Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)

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

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WP:NSONG and covers

So, this idea stems from something discussed at Wikipedia talk:Notability (music) back in 2021, at Really, a cover can never have an independent article?. I think it's ready for a centralized discussion now.

Summary

The current guideline on the inclusion of cover songs as standalone articles is this line in WP:NSONG:

• Songs with notable cover versions are normally covered in one common article about the song and the cover versions.

This sentence stems from a 2013 discussion, held at Wikipedia talk:Notability (music)/Archive 16#WP:SONGCOVER. The discussion was informal, relatively small, and localized to a single notability talk page. And, to be frank, I don't think the policy they came up with is very well thought-out, and it should be replaced with something more permissive.

Take "The House of the Rising Sun", a folk song of unknown origin. At 15kb of prose, it's a pretty large article; and it's a bit cluttered with infoboxes, tables, and paragraphs from all the artists who have covered it. The section on the cover by the Animals is simply an entire article pretending to be a section. This rule jams notable and non-notable versions alike into a solitary article, and it makes articles with many notable and even culturally significant covers feel bloated. In this case, the Animals' version is arguably more culturally significant than the composition itself, taking on a life of its own. To be squashed with every other cover and the song's origin seems counterproductive. Instead, the Animals' cover should be mentioned and discussed in a concise manner, that doesn't require every notable statistic and detail. There can be a {{Main article}} hatnote above the section, linking to a full article about the song with room for expansion. Did you know that the Beach Boys didn't write Barbara Ann? Neither did I, and our article on the song reflects that imbalance in notability poorly; in fact, the Regents don't even get their own section for composition or release. It's all Beach Boys.

It seems to me that, like any creative work, we should expect our best articles on songs to cover a broad range of topics: writing process, composition, themes, production, release, reception, impact (including brief summaries of notable recordings), and so on. A cover song with notoriety of its own will have a separate composition, production, release, reception, and impact. The only thing that remains essentially unchanged is the lyrics; so, if we were here to simply be genius.com and reprint lyrics, I would then understand merging various versions of a song into a single article. But that's not what we're doing, and the strategy we've come up with seems to be detrimental. There is precedent for this idea, a few distinct recordings that have swollen too large and have split off; see The Star Spangled Banner (Whitney Houston recording), We Are the World 25 for Haiti (YouTube edition), Somos El Mundo 25 Por Haiti, We Are the World 25 for Haiti, and presumably others because I couldn't really find any on my own. Thanks to Helloimahumanbeing and Tbhotch for these.

So, what's the solution? Well, I don't think every notable cover should have its own article; some GNG-passing topics remain basically stubs throughout their life on Wikipedia. Here, WP:NSONG comes in handy:

• Notability aside, a standalone article is appropriate only when there is enough material to warrant a reasonably detailed article; articles unlikely ever to grow beyond stubs should be merged to articles about an artist or album.

I think that this is an excellent rule of thumb, and I propose that it be implemented for articles about cover songs. If there is enough material to warrant a detailed article, cover songs should absolutely be developed in a space of their own, free from the constraint of its parent article. This will not only allow for more detailed analysis of covers, but also for more concise articles on original compositions. Thanks for your time, everyone, and I hope we have a productive discussion here! theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/they) 23:11, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

Discussion NSONG

What should Wikipedia's guidelines be concerning cover songs and individual recordings? theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/they) 20:02, 8 May 2022 (UTC)

Options

• A: All notable covers can have a standalone article, subject to normal policies of splitting and merging
• B: Notable covers can have a standalone article provided it can be reasonably detailed article based on facts independent of the original
• C: Only "exceptionally notable" (i.e. demonstrably culturally significant) covers
• D: No change

Discussion

• For now, just adding a link to a related discussion, also from 2013. Interesting reading. At the time, more editors were adamant about combining versions than the editors who saw a value in splitting, curious to see if that changes through this discussion. I see the points on both sides, although I lean toward "exceptionally notable" covers having their own articles, such as "The House of the Rising Sun" by the Animals, and Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You". (Also, I changed this to a bullet; why would discussion comments be numbered?) Schazjmd (talk) 23:30, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

  if this proposal isn't dead on arrival, we might have a future RfC in this section with a few options moved options to top for RfC

  Or something like that. theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/they) 23:45, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

• This proposal seems sensible to me. In my view, the best approach would probably be something along the lines of WP:SPLITTING – if a cover version is sufficiently notable, we build out its detailed information (the chart performance and reception and so on) into a separate article, and mention the cover in summary style in the broader article about the song. ModernDayTrilobite (talk • contribs) 17:42, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
• That the Whitney Houston cover of I Will Always Love You does not have its own article has felt bizarre to me for a long while. I understand the benefit of keeping covers together with the articles on the song (as any sections on lyrical analysis, background, etc. are going to have overlapping content), but I think opening this up to something somewhat more permissive than the current rule would be worthwhile. If WP:IAR frequently applies to a particular rule, then that might be an indicator that the rule has to change. — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 17:53, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
• This should proceed to an RfC. What is mentioned above about covers and articles is sensible.--Whiteguru (talk) 21:19, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
• I think it's definitely possible to have an independent article for a cover, but the issue is that, most of the time, when a cover is really well-known it will eclipse the original to the point where it makes sense for us to just largely devote the main article to it (see eg. Hound Dog (song), which devotes a ton of its text to Elvis.) The only situation where we'd really want separate articles is when the main article gets so big that it has to be split... which several of them, like the one I mentioned, might have reached. But I don't see any value to splitting if it's just going to result in one of them being a stub. --Aquillion (talk) 21:30, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
• I think proposal B is sensible. I've often found song articles to be unwieldy. NemesisAT (talk) 21:44, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
• I think B-ish seems reasonable, but I would add the caveat that cover version should only normally be split out into their own article if and when issues like WP:ARTICLESIZE and WP:DUE are a problem. WP:SUMMARYSTYLE applies here; if we can include sufficient information on all of the various versions of a song and not overwhelm the same article, then there's no need to create more articles. If and when the article becomes excessively long or out of balance, then we could split into multiple articles. I don't want to encourage the proliferation of multiple articles where one article is sufficient, but I recognize that in some cases, one article isn't. --Jayron32 14:49, 6 May 2022 (UTC)
• Another example is Tainted Love. First recorded by Gloria Jones in 1964. I happen to think her version is pretty fantastic, but it was released as a b-side of a single that nobody liked (different world back then, do you kids even know what a b-side is?) She gave it another shot with a re-recording in 1976 but that also didn't really go anywhere. Fast forward to 1981, new wave band Soft Cell recorded their own version of the song and it became a massive hit, top ten in the charts on multiple continents. It's certainly the most known and popular recording of the song, and what could clearly be a stand-alone article about it is crammed between Jones' original version and the 2001 Marilyn Manson version. That seems a bit off to me. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:37, 6 May 2022 (UTC)
• No change, or only change to make the prohibition stronger. The articles are about the songs, not the recordings.--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 18:58, 7 May 2022 (UTC)
• I would also support “No Change”. The song is what is NOTABLE … not the individual versions/covers. Yes, it is quite possible for a cover to be more famous than the original recording (or for one cover to be more famous than other covers), but notability and fame are not identical concepts. That said… when a specific cover is famous, it is appropriate to highlight it within the article on the song (and also in the article on the performer). To not highlight The Animals in the article on “House of the Rising Sun” would be redivilous. To not highlight both Dolly Parton and Whitney Huston in the article on “I Will Always Love You” would be silly. Blueboar (talk) 19:42, 7 May 2022 (UTC)
• Note: I've retroactively made this an RfC. theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/they) 20:02, 8 May 2022 (UTC)
• No change: I've just read the articles mentioned above, and I think the present 'rule' (which says keep it together "normally") makes good encyclopedic sense, when one is trying to understand the song, and WP:SPLITTING already covers the times you should split out, so no need to change. "A Famous cover" is likely to have more space in the article, but that is fine, too, in line with DUE. Alanscottwalker (talk) 22:05, 8 May 2022 (UTC)
• Option A I don't see why specifically being a song cover should make it have a higher standard than GNG. — PerfectSoundWhatever (t; c) 03:54, 9 May 2022 (UTC)
• Option B as per previous comments and in accordance with WP:SPLITTING policy. P1221 (talk) 07:39, 9 May 2022 (UTC)
• Option D. As an editor who has focused on music articles since first joining in 2012, I like having all the information about one particular song in one place. In other words, I don't have to go on a wild goose chase to find a particular page for a cover version simply because someone else happened to make a more successful version of it. Creating pages for particular covers seems biased. Similarly, if we make pages for covers, we'll be confusing our readers who'll ask questions such as, "Wait a minute, didn't [insert pop singer here] make a notable version too?" Where will they put this new cover? The page for the original version or the page for the version that their recording is based on? Meanwhile, what would we do for songs like "Unchained Melody" where eight—count them, eight—different musicians released versions that charted? This is where simple section linking and redirects triumph. I think things are fine the way they are, and I agree with what Khajidha and Blueboar said above: we're talking about songs here, not recordings. ResPM (T🔈🎵C) 19:00, 12 May 2022 (UTC)

  Having 8+ articles about different iterations of the same creative work doesn't seem like it would be the end of the world. Colin M (talk) 20:08, 12 May 2022 (UTC)

  and if it is the end of the world (as we know it, anyway), then i feel fine :) theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/they) 05:38, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

• Option B. I won't belabor the points made above, but it seems to make the most sense. We shouldn't have an article for every cover of every song, but surely some are notable enough to be worthy of their own articles. (While this may read as an endorsement of Option C, it's not. I find phrases such as "exceptionally notable" and "demonstrably culturally significant" to be too stringent.) -- Vaulter 19:08, 12 May 2022 (UTC)
• Option B (or maybe A). I've written previously about my reasons for supporting separate articles for notable covers in the 2021 discussion linked above and this little mini-essay. In principle option A seems reasonable to me, but it might be safer to start with a somewhat more incremental change, work out any kinks, and then consider pushing it all the way. Colin M (talk) 20:02, 12 May 2022 (UTC)
• Option D, as we want to encourage more merging, not more splitting (without guidelines like this, we have what has happened for obscure plants and villages - individual micro-stubs, when a longer combined article would benefit the reader more) and per ResPM. BilledMammal (talk) 05:45, 13 May 2022 (UTC)
• Option A or B: You know, I never liked the fact that notable covers had to be in the same article as the original song. Some covers far surpass the popularity of the original, to the point where many people are unaware they are even covers in the first place. Wouldn't it make more sense to have articles on them over the original, with most of the article being dedicated to that particular cover? MoonJet (talk) 21:48, 16 May 2022 (UTC)
• Options A or B As I wrote above, song articles with notable covers can quickly become unwieldy, especially on mobile. The current policy is also at odds with WP:GNG. NemesisAT (talk) 23:04, 16 May 2022 (UTC)
• Option B as so to fit established Wikipedia policy, but make the non-disambiguated article title a set-index article instead of an article about the most popular version of that song. This too is consistent with policy—when we talk about the 2022 Emmy Awards, we almost always mean the Primetime Emmys, just as we almost always are talking about the Beach Boys song when we talk about Barbara Ann. Nevertheless, 2022 Emmy Awards is a set-index article listing the three types of Emmys from 2022, even though one is certainly more well-known than the others. (The set-index articles need not be so bare, see Dodge Charger for a more fleshed out example and probably more like what the song ones should look like) Pinguinn 🐧 10:21, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

Moving Article to Draft Space During AFD

Is an editor permitted to move an article from article space into draft space while an Article for Deletion nomination is pending? I am asking because I thought that I knew the answer, but it appears that there is disagreement. I had thought, once an AFD was properly started, moving the article to draft space was not permitted. In the past, if an article has been moved to draft space, it has been moved back to article space, and the AFD allowed to run for seven days, with Draftify being one of the possible closes. However, in the most recent case, the article was moved to draft space, and then a non-admin did a Speedy Close of the AFD, stating that the AFD rationale is no longer valid, because the article was moved to draft space.

So what is the policy? Can an article be moved to draft space, closing the AFD? Or should the article be left in article space to allow the deletion discussion to run for the usual seven days? Robert McClenon (talk) 03:26, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

The AFD template on the article says not to remove the template and not to blank the page. It doesn't say not to move the page. (The template on a page that is pending MFD has a longer list of things not to do, including moving the page.) Robert McClenon (talk) 03:31, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

I think it's generally unwise to boldly draftify an article if an AfD is pending, especially if at least one editor has expressed opposition to draftification. WP:AFDTODRAFT, which might be the guidance that you're looking for, states that [w]hile there is no prohibition against moving an article while an AfD or deletion review discussion is in progress, editors considering doing so should realize such a move can confuse the discussion greatly, can preempt a closing decision, can make the discussion difficult to track, and can lead to inconsistencies when using semi-automated closing scripts. So, there's currently no policy prohibition, though there are ways in which it can be disruptive. — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 03:40, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

Like Mhawk says, there's a long-standing consensus that moving articles during an AfD is disruptive. I also can't imagine that an article at AfD would be eligible for draftication, unless there hadn't been any !votes for any other outcome. Even then, incubation in draftspace is a possible outcome of an AfD, so the early close is ending the discussion prematurely and pre-empting consensus. It might be justified in some WP:IAR edge cases, but otherwise this sounds like a bad close and should be reversed. – Joe (talk) 07:46, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

Thank you, User:Joe Roe, User:Mhawk10. I have observed this at least several times, usually where the person moving the article to draft space had previously moved it to article space. That is, the editor moving the article into draft space was previously the proponent or author of the article. It was in draft space, either because it was in review or because it had been moved to draft space once already. Then the proponent decides that it is ready for article space. Someone nominates it for AFD at this point. Then the proponent moves it back to draft space. If this sounds like gaming the system, that is because I think it is gaming the system. My own opinion is that the current policy is wishy-washy, but that is only my opinion. My own opinion is that, because it doesn't prohibit this behavior, it enables a proponent to try to sneak a page into article space and then run back. But maybe the community wants the policy to be ambiguous. Robert McClenon (talk) 14:32, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

I will add that I have in particular observed this behavior in an area where the notability guidelines have been ambiguous for more than ten years, films that are pending release. Part of the problem is that the notability guideline has been ambiguous, and an effort to clarify the guidelines resulted in No Consensus. A typical sequence is:

• A. There is a draft.
• B. A proponent moves it to article space.
• C. A New Page reviewer moves it back to draft space, saying Not Ready for Article Space, Incubate in Draft Space.
• D. The proponent moves it to article space a second time.
• E. Another editor nominates it for deletion.
• F. Now the proponent moves it back to draft space.
• G1. An admin moves it back to article space and the AFD continues, or
• G2. A non-admin speedy-closes the AFD.

