be a subcategory of players of a different sport - it isn't true, they are not different sports, in the same way that the men's 100m sprint and the women's 100m sprint aren't different sports -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 08:22, 20 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Weak no - in that 'footballers' and 'women's footballers' are about players of those specific sports, not necessarily players, by sex, of those specific sports. As such, we don't need a "men's footballers", because there isn't a sport called "men's football". — xaosfluxTalk05:54, 20 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
There isn't a sport called "women's football" either, it's just football played by women. There is no difference in the rules, playing equipment, or anything other than the sex of the players, it's the exact same sport in the same way that the men's 100m sprint and the women's 100m sprint are the same sport -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 10:40, 20 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Doesn't "women's football" have a special rule, that player must only be women. Whereas football only has a rule that women can not play on mens teams sometimes (from U18 and up). I'm rather "weak" on my opposition - but think it could be useful to the readers, under the current technological limitations of categories, to be able to browser players that play in women's leagues - and also to be able to browse players that play in the non-womens-only leagues (such as the player in this youth league: <https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/sport/2015/09/meet-footballer-niamh-mckevitt-girl-who-joined-boys-league>). I'm pretty "weak" on this still, and football may be special compared to some other sports where there are more technical differences between "sport" and "women's sport". — xaosfluxTalk12:42, 20 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This is true, I just don't don't think we should follow suit (calling it "football" when it's played by men but "women's football" when the same sport is played by women). I don't think, for example, any readers will be confused by a category called "male football players" and "female football players" (especially since readers don't even use categories anyway, as they're mostly used by editors for maintenance purposes). Although, the more I think about it, the more I think just doing away with gender categories altogether may be best. Levivich14:22, 21 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, though not sure a corresponding male category is always needed. Remember the discussion in 2013 about women novelists being moved out of Category:American novelists, triggered by an article in The New York Times. The solution was to make American women novelists a non-diffusing category and put the American novelist category back on their pages. All such gendered categories should be non-diffusing, since female soccer players are still soccer players. Wikipedia does have a guideline on this, also at Wikipedia:Categorization/Ethnicity, gender, religion and sexuality, that says In almost all cases, gendered/ethnic/sexuality/disability/religion-based categories should be non-diffusing, meaning that membership in the category should not remove membership from the non-gendered/non-ethnic/etc. parent category.StarryGrandma (talk) 22:18, 19 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
If we have categories for female foo we should have a parallel category at the same level for male foo (and non-binary foo if the category would not be empty), regardless of whether the category is diffusing or not. If you don't think a category for male foo is relevant then neither is a category for female foo (and vice versa). i.e we should always have either no gender categories or categories for all genders, with all such categories at the same level. Thryduulf (talk) 23:03, 19 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Thryduulf: see also above (and I'm far from well-read on this) - but it seems that the difference in the categories isn't a category of players, who are women, who play sport X; but instead players of sport X, which just so happens to be called "women's X". — xaosfluxTalk23:24, 19 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Xaosflux see also my reply to you above (which edit conflicted with your writing this), but this comment is more general than association football. We do have categories where we are categorising people doing the same thing based on their gender, e.g. novelists. In neither case should the category for one gender be a subcategory of the category for any other gender. Thryduulf (talk) 23:32, 19 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Thryduulf: (putting it out there that I only have weak opinions on all of this thread so far) I don't think we need to be as specific as we are on many categories, and should instead use category intersection better; e.g. if you want a female author of novels, look for pages where the subject is a "novelist" and is also "female". I understand the category system is very old and doesn't do this very well, so these extra unrelated subcategories exist to help readers find things like that. A quick look in that category is also Category:LGBT novelists, I'd say the same sort of better way of doing things should be figured out (unless these are novelists who write about the topic of "LGBT") --- else the same, they should be "LGBT people" and "novelists". But until a better way for readers to navigate categories (perhaps with some sort of dynamic category linking) exists, if we have "Women novelists" we might as well have "Men novelists" -- or have neither. I do think this is a much different conversation then that about if "women's football" and "football" are different sports though. — xaosfluxTalk23:47, 19 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