So, I think that the policy is ambiguous, but maybe the community wants it to be ambiguous. Robert McClenon (talk) 14:32, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

If I saw in the wild what you are describing above and the editor making these moves were either experienced or did this across multiple articles, I would start to look for signs of UPE in the editor’s history. It’s a bit odd.
I think the most natural thing to do would be to treat this akin to BLARing a page that is already up for AFD. Which is to say, please don't do it if you are not the uninvolved closer. — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 14:46, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

I'd be a bit more charitable and say that it's not gaming the system, but a common misunderstanding of the system that we wilfully perpetuate by treating draftspace and AfC as if they exist outside our usual collaborative norms. That is, we tell new editors wanting to write a new article that they must make a "draft" and that this will be reviewed for "publication". They probably go through a cycle at least once (either creating in mainspace and having it moved to draft, or having an AfC submission declined) that teaches them that if their draft is not suitable for publication, it is returned to them to work on further. Finally they get to a point where the reviewers are satisfied and... whoops, now it's at AfD and a bunch of other people are saying that it isn't suitable for publication after all! In that context, trying to move it back to draftspace to work on further is an entirely reasonable response based on how they've been led to believe Wikipedia works. Of course, in reality, the "draft" was never theirs and whether it was suitable for "publication" never had anything to do with their work or the decisions of reviewers, but was entirely dependent on community consensus on the merits of the topic it's about. But how the hell were they supposed to know that? We need to communicate better to these editors how mainspace ownership and collaboration actually works – or rather, we need to stop deliberately misleading them with the fantasy peer review and "publication" process offered by AfC. I'd say that starts with ending the review–decline–resubmit cycle: articles that start in mainspace should stay there, and drafts should only be moved once. In other words, if we get rid of steps C and D in your sequence, I think there's a good chance it will naturally eliminate F and G. – Joe (talk) 15:14, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

• Two general things we can that should deter these cases without the need for specially tailored rules directed at regular participants in AfDs is (i) say that if an AfD is irregular in that the content radically changes other than unambiguous improvement, including a move, then it is then not suitable for NAC, and (ii) the closer of the AfD is to interpret the question as to whether the content belongs in mainspace under the given name. Then, we will only don't delete the article if the closer interprets the AfD as asking for draftify.

Apart from my general aversion to rule creep, I'm happy with codifying that this behaviour is unacceptable. — Charles Stewart (talk) 15:31, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

I have observed some UPE editors using this technique in an attempt to avoid completion of the AfD. MarioGom (talk) 11:12, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

I think that a rule saying not to move an article to draft space while an AFD is open is a good idea and has a low wp:creep risk. To me it looks like it should be too obvious to need saying. The AFD period is brief, and I see no non-disruptive reason for such a move. BTW, we should understand that AFC is a tough venue. Edge case articles that would survive in mainspace are usually rejected in AFC because the folks there are playing it safe, the alternative being "go out on a limb" with an edge case article. We should both thank the AFC folks for what they do and also be nice to the folks trying to get their article through AFC. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 15:58, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

First, I agree with User:North8000 that codifying a rule against moving an article while it is being discussed for deletion is a minimal change in scope, and would add that I have seen it done often enough that I think it should be either forbidden or permitted, and I think forbidden is a better approach.

Second, to User:Joe Roe, in the cases that I have observed, I am willing to assume good faith and say that sometimes it isn't UPE. (Sometimes it is.) In particular, it happens with future films, and the editors who do it are simply ultras, fanatics, willing to game the system to get an upcoming film listed.

Third, to User:Joe Roe, this is related to the problem of move-warring between article space and draft space. The repeated moving of an article from article space to draft space is move-warring, and should be avoided. If a proponent moves the page back into article space, the proper response is not to draftify it again, but to nominate it for deletion. But after it is nominated for deletion, sometimes the proponent then tries to pull it back into draft space.

Fourth, I was about to ask what BLARing a page is. It is cutting down to a redirect. Redirect wars are common in music disputes.

Robert McClenon (talk) 17:20, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

Fifth, the speedy close in the case in point was done in good faith because the closer didn't know that the move to draft space was out of process. The move to draft space was not in good faith, but the speedy close was in good faith; the closer just thought that they were wrapping up a loose end. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:07, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

• I think moving to draft space should not be allowed during an AFD. Instead someone who wants to do that should propose it in the AFD discussion, then others can support or oppose that idea. Also any move during the discussion is a bit disruptive, though I can see why it may happen, eg error in title; title is an attack on someone eg "Joe Blow (loser)". If someone wants to change the scope of the article by renaming, then that should be discussed in the AFD anyway. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 00:47, 11 May 2022 (UTC)
  • As I have outlined, the problem has to do with an editor who is determined to have an article in article space, and has moved it into article space after it was moved back into draft space. But then, when it is nominated for deletion, the editor says, "Oh. Now I am willing to compromise and have it in draft space rather than have an AFD." And they hadn't been willing to compromise earlier. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:20, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

I have had this arise as an issue recently. In my view, if the gist of the AfD nomination is that the subject is notable but the article needs to be completely rewritten, and a review of the article confirms this, then a move to draft space is immediately justifiable. It immediately removes poor content from article space, thereby improving the encyclopedia, and does not disrupt the discussion of the AfD question of whether such an article should exist in Wikipedia. The article is still visible, and quite frankly, because improvements to the article can be made in any space, it is less disruptive to the discussion than substantial efforts to improve the article while it remains in mainspace. BD2412 T 01:20, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

User:BD2412 - I can see that this case will occasionally happen. But, if so, is it unreasonable to wait until the AFD is concluded in 7 days with a conclusion to Draftify? Alternatively, if everyone agrees, can the AFD be SNOW-closed? Also, are you, BD2412, saying that the AFD should then continue while the article is in draft space? That isn't consistent with current policy. Do we need an exception to current policy, or can we simply wait until the AFD concludes? Robert McClenon (talk) 03:32, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

I am saying, let's not let the bureaucratic be the enemy of the good. If the article is a hoax or an unfixably non-notable subject, then the move should not matter and the discussion should conclude as it concludes. If the issue is that the article is in poor shape (WP:TNT) is raised often, that's another matter. BD2412 T 03:42, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

I think that User:BD2412 is saying that an AFD can continue (conclude as it concludes) while the article is no longer in article space. Is that correct? If that is correct, then does the close of the AFD resolve the matter of what space the page should be in, if any? If so, that would mean that moving the article to draft space does not stop the AFD. In the cases I have been describing, the purpose of moving the article to draft space was to stop the AFD. So are you saying that an AFD should run to conclusion, then that means that moving the article should not stop the AFD, which should continue. That is interesting. Do other editors agree? Robert McClenon (talk) 19:35, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

Yes, the AfD can continue running. I think this is no different than an AfD continuing to run after an article remaining in mainspace has undergone a complete overhaul that removes the problems that prompted the AfD nomination and adds a dozen high quality reliable sources. I would give as an example John T. Newton, which was nominated looking like this (three lines, no sources). BD2412 T 19:54, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

Do other editors agree with User:BD2412 that an AFD can continue running after the article is moved into another namespace? I think that is a very good idea, and would prevent the devious use of the move back into draft space. If so, that would mean that the author of a questionable article is taking the risk of an AFD, and, once properly started, the AFD can continue. Do other editors agree that moving an article out of article space does not stop an AFD that was validly started? Robert McClenon (talk) 23:57, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

In other words, a page can only be nominated for AFD if it is in article space when nominated, but the AFD continues in any space. Is this correct? If so, administrators should be aware of this provision, so that they will know that draftifying cannot be used to stop an AFD.

As I said at the beginning, moving an article into draft space to stop an AFD is a relatively common abuse. It should be clarified that it doesn't work. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:57, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

I doesn't "sit" right with me to be having an AFD without a corresponding "article". I agree with the others who said Draftify during an AFD should be prohibited. AFD is a formal process that usually provides a clear answer and once started, should conclude. As with everything, there are exceptions. Hoaxes can be CSDed, which immediately ends the AFD. This same thing happens when one editor AFDs an article and subsequently someone else says CSD G11. But for the more routine case of a notability issue, there is no great rush. MB 00:49, 16 May 2022 (UTC)

• If the AfD is running, DO NOT move the article to draftspace without closing the AfD. If you are not competent to close the AfD (eg too inexperienced, or involved with the article) then do not Draftify, but instead !vote in the AfD your opinion for why it should be draftified. If consensus is to draftify, then the AfD can be closed per that consensus. Seven days is not strictly required, especially if consensus is for a non-deletion result. I can easily imagine that an AfD nominator may very easily agree with the first comment or two that advise to draftify, and the nominator withdraws the AfD and draftifys. This would be an AfD speedy close and subject to the WP:Draftify conditions. Alternatively, the AfD consensus may be SNOW Draftify, meaning the page can be draftified per consensus at AfD overcoming objections such as from the author.
  Leaving the AfD running on a draftified page would be disruptive to the AfD process. The templates would go red, and scripts wouldn’t work, and later editors browsing AfD would be frustrated. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:43, 16 May 2022 (UTC)
• User:SmokeyJoe raises good points about why moving a page out of the article namespace during an AFD is a bad idea, and will mess up the scripts and templates. However, SmokeyJoe appears to be assuming that I am asking about a good faith effort, when he refers to whether the editor is competent to close the AFD. The instances that I am asking about are not good faith editing. The cases that I am asking about have to do with editors who have pushed a draft into article space, typically after it has already been draftified at least once. So then a reviewer nominates it for deletion. SmokeyJoe has been involved recently in other discussions about draftification, and we agree that an editor has the right to object to draftification, and to insist on keeping an article in article space. But SmokeyJoe has, I think, also agreed that in that case, the author is taking the risk that an AFD discussion will be started. The question is about a namespace two-step, in which the author first pushes the page into article space, and then tries to pull it back into draft space to defeat the AFD that is an appropriate response to pushing the article into article space.
• So it isn't a matter of whether the author is competent to close the AFD; they are not only involved but are playing a game. The question is how should the community deal with an editor who tries to stop an AFD by hiding the article in non-article space. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:57, 17 May 2022 (UTC)
• I have seen two different ideas. First, some editors think that moving the article out of article space should be forbidden. Second, some editors think that the move should be ignored and the AFD should go on anyway. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:57, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

  I think my answer silently covered the “bad faith” page proponent.

  My answer implies that draftification is forbidden by an INVOLVED editor, as they aren’t able to closed the AfD. This means that the editor who ignored AfC negative responses and mainspaced the draft anyway can interfere if the AfD heading towards deletion. SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:23, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

  • User:SmokeyJoe - I think that your last sentence is missing a negative, or something. Robert McClenon (talk) 05:55, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

    This means that the editor who ignored AfC negative responses and mainspaced the draft anyway can’t interfere if the AfD is heading towards deletion. SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:28, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

  An editor who breaks the rules and tries to shut down the AfD by draftifying should be reverted, warned, and blocked if they do it again.

  G7 does not prevent an AfD from finding a consensus to delete.

  Note that if an AfD determines a topic to be non-notable, this makes its non-notability a fact in any future MfD on future drafts. MfD does not examine notability, but it does pay attention to past AfD results. SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:28, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

  In the cases that I am discussing, the proponent isn't trying to shut down the AFD because it is "heading towards deletion", but tries to shut it down before it is heading anywhere, because they don't want an AFD. They just want what they want, and are playing a game. Robert McClenon (talk) 05:55, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

  It appears that User:SmokeyJoe is either saying or implying that the article may not be draftified or otherwise moved during the AFD, because the AFD must be closed first. This comes back to the question of whether the template on the article should include a statement that it should not be moved during the deletion discussion. A page that is at MFD already says that it should not be blanked or moved. A page that is at AFD says that it should not be blanked.

  It now seems that this is about the template. Sure, the AfD template should say “Do not move the page while the AfD is in progress”. In a separate process, an active AfD trumps the RM process.

  I don’t think there is any need to ascribe motive to the draft mainspacer, whether they did it for this reason or that, once the mainspace page is AfD-ed, short of speedy deletion, the AfD has to play out. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:51, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

  I am not attributing motive to the draft mainspacer as such. Anyone has the right to mainspace a draft. I am attributing motive to anyone who moves an article back into draft space after it has been tagged for AFD. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:42, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

  I see a lot of agreement that a page with the AfD tag should not be moved. So add this statement to the AfD tag. SmokeyJoe (talk) 13:53, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

• I certainly think AfDs should continue regardless of what enterprising participants do with the content. The point of my previous comment was that I think we should forbid NACs if the AfD is irregular because the content is moved. I'm open to us forbidding draftification once an AfD is started in addition. — Charles Stewart (talk) 06:15, 17 May 2022 (UTC)
• Careful with the wording… Draftifying (or even re-draftification) is a perfectly legitimate result for an AFD… it just shouldn’t be used to bypass an AFD. Blueboar (talk) 14:19, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

  This is my thinking in suggesting rules:

  • If the page is AfD tagged, do not move it.
  • Do not remove the AfD tag while the AfD is open.
  • Do not close the AfD if you are INVOLVED.
  • CSD#G7 may not be used during an AfD, instead !vote as author agreeing to deletion.
  • Draftify, instead of delete, is a perfectly acceptable outcome of an AfD, if that is the Consensus of the discussion. SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:53, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

I have started an RFC to add an instruction not to move the article to the instructions not to remove the template or blank the article. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template_talk:Article_for_deletion#RFC:_Add_Instruction_Not_to_Move

(I can't unilaterally add a statement to the template, which is protected.) Robert McClenon (talk) 22:08, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

By the way, probably the most recent example of an attempt to move an article to draft space to defeat an AFD can be seen at M Miraz Hossain. Robert McClenon (talk) 22:12, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

• Concurring with Robert McClenon: Someone nominates it for AFD at this point. Then the proponent moves it back to draft space. If this sounds like gaming the system, that is because I think it is gaming the system. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:51, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

Applying Notability Tag to Article after No Consensus AFD

There is a tagging dispute currently at DRN in which a {{notability}} tag was applied to an article after an AFD was closed as No Consensus. (I will not mediate any tagging dispute, because I think that the purpose of dispute resolution should be to improve the article, but that is not the point.) The editors appear to be "dug in" on both sides, with some saying that the No Consensus close meant that there are questions about the notability of the subject, and some saying that the No Consensus close meant that there was not a consensus to delete the article. I think that the issue is really a policy question, which is whether No Consensus at AFD is a reason for tagging the article. Comments? Robert McClenon (talk) 20:59, 12 May 2022 (UTC)

No Consensus means that there was not a consensus to delete the article. Since the only real point of a notability tag is to stimulate an Afd, & there shouldn't be another right now, it should be removed. Johnbod (talk) 04:01, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

I have to disagree, the fact that that it was no-consensus clearly means there are doubts that it is notable (assuming that's why an article was at risk of deletion). So its ongoing inclusion makes sense until more sources are added. Nosebagbear (talk) 11:54, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

Precisely. The purpose of tagging articles is to encourage people to fix potential issues. An AfD closing as 'no consensus' is clear evidence that a significant proportion of people think there are issues. The fix is to improve the article, not pretend there isn't a problem. AndyTheGrump (talk) 12:18, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

How do you fix notability, which is supposed to be unrelated to the current state of the article, by editing the article? — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 13:19, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

I consider the tag to be an appeal for editors to demonstrate notability in the article sourcing, rather than a proclamation that the subject is not notable. If the latter was the case, there would be no reason for the tag since the tagger could instead just PROD or AfD it. JoelleJay (talk) 16:50, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

Assuming there was a discussion prior to the AfD, querying notability, then that would have been the time to tag, not after gng was discussed in an AfD. The discussion can continue with a view to resolution without the tag. Selfstudier (talk) 12:32, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

I always find a post-AfD notability tag pointy. AfD is where we debate notability. If you still think it's not notable, you can initiate a DRV or renominate it at some point. Otherwise, what, are we supposed to have articles tagged forever? (I supported deletion btw). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 13:19, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

Continued presence of notability tag can be 3 things:

1. An impetus to get the article improved
2. A visible indicator that there is an unresolved question/dispute over wp:notability
3. A precursor to AFD.