For the purposes of this discussion it is sufficient to say that where gendered categories exist they should always be parallel and at the same level. Whether gendered categories should exist and if so what part of which tree they should be on are valid questions but not relevant here - they are questions for the individual categories concerned. Awkward42 (talk) [the alternate account of Thryduulf (talk)] 03:53, 20 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I have a feeling this is obvious to most people but in this case it is referring to what Americans call "soccer", and not American football (which to my knowledge has never had a female player on a team, dunno if it's because women just aren't allowed to play American football or if it's because usually women aren't interesting in American football, I don't know because I don't care that much about American football). ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#654523:51, 19 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support change, but there are multiple ways of changing that I would support, none of which is the status quo: (1) split into separate male/female subcategories, with the parent category a container category that is not allowed to directly include male athletes or male-athlete subcategories, more or less as in the current proposal (2) make the female footballer subcategories non-diffusing and require the other subcategories to accept women into them, (3) abolish gendered subcategories and require this part of the category hierarchy to accept both men and women. Anything else (including the current ghettoized status quo) is unequal treatment, sexist, and making a show of how sexist our sports editing often is. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:05, 20 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support change, oppose the current ghettoized status quo, to borrow the phrase from David Eppstein above. I support the proposal per nom but I wonder what we are going to do about nonbinary athletes, and that makes me wonder why we're categorizing athletes by gender at all. So I also support merging, as well as the non-diffusing, solutions proposed above. Whatever works and doesn't imply that females athletes are a subset of male athletes, or that male athletes are the default athletes, because that's sexist (and yes, this is about sexism, at least for me it is). Levivich00:17, 20 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yes per above. With our current rules, the rule should be that male footballers are in a "men's footballer" category. I also agree that this isn't a particularly desirable outcome, and we may want to change some of our standing rules so that isn't the outcome. User:力 (powera, π, ν) 01:44, 20 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
No objection as a matter of principle here. But it seems to me that the implementation is going to be a massive amount of work, is it worth the effort? Marcocapelle (talk) 07:33, 20 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support change Categorising women's footballers into a sub-category of an exclusively men's category is silly. There should either be no subcategories or there should be a subcategory for both men and women. Stevie fae Scotland (talk) 10:22, 20 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Qualified yes. Qualified because the useful distinction here is not the gender of the player, but which branch of the game they play. A female or non-binary player playing in the men's leagues should be categorised on the men's side of the branch, and a male or non-binary player playing in the women's leagues should be categorised on the women's side of the branch. In this context, we may want to consider carefully what words we use for the category names. Kahastoktalk10:38, 20 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'm on board that it should be about what game/leagues were played in, not about whatever some players current or historically requested gender identifier is/was. — xaosfluxTalk13:35, 20 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yes - either the men and women should each be in their own cat or else they should all be in one cat. Having the women as a subcat of the men has never made sense -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 10:40, 20 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yes. If a tree is categorized by gender, then a male one should be created. I really don't see how we can justify this any other way. If this RfC passes, WP:CATGENDER should be updated. Gonnym (talk) 10:51, 20 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'm closer to this one - in that it should be about who played what type of football - but the common name of "men's football" is just "football" (and in some cases it is mixed sex football) as opposed to "women's footbal" is sex restricted. — xaosfluxTalk13:32, 20 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
...and yes, I'm was using "men's football" as a slightly incorrect shorthand for "football in competitions either limited to men, or open to all but in practice entered almost exclusively by men". Certes (talk) 14:46, 20 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose and abolish the gendered categories (upmerging to the general category). No need to split by gender, and would cause issues for players who have gender changes. Joseph2302 (talk) 18:19, 20 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This would not cause issues with players that underwent gender transitioning. The categories are not referring the gender of the player, but rather as players of men's/women's association football. S.A. Julio (talk) 16:10, 21 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - there are now three potential proposals/outcomes (categorise by gender, namely 'male footballers' and 'female footballers'; or abolish these gendered categories completely; or maintain the status quo) and it is not entirely sure which editors are supporting/opposing which. I therefore suggest that @Mike Peel: invites everyone who has !voted to far to make a clear vote on each, perhaps under a new sub-section? GiantSnowman14:56, 21 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@GiantSnowman: I think my question was clear (the first option vs. status quo), it's not my problem if people then think they are !voting for something else. If you want to add other questions more clearly in subsections below this (perhaps specifically for your middle option), go for it. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 17:33, 21 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support creating "men's footballers" categories This is a better and more consistent way of categorizing, and will allow men's footballers to be subcategories of Category:Sportsmen (which is currently not the case). I disagree with upmerging the women's categories into a single men's/women's footballer category, it is useful to be able to be able to search specifically for players of [[women's association football}} and follows other sports such as Category:Volleyball players. S.A. Julio (talk) 16:10, 21 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
No/Oppose - football played by men is far more popular than that played by women. In standard coverage the gender is never mentioned unless its women (for example it's the FIFA World Cup, not the FIFA Men's World Cup, while the women's version is always referred to as the FIFA Women's World Cup). Wikipedia should reflect what the sources and coverage say on a topic, and not what editors believe to be more gender-balanced or politically correct. Inter&anthro (talk) 22:37, 21 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This is not a proposal to change the names of articles, it is solely to change how we categorise articles. Subcategories should be a more specific type of the parent category, e.g. Footballers → Association football players → British footballers → English footballers, but female football players are not a type of male football player. Thryduulf (talk) 13:15, 22 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
No you are misinterpreting my argument, if none of the article about the organizations concerning men's football even make mention of the gender, then why should the categories? I wasn't saying the articles should be changed, I was saying the categories should reflect the articles. Inter&anthro (talk) 18:19, 22 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
In that case it seems your objection is to the name "men's footballers" rather than the principle of subcategorising female players below male players? Thryduulf (talk) 19:05, 22 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support either placing all players (male and female) into a single category or moving all male players to a new subcategory with no individuals in the non-gendered parent category. As this is solely about Wikipedia categorization, the objection that men's teams are not called men's teams "in the wild" is irrelevant. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 13:10, 22 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yes per Thryduulf (who of course says "If we categorise people by gender...". If folks decide there's not much benefit to categorising these articles by gender, that's fine by me as well). Ajpolino (talk) 17:01, 23 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support any categorization that means that men and women are categorized in the same way. Also, the problem is not limited to football, I assume the same change would take place for other sports as well. Gunnar Larsson (talk) 13:13, 27 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support. We should not treat genders differently. Though I'd prefer to just abandon the gendered categorisation. /Julle (talk) 20:39, 2 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose If we have Women's association football and Category:Women's association football, we should also have a category system for all the players of the sport. As someone who has contributed to WP:WOSO, this category tree is very useful to be able to find just the players of women's football. For example, I just looked and there are 210 women's footballers who are neither in a club nor a national team player category, with this proposed upmerging such players would be impossible to track. S.A. Julio (talk) 20:29, 21 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Then how do you deal with non-binary etc. players? Add them to their own category? what about men who manage in women's football and vice versa? GiantSnowman09:45, 22 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'd think that a category like "Women's association football players" is different from "Women that play association football"; that is we shouldn't categorize based on the gender or sex of the person in the category - but can still categorize upon what they played. — xaosfluxTalk10:36, 22 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
But when the sport they play is called "Women's association football" or "Women's football", their profession is "Women's footballers" (or are you saying that they should just be in Category:Athletes?). --Ahecht (TALK PAGE) 14:18, 23 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Khajidha it seems to vary more by different sports; it many sports the difference between "women's X" and "X" is that only women are allowed to play the former; in some sports there are many other different rules between the "women's X" and "X" versions (e.g. Women's lacrosse vs Field lacrosse). In almost all cases, completely different championships and league systems are in place between "women's X" and "X".
To this specific topic: In most instances of association football (adult leagues) the only rule difference is the sex of the players, with WAF only allowing women, and AF only allowing men. This bifurcation also precludes these teams competing against each other. — xaosfluxTalk16:47, 23 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Even with different rules, different championships, and different league systems, "women's _________", "men's _______", and "_______" would not be what I would consider "different sports". --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 17:10, 23 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support My preference is for the main proposal (which is why I phrased this RfC that way), but this approach would work as well. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 16:30, 25 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, per Ahecht and some others; and honestly, I cannot believe how this concept is completely flying over so many of your heads: we aren't categorising the players based on their sex; we are categorising them based on which leagues they play in! For soccer football there are "football (teams, leagues etc)" and there are "women's football". The ones that men play in are not called "men's football", they're just called "football". I am sympathetic to the notion that they ought to be called "men's football", but the fact is that they're not, and we aren't here to right great wrongs. Note that, there ARE sports where this is not the case: the men's and women's divisions ARE each labeled as such, but football is not one of such sports (at this time). I also oppose lumping them all together into one category. In this sport they are sex-segregated, and I sincerely hope for the physical safety and well being of all the female players that they remain sex-segregated. 2600:1702:4960:1DE0:6136:D2CD:D164:1BED (talk) 08:20, 3 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Make links to disambiguation pages highlighted for all users when previewing
Result of previous discussion: Not consensus to make the pages orange.
New, modified proposal: Make disambiguation links highlighted with yellow background for all users when previewing the page (not just reading it). It can be done by adding:
Yellow backgrounds are easier to spot than orange font in a big and complex article
All such highlighting disappears when the changes are published
The highlighting may be limited to article space by adding body.ns-0
Note: A great part of the opposition to the previous proposal was concerns about the readers' experience. These drawbacks are eliminated in this new proposal. Utfor (talk) 17:39, 22 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Is this needed now that the editor informs you when typing that you've linked to a disambiguation page? If you're using VE to choose the link then it already tells you it's a disambiguation page, so it definitely isn't needed in that environment. Thryduulf (talk) 19:11, 22 February 2022 (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.