After a no-consensus AFD, with #3 temporarily off the table, you still have #1 & #2. IMO a recent no-consensus AFD should not preclude notability tagging. On #1, while in the ethereal sense notability relates to the topic/title, in reality it can be improved by including more (suitable) sources. Adding such sources (or failure to be able to do so after an effort) is also a way to resolve #2. North8000 (talk) 13:49, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

Additional note: The language right at Template:Notability make clear that the tag can be removed if you are certain that enough in-depth, independent sources have been published about the subject to overcome any notability issues and that The template must not be re-added. In other words, once someone feels notability has been addressed, the notability tag is done. The next step, if you don't think they've been addressed, is to AfD, request merge, etc. This is in line with my understanding of what this tag is for. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 14:15, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

Those template notes sound like good guidance for most situations but probably not for when there is a dispute. Because basically says that if one person says it's not needed and takes it off, it can't be put back. North8000 (talk) 14:33, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

Yes, that's what it says, and that's the way it should be. We shouldn't be having disputes over notability tags, and it's built into the documentation of the tag. The dispute is over notability, and one side of that dispute has a way to escalate: merge, afd, etc. Insisting on tagging because you didn't get your way isn't ok. Like it or not "no consensus" defaults to keep; if you still don't think it's notable, you can renominate, go to DRV, or find something else to do (like improving the article, removing low quality sources, removing unsourced/promotional content, stubifying if necessary, etc.). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 14:58, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

Many good & valid points there but I still stick with my view on categorical exclusion of the tag as outlined above. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 15:19, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

• I advocate for even more use of {{Notability}} for articles that are still sitting in the WP:NPP queue. But I think that as soon as an article is nominated for deletion, the tag becomes pointless. I usually remove this tag as soon as an article gets nominated for deletion. I don't wait for the AfD result. Post-AfD, if the close was no consensus, {{More citations needed}} may be more appropriate, notability discussion can continue in the talk page, or a second AfD nomination can be done. MarioGom (talk) 18:54, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

  "More citations needed" would not be more appropriate. The purpose of this tag is described as the following: This template indicates that the article needs additional inline citations. This is not the issue with the article - the article does not make statements that require additional inline citations. The disputed article discusses a subject which may not be notable enough to be included on Wikipedia. Those are two different issues. BeŻet (talk) 09:52, 16 May 2022 (UTC)

• The template should not be restored once it is removed. As Rhododendrites points out, improvement of the article is never an option, as notability is not affected by referencing or the state of the article. The template must not be re-added. Doing so is disruptive and a block should be considered. Our means of resolving notability issues is AfD, and that should be considered final. The use of this tag to obstruct an article is deplored. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 20:17, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

  I have a proposal for change here: replacing the link to Help:Maintenance template removal with Template:Notability#Removing this tag Hawkeye7 (discuss) 18:27, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

  That doesn't seem necessary, as the help page already has a section about notability tags. The issue is, the help page straight up mischaracterizes the template. The template doesn't say, and doesn't require, adding citations to reliable sources (because notability doesn't require adding citations). All you have to do is read Wikipedia:Notability and Template:Notability to see that perspective doesn't follow from anything else. The template is an expression of doubt that such sources exist. To overcome it, you have to feel sufficiently confident they exist. Ideally, yes, you add them to the article, but we have other templates for insufficient citations ({{Refimprove}}, etc.). If you think the current citations are sufficient, you can just remove the tag. In a typical situation, though, you need to be careful when you do that, because the person who doesn't think it's notable can't restore the tags and has no other option but to escalate. We have a formal process for that. (Of course that's a typical case rather than someone making a point by adding it after an AfD was closed instead of following standard procedure for contesting a close or renominating). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 23:56, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

• I closed the DRN case about the tagging dispute that prompted this inquiry. I was probably too polite in closing the dispute, and not sufficiently sarcastic, because I am in general disgusted by tagging disputes. Thank you for your comments. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:53, 17 May 2022 (UTC)
• If an article is sent to AFD on notability grounds and survives the discussion, it should not continue to be tagged for notability. The AFD settles the notability issue. It makes no difference that the close was no consensus. A no consensus defaults to keep and means a substantial number of participants agreed it was, in fact, notable and presented rationales for that acceptable to the closer (if the keep rationales were not acceptable the close cannot possibly be no consensus). Those who disagree don't get to put a permanent "badge of shame" on the article. If you think the closer was in error then DRV is the correct route. If you think the participants were in error, then a subsequent renomination is possible. SpinningSpark 14:47, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

Reworded RfC on the addition of a stand-alone page creation criteria to the geography notability guideline

RFC to clarify that notable geographical topics do not need to have stand-alone articles. See Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)#Drafting of stand-alone page criteria for WP:NGEO, based on feedback at recent RfC. Previous proposal, withdrawn to reword it: Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#RfC_on_the_addition_of_a_stand-alone_page_creation_criteria_to_the_geography_notability_guideline

Background

Wikipedia has many very short geographical article stubs. This proposal is to add a section to WP:NGEO that will clarify, in line with the existing WP:NOPAGE guideline, that information on notable geographical topics may sometimes be best included in parent articles. The draft wording of the addition to WP:NGEO is given below:

RFC

Should the following section be added to WP:Notability (geographic features)? — Ixtal ^{( T / C )} ⁂ Join WP:FINANCE! 10:34, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

== Whether to create standalone pages ==

As stated in WP:NOPAGE, "Sometimes, understanding [of a notable topic] is best achieved by presenting the material on a dedicated standalone page, but it is not required that we do so. There are other times when it is better to cover notable topics, that clearly should be included in Wikipedia, as part of a larger page about a broader topic, with more context." For example, a majority of a river's tributaries may meet the notability criteria defined in this guideline, but there is little to be said about most of them. In this case, we may include a list of tributaries in the river's article, with standalone articles for some tributaries and redirect articles pointing to the list entries for other tributaries. A similar approach may be followed for hamlets or neighborhoods in a municipality, stations on a railway line, and other geographical features.

Merging a short stub about a notable topic into a parent article may improve the reader experience if it presents the topic in a broader context, as long as a redirect from the stub title is maintained, with suitable categories to assist navigation. The redirect target may be an entry in a stand-alone list or an entry in a list or sub-section within the parent article. The information may be formatted as a sortable table, a bulleted list, paragraphs, or sub-sections depending on the type of content. The redirect should point to the position in the parent article that holds the merged content, which may be identified by an {{anchor}} template. Maximum care should be taken to preserve the information that was part of the stub. Examples: MacDonald River (Côte-Nord)#Lakes and Alachua County, Florida#Historic communities in Alachua County.

It is important to follow the process described at Wikipedia:Merging when merging articles, with particular care to publicising controversial proposals at relevant WikiProjects. A merge does not preclude expanding the redirect back into a standalone page if more information comes to light.

— Ixtal ^{( T / C )} ⁂ Join WP:FINANCE! 10:34, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

Survey NGEO

• Yes, as proposer Before outlining my vote, I will first mention some important aspects of Wikipedia policies and guidelines for context. Firstly, notability is not the same as stand-alone page creation criteria. From Wikipedia:Notability: [Presumption of notability] is not a guarantee that a topic will necessarily be handled as a separate, stand-alone page. Editors may use their discretion to merge or group two or more related topics into a single article. From Wikipedia:Notability#Whether_to_create_standalone_pages: Sometimes, understanding is best achieved by presenting the material on a dedicated standalone page, but it is not required that we do so. There are other times when it is better to cover notable topics, that clearly should be included in Wikipedia, as part of a larger page about a broader topic, with more context. A decision to cover a notable topic only as part of a broader page does not in any way disparage the importance of the topic. Secondly, there is no strong community consensus or policy argument against the existence of stubs, although guidelines support their existence if and when they are capable of expansion (WP:AVOIDSPLIT: If only a few sentences could be written and supported by sources about the subject, that subject does not qualify for a separate article, but should instead be merged into an article about a larger topic or relevant list., WP:STUB: A stub is an article that, although providing some useful information, lacks the breadth of coverage expected from an encyclopedia, and that is capable of expansion. bolding my own). Finally, WP:NGEO currently presumes all legally recognized places to be notable. This means that there are hundreds of thousands of articles (mostly stubs) that can be created off of a single source.
  I will now provide some arguments for why I think having specific criteria for stand-alone geo pages would be useful. To begin with, the ratio of active geo editors to geo pages is almost negligibly small. This means that not only do geo editors need to patrol many articles for them to be kept up to date or prevent misinformation, but also that large-scale misinformation campaigns or long-standing mistakes are unlikely to be caught in a timely manner (the Abadi mistranslation issue being a particularly notable mistake requiring over 13,000 page deletions). Thus, there are practical issues for the community when it comes to managing the geo pages effectively based on the current NGEO guideline. Secondly, geography stubs are unlikely to be of much use to our readers in an encyclopedic manner. Confirming that a town exists or finding out there is a town in Turkey called Afşar gives our readers very little information. Having some criteria for when to merge geostubs into their parent article or some list article could greatly improve the context and breadth of information that readers receive, without removing the information that is currently accessible as a geostub article. Finally, having more guidance on when and how to create separate articles for geographical features would be useful to new editors who don't have the experience to understand the unspoken nuances in the notability guidelines or community expectations.
  In conclusion, I think having a separate section of NGEO outlining criteria for when and how to create stand-alone pages for geographic features would be of significant benefit to the community in the future. — Ixtal ^{( T / C )} ⁂ Join WP:FINANCE! 10:34, 15 May 2022 (UTC)
• Support the principal - but the proposed language is TLDR… can we summarize? Blueboar (talk) 12:44, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

  Blueboar open to suggestions :) — Ixtal ^{( T / C )} ⁂ Join WP:FINANCE! 20:06, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

• Support nothing new here. The proposal only collects existing information from other pages and adds it for user convenience. I have merged several geo stubs myself, following existing rules listed above. Venkat TL (talk) 12:54, 15 May 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose because it does not add anything to the global policies. This proposal seems to be motivated by the existence of many articles about geographical features that could be merged. It's not that I am against the objective of merging in this case—I trust that the editors know what they are doing, but the policy is independent of this particular situation and it should remain neutral, even within the particular domain of geographical features. The policy says that stand alone articles, even stand alone stubs, that are forked content are fine. It depends on the situation. How to organize a topic into many articles is not fixed by the policy. It should remain like that. (See comments and discussions). Dominic Mayers (talk) 13:30, 15 May 2022 (UTC)
• Support This is good guidance that represents current best practices, though I agree with the commenter below that it could be a bit more concise. Reywas92^Talk 19:45, 16 May 2022 (UTC)
• Comment. The sentence The information may be formatted as a sortable table, a bulleted list, paragraphs or sub-sections depending on the type of content is missing a comma after the word "or"; WP:NGEO is written with oxford commas.— Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 21:51, 16 May 2022 (UTC)

  Fixed, thanks Mhawk10 :) — Ixtal ^{( T / C )} ⁂ Join WP:FINANCE! 22:38, 16 May 2022 (UTC)

• Support. Consistent with other guidelines and just reiterates what is already encouraged. JoelleJay (talk) 02:05, 17 May 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose. After thinking about this more, I can't support the text because it's rather imprecise. A quick search through all of the Hamlets of Canada's territories (See: 1, 2, 3), appear to be either substantial articles or stubs where I get something out of it that is more than "X exists". I fear that the example using Hamlets will encourage inappropriate mergers of articles both where standalone stubs do a fine job covering the topic and where more-than-stubs may be pressured to be merged into county-level articles. On top of that, ordinary railroad stations need to pass WP:GEOFEAT#2 (require significant in-depth coverage by reliable, third-party sources to establish notability) or WP:GEOFEAT#3 (notable under Wikipedia's WP:GNG), each of which should make it more than reasonable that the article be expanded rather than lazily upmerged. The only real area where geostubs can actually have very little more published information than X exists and still be worthy of including in the encyclopedia (per WP:NGEO) is the clade of Populated, legally recognized places. If the proposal were going to simply give merging advice for those sorts of items, I might feel differently, but the proposal goes far beyond that limited scope in its merge recommendations. For the reason that I believe that the implementation of this language would be more likely to encourage editors to upmerge stubs to a parent rather than to expand existing stubs, I must oppose. — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 02:25, 17 May 2022 (UTC)
• Support, with no objection to concision or other wording tweaks suggested. Wikipedia articles should help readers first and foremost, and placing topics of which there is very little to say within a wider contextual framework does this. (Reducing editor burden for maintaining multiple pages is a plus.) While the proposed text does not create new policy, it usefully points out an application of existing policy. I am specifically inclined to support here as this practice reflects the current consensus of WP:PHILIPPINES, which after numerous AfDs and some discussion has agreed that barangays are not always best covered on standalone pages (ie. the "hamlets or neighborhoods in a municipality" example mentioned). CMD (talk) 02:28, 17 May 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose The proposed verbiage does not say anything useful as it's a vague case-by-case evaluation rather than some specific guidance. And its bias against specific articles about particular places is foolish. It is generally best to have tight articles about particular places because:
  1. The scope of the topic is more likely to be clear when it's a particular place rather than an arbitrary assortment
  2. The name of a particular place is more likely to be clear and unambiguous
  3. The coordinates of a particular place are more likely to be clear and exact
  4. A picture of a particular place will be easier to agree upon

See also WP:CREEP and the KISS principle.

Andrew🐉(talk) 09:56, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

Andrew, I'd appreciate some clarification on your arguments.

1. What do you mean by "arbitrary assortment".
2. I'm not entirely sure what names have to do with coverage of a notable location. Perhaps an example would be useful in this point.
3. Wikipedia is not a database so being against merging (for example) for the purpose of coordinate collection seems counterintuitive to me. Additionally, with the hundreds of thousands of geostubs that have never been checked by other editors (NPP will tend to check that it's sourced correctly and passes NGEO rather than fix coordinates), I actually believe the opposite is an issue. Having hundreds of thousands of articles with negligible oversight means coordinates, if wrong, will stay on the mainpage for years on end.
4. Why are pictures a key determinant when choosing to merge/create or not to merge/create articles? If they aren't, I fail to see the relevance of this point.
5. In regards to creep, I strongly disagree my proposal would result in creep. Which of the criteria in the CREEP page do you think the proposal fails? Because in my mind there (I) is a very real problem of an unsustainable and overwhelming amount of geostubs with little to no context that no one can or bothers to patrol for accuracy of information, (II) the proposal would clarify how NOPAGE applies to NGEO in a way that will result in more constructive discussions on geo content curation, (III) this RfC would satisfy the consensus requirement if passed (taking into account that NOPAGE is already strongly-supported policy and the proposal doesn't create new rules but rather clarifies the relation of NGEO to NOPAGE). — Ixtal ^{( T / C )} ⁂ Join WP:FINANCE! 13:40, 17 May 2022 (UTC)
   • A good example of an "arbitrary assortment" is Alachua County, Florida#Historic communities in Alachua County. This details information about a random assortment of places in an arbitrary way while not doing the same for other places in the county such as Hogtown or Lochloosa. Such chaotic clutter does not seem helpful to the reader. It is much simpler and straightforward if there's a separate page for each place. These pages will have a natural title and the coordinates, pictures and other content will likewise cohere in a commonsense way. The proposed text provides no clear guidance about this and so has no value; it's just superfluous verbiage which will make writers less likely to read any of the existing guidance per WP:TLDR. This is the key point of WP:CREEP, "...bloated pages that new editors find intimidating and experienced editors ignore". Andrew🐉(talk) 07:46, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

     I agree that Alachua County might not be the best example. I think a good example would be something like New York City#Boroughs (assuming they didn't have their own pages). The mix of images, maps, and brief descriptions follows what I'd say would be close to ideal for describing subdivisions of a populated place (I don't see coordinate information as strictly necessary encyclopedic content). What type of guidance would you hope the guideline have if the proposal is updated, Andrew? — Ixtal ^{( T / C )} ⁂ Join WP:FINANCE! 08:29, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

     • Coordinates are expected in geographical topics and seem fairly fundamental. They support useful features such as the Special:Nearby function. If multiple places were forced together into arbitrary assortments then this would break that function. Andrew🐉(talk) 09:53, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose, per Andrew Davidson. Unfortunately vague text that lacks specificity, and which isn't likely to be of much help in real, contentious, situations. MichaelMaggs (talk) 10:16, 17 May 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose. (1) As others have already said, this adds nothing useful to policy and is TLDS where a simple link to WP:NOPAGE would do. (2) It is a solution in search of a problem. I pay particular attention to GEOLAND articles nominated for deletion and I have rarely, if ever, seen opposition to merging a stubby village article when a suitable target exists. Much more often the problem is stubby village articles get nominated for deletion instead of doing the work of merging. The proposer has not given a single example of where a one line "it exists" page has been kept standalone rather than merged because of a misunderstanding of guidlelines. (3) The text as well as being overlong is factually wrong in a number of places. For instance, it is not true that "a majority of a river's tributaries may meet the notability criteria". Just the opposite in fact, the majority of named streams are entirely non-notable. Besides which, the guideline already gives the similar example of river islands as possible candidates for merging. The guideline also already has guidance on merging populated places. SpinningSpark 14:55, 17 May 2022 (UTC)
• Support: hamlets or neighborhoods in a municipality, stations on a railway line cause significant problems, particularly in New Page Patrol. How do these one-line articles get notability? Just because they exist? Not on your nelly. Merging into a parent article is a proper solution. --Whiteguru (talk) 21:06, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

  @Whiteguru: The guideline already recommends merging for one-line articles that "cannot be developed using known sources". Nobody (mostly) is arguing against that. The question here is whether this monstrous verbiage of an inaccurate addition is going to help. Also, can you please open a thread in the discussion section explaining why this is such a huge problem in NPP. To me it looks like tag with "notability" or "suggested merge" and job done. SpinningSpark 07:35, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

• Support, while I agree that it is redundant to already existing policies and guidelines, sometimes (as is the case in this field) it is necessary to be redundant in order to highlight the fact that geographic articles do not enjoy a privileged states with regard to various PAGs on article creation, notability, and the like. I like the addition because it brings into highlight what should be best practices that years have history have taught are not usually followed in this realm. --Jayron32 14:43, 20 May 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose There is nothing here that isn't already covered in WP:FAILN. There are adequate procedures to discern which geographical topics are likely to be notable, and most neighborhoods and rivers are not notable enough even to be mentioned, let alone described, in an associated article. Case in point, not all of the lakes of MacDonald_River_(Côte-Nord) are covered in that section, just the ones where nontrivial information is available (and Lake Larry should also have its own subsection as it is associated with a national park).
  On the other hand, ghost towns in the United States are usually notable if there is evidence that it was ever a legally recognized place, and this is implicity recognized in the current wording of NGEO, so the bullets in Alachua_County,_Florida, should be split finto their own articles, as is done for the vast majority of US counties. It is not clear that the content in the examples given was merged from elsewhere, or that they reflect an established practice.
  Lastly, in some countries, very small communities are not called hamlets; for example, villages in Myanmar are below the usual cutoff of legal recognition for that country, and instead each township of Myanmar has a list of villages. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 15:14, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
• Good thoughts there but oppose IMO it is long essay-like advice / opinion which really doesn't add anything. Also the example given is non-typical of geo articles in an important way. For the example, the next level up (river vs. tributary) is invariably more real-world notable/ recognizable and also unique (a tributary goes only to one river). Regarding an inhabited place that passes NGEO, the next level up (e.g. a township or a country) is usually more abstract, often less real-world notable, and often not unique. For example, a small town may straddle the border between multiple townships or counties. A much better idea would be to prohibit mass-creation from mere database entries. A proposal for that a few months ago IMHO passed but in reality faded awary and got a stale no-consensus close. If an editor is going to spend real time creating a short geo article IMO that carries some weight and less likel to be any big problem compared to being just one of a set of 1,000 mass creations. North8000 (talk) 15:59, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

@North8000: Re "A much better idea would be to prohibit mass-creation from mere database entries." I thought that this was already deprecated for many years. A 2009 discussion closed with a requirement that such activity required a bot approval Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 66#Proposal: Any large-scale semi-/automated article creation task require BRFA. This should still be in force unless something radical has changed that I'm not aware of. This is certainly not the only place this issue has been discussed. In particular, there have been many discussions around mass-creation of GEO stubs from the GNIS database (which has resulted in a large number of inaccurate stubs). Another one that proved controversial was mass creation of astronomical objects from databases, the vast majority of which are permanently non-notable. SpinningSpark 15:37, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

@Spinningspark: Hopefully that history (that I was unaware of) is in force. But a recent happening made me think otherwise. A few months ago we had a major proposal / discussion with lots of comments on adding wording discouraging mass creation of articles. This was not mentioned. (I ran out of wiki-minutes looking for it) It got forgotten. I thought it was a "pass" and asked for a close and the close was "no consensus" . North8000 (talk) 16:05, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

I found it. July 2021 at wp:Notability. A previous restriction on mass creation by bots was mentioned. North8000 (talk) 16:24, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

@North8000: Yes, it is actually written into policy at WP:MASSCREATE, probably as a result of the above linked discussion. Note that bot approval is required for bot-like editing using semi-automated tools like AutoWikiBrowser as well as genuine bots. Approval is never given without a community discussion supporting it for things that are not purely uncontroversial maintenance. SpinningSpark 08:04, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose. There's nothing wrong with the proposed language, but experience suggests that adding this as a section of a Notability Guideline (cue theme music) will inevitably lead to it be turned into an all-caps shortcut and taken to unwise extremes. Merging is sometimes appropriate, and vastly better for the health of project than deletion. But it often has significant downsides both for user experience and article improvement. To take the proposer's example of Afşar: as a reader, even the existing two-sentence stub gives me easy access to information about the village's location and population that I would have a hard time finding if it were buried in a list. And as to article improvement, tr:Afşar, Bolu, while still quite minimal, has considerably more content than the English article. So the English article is capable of being expanded -- which would be unlikely to happen if the existing information were merged into a list of settlements. Good merging requires balancing these considerations, and even small amendments to guidelines can easily upset that balance. I think the existing policies provide sufficient guidance. It would not be an improvement to have something that editors could casually cite as authority, AFD-style ("Merging 500 stubs into a single list per WP:GEOMERGE"). -- Visviva (talk) 17:38, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

Discussions

• I don't like survey in a RfC that are not complementary to a discussion. The most important in a RfC is the arguments, the discussion. The consensus is best obtained through a discussion. A survey is only there to help. It does not replace the discussion. Besides, in some RfCs, the outcome is more nuanced than a support or a reject. Dominic Mayers (talk) 13:57, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

  Dominic Mayers calling the section "Survey" is commonplace on wiki, in my experience, and does not impede discussion. — Ixtal ^{( T / C )} ⁂ Join WP:FINANCE! 14:20, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

  Perhaps it's only a question of terminology, but a separate section where people summarize their position is useful and is best kept separated from the discussion section. Dominic Mayers (talk) 14:25, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

• Perhaps a simpler paragraph that simply says that the global policies Wikipedia:Summary style, Wikipedia:Content forking, Wikipedia:Article size, and Wikipedia:Merging, as summarized in WP:PAGEDECIDE, apply to geographic features as well would be more appropriate. My understanding is that a group of editors consider that a lot of small articles should be merged into larger articles. There is nothing wrong with that, especially if it is does not create a polemic. However, I don't see that we should duplicate what is already written in the policies to support that. It is paradoxical that the goal is to keep Wikipedia simple, but it accomplishes that by making its policy more complex with duplication. Dominic Mayers (talk) 13:57, 15 May 2022 (UTC)
• If the intention is to discourage systematically content forking in the context of articles on geographical features, then this is not the same as the global policy. It should not be presented as an application of this global policy. It becomes then a specific policy for articles on geographical features. Some rational that is specific to articles on geographical features would have to be given to justify this more specific policy. I have not seen this rational. Dominic Mayers (talk) 20:23, 16 May 2022 (UTC)

  What? I'm so confused as to what you interpret the proposed addition's impact/relation with content forking is, Dominic Mayers. — Ixtal ^{( T / C )} ⁂ Join WP:FINANCE! 21:25, 16 May 2022 (UTC)

  I don't know what confuses you. I don't see this in a complicated manner. When a topic is divided into many articles, this is content forking. It's natural and some times necessary, especially in large topics. There is nothing pejorative in the concept of content forking. It should not be confused with POV forking. Dominic Mayers (talk) 21:42, 16 May 2022 (UTC)

  I understand what forking is, Dominic Mayers, I'm just confused as to what exactly in the proposed wording discourages systematically content forking as well as what "systemic content forking" is. You say "the global policy", but that may refer to any sections of the policies and guidelines. Perhaps rewording your initial comment to be less vague would be helpful in that regard. — Ixtal ^{( T / C )} ⁂ Join WP:FINANCE! 22:42, 16 May 2022 (UTC)

  I agree that the proposed wording does not discourage forking. In fact, it seems to repeat what the global policy says regarding forking and the global policy does not discourage forking. It's just that you described separately, in your comment, a problematic situation which requires merging as a solution. I agree that the situation is confusing, but this is because there is no connection between the objective that you describe and the policy: the policy does not encourage merging (nor discourage it) and merging seems to be your goal. Dominic Mayers (talk) 23:04, 16 May 2022 (UTC)

  Dominic Mayers I personally do believe that the addition to NGEO encourages more frequent and widespread merging of geographic articles in cases where it makes sense. At the very least it clarifies it as a valid editorial decision so voting to keep a geostub in an AFD "per NGEO" demands a conversation on whether merging or keeping the stand-alone article is the best way to preserve the content, which would be a massive improvement over the current state of affairs where the de facto assumption is all articles that pass NGEO deserve their own pages. In the sense of PAGs not encouraging merging, the PAGs encourage editorial decisions that benefit our mission, our readers, and our ability as editors to continue our work on the wiki sustainably. When taking decisions regarding how to present content to our readers, I think guidelines that acknowledge the existence of merging as an option are helpful to the community, which is why I proposed the addition of the section to NGEO. — Ixtal ^{( T / C )} ⁂ Join WP:FINANCE! 23:30, 16 May 2022 (UTC)

  If you give the impression that a different policy is needed, when it's not the case, then you weaken your position: only a few people are here to discuss what you propose, the wording, etc. whereas the global policy has the support of the community at large. Unless you need to have a specific policy adapted to articles on geographical features, I don't see what is the purpose here. As a minimum, make it clear that you refer to the global policy. I still do not see the point of repeating it, but there will be no harm. What is clear is that, if you need a support from the community for merging many articles and the existing policy is sufficient, then the best way is to discuss the specific of the situation in the light of this policy, not confuse this with a discussion of the policy for the sake of improving it. Dominic Mayers (talk) 23:56, 16 May 2022 (UTC)

  Dominic Mayers I'm not proposing entirely new policy but rather an addition to NGEO that brings it closer in alignment to NOPAGE, which is part of WP:N. The issue is that sometimes when you propose merging articles based on NOPAGE, editors will reply they believe the article should be kept separate based on NGEO (see one of the AFDs I started in line with WP:BLAR), completely ignoring NOPAGE. That is why specific guidance on the NGEO guideline would be beneficial. I'm happy to discuss this in more detail on my talk page if you wish to have a conversation about it, as we are taking up quite a bit of space here. — Ixtal ^{( T / C )} ⁂ Join WP:FINANCE! 13:52, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

  We are not taking too much space here at all. We are discussing exactly what needs to be discussed. Yes, I would support a clarification that passing the notability requirement is not at all a sufficient criterion for a stand alone page. That seems to be your main point. In fact, if it is not already clarified at the global policy level, it should be. You could then refer to that clarification, which is or would be provided at the global level. I suggest that you limit the proposal to that. Just have this single main point. Dominic Mayers (talk) 14:33, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

• The proposal states For example, a majority of a river's tributaries may meet the notability criteria defined in this guideline, but there is little to be said about most of them. If this is an accurate description of the situation, the guideline is problematic: it's weird that it classifies as notable geographical features about which there is little to be said. Perhaps this is the real issue at stake here. Stubs are a different thing. We create a stub when we are pretty sure there is enough to be said about the subject. If we have many stubs with little to be said on the subject and the guideline supports that, it's a problem with the guideline. I admit that I do not know much about the history of the guideline. I was summoned at random by a bot to give my comment. If this has been discussed before and the guideline remained like that, then perhaps not enough people were involved in that previous discussion or the sentence above is not an accurate description of the situation. Dominic Mayers (talk) 12:54, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

  As I pointed out in my !vote, this is completely inaccurate. The guideline supports no such thing, it says "named natural features are often notable". It does not say they are always notable, and then goes on to give named river islands as candidates for merging into the river article. It is obvious to anyone reading the guideline that river tributaries will fall under the same principle. There is no need for this lengthy addition to the guideline to explicitly state that. SpinningSpark 07:44, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

What MEDRS is NOT

An editor has repeatedly claimed that attributed allegations - from Chinese CDC whistleblowers - about the Chinese government supressing COVID-19 infections and deaths, is a violation of WP:MEDRS [1] [2] [3]. There are literally tens of other Chinese and English language sources making these allegations, from as early as March 2020 [4] [5] [6], to recent weeks [7] [8] [9]. I have therefore created Wikipedia:What MEDRS is not, and attempted to update WP:MEDRS [10], and I am now posting here to build consensus on the proper application of this guideline, so as to prevent it being used as a carte blanche to delete content. This discussion is irrespective of WP:NPOV and WP:DUE concerns with the content in question. CutePeach (talk) 16:05, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

The editor involved insists on erroneous narrow reading of the guideline, but perhaps adding one more guideline is not the answer. There is nothing wrong with your essay. I just think that the current guideline is sufficient to deal with this issue, without having to legislate what imo should be, for most people, an obvious interpretation. 65.88.88.57 (talk) 18:21, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

• Yet another asinine essay from a problematic editor trying to undermine Wikipedia's WP:PAGs . Best to ignore for now, and if such WP:POINTy stunts become too disruptive CutePeach can be removed from the Project. Alexbrn (talk) 08:23, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

  Unhelpful. 172.254.222.178 (talk) 12:00, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

  MEDRS should not be used to strike down news or facts or opinion where the primary "noun-verb" facet (for lack of a better way to describe it) is not one drawing from science or medicine, even if the facts supporting that "noun-verb" facet are elements that would clearly be covered by MEDRS. A mainstream discussion of the history of the "lab leak theory" itself can draw on MEDRS sources for that history, but it is far better covered by mainstream news reports, as long as they do not try to attempt to validate the lab leak theory, for example. --Masem (t) 12:25, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

  MEDRS is guidance on identifying reliable sourced for WP:Biomedical information. That's it. It doesn't "strike down" anything. We're really not going to do the lab leak thing again are we? The socks, trolls and political POV-pushers have already wasted enough time trying to compromise Wikipedia's well-established guidelines in furtherance of their agenda. If anybody has been mis-using WP:MEDRS (as is continually alleged) let the accusers take it up with the supposed miscreant or report it at an appropriate noticeboard. These WP:RANDYs and their enablers are otherwise just wasting the time of editors with better things to do. It wasn't even a year ago that a mega-RfC on this was closed[11] Alexbrn (talk) 14:00, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