Currently, the time is set 8 hours ahead of my time zone (PST). I find this confusing, as an edit that was made at 5:33 PM on Feb 24 in my time zone would show up as being at 1:33 AM on Feb 25, and I'm sure other editors agree Not only this, but the featured article and other stuff on the main page updates 8 hours before it should. I think there should be an option for the user to select their time zone, using the current time zone Wikipedia uses by default, and/or use location services (this would be an option, off by default and using the current time zone Wikipedia uses) to determine the user's time zone. InterstateFive (talk) - just another roadgeek 01:38, 25 February 2022 (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.
I previously started this discussion with no consensus, and I was ready to just give up and accept it when yesterday Google became the AFI and it still hasn´t been edited for an entire day despite being important, its clear that this wikiproject is incredibly denied and I think it should be shown on a high traffic page. Maybe we could add it to welcoming messages and for newcomers who do well we can award them with a Template:Articles for improvement barnstar. Activity on AFI is dead and nobody except for one guy actually participates.
Option A: Add articles for improvement to newcomer welcome messages and award barnstars to good contributors
Option B: Do not add to Welcome notices or Help:Introduction but do add it to some other high traffic page
Option C: Shut down articles for improvement due to no activity
Option D: Do nothing
Option E: Other (Specify what)
I think Option A.Lallint⟫⟫⟫Talk13:39, 28 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It would help if someone vetted the suggested articles before they are posted. For example, one AfI proposed recently had been replaced by a dab some time ago and no longer required improvement. Certes (talk) 13:50, 28 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Option E Something else. Suggesting new users participate in AFI isn't all that good of an idea since new users should probably be sent somewhere else to start. However I don't think it should be deleted either. I think it should probably be made known to other people. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#654515:19, 28 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Is there some way to find out what benefit AFI has had or its evolution over time? That might be helpful when deciding what to do about it. Presently, however, I agree with Blaze Wolf's perspective on it. A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me!15:24, 28 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Also, the 3 suggestions on the talkpage are weirdly specific pages. Would be better to find general topics that have poor quality articles, which wouldn't require people to have knowledge of a very specific topic. For example, next week seems to be First Sudanese Civil War, which would require knowledge of African history. Wouldn't it be better to do something like Wood (which everyone knows something about)? Joseph2302 (talk) 15:50, 28 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Option E Specifically, scrap the project. All articles should be considered as subject to continual improvement since knowledge about anything may be constantly increasing (or rather, ignorance may be hopefully decreasing since we start with ignorance). Maybe what is meant are articles that are unverified/unverifiable, biased, opinionated, or badly written. Any of those or a combination afflicts the majority of articles in my entirely unscientific survey. However this is borne out by the fact that so-called "good articles" are a tiny minority. It wouldn't be a bad idea to scrap the GA embarrassment as well, as it is glaring proof by the encyclopedia's own admission that it publishes, mostly, junk according to its own metrics. I would give barnstars to anyone who proceeds to do that if I didn't think that such "awards" belong in kindergarten. 65.88.88.126 (talk) 15:56, 28 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Scrap it. there is nothing on Wikipedia other than articles for improvement. New users will be more likely to find articles to work on by randomly selection than a list like this. Get rid it. --jpgordon𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇16:43, 28 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Scrap it as it's not providing any benefit, and hasn't done for years. Stop the bot from making proposals for article of the week, and then mark the project as historic. Joseph2302 (talk) 17:26, 28 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Is there a mechanism to route "improve this article" messages to editors with the right skills and interests to help? Perhaps something on a per-topic basis might be better. Selecting WikiProject Earthquakes at random, its members might be able to help with these articles. Certes (talk) 17:54, 28 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
E: Pick different articles to improve. Google specifically is a difficult article to improve:
it's already large, so nothing obviously missing,
it's already high visibility, so people who could improve it have already seen it,
it has many, many sub-articles, so any improvements might be better there
If instead you were to pick articles that are more obviously incomplete, and had less visibility so someone getting an AFI notice might say - "hey, I didn't realize we had an article about that, I know what I can add", that would be much more effective. I know that was what I thought when I saw Google was the AFI - I looked at it and said "nothing obviously missing here" - and I used to work for the co, so I may know whereof I speak. Also A: Award barnstars. They're free, and praise is a non-negligible motivator, also helps popularize the project when others see them on the awardees talk pages. --GRuban (talk) 19:48, 28 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think the difficulty here is that it's hard to come up with articles which are simultaneously obviously lacking in some area, sufficiently obscure that people interested in the topic might not already have known about it, and sufficiently broad that editors who get the notice are likely to have the interest and knowledge to improve it. The problem with picking "less visible" articles to improve is that they're often less visible because they're only of interest to specialists. An article for improvement really needs to be one that non-specialists can meaningfully help with – otherwise more focused collaborations (e.g. by subject-specific wikiprojects), or efforts by interested individuals will be more effective at improving the article. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 21:15, 28 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