  WP:MEDPOP does not disqualify news items out of hand. There is wide latitude to use non-expert sources, especially in the reporting of non-medical aspects of medical issues. Biomedical professionals and their forums should not be considered better than anyone else when discussing these non-medical aspects. The lab leak theory is an example. There may be biomedical evidence for and against; but there are obviously other considerations too. These other considerations can, and should be, within the purview of wider forums. As long as all aspects of the lab leak theory are presented neutrally, according to reliable, verifiable references any related Wikipedia article can benefit. 50.75.226.250 (talk) 15:04, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

  I have seen editors argue that if the page topic is clearly a biomedical one, the all sources on it must be MEDRS compliant, which is my concern. A page on a biomedical topic should obviously heavily rely on MEDRS but there may be parts of that topic that do not directly about the biomedical aspects (such as the generic trademark of aspirin) that would be better covered by non MEDRS sources. Thers's only a handful of editors that take the extreme approach, and is good to have advice of where NEDRS doesn't apply to help. --Masem (t) 15:10, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

  I think it goes further. Neutrality may be compromised when only the views of experts in any subject are allowed. It is not as if medicine, or science in general, happens in a vacuum. Although the number of experts who consciously or unconsciously believe so may be considerable. In any case, this is going off-topic. As commented above, there is no real need for yet another clarification of WP:MEDRS. The current guideline is fairly clear in allowing non-expert sources, subject to constraints. 50.75.226.250 (talk) 15:17, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

  Neutrality may be compromised when only the views of experts in any subject are allowed. Right, a neutral viewpoint should include ignorance as well as expertise. Levivich 15:21, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

  Correct. For instance, peer-reviewed articles in The Lancet circa say, the 1990s (barely a generation ago) about coronaviruses could be shining examples of unreliability and ignorance in the light of today's widely accepted knowledge. It is fair to ask if today's knowledge won't be considered an example of ignorance 30 years hence. But it goes further: nothing happens in a vacuum and the narrow confines of expertise do not describe reality in full. 50.75.226.250 (talk) 15:31, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

  "A cherry-picked example of some thing that experts thought true years ago were later found to be false" is not a valid reason to cast any special doubt on what experts think now. There's probably some latin term for this logic-mistake, some sort of inverse of Sagan's quote about laughing at Bozo the clown. By policy, WP is a mainstream encyclopedia and not in the business of crystal-balling or second-guessing reliable sources. DMacks (talk) 15:52, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

  Ofcourse it is not a valid reason to cast any special doubt on what experts think now. There is also not a valid reason to cast any special acceptance on what experts think now. It is supposed to be science, not religion. 50.75.226.250 (talk) 16:24, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

  It's the fallacy of composition (the fact that experts were wrong about something else does not mean they are wrong about the relevant item) spiced with a large dollop of the historian's fallacy (assuming that experts would have reached the same wrong conclusion then even if they had the information we have now). SpinningSpark 16:08, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

  I think you are discussing something else. This is not the argument made here. The current pandemic is an example. There are various theories on the origin, and studies proposing explanations for the way it spreads and the way it mutates. Not all of those are in sync, but a rough or not so rough consensus among experts is reached. This is then used by public health authorities in their policy decisions. These policy decisions are then applied in some form or other, and have real consequences on every day life. Any comprehensive treatment (pun intended) of the pandemic in an encyclopedia should give proper weight to all these aspects. We can't just promote the current expert opinion and disregard its effects as if it exists in a vacuum. Especially since it is a historical, logical and evolutionary fact that "expert opinion" is subject to change, and the scope and effect of such change is uncear. 50.75.226.250 (talk) 16:40, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

  I mean, there's the rub. The process used to guarantee expertise can also be the process that inculcates certain biases into those experts, or ensure that all potential experts belongs to a power structure that enforces certain opinions either explicitly (https://www.technocracy.news/nih-director-francis-collins-ordered-takedown-of-the-great-barrington-declaration/, https://unherd.com/2021/07/how-scientists-stifled-the-lab-leak-theory/) or implicitly through funding, or such assumptions being the basis of profession's legitimacy (see Abbot's System of Professions).

  I'm not sure it is quite a problem that wikipedia can solve and some sourcing standards are clearly necessary.

  At a societal level, My take on how you solve this at a social level is having broad scholarship on topics, and allowing for encouraging interdisciplinary work or experts moving between fields of study; and ensure that your process for producing reviews considers these papers fairly.

  Within wikipedia it might consist of including perspective from multiple fields (e.g. medical, psychological, psychiatric, neurological, public health, philosophy, sociology, critical theories, economics...). Talpedia (talk) 19:41, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

  • @Alexbrn: I realize that it's easy to get angry in discussions like this, but I don't think "yet another asinine essay from a problematic editor trying to undermine Wikipedia's WP:PAGs" is an appropriate comment to make (if this is true, you ought to open a thread on AN/I or AE, rather than casting aspersions). jp×g 23:30, 25 May 2022 (UTC)
• Generally support these efforts as per Masem, I have run into the same type of consistently erroroneous allegations--that somehow news sources are inappropriate in the COVID-19 arena. We cannot risk undermining the efforts of the encyclopedia by excluding reliable sources for the wrong reasons. SmolBrane (talk) 15:49, 18 May 2022 (UTC)
  • It's almost like there should be a section, "What is not biomedical information?", at WP:BMI. If editors actually read the WP:PAGs a lot of time could be saved. Discretionary sanctions apply to the whole COVID-19 area so anybody twisting policy can be taken to WP:AE. That doesn't ever happen because it's a fiction. In the past some editors, including Masem, have !voted to extend MEDRS to all aspects of COVID-19; that effort did not succeed (neither did the effort to rescind MEDRS from most aspects of COVID-19). These arguments do not need to be re-run. Alexbrn (talk) 16:29, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

    I don't recall !voting to expand MEDRS to all aspects of COVID (or why you are singling me out). I am just saying that even with BMI in place, some editors are overly aggressive on drawing a line to block nonMEDRS sources where BMI wouldn't apply. BMI and/or MEDRS and/or an essay could be used to explain that MEDRD is not a blood pact when any biomedical info touches an article. Just that any factual statement that falls within BMI must use MEDRS sourcing, and other appropriate RS (which can include DUE RSOPINION) can be otherwise used. --Masem (t) 16:39, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

    MEDRS only applies to content which, if a reasonable sane person were to read, may plausibly affect the medical tests, treatment or lifestyle changes they get for themselves, their minor children, their pets/livestock, or anyone else they may decide on medical treatment for. The question of whether or not China was supressing information about COVID 19 is clearly outside that scope. 93.172.252.36 (talk) 16:45, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

    "I don't recall !voting to expand MEDRS to all aspects of COVID" ← Apologies, you are correct and I am wrong. Your support was for stating that MEDRS should apply to disease and pandemic "origin", at this RfC.[12] Alexbrn (talk) 16:48, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

    WP:BMI is neither a policy nor a guideline, and has very recently been modified by a cabal of "scientific skepticism" editors to expand "disease" to "disease or condition" MarshallKe (talk) 17:10, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

    A cabal eh? Sounds serious. Any actual evidence to make your comment not look idiotic? Alexbrn (talk) 17:33, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

• Although the draft-essay is rather pointy, there is a serious problem with MEDRS regarding its use to disallow useful information. For example in relation to biological agriculture. MEDRS should be rebalanced or narrowed in scope. The Banner talk 16:49, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

  Doubt it. Certainly MEDRS helps prevent fringe POV-pushing in this area (GMOs spring to mind). Or do you have an example to back up your claim? Alexbrn (talk) 17:43, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

• A cursory look through OP's edits to COVID-related articles (an awful lot of which have been reverted) shows plenty of adding inappropriate sources and other problematic edits, all seemingly in the name of a particular POV or in pursuit of "balance". This includes an article on covid-19 naming which reads like an attempt to justify Trump's "Chinese virus" (going as far as saying he abandoned it in 2020, well before his continued use of it drew most of the criticism), and COVID-19 vaccine side effects, possibly a WP:POVFORK, with entire sections making biomedical claims with sources that fail WP:MEDRS. I've seen people revert "per MEDRS" when MEDRS doesn't apply, just like I've seen people revert "per NPOV" when NPOV doesn't apply. The context, however, makes me a little skeptical of the essay. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 16:55, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

  I would be skeptical of assigning any particular context. The question posed can be resolved without theorizing about the motives of the OP or anyone else, or examining the editing history. The OP states that another editor disallows in kind of a blanket fashion, all non-medical sources in an article concerned with a medical issue, in contravention of the applicable guideline. The OP proposes an essay to clarify the associated guideline, for any such action, not just the present debated one. The question is whether such essay is necessary and/or appropriate. 98.7.66.30 (talk) 19:34, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

  I have blanked and redirected COVID-19 vaccine side effects to an appropriate target. When we (eventually) come to a post-mortem on Wikipedia's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, the inability of the system to handle some damaging net-negative editors will doubtless be one of the chief considerations. Alexbrn (talk) 19:42, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

  @Rhododendrites:, please WP:AGF and refrain from WP:CASTINGASPERSIONS. Most of my COVID-19 related edits are live, and most of the reverted ones have to do with the subject of this discussion. I created the COVID-19 naming article as a target for a redirect discussion [13], and it is mostly a translation of the ZH:WP article zh:wikipedia:2019冠状病毒病名称争议, which I simply haven't gotten around to completing. I created the COVID-19 vaccine side effects article because it is a WP:NOTABLE, and the WHO just put out a statement with the ICMRA to encourage better communication with the public on the subject [14]. Alexbrn's WP:BLAR of the article demonstrates the need for a supplement to WP:MEDRS, and we might also have to clarify the WP:POVFORK assessment on WP:NPOV/N. The article does not make any biomedical claims that aren't attributed, which is a very important distinction, and the subject of this discussion. CutePeach (talk) 13:36, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

  It's not an important distinction, although WP:PROFRINGE editors have tried to pull this stunt many times in the past. We don't get to spout lots of antivaxx talking points just by putting "According to Andrew Wakefield ..." before them, nor do we get to include primary research by putting "Professor Xi and his team reported ..." (or similar) in front. WP:BMI applies to biomedical information, and attributing it does not magically transmute it into something else. Alexbrn (talk) 13:42, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

  It is a very important distinction, which is why I have restored the article [15], and if you insist on confounding between side effects and misinformation and continue to WP:CASTASPERSIONS against me, then we will have to take this discussion to WP:AE, as a case of twisting policy and incivility. There is no consensus here in favor of your WP:MEDRS interpretation, regardless of whether this subject is BMI or not, and I would advise you read WP:CONTEXTMATTERS. CutePeach (talk) 14:33, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

  The claim Most of my COVID-19 related edits are live made me curious, so I looked at Special:Contributions/CutePeach. It appears that you have made 332 undeleted mainspace edits in the last year. 35 were page creations (half redirects). That leaves 297 which are technically possible to revert, and 59 of those – 20% – were reverted. Having one out of five of your edits get reverted is very unusual for good editors. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:10, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

  The redirect discussion you mentioned was closed as keep, suggesting the page you created as an alternate is now unnecessary. Bakkster Man (talk) 19:25, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

I have a very simple concern. The essay doesn't delineate why non-BMI information doesn't need MEDRS, and more importantly how to ensure the non-BMI is placed in context of the accepted knowledge and mainstream positions on biomedical information. At a minimum, it really should make clear that the non-BMI claims should be portrayed in the context of the MEDRS-sourced BMI accepted knowledge, not in place of them. Bakkster Man (talk) 19:39, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

Someone should probably write an essay entitled WIkipedia:What essays are not. It only needs to be brief. Simply explain that essays aren't policy. And if people misrepresent an essay as policy often enough, it should probably be nominated for deletion. AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:16, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

@AndyTheGrump:, my intention was to create a WP:SUPPLEMENT of WP:MEDRS. When Firefangledfeathers switched the supplement tag with an essay tag [16], it gave me the idea of posting here to build consensus. What do you think of MEDRS being used as a sourcing restriction for attributed claims such as Tinnitus as a COVID-19 vaccine side effect? CutePeach (talk) 13:06, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

I think that the creation of essays, supplements etc as a means to continue a debate about specific content is a bad idea. AndyTheGrump (talk) 13:48, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

Isn't WP:BMI already the relevant explanatory companion to MEDRS? And if that's not considered a supplement for lack of vetting, this brand new essay sure isn't going to be.

Why wouldn't MEDRS be applicable to tinnitus (a medical condition) being a potential side effect of a vaccine (a disease treatment)? That seems to be the default assumption, unless a very good reason is given to consider it an exception. Bakkster Man (talk) 02:09, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

Yes, but essays can often supplement policy, or explain a certain applicability of policy, and when someone cites an essay in defending an interpretation of policy, it is VERY useful, as it obviates the need to rewrite the content of said essay every time someone needs to present that interpretation of policy. Saying "Per <insert essay>" here, that doesn't mean the essay has the weight of policy, it means "This essay explains the interpretation of policy that is relevant to the discussion at hand". A person could retype the entire essay every time, but why? Essays are supremely useful in that regard, and no one is ever saying, when citing an essay, that it holds the weight of policy. --Jayron32 13:45, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

...no one is ever saying, when citing an essay, that it holds the weight of policy. I've seen it done far too often. AndyTheGrump (talk) 13:50, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

No, what you've done is seen people citing essays which reiterate their own interpretations of policy, which is valid. You've likely chosen to read these situations as treating essays as policy because they inconveniently don't align with your own interpretations of policy. --Jayron32 14:31, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

What I've seen, on numerous occasions, are people citing essays and stating outright that they are policy. Some essays may indeed 'supplement' consensus about the interpretation of policy, or simply present a particular interpretation of policy. Both are valid. What isn't valid however is the creation of an essay which doesn't reflect policy at all, though it purports to, or one written in a manner that encourages misinterpretation. Which it think is what we are discussing here. Hopelessly vague, and clearly written to argue a point over specific content. AndyTheGrump (talk) 15:12, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

And editors in the various !voting processes use essays-as-policy, that's when the closing admins need to be aware of strength of policy arguments as policy-based arguments will always override those strictly based on essays. That's why its important they be tagged as essays with little consensus. --Masem (t) 02:33, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

The problem of editors declaring that BRD is policy is so common that WT:BRD now has a FAQ about it, complete with links to RFCs in which the community rejected proposals to make it a policy or guideline. It does happen. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:11, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

if people misrepresent an essay as policy often enough, it should probably be nominated for deletion - If people misrepresent essays as policy often enough, the problem isn't the essays. Essays in projectspace shouldn't contradict policy, but there's a lot of leeway to interpret, apply, explain, elaborate, etc. in ways that conflict with other interpretations, applications, explanations, and elaborations. Some of the explanations are so in line with policy, without the need to become policy, that they make for a useful shortcut. WP:BRD is a canonical example of an essay with very wide-reaching support, but little interest in making it more than an essay. If people abuse essays, however -- especially essays that don't have such wide buy-in -- that's a behavioral issue. This section seems like an instance of flawed big picture arguments due to unusually problematic/pointy/controversial examples IMO. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 15:22, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

Exactly, and the same goes for MEDRS. Jayron32 writes below "I think you can find many examples of people over-extending the applicability of MEDRS". But if that's so, the problem is with these "people" not with MEDRS. It should be raised with the errant editor and, if it persists, escalated to an appropriate venue (ANI, AE, etc.). But so far nobody's produced any convincing example of this "over-extension", instead producing examples which show how MEDRS has been applied exactly right (jiggly boobs, below). Alexbrn (talk) 05:32, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

Yes, but if people have clearer policy to guide their actions, then a) there is a better chance they will better self-regulate and b) the rest of the community has a way to sanction and ultimately get rid of those people when they refuse to abide by PAGs. There is no way to violate something that doesn't exist. We need clearer boundaries. --Jayron32 11:42, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

The guideline is clear. Mostly people querying it are POV-pushing or in some way working working against the interests of the Project. It's a fallacy to think that we can WP:CREEP towards perfect understanding by adding to already-long WP:PAGs (which people don't fully read anyway). If that were true we wouldn't have all the drama boards for dealing with when people "don't understand" WP:COI, WP:BLP, WP:NOR etc etc. Alexbrn (talk) 11:50, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

I don't think this essay is actually likely to produce 'clearer boundaries'. WP:MEDRSISNOT is significantly less clear than the existing recommended boundaries in WP:BMI. That's the problem. Bakkster Man (talk) 14:16, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

• The essay is not necessary as the information is covered adequately elsewhere. Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) [he/him] 17:11, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

Jiggly boobs are not a medical condition

A block of text in Sports bra describing research on breast motion control by sports bras removed by a well-known editor of medicine related articles with the comment "rmv. non-MEDRS" and I think it's a good example of the abuse/encroachment of MEDRS policy into all aspects of being a human. I have returned the text to an appropriate section so as not to imply it has anything to do with any medical condition of the breasts. MarshallKe (talk) 17:42, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedia has a history of perv editors bollixing up its bra articles.[17] Please don't add unreliable primary sources to try and make a WP:POINT against your imagined "cabal". Alexbrn (talk) 17:48, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

My impression of single studies is that their conclusions are incorrect often enough that we should be hesitant to use them, and mentioning them is often WP:UNDUE. Replication crisis applies to many of them. This goes for any study, not just medical studies. Please use caution when citing studies, and in my opinion avoid if possible. Review articles (where experts survey a bunch of studies and decide for us which studies had useful, accurate conclusions) are much better. –Novem Linguae (talk) 18:07, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

This should be discussed in the article talk page. This is also a terrible example as I think Alexbrn not only was correct in removing some of the content for MEDRS reasons but also from general editorial discretion. Let's not feed the perverts, shall we? — Ixtal ^{( T / C )} ⁂ Join WP:FINANCE! 18:08, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

Maybe there are other reasons for noninclusion of this information, but it's been well-established that Wikipedia values information above socially conservative agendas (or for that matter, any other social or religious norms). That kind of moralizing is utterly incompatible with Wikipedia's goals. Again, maybe that block of text is undue weight. Fine, good. But arguments for edits for furthering socially regressive agendas (or, indeed, progressive agendas) will fall on deaf ears. Oh no, Wikipedia described the motion of breasts. Give me a break. We have an article on futanari with an example image. MarshallKe (talk) 18:22, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

MarshallKe I'm not sure you want to be equating sports bra content and its relevance to MEDRS with japanese porn genre articled. It's really not the galaxy-brain argument you think it is. The idea that we're bending over social conservativism by finding issues with your description of people's breasts is absurd. Wikipedia won't collapse because you can't rely on badly sourced primary research to write cruft on breast cups. — Ixtal ^{( T / C )} ⁂ Join WP:FINANCE! 18:44, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

Per all of the above, I think you can find many examples of people over-extending the applicability of MEDRS, but this is a really shitty example, and all you are doing MarshallKe is screwing it up for the rest of us, who also want to see MEDRS reigned in, but now have to contend with looking like your ridiculous example speaks for all of us. Great. --Jayron32 18:18, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

It adds to MarshallKe's problematic pattern of editing (already sanctioned), and probably brings them a little closer to the end of the runway. As written above, if any editor is repeatedly "twisting" policy the solution is to report it an appropriate venue. The rest is gaslight. Alexbrn (talk) 18:27, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

Since COVID and 'Jiggly Boobs' sports bras do not seem to provide the best representation of areas where MEDRS should be set aside, can you help those on the fence and provide examples of articles/subjects/topic areas where toning down MEDRS requirement would benefit the encyclopedia, as I am not seeing mentions above of anything beyond those two topic areas.Slywriter (talk) 18:29, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

Well, we did have[18] some editors arguing a while ago that recreational drugs weren't actual drugs dude, and so descriptions of their effects on the body were exempt from MEDRS (Why is there no "Benefits" section at Crystal Meth I hear you cry!). So taking it all-in-all, the reasons for relaxing MEDRS hinted at so far seem to be for (1) Airing antivaxx talking points; (2) Lab leak conspiracy theory stuff; (3) For writing how evil GMO food is; (4) To highlight the benefits of recreational drug use and of course (5) Jiggly boobs. Funnily, the more I see editors arguing for a relaxation of MEDRS the more apparent it becomes how it has helped hold back a tidal wave of crap on Wikipedia. Can we all go back to writing articles now? Alexbrn (talk) 05:09, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

It's not that COVID is a bad example; the medical aspects of COVID (what it does to the body, how to treat and prevent it, etc.) are ABSOLUTELY covered by MEDRS. That's biomedical information. There are things, such as economics, politics, sociology, etc. which are related to the COVID-19 pandemic, and which are NOT biomedical in nature. It's people insisting that, for example, when a political scientist analyzes how various governments have handled the COVID-19 pandemic in their country, people push back on that and say "not MEDRS compliant!". But it shouldn't need to be, because this isn't medical information. There needs to be an assessment of how a particular bit of information applies to human health; sometimes MEDRS is not appropriate. How far does it go? Do I need MEDRS compliant sources to discuss the chart positions of "Level of Concern", a song about COVID-19? --Jayron32 11:18, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

Do I need MEDRS compliant sources to discuss the chart positions of "Level of Concern", a song about COVID-19? ← No, you do not. Alexbrn (talk) 11:28, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

It sounds ridiculous, but there are people who make equivalent ridiculous invokations of MEDRS, and those should be addressed. For example, when a politician makes a notable, uneducated, and incorrect claim about something of a medical nature, we shouldn't need to either a) note that they made such a claim or b) note that the claim is bullshit. Standard WP:RS considerations are all that is needed. The original intent of this thread is to better define the scope of MEDRS, so that users know not only when it does apply, but also when it doesn't. Having boundaries on policy only works when all boundaries are adequately delineated. the OP's essay is a good start; I think it lacks in many ways, but conceptually, we do need to overtly let users know not only when something IS covered by MEDRS, but where it ISN'T so that we can better reign in over-applications of the guideline.--Jayron32 11:38, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

The OP's essay is junk, and wrong (the practical application of the beliefs it carries can be seen in the snow-like deletion ongoing at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/COVID-19 vaccine side effects). The supplement to MEDRS you are seeking is WP:BMI, which now has had a fair amount of scrutiny and does everything you ask for. There will always be edge cases but ultimately WP:CLUE cannot be legislated. Alexbrn (talk) 11:43, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

I fully agree with Alexbrn's take on the matter. My perspective is that if editors are trying to violate the spirit of a guideline and wikilawyer to get content removed or added, there's not much an essay can do nor is weakening the wording in a guideline beneficial. The OP's cite this essay to correct and educate editors on the proper application of Wikipedia's sourcing policy displays the wrong way of engaging with contentious policy and seems almost like a way to create pseudo-policy. TBH I'd move to userfy the essay. — Ixtal ^{( T / C )} ⁂ Join WP:FINANCE! 12:59, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for that essay. Yes, it is exactly what is needed; much better fit for the purpose than the OP's essay. --Jayron32 13:05, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

• Upon reviewing my run-ins with this, it was actually an inappropriate deference to academic sources, at the expense of non-academic sources, not MEDRS specifically that was the issue that I ran into. I don't want to point fingers at editors that haven't commented here on the village pump but I will mention I recently removed a 'medref' banner that was inappropriately added to an article that isn't at all reasonably constrained to medical issues[19]. This sort of improper assessment may not be resolved by writing an essay and it's probably not a large enough issue to provoke any sort of arbitration or enforcement. SmolBrane (talk) 13:11, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

  Bad move removing that banner. That article still has problems, like the (problematic) claim that omicron COVID is more mild, cited to a newspaper. Alexbrn (talk) 13:22, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

  If the prime minister of Singapore(for instance) thinks COVID is treatable enough to manage endemically(“has become a treatable, mild disease for most of us”), then we should inform our readers of this, especially in the context of other considerations(from the Singapore section:maintaining restrictions would impact the economy and mental health of the country). SmolBrane (talk) 14:51, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

  Those two items are not mutually exclusive. Most of the information on the page is not WP:BMI, and does not need MEDRS sources. It's policy decisions and documentation of recommendations. But there is what I would consider WP:BMI, or at least information that's toeing that line, without secondary sources. I've made an edit along what Alexbrn mentions, is Omicron actually mild, or is it perceived as mild. The former requires MEDRS for a concrete claim, but clearly indicating perception does not. And the tagging of the article with the banner would be appropriate as long as some of the content is inadequately sourced, it does not mean all of the content must have MEDRS.

  To put this another way, this is not a medical article does not mean the article does not include some BMI, in the same way that articles about medical topics can have non-biomedical information as well. The two solutions are either to remove each biomedical claims (where they exist, only part of the article), or source them to MEDRS. Bakkster Man (talk) 17:09, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

  In re If the prime minister of Singapore(for instance) thinks COVID is treatable enough to manage endemically(“has become a treatable, mild disease for most of us”), then we should inform our readers of this

  Should we? Imagine that the sentence instead said "If the prime minister of Singapore(for instance) thinks influenza is treatable enough to manage endemically(“has become a treatable, mild disease for most of us”)". Would we still feel like it's important to inform our readers of this? Or would we all wonder why readers would actually care what that particular politician thinks about this subject? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:23, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

  Look at Fauci's recent comments(COVID-19_pandemic_in_the_United_States#Transition_to_endemic_stage), that the US is “out of the pandemic phase”, only to be 'clarified' the following day that “we are still experiencing a pandemic”. Does this mean that Fauci is a gold standard MEDRS and also a fringe disinformationist dogwhistling to conspiracy theorists? Seems like questionable expertise when this individual is not sure if the US is in a pandemic or not. This is the issue with MEDRS deference in a sociopolitically affected area. SmolBrane (talk) 15:37, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

  Politicians say nonsense things about health all the time, and individual expert comments are not generally good MEDRS. If a politician's nonsense is to be quoted at all (e.g. the ZA AIDS denial stuff, or Trump's bleach injections) it needs to be contextualized with a sane source. That's just basic WP:NPOV. Alexbrn (talk) 16:59, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

  I'm not entirely sure this question is very applicable. Wikipedia shouldn't really be changing the status of the pandemic in the US from one day to the next based on a press release, nor is someone making mistakes from time to time mean they are generally unreliable, nor is Fauci's comments the gold standard in MEDRS. — Ixtal ^{( T / C )} ⁂ Join WP:FINANCE! 16:59, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

  So Fauci misspoke when he said that “‘we are certainly, right now, in this country, out of the pandemic phase” and “"Namely, we don't have 900,000 new infections a day and tens and tens and tens of thousands of hospitalizations and thousands of deaths. We are at a low level right now. So, if you're saying, are we out of the pandemic phase in this country? We are”? Which he then clarified with “I probably should have said the acute component of the pandemic phase, and I understand how that can lead to some misinterpretation”? Is this supposed to be coherent? How do we know when he is mis-speaking? As far as MEDRS goes, Fauci is the director of NIAID and a resident expert for the Biden administration on COVID-19. He is not described on wiki as a politician. I doubt his quotes have ever been reverted for being non-MEDRS but you are welcome to prove me wrong. SmolBrane (talk) 19:36, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

  The comments of individual experts are generally not WP:MEDRS obviously. In general, it's a hallmark of high-quality sources that they do self-correct. It's the ones that never do which are more usually rubbish. Alexbrn (talk) 20:05, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

  WP:RS even says that "the publication of corrections" is a sign that a source engages in fact-checking, which is one of the things that suggests it will be a useful source. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:26, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

  Not at all. Fact-checking is supposed to happen before publication. Corrections indicate problems with the source. Maybe the fact-checking editors were asleep or careless or partisan. Maybe other editorial guidelines were not followed. Maybe the story's impact would be diminished while waiting for the checking to conclude and they decided to wing it anyway, and deal with any repercussions later, at low cost. Because the story may have a front-page headline, but a small bottom paragraph "correction" in page 3. Maybe they were just caught in a fake news item, and have no other option (especially when it may involve potential lawsuits). No source can be called reliable when it corrects itself. The simple fact is that whatever has to be "corrected" is by definition unreliable. If the correction is material, Wikipedia cannot base reliable references on that item. Don't try to "patch up" the damage of an ex-post-facto corrected reference by referencing the correction, remove the unreliable (corrected) reference. Unless that is, the Wikipedia article is discussing sources' handling of the item, as distinct from the item itself.71.245.250.98 (talk) 00:43, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

  That's quite the suggestion for changing a fundamental policy (though it's worth noting, that's meant to apply to news organizations, not individuals). You seem to be conflating reliability with perfection. Key here is a reputation for accuracy, and that reputation is maintained by corrections being made when necessary (which should be rarely). Considering any source which makes any correction unreliable would leave us with either no sources, or only crackpot sources who never cared about the truth in the first place. Bakkster Man (talk) 01:14, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

  What was described regarding sources and corrections is factual. What is reputed, as in "reputation for accuracy", is not: when it involves the next reference from any source it is a guess, actually an expectation based on hearsay and/or (reliable?) analyses of past performance. It may or may not apply to the next reference, and one cannot make blanket statements of reliability a priori. That is why any one reference must stand on its own. There can be reliable references. But there is no such thing as "reliable sources". Wikipedia doesn't need to parrot the ways the media establishes its myths of reliability or objectivity. Isn't there enough parroting by pundits and academics whose jobs and careers depend on ruminating on such distinctions? Like most people, the media are biased. Subtly and craftily in the case of the established mainstream, more crudely so at the fringes. To stay in business, they target certain demographics with distinct preferences. They will not, in the great majority of the product offered, contradict these preferences. So facts are "explained", spun, and massaged. But just because sources are unreliable does not mean that citations based on these sources must be. 23.246.74.210 (talk) 03:25, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

  I think I forgot to wear my tinfoil hat because I don't understand your argument. What do you mean by spun by the media? You seem to be implying there is an organized and all-encompassing campaign to misinform the public on medical topics, which is a wild abd highly doubtable accusation. I'd appreciate an "explanation". — Ixtal ^{( T / C )} ⁂ Join WP:FINANCE! 13:31, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

  No, that is not what was stated at all. The language used was plain, and the rationale uncomplicated. Nothing was "implied": it is all laid out clearly, because the objective was others' understanding, not befuddlement. Your interpretation is something else. If there is something specific that needs clarification, I will be happy to attempt it. 71.105.141.131 (talk) 00:45, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

  To the IP: Post-hoc fact checking is still fact-checking. ;-) WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:49, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

  I assume you jest. Any news organization worth its name has a fact-checking department. Its function is to check the purported facts of work submitted for publishing by the organization's own journalists, or other contributors. This happens before publication, and it is not/should not be trivial or avoidable, although it may be less rigorous for say, opinion pieces. This internal fact-checking happens for the reasons stated in the posts above, and others. Simply put anything that is published is understood to have cleared "fact" (i.e. the fact-checking editors). The organization fact-checking their story after the fact is called "correction". It is an obvious example if non-reliability. 71.105.141.131 (talk) 00:58, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

  A correction is a fact check, and a publication that publishes corrections when necessary is more reliable than one which doesn't. Bakkster Man (talk) 01:38, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

  What is accurately reported (i.e factual) needs no correction. Correcting published work is not an example of reliability but proof of its absence. The correction may happen for a number of reasons, the majority of them likely self-serving. Whether this makes the source less unreliable than others is irrelevant. Only reliability is relevant when citing sources on another unreliable platform such as Wikipedia. 64.18.11.68 (talk) 12:48, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

  And what is intentionally inaccurately reported receives no correction, yet is clearly less reliable than the outlet which made an error. This is entirely relevant with the core policy of WP:V, and best of luck if you seek to change that interpretation.