As a starting point, here is a list of articles beginning with A which are rated as both stub or start class and top or high importance by more than one wikiproject. There should be about 1500 of them over the whole alphabet. Certes (talk) 21:25, 28 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
To address GRuban's assertion that nothing is obviously missing from the Google article: my review shows no mention, whatsoever, regarding quantum computers, the milestone of quantum supremacy which they are said to have achieved, nor anything else including rates of progression and timetable goals for reaching the next milestones. Whether there are other articles covering these topics or not, Google is a "main player" in this field and it is a significant omission that they are not, at least, mentioned and linked from the main Google page.--John Cline (talk) 09:22, 2 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I would go with option C/scrap it. We shouldn't all go for the same article at the same time, but spread our net wider. There are literally (and I mean that word literally) millions of articles on English Wikipedia that need improvement. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:24, 28 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
WikiProjects which don't affect the rest of the project are usually given latitude to decide for themselves how they'd like to proceed. I feel this discussion should be held on the WikiProject's talk page. If there's no one left interested in participating, then the initiative can be stopped. Otherwise, let the participants figure out the best next steps. isaacl (talk) 22:02, 28 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I have notified the WikiProject of this discussion. But the WP doesn't seem active to me, so I don't imagine many people will reply or would reply to a discussion there. Joseph2302 (talk) 14:34, 1 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
D Do nothing. Keeping it around causes no harm, and if someone does become interested in it in the future, let them. --Jayron3214:20, 1 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I've struggled to unearth the actual discussion process to see the rationale for how Google was nominated for improvement at WP:AFI, and then automatically flagged by MusikAnimal's bot. However, there is a genuine need to identify and recommend the right sort of article for improvement, and these should be shorter ones with tags indicating clear areas for attention. That didn't seem to apply at that article. But MMiller (WMF)'s Growth Team Features is actively identifying structured improvement tasks for new users. There could be potential for the AFI team to work with the Growth Team to identify the right types of articles to improve, not the wrong ones. Nick Moyes (talk) 21:39, 2 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
If participants in the articles for improvement initiative want to continue (which is an open question (*)), then their task queue ought to be distinct from the structured improvement task queue, since otherwise a separate queue isn't needed. I don't agree that there is a single set of "right" articles to improve; WikiProjects can use whatever criteria its participants find useful, and that can even include throwing in some already large articles that are lacking in some way.(*) My recollection is that when it was removed from the main page and renamed from "Today's article for improvement", stats were collected indicating that most improvements were being done by initiative participants, and so they chose to continue the initiative for their own benefit. If there is no longer a core set of interested participants, then the queue may have outlived its purpose. isaacl (talk) 23:00, 2 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Option C Mark as inactive/historical. No activity on the project talk page, and nobody is editing the suggested articles. As I've said above, there are better ways for people to find articles that they might actually be interested in working on. Dan from A.P. (talk)
@Yahya: Ah interesting. Not sure if there's much we can do here on enWiki since they haven't made any edits since this one and to my knowledge we can't use CU to connect IPs to accounts. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#654523:22, 2 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
"User contributions for (user)"
I remember when you're at the user contributions page it would have "User contributions" as the only text, with "for (user)" and then a bunch of links. Why was the change to "User contributions for (user)" to the top text done when we still have the "for (user)" and links below it? The only way it could be useful is if the "for (user)" (smaller text) is removed. Nearly but not perfect (talk) 03:36, 1 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
In either case, since we are VPR - are you proposing we make a local override, or are you just trying to figure out what developer did that? — xaosfluxTalk11:56, 1 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
(non-admin closure) It is clear this is heading towards a WP:SNOW. There is strong consensus against the proposal. The community believes changing the logo would be a form of political advocacy at odds with the neutral principles, goals, and operations of Wikipedia. However, the community is overwhelmingly sympathetic to the victims of the conflict and may support other, non-political initiatives on English Wikipedia. A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me!12:36, 2 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Georgian Wikipedia has adopted a logo in support of Ukraine. We on English Wikipedia should do the same, not only to show support for Ukrainian Wikipedians but in opposition to what is currently taking place. Not sure if this has been proposed already...