  That said, we're entirely off topic related to the correction above, as we're referring to a public health official clarifying a public statement, not a news organization whose article went through a process of editing and fact checking before publication. And there the idea that "any public figure who ever misspeaks is unreliable on the topic" is even more risible. Bakkster Man (talk) 14:12, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

  Well, Wikipedia is an unreliable platform. It needs reliable citations, not less-unreliable ones. What difference does it make to the Wikipedia reader that a source is unreliable intentionally? The important thing is that the citation is unreliable and should be removed. Again, do not add the correction to patch things up, this is not about a source's acrobatics or the desire to justify a reference. Unless the original erroneous reporting had materially influenced the subject of the article. Moving to a less important user segment, how do Wikipedia contributors know a source intentionally reported anything inaccurately? Did they consult other sources who may have intentionally reported so inaccurately? See how ridiculous this becomes. 68.132.154.35 (talk) 23:12, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

  So what is an example of a "reliable news organization", then? JoelleJay (talk) 02:19, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

  Finally. For Wikipedia citation purposes, that is a fantastic entity, mainly given form by practitioners/associated professionals and repeated constantly, an easy operation when one always has access to the horn. Some of the reasoning has been given in posts above, so I will not repeat it. To repeat another point also made above, it doesn't follow that reliable individual citations cannot exist. That is the entire point, that each citation should be considered on its merits. 64.18.11.64 (talk) 13:09, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

  That's wrong. WP:V says readers must be able to check citations are to reliable sources, not unreliable sources that Wikipedia editors have decided are "right this time". For assertions about biomedical content, news sources are not reliable, so WP:V, a core policy, can never be satisfied. Alexbrn (talk) 13:16, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

  All sources must be judged about whether they're reliable "this time". There is no source that's reliable for every possible sentence in Wikipedia; there are few enough that are reliable sources for even half the contents of a single article. Reliable source = accepted in this article, for this material, not accepted for something. That said, news sources are never ideal for biomedical information. They've either got it wrong (in which case, you shouldn't be putting that content in the article at all), or they've got it right (in which case, you should be citing a {{better source}} anyway). The original dispute that prompted this, however, is really about apples and oranges. It's about scientific facts and trying to use politicians' self-serving statements to debunk or contradict those facts. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:02, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

  This is the boundary between 'generally reliable' (what WP:RS/P attempts to track) and 'reliable in a particular instance'. Conflation between the two may be what IP is confused about. Bakkster Man (talk) 16:50, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

  Yes. They miss the point that many sources are never reliable for anything (e.g. Daily Mail), or for specific areas (e.g. CNN for WP:BMI), even though they might be "right" according to genuine RS - in which case use the genuine RS. Alexbrn (talk) 17:17, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

  I sometimes wish that we could have a different name for "the kind RSP is talking about" and "the kind that the top of RSN is talking about, when it says that you need to supply 'The exact statement(s) in the article that the source supports.'" Then we could have less "If a source falls in the forest, and nobody hears it, is it reliable?" and have more "Sure, it's reputable enough in general, but you can't rely on it for that statement". WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:46, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

  Wikipedia citations will never be reliable when editors make statements like many sources are never reliable for anything, that are simultaneously vague and unverifiable. Or when useless further distinctions are made between "genuinely"(?) reliable sources and presumably less-genuine ones. Or when the undefinable, and therefore meaningless for citation purposes, concept of "generally reliable sources" crops up. The idea that no source (including your favorite ones) may be a priori reliable seems to be putting people out of their comfort zones. It doesn't need to. Wikipedia does not have to designate any sources as a priori reliable or as a priori more-reliable in order to produce reliable citations. Editors can keep their beliefs about the source being otherwise reliable or unreliable, just don't insert these beliefs in the examination of the present citation. "Reliability lists" (see for e.g. WP:RS) are enablers of lazy or bad-faith editors. Their criteria of inclusion may be inexact, arbitrary or opaque, part of the so-called "general reliability" fog. You want to help Wikipedia? Do the hard work of reliable, context-based verification for each and every reference used. 68.132.154.35 (talk) 23:54, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

  Quite often you can save time of "doing the hard work" by deleting obvious rubbish without reading it. E.g.: Predatory journal used to support claims in the "Effectiveness" section of an article about a drug? Delete. Other times it's trickier and I've had to use libraries or even buy expensive books to do verification. Technically it's true that "everything is reliable for something" but for many junk sources that "something" will never be included on Wikipedia for other policy reasons. I still not sure whether RSP does more harm than good. Alexbrn (talk) 05:14, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

The guidelines and policies assume there is such a thing as a "reliable source". This is basically a religious view i.e. one based on belief or faith. The related priesthood (people who profit from such views) will of course be pushing the otherwise useless distinction. There is also the issue of gullibility: past performance of any source is no guarantee that the next item of information will follow the trend, if any. To use both common sense, and the first rule of logic (A is always A): A reliable source must always be reliable: it can not be reliable "most of the time". The information conveyed, all of it, must be reliable: the content can not be "mostly reliable". Does anyone know of any such source? If not the source is unreliable, and the specific citation based on it must be scrutinized. Assume a source is unreliable 1% of the time: how does a Wikipedia contributor know that the information they intend to cite does not fall in that 1%? Play spot-the-facts roulette? Or, say a source's content is 99% factual. How does a Wikipedia contributor know that the inline citation used does not refer to the unreliable 1%? Don't agonize over it, it is easy. Disregard all you've heard about general source reliability and fully examine each citation on its merits. And if you are uncertain about the accuracy, the citation is unreliable and should not be used. There may be a very small loophole in using citations whose reliability is uncertain, when you declare such uncertainty in wikitext. But even that should be carefully weighed. Since Wikipedia doesn't have an editorial board to make all these decisions, every contributor should be fully responsible for their citations and do the work themselves. An important point is not to take into account a source's so-called "reputation". The origin of such quality is always nefarious and can distract from objective evaluation. If one insists on giving weight to reputation then the implications of such weight should be prominent. If The Lancet and the NEJM are "reputed" to be reliable journals with impeccable peer-review credentials then the status of such reputation in the end of June 2020 deserves its own article. Probably, a lot of people will be interested to know how the publishing process failed at the time. [20] [21]. 71.247.146.98 (talk) 14:12, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

Sounds like you should make your case at Wikipedia talk:Reliable sources. Good luck. Bakkster Man (talk) 14:24, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

As an encyclopedia (tertiary source) Wikipedia is just a handy summary of accepted knowledge, as found in what it deems to be "reliable sources" for that knowledge. There's no big attempt to be "right" about things in any way that deviates from that objective. If scholarship is wrong, Wikipedia is wrong in lock-step with it. This is by design. Alexbrn (talk) 15:06, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

This exactly. We can't exactly right the great wrongs of academia/RS, nor should we attempt to. — Ixtal ^{( T / C )} ⁂ Join WP:FINANCE! 16:00, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

The insistence on the fantasy of "reliable sources" itself is an all-encompassing "righting great wrongs" position that should be put to rest. There are no a priori reliable sources, and there have never been any, at anytime. This includes BMI sources such as The Lancet and NEJM. Adjusting WP:RS and WP:MEDRS to this reality could be a step in making Wikipedia itself more reliable. The exciting part about this is that editors don't have to wait for these misleading guidelines to change: simply ignore the nonsense parts dealing with so-called "reliable sources", and focus on reliable references instead.

Recognizing that there are no reliable sources impacts more severely sources that are now falsely considered reliable. The examples from The Lancet and NEJM linked to in the previous post are not accidental: they were selected (among other retractions about other topics) because these sources may be accepted unquestioningly as reliable, and because the subjects of retraction had to do with Covid-19. They are examples of inaccurate reporting, (probably?) caused by failures in the journals' operating norms & procedures. The naturally arising question: what are the chances that a study, supposedly peer-reviewed and published in the next issue of either journal, will be retracted? Anyone who observes this objectively will say "I don't know" or "I am not certain". One cannot say "based on some historical record, this rarely happens". Citations are not the result of statistical constructs. In practical terms, all this makes these sources a priori unreliable, since one cannot assume their reporting will always be accurate in advance. The given examples are related to Wikipedia's coverage of Covid-19, and tangentially, to this thread: if The Lancet or NEJM are used as sources in Wikipedia's Covid-19 coverage their track record on the subject is pertinent; including their instances of inaccurate reporting and repercussions in the medical field and the world at large. It is likely that non-BMI sources are best for this particular information in Wikipedia. Certainly the journals themselves would be primary sources on the subject of their own "mistakes". And the rest of the biomedical establishment should be handled lightly on this issue. After all, publishing on these journals can do wonders for one's career and/or their standing among their peers. 4.30.91.142 (talk) 00:20, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedia aims higher than that, and its sourcing policy is recognized as one of the reasons why it has been successful in its coverage of COVID-19.[22] The sourcing policy is flexible enough to resist dodgy claims even if they appear in nominally reputable sources - see WP:EXCEPTIONAL. For example, Wikipedia avoided the buying into (what turned out to be) the academic fraud and scientific misconduct around ivermectin precisely because of its high sourcing standards. Alexbrn (talk) 04:40, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

Being defensive regarding Wikipedia's reliability and sourcing is a waste of energy and time. This is an unreliable platform, and this has to be recognized before there is any hope of remedy. Wikipedia contributors praising their contributions is neither useful nor relevant. To clarify one thing, the study linked to above should not be used to draw inferences about Wikipedia's coverage of Covid-19. It is an analysis of a certain class of citations in a selected minority of Wikipedia Covid-19 articles. It has a very narrow scope defined by rigid qualifiers. In addition some of the premises of the analysis (both implicit and explicit) are either non-applicable or may rest on shaky foundation. Within these parameters, the article set covered by the analysis receives positive marks. It is like examining a car's wheelbase and determining that it consists of high-quality parts. The determination cannot be used to infer the car's performance. 24.168.24.89 (talk) 19:10, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

MEDRS vs DUE as the explanation

This kind of problem reappears in regular cycles. I don't think we have a good page that explains it, but perhaps someone will provide a link soon. Wikipedia:Why MEDRS? covers at least some of the territory.

The situation usually looks like this:

• The article says something that is generally accepted as a fact, cited to a plausible medical(ish) secondary source: Scaryitis is an acquired medical condition that develops mainly in children who stay indoors all day. Primary prevention involves sending children outside to play for at least two hours per day, especially before the age of 7.
• An editor adds something that says someone disagrees with this claim, cited to the news: Paul Politician told The News that the main cause is children not eating enough foods rich in Vitamin A, such as carrots.
• A passing editor reverts it, citing MEDRS.
• Drama ensues.

The problem isn't verifiability or RS. WP:V and WP:RS are concerned with individual claims. Is there at least one decent source (any decent source) that says Scaryitis exists, is a medical condition, is acquired/non-congenital, develops over time, affects children who stay indoors, can be prevented by going outdoors, etc.? Then WP:V and WP:RS are  Done.

Is there also a decent source (any decent source) that says Paul Politician was flapping his gums at the press again? If so, then WP:V and WP:RS are  Done.

This is because the problem is not verifiability, which means – to quote the first sentence of the policy – "other people using the encyclopedia can check that the information comes from a reliable source." For both the original and the new text, you can do that. The original description really can be found in a decent medical source, and the politician really did say that. All of it is verifiable.

The problem is that the text violates WP:NPOV. Specifically, it violates DUE, WP:BALASP, and WP:GEVAL.

• WP:DUE says Undue weight can be given in several ways, including but not limited to the depth of detail, the quantity of text, prominence of placement, the juxtaposition of statements, and the use of imagery.
• WP:BALASP says (in its entirely relevant entirety) An article should not give undue weight to minor aspects of its subject but should strive to treat each aspect with a weight proportional to its treatment in the body of reliable, published material on the subject. For example, a description of isolated events, quotes, criticisms, or news reports related to one subject may be verifiable and impartial, but still disproportionate to their overall significance to the article topic. This is a concern especially for recent events that may be in the news.
• WP:GEVAL says While it is important to account for all significant viewpoints on any topic, Wikipedia policy does not state or imply that every minority view or extraordinary claim needs to be presented along with commonly accepted mainstream scholarship as if they were of equal validity.

MEDRS is kind of the wrong page to be citing in these situations, but it does have one very relevant rule at WP:MEDPRI: Primary sources should not be cited with intent of "debunking", contradicting, or countering conclusions made by secondary sources.

This is the problem that we keep encountering. We have some sort of biomedical information, but someone disagrees with it. So an editor who disagrees will attempt to improve the article by using a WP:PRIMARYNEWS source to debunk, contradict, or counter the mainstream views on a medical condition through the juxtaposition of a quote that gives undue weight to minor aspects, namely whatever one politician said yesterday, which is disproportionate to their overall significance to the article topic and tends to result in his minority view or extraordinary claim [being] presented along with commonly accepted mainstream scholarship as if they were of equal validity.