Support as proposal. The Russian state is likely to try to limit access to Wikipedia no matter what we do and I do not think worrying about that should effect our decision. The truth, obviously does not align with Putin's position. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:17, 1 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Probably won't pass but I think the current situation is more fundamental than a 'political issue', and the proposal is not 'political activism' or a NPOV violation IMO. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 01:19, 2 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I feel like its pretty hard to claim neutrality while openly supporting one side in a geopolitical conflict, no matter how despicable the other side may have acted. People will probably say that the articles have to be neutral but wikipedia does not in a meta sense - still an appearence of a conflict of interest is often just as bad as a real one, and changing the logo does nothing if not give the appearence of which side we support. Bawolff (talk) 23:41, 1 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Why give fodder to the trolls who constantly attack our coverage as having a 'western' and 'anti-Russian' bias? We claim to have a mission to chronicle events in a neutral fashion, based on reliable sources. It is quite hard to square that mission with outright support for one side in an ongoing war. As an aside, I find it quite amusing to see such a proposal now. Back when this conflict broke out, in 2014, we barely had any tools to control the swarm of Russian trolls that began inserting disinformation of all sorts into our articles. And most people, frankly, didn't care. Administrators, by and large, ignored Wikipedia articles on the conflict then, and it was left to individual editors, like myself, to ensure Wikipedia's mission and policies were implemented. We fought tooth and nail to preserve Wikipedia's neutral point of view in the face of that onslaught, and to make clear that we didn't accept propaganda from either side. Take an open side in the conflict now, and all that hard work goes out the window. All you'll do is validate their long-held feeling that we, the Wikipedia community, are part of some kind of western conspiracy against them. Why should we give these people that satisfaction? RGloucester — ☎23:50, 1 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The proposal is made in good faith, but in general, I don't support any changes to the Wikipedia logo (even temporary ones) unless the reason for the change has something to do directly with Wikipedia (e.g. Wikipedia's 20th anniversary). It's a slippery slope if we start allowing non-Wikipedia related changes to the logo. Some1 (talk) 00:08, 2 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose as Wikipedia should always be NPOV. Whilst of course it is right to want to show support for Ukraine, Wikipedia is not the correct place for doing this. Joseph2302 (talk) 00:13, 2 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Definitely not. Our work here is to document notable information and make it freely available, not to take political stands. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:39, 2 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, though I acknowledge (and deeply sympathize with) the good intentions. It is not our place to be taking sides in a conflict, only to report what RSes say. GeneralNotability (talk) 01:46, 2 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. I come at this from two angles. 1. Wikipedia is an encyclopædia, it is not a platform. It aims to be and is widely regarded as a serious and relatively neutral source of knowledge. The SOPA situation was entirely different as it directly impacted upon Wikipedia itself and the community and the foundation was right to take a stand. 2. I am very sympathetic to the Ukrainians, and especially the ones I was fortunate to meet at various Wikimedia events. I hope they win against the bullies attacking them, and I don't think there's any problem with saying that. But I am also sympathetic to many other people and causes be they humanitarian, social, political, technological or musical, and I would not expect Wikipedia to reflect my point of view or sincerely held beliefs on those issues. The Wikimedia movement, separate to Wikipedia, can take a stand and especially in support of our WMUA and WMRU brethren (for it is governments, not people, that start wars and there's plenty of evidence this one doesn't have much home support), but its main product is at its best when it can remain dispassionate about things which can divide or polarise people. Orderinchaos02:47, 2 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
If it was a prerogative of community consensus to do this thing (to be clear: it is not) I am glad to see consensus emerging to oppose. And while I've no standing to formally speak: I, too, oppose this notion and say so for the record.--John Cline (talk) 06:25, 2 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose due to violation of WP:NPOV. In this case, even though my sympathies are with Ukraine, I would not want to set a precedent that the Wikipedia logo should be changed for political causes. --Metropolitan90(talk)07:33, 2 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Would undermine our reputation for neutrality. Political activism which actually relates to or threatens Wikipedia is sometimes acceptable, but Ukraine isn't that. Hut 8.508:32, 2 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I do think there could be times when it would be appropriate for Wikipedia to take sides. In this case, the facts speak for themselves so loudly and clearly that it's not necessary ---- and if we did use a Ukraine flag, then we would be giving credence to the Russian authorities' line that everything written by a Westerner is a lie.—S MarshallT/C11:13, 2 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Putin, and his invasion, are both scum and on a personal level I encourage people to help Ukraine as best they can. However, in terms of human rights issues, this invasion is not different from others that have occurred and we've not acted. The tough bit about being neutral is, well, having to be neutral. We should only publicly state positions on direct threats to the movement. So I'm 100% in favour of showing banners to those who might be having access cut-off and being freer than normal with IPBE, and the Foundation can offer additional Tor support, and so forth. Nosebagbear (talk) 11:33, 2 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose as above. Individuals can take political positions; the wider WMF should not. Although saying that wasn't there a black out a few years ago in protest of something? However, solidarity with Ukraine, always. GiantSnowman11:41, 2 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose While my personal self may be horrified at what Putin is doing in his invasion of Ukraine, I don't believe that, at the organization level, English Wikipedia should be taking positions. This is not what we do here. Write good articles on the subject and let the truth be our political statement. But there's no need to take a symbolic gesture. --Jayron3211:42, 2 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose I think that that is not necessary. Wikipedians are best in what they are doing right now: providing information to the world. This is also best serving to those we care for. Compare it to media outlets that don't have a blue-yellow ribbon on their sites either. Ziko (talk) 12:29, 2 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
As a former board member, I can say that if we have a clear consensus from the community, they will support us in our decision from a technical perspective. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:24, 1 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think we absolutely should have involved the WMF and further believe that they will decline our request if or when we do. The Wikipedia logo is not subject to our consensus and it is not licensed for any modification or reuse. Per Wikipedia:Copyrights § Reusers' rights and obligations "The only Wikipedia content you should contact the Wikimedia Foundation about are the trademarked Wikipedia/Wikimedia logos, which are not freely usable without permission". Best regards.--John Cline (talk) 02:02, 2 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This seems like a good idea, however i can see a few issues with it, mainly making it seem like Wikipedia is picking sides. Wikipedia tries to remain neutral, however if it seems like we're supporting Ukraine and not remaining neutral, then that neutrality can seem questionable. So really, I'm on the fence about this. I think there's some policy or essay somewhere relating to this (besides WP:NPOV) but I can't find it at the moment. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#654523:32, 1 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This is certainly intresting, but I'd like to know if anything of this order has been attempted before on the English Wikipedia (as in changing logo/main page for a cause). What was the outcome? I think there was some proposal back when Floyd died, but I am not sure. Rlink2 (talk) 23:34, 1 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'm tempted to notify Jimbo about this since not only does this seem like something he should be involved in, but he also appeared to have something to do with that as well. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#654523:42, 1 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The reason WP was active in the SOPA one was due to the direct threat to WP's livelihood. We have tried others where WP's fate was far from being in danger and more political (I recall something proposed around the Hong Kong protests), but the community has balked at such direct political messaging.--Masem (t) 23:45, 1 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Probably the most frequent ArbCom principle cited in its history: "The purpose of Wikipedia is to create a high-quality, free-content encyclopedia in an atmosphere of camaraderie and mutual respect among contributors. Use of the site for other purposes, such as advocacy or propaganda, furtherance of outside conflicts, and promotion of political or ideological struggle, is prohibited." Straight-up taking sides in a literal war is about as problematic as it gets, on par with propagandising in an election or religious dispute. --Yair rand (talk) 23:53, 1 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Would support, but I am concerned whether it would make wikipedia a target for partisan hackers. Rightly or wrongly, Wikipedia is a source hundreds of millions rely on each day and we should do what we can to protect the flow of information. Also of concern is dozens of less public tragedies occur every day affecting similar and larger population sizes without being given the benefit of the public awareness 300 million page views a day will bring.Slywriter (talk) 00:11, 2 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The Wikimedia Foundation, the political lobbying organization, should of course weigh in with their support for the Ukrainians. I don't know about the current executive director, the the former ED was all about tweeting her politics all the time. The encyclopedias themselves should stay out of politics and remain neutral. – wbm1058 (talk) 04:22, 2 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hello everyone,
I want to briefly explain to you all why the Georgian Wikipedia modified the logo (in the color of the Ukrainian flag) and state the position of the Georgian community.
We are in full solidarity with our Ukrainian colleagues and the Ukrainian people in the struggle for freedom and independence, and we hope that the invasion and bloodshed will end as soon as possible. We pray for them. Due to solidarity with the Ukrainian people and our colleagues, who are now under fire and bombardment from the Russian army, we have temporarily changed the Wikipedia logo.
I myselfs, as well as all editors from Georgia and the absolute majority of editors in Georgian language ourselves 14 years ago (2008) became the target of Russian aggression, when Russia attacked Georgia and occupied our regions, so we know what our Ukrainian colleagues are feeling and experiencing now. This triggered our respective response.
The decision to change the logo was taken unanimously by the Georgian community, in full compliance with the principle of transparency. You can check this here.
The Georgian community remains completely neutral in its coverage of events in Ukraine. Unlike some larger Wikipedias, Georgian Wikipedia praises academic freedom and is adherent to the principle of neutrality in academic materials. Our policies, as well as checks, are well in place and all of our articles are almost identical in neutrality as in English Wikipedia. Accusations of non-neutrality are unfair, unbased and demonstrate the preexisting bias from the accuser. We recommend everyone to double-check and then blame. All accusations of lack of objectivity are unfounded.
Finally, every Wiki community is independent and decides on specific actions themselves, in adherence with the principles and values of our Movement. There is a huge difference between bias in articles and demonstration of solidarity - we are adherent to the principles of neutrality as I have already stated above, as much as the English Wikipedia, but nobody can deny us of our right to express solidarity in the way we deem it appropriate, in support of people who are part of our Movement, who are dear to us, and are currently suffering.
Hi Mehman - I would definitely concur that Georgian Wikipedia is within their bounds to demonstrate their support publicly - it's not like it's a wild, outre, judgement that couldn't reasonably be arrived at. Here, we have a "if we do this, logically we should be doing it for b-z issues, too, and thus the safe route is not to start" Nosebagbear (talk) 11:39, 2 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Nosebagbear. My this message is just information about the position of the Georgian Wikipedia community, I wanted to explain our position to everyone and at the same time I don't call someone to something. Sure, each community has its own right to decide issues within its community. Thank you, --Mehman9711:47, 2 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Mehman97: thank you to the users of Georgian Wikipedia for their support of the Ukrainian people! We in Russian Wikipedia, unfortunately, failed to place a banner in support of the peace: about 60% of users supported it, probably about 20% opposed it as political activism, and probably about 20% shamefully supported this gruesome invasion (see ru:Википедия:Голосования/Украина), while 66.7% of support for the banner were necessary. Wikisaurus (talk) 13:16, 2 March 2022 (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.
Book pages should treat dust jacket and industry commentary as biased, plus music and films
Numerous pages about individual books have quotes from the book’s dust jacket. These are biased and unreliable due to cross promotion of the commentator being a fellow author usually for the same publisher.
These promotional commentary should be removed from wikipedia.
Music pages, Devo Satisfaction song, should have these promotional comments removed also. Mick Jagger states thst Devo cover of the Rolling Stones Satisfaction is the best cover of that song. He would of course promote the cover since half of the sales of the cover go to the original artist, Mick Jagger.
Films such as Kirk Douglas quote praising his-son’s Falling Down film should be removed for the same reason.
Lastly, removing quotes from book introductions should be done since the introduction writer is paid to praise the book’s content. For anthologies, the introductory paragraph for a story is also promotional.
Although such quotes should not be used to support notability, not everything quoted from a book etc. jacket is promotional. Sometimes people involved in the book production are only credited on the cover. Music works credit personnel, and include tracklists. Even the promotional info (publisher annotations, liner notes etc.) may contain citable information if they are the explicit subject of wikitext. 71.247.146.98 (talk) 13:12, 3 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Stale outdated sources
There needs a way to can mark a reference as stale needing an updated one.
Pages frequently have twenty year or older references in the first few paragraphs outdated omitting recent definitions of the page topic.
In the sciences and history pages this excludes recent research defining the topic by blocking new research from inclusion in the page top section.
It advantages the second generation of scholarly research to balance the first generation researchers work. For example, the first biography of a living president, one from just after death and onrpe from twenty years later when policy has run its course. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1700:D591:5F10:9998:5F2A:1AD7:F946 (talk) 01:01, 3 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
You may have it backwards. If there is new material information about an article, the article can be edited and new citations should be added to support the edits. If this information necessitates the removal of older text, and that may depend on the way the article is structured, then the citations supporting the no-longer valid text should be removed. Sources are not "stale". The wikitext depending on them may be. 71.247.146.98 (talk) 13:02, 3 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
If things have radically changed such that the old information is now incorrect then in many (probably most) cases there should be a history section that documents this and those old sources can be used to support that. If the old sources are not incorrect then why do you want to remove them? Thryduulf (talk) 16:41, 3 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Limit or call out citation clustering
Propose to limit or cluster citations from the same author, university department or research center.
Pages having different papers on the same research topic from the same author should be clustered or limited. RS consisting of the same conclusion or narrow variences of it from the same author should be treated as a single reference.
Why? Inflating the RS count prevent good faith discussion on changing an article. A conclusion repeated in three papers from three years is one conclusion that should not block changing a page based on one new RS. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1700:D591:5F10:9998:5F2A:1AD7:F946 (talk) 01:16, 3 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It is not a good idea to artificially limit citations that support wikitext claims just because they are from the same author or work. Assuming this is not about single-source (or almost-single-source) articles, but such can be tagged now. It is incumbent on editors to provide additional supporting sources if they exist, but this is not an obligation. It is also incumbent on editors to add contrary wikitext claims and the citations to support them.
The second paragraph is better. Authors may have an area of expertise and associated conclusions they reinforce in work after work. The final real-world source in all citations is the author, so one may see multiple such citations as coming from a single source. But this again is not a citation issue. Citations exist to support wikitext claims. That's all. What you propose falls under NPOV and balance which are wikitext, not citation issues. 71.247.146.98 (talk) 13:54, 3 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]