See how all those underlined words line up with what the policy says editors must never do? That's what's going on in these disputes. It's not a question of whether you can verify the exact, specific claim in some source that's reliable for that purpose. The question at hand is whether that particular statement from that particular politician actually matters overall. It is a problem of DUE and BALASP and GEVAL and using primary sources to debunk secondary sources. It is not really a problem of simple verifiability. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:30, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

Great post. Since this is a perennial issue and you do a good job of explaining it, perhaps you or someone might want to copy the above post verbatim into an existing essay or its own essay. –Novem Linguae (talk) 00:10, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

Since you and others have asked, I've put this comment at Wikipedia:Don't use today's news to contradict medical sources. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:13, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

I'll add one additional situation I've seen frequently. As the guideline itself mentions, the goal is to present prevailing medical or scientific consensus. This is the real reason for preferring secondary sources, and why popular news coverage tends to get it wrong. Both of which are well summarized by this relevant XKCD. Bakkster Man (talk) 01:53, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

I love the jelly bean XKCD! WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:51, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

I agree, WhatamIdoing's post is very helpful. I have often found that when editors want to argue "MEDRS does not apply" in order to push a fringe POV, then it is helpful to argue instead about WP:WEIGHT (or WP:DUE, same thing). Although MEDRS appears to be a sourcing guideline and so you might think it is an application of WP:V policy, it is actually a guideline on choosing sources so you don't break WP:NPOV policy. The WP:What MEDRS is not essay is unhelpful (and should be deleted) as we already have WP:Biomedical information that has a long "What is not biomedical information?" section. This seems to be nothing more than a POV fork by an editor who has a long track record in pushing conspiracy theories. It is rooted in the idea that if your POV-pushing is reverted "per MEDRS" and you can claim MEDRS does not apply, then you can push your POV. It suggests you can give undue weight to whatever POV you want to push as long as you can attribute it in-text and suggests that WP:BALANCE requires you to cite Dr Crank as well, because an MD or PhD makes him an "expert" in whatever he wants to say. I would, however, advise editors to consider enhancing their edit summary revert with "per WP:MEDRS and WP:DUE" to avoid this kind of timewasting. -- Colin°^Talk 09:29, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

Also agreed. This is a really good explanation, and would be a valuable essay (generalised to all articles, as the issue is by no means restricted to medicine). MichaelMaggs (talk) 10:29, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

I'm much more familiar with how this phenomenon manifests in medical subjects. I'm not sure that I could give an equally convincing example in non-science subjects (e.g., BLPs or international relations). Perhaps you have one in mind that you could share? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:59, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

References

+1 This isn't just a pattern in medicine, too - POV-pushing and recentism also tend to have this issue on contemporary articles. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 09:34, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

• This isn't a great steelman, the bigger issue is when biomedical issues and sociopolitical issues conflict, causing an a priori imbalance. A good example here is this MEDRS RSOPINION [23] that is regarded as fringe on the Great Barrington Declaration article. And here is another non-med RS that questions "whether the public health establishment can ever recover from ongoing revelations of incompetence, malfeasance, and politically motivated decision-making."[24] How do we reconcile RSes vs. MEDRSes? It is conceivable that MEDORGS can become unreliable, if only on specific matters. If RSes conflict with MEDORGs, or describe them as incompetent or malfeasant etc, we will have NPOV issues since MEDORGs are deferred to. SmolBrane (talk) 15:35, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

  It's not always, or even usually, sociopolitical. There's a lot of "Cancer is deadly, but a special soup will cure it" spam that really has nothing to do with sociopolitical issues. (Yes, that's a real-life example. He was going to spend $200 a week to buy some vegan soup that all but promised to cure Stage 4 lung cancer for his relative.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:04, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

• Something that has not been discussed yet is that one purpose of essays is to express and explain disagreement with consensus. This is especially true when the disagreement is over policy interpretation (as opposed to the actual language of the policy). This is why we don’t give essays any official Weight (except, perhaps, the weight that comes from a well reasoned argument). Blueboar (talk) 18:16, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

  Blueboar, the purpose of this disputed essay is not to "express and explain disagreement with consensus" or to highlight some wrong "policy interpretations" but to make false claims about how our policy and guidelines require editors to source and write article content. Fine if someone wants to write "In my opinion, NPOV is too restrictive and Wikipedia should be a free-for-all for any random opinions, suitably attributed" but if you actually claim an approach is compliant with consensus policy/guideline yet really isn't, then that's just plain dishonesty (or at best, complete lack of clue). While technically essays have no official weight, everyone here knows they do carry weight, and are often cited by shortcuts as though they were official (e.g., "restore text per WP:MEDRSNOT"). I don't think your post was helpful to the discussion: the idea of essays being just essays has been discussed many many times, and I think everyone in this discussion is more than aware of their purpose and practical effects. It is exactly for that reason that an essay masquerading as policy clarification, written by a POV pusher for the purpose of pushing fringe POVs is not helpful to Wikipedia. -- Colin°^Talk 20:11, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

• As a cold case of somewhere where perhaps WP:MEDRS did not help us get it just quite right (or did it?), can I offer Liverpool Care Pathway for the Dying Patient as a possible study. This was a protocol for managing end-of-life care, that was rolled out nationwide across the UK. It came under sustained attack in 2009 and 2012 spearheaded by pieces in the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail. Following a review, this led to the pathway being withdrawn in 2013 (or, allegedly, retained but locally rebranded to something less visible). Unfortunately not all the edit history is available due to a later rev-del'd copyvio; but as one can see from some of the edits up to 2012, WP found it difficult to present the controversy. On the one hand there were earlier academic papers introducing the pathway, which satisfied MEDRS. But the material raising the controversy in most detail (particularly questions stirred up about end-of-life hydration; and whether people were sometimes inappropriately being given a one-way ticket to die) was typically in populist or agenda-grinding newspapers, which did not. (And indeed, in the case of the Daily Mail article by a doctor with an agenda, that really launched the controversy, was in a publication designated by WP to hunted down and shot on sight). The article was gutted to such an extent that even to this day (when more academic sources may now be available?), the article really fails to cover in any comprehensible way the media panic that ultimately killed the pathway, or what the issues were that became so sensitised.

I still don't know what the right way should have been in this case. For full understanding, should reference links be given to the DM pieces that launched the furore? An extreme case of a publication that is not just not MEDRS, but so consitently unreliable partisan and agenda-mongering that we hold it should never be used at all? Or, when a WP:PRIMARY has had a key role in shaping a mass-perception, is it important to give at least a link to see what it actually said. (In the way that a WP:PRIMARY source can be usedul, even if partisan, if contextualised with appropriate WP:SECONDARY and WP:TERTIARY sources) And more widely, at the time when the issue had reached a level of wide public concern, was it right that even broadsheet newspaper coverage was removed, as not being MEDRS compliant?

On the one hand MEDRS is in part there to protect us from undue weight to questionably reliable material, and repeating unreliable content, often specifically against media storms and the material thrown up in them. On the other hand, that media storm itself can be an important part of the topic. Given that it's now substantially history, that we can look back at now from almost 10 years on, the LCP may be an interesting case study to consider. Jheald (talk) 20:40, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

Surely if in 2022 we are to discuss the "furore" in the press at the time, we should be citing modern texts that examine the now historical event. This is true of any subject, whether a footballers' wives court case, or a medical treatment. I don't see how citing the Daily Mail for its contemporary stories is anything other than trying to make a story about the media attack using primary sources. You mention giving a link to the DM so readers can see what was said, but as you note, the actual sources for our text would need to be appropriate secondary/tertiary sources, so that isn't really a sourcing question, but whether to provide a link for convenience.

There is a pattern perhaps with that story and covid, where at the time editors think every new development in the story is encyclopaedic and every controversy is historically notable. Surely bloat-now and cull-later is a normal pattern? I wonder perhaps if Wikipedia is now the only contemporary publication that is remotely interested in a care pathway that was killed off nearly a decade ago.

The article currently says that the criticism was controversial, with some professional bodies and other newspapers arguing the criticism was incorrect. Surely citing the newspaper stories at the time would be little more than a he says / she says battle conducted on Wikipedia.

You say "the article really fails to cover in any comprehensible way the media panic that ultimately killed the pathway, or what the issues were that became so sensitised." That is also a general problem with current affairs stories on Wikipedia. Editors are over-interested in it at the time, but don't hang around to fix it up afterwards. Would it be better if the 2022 article was a random mix of Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph and Times headlines (most now either expired or behind a paywall) that contradict and fight each other and leaves the reader clueless about whether any of the claims were true or unfounded. Is it perhaps better to say nothing than to say something that is likely quite incorrect. -- Colin°^Talk 07:54, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

The Liverpool Care Pathway interests me quite a bit: it is to a substantial extent about the ethics of suicide and mercy-motivated homicide. I would say that rare cases exist where television and newspaper channels aren't reporting a story, but creating it. My position would be that the Liverpool Care Pathway is one of those, and we should disfavour the reporting media as sources ---- I feel we should insist on what Wikipedia wrongly and frustratingly miscalls "secondary sources" about it.

I would differ from Colin because I think we absolutely should be interested in historical care pathways. Wikipedia quite rightly has millions of articles about topics that are of purely historical interest. To someone who's mostly concerned with medical practice now, I would say that the phenomenon of link rot means that we, as in Wikipedians, have a role in maintaining the world's institutional memory about care pathways and the reasons why they were changed.—S Marshall T/C 11:14, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Should we care about it more than we care about the current approaches? Because I can't find those on Wikipedia. Does Wikipedia have a NICE Guideline 31: Care of dying adults in the last days of life (2015) article? It seems that a named protocol that attempted to cover many things, was replaced with five wordy priorities, and left up to hospitals and trusts how to implement them. Having a name for something sure helps when writing an article (and also when complaining about it in the media). So we've got this weird thing where Wikipedia has more information about the protocol used when your gran died than it does about the care your mum can expect.

A quick google found [25] and [26] which mention the LCP as a historical pathway in less detail than we do. And [27] and [28] which are serious academic discussions about the pathway and its failings (the former by the author of the official report). Both could be used to create a solid comprehensive article from reliable sources that examine a historical protocol/event from a historical perspective. I don't know why we'd think that in 2022 we'd want our Wikipedia article to be based on newspaper stories from 2013. -- Colin°^Talk 13:19, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

I think the fact that our information about the history is better than our information about nowadays is partly because editors work on the stuff that's in the newspapers rather than the stuff that's important, and partly about Wikipedia's various problems with editor retention.—S Marshall T/C 16:16, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

I suspect, though, if the Liverpool Care Pathway was superseded by the Manchester Care Pathway, we'd have an article on that. It might be a bit stubby and boring but we'd have it. I'm suspicious that those deciding new policies deliberately chose to not give it a name. It eliminates a point at which to attack and all you are left someone writing to The Telegraph "Sir, I'm writing to alert you to issues with Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust's policy on end of life care (2018-2022) 2nd ed. In my view they have incorrectly interpreted NICE Guideline 31 and as a result, three patients received less than optimal ...." -- Colin°^Talk 16:40, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Fair. Want to collaborate on End of life care in the United Kingdom? :)—S Marshall T/C 17:55, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

One note on the topic of 'do we cite a highly unreliable source when it is the topic of the article' that I've seen utilized is to instead cite reliable WP:SECONDARY sources, which may themselves link directly to the problematic source. Particularly in circumstances where the source is so potentially problematic (disinformation, hit-piece, etc) it's hard to think of a way to maintain core principles if it's cited directly. I'm not familiar enough with the British rags to know if they'd rise to this level, but I've seen it used for a case of a widely-circulated pre-print of an extremely low-quality study, funded by political activists, which was not submitted for peer-review because the author claimed a cabal sought to censor the information. There's just no value to citing the papers themselves on the author's page, instead of citing the plethora of reliable sources thoroughly debunking their validity. Bakkster Man (talk) 14:30, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

I think Jheald posted a good example. On the general problem, I have wondered whether we would benefit from an "anniversary reminder" system. That is, if an event happens on 12 Octember 2021, then the editors involved in creating the article should all be encouraged to show up on (for example) the first, second, and fifth anniversary of the event to bring the article up to date. An hour every year for a while, times a couple of people, could do really good things for articles about time-specific subjects. WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:56, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Improving the essay

I have taken some of the gracious, and not so gracious feedback from editors above and rewritten the essay. I would to clarify that this essay does not negate WP:MEDRS or WP:BMI, as some editors here are suggesting. It is meant only to guide good faith editors when encountering POVEDITORS who habitually abuse the guideline when deleting WP:DUE content related to political and scientific controversies where there is scientific uncertainty. Thanks. CutePeach (talk) 14:56, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

I'm sorry but it is WP:CLUEless in almost every paragraph (Though kudos on the humour of having an essay which contains both the exhortation "Editors must always WP:AGF" and the warning "Some editors go by an ultra orthodox approach to implementing MEDRS ... These editors will sometimes employ nefarious tactics"!). Why you've taken it upon yourself to try to lay down the law in this area is very suspicious. I would support an extension of your TBAN to all medicine (or a total block/ban) and think the essay should be deleted. This whole initiative is disruptive. Alexbrn (talk) 15:06, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

"that even the most adamant MEDRS roused DELETIONISTS", were you standing on a soapbox when you wrote that? I thought the original had a couple of problems, but the rewrite is a joke. - LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 22:51, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

The whole thing is also transparently sub-posting about the whole COVID lab leak nonsense (which I prudently blanked and redirected early on in the piece). Wikipedia editors are WP:NOTDUMB and at some point this oh-so-clever TBAN edging will get what it deserves. Alexbrn (talk) 05:19, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

Example: Havana Syndrome

• Talk:Havana_syndrome#Why_is_so_little_weight_given_to_mainstream_science? Notice the difference in behavior between editors in that topic, and certain other topics where POVEDITORS insist that only MEDRS can be used, even for attributed opinions. This demonstrates that it is a behavioral issue, and this is why an essay is required. CutePeach (talk) 15:05, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

  MEDRS is generally required for biomedical information. The fact that load of conspiracy theorists are all over so-called "Havana syndrome" makes it even more important we ignore the WP:FRINGE froth. As others have said above, your wheeze that "attributing content means we can use unreliable sources!" is completely wrong. Alexbrn (talk) 15:09, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

  I guess it's the monthly Havana syndrome namedrop. CutePeach stop arguing that disagreement on sourcing policy is inherently a behavior issue, especially in such a grey area. I'm honestly getting pretty concerned about your ability to edit the medical topic-area and would suggest you take some time to really learn to see it as less of a black-or-white me-against-POVEDITORS type of situation. — Ixtal ^{( T / C )} ⁂ Join WP:FINANCE! 20:55, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Ixtal when editors engage in ad hominem and make threats instead of furthering our application of policy, differences on sourcing policy become a behavioral issue. Take, for example, Alexbrn's skepticism of Havana syndrome, which a CIA expert panel has determined is real, albeit for a far smaller number of victims, in a report that has quite radically altered the story reported up till now. In the same sentence, he presents an example of how the association fallacy is applied, saying that because conspiracy theorists believe in it, we should cast it aside. In the same phrase, he mentions WP:FRINGE, a policy that is frequently misused in tandem with WP:MEDRS, which, as I explain in my essay, describes a spectrum rather than a binary set of alternatives. But returning to the topic at hand, what do you think of Havana syndrome? Would you support a blank and redirect of the page? Do you think the CIA panel is a WP:MEDORG and its report a MEDRS? How should MEDRS apply to this topic? CutePeach (talk) 12:45, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

The CIA is not a medical organization, and not reliable for anything beyond the fact they said it. WP:PARITY would be useful for Havana syndrome, some sensible skeptic has surely written stuff to put the conspiracies back in their box? Alexbrn (talk) 12:53, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

There's a whole book on it from Springer : Havana Syndrome: Mass Psychogenic Illness and the Real Story Behind the Embassy Mystery and Hysteria. The article does mention it, but attributes it in such a way as to make it sound like just another viewpoint instead of the mainstream view. MrOllie (talk) 13:25, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

Yes, and that rubbishy JAMA article (despite failing MEDRS) gets top billing, despite the fact it's been received with a contemptuous snort by other academics.[29] Methinks some WP:PROFRINGE-ifying has been going on at this article! This is in fact a textbook example of why MEDRS should have been applied; because it wasn't we ended up with a ~3,000 views/day article, saying in Wikipedia's voice that scientists had "found evidence that the diplomats had significant brain neuroimaging differences", when subsequent secondary scholarly reaction has found this to be at best incompetent work and at worst scientific misconduct. I have started filleting the junk out of the article but it really needs a ground-up rewrite to assert mainstream scholarship and contextualize all the James Bond stuff as the minority political silliness it is. Alexbrn (talk) 13:28, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

Is there an official set of guidelines for how to format articles on animal species?

A quick look at different good/featured articles on various living species shows wildly different formatting. The "lion" article's layout (etymology → taxonomy → description → distribution and habitat → behaviour and ecology → conservation → interactions with humans → cultural significance) or some close variation of it ("tiger", for instance, is very nearly the same) seems to be most common overall and is the style I personally prefer, but even within this general layout, there is a lot of inconsistency (sometimes headings are put in a different order, sometimes etymology and taxonomy are merged, sometimes "behaviour and ecology" is written as "ecology and behaviour", sometimes phylogeny and evolution have their own section, etc.) and some articles have a radically different design (alligator gar, willow ptarmigan, American bullfrog, etc.). If possible, I think it would be best to reorganize many articles to follow one clear set of guidelines so information is easier to find. --An anonymous username, not my real name (talk) 19:48, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

@An anonymous username, not my real name Is MOS:ORGANISMS of any help? It seems the short answer is "no." Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 08:36, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

Thank you. You appear to be right. --An anonymous username, not my real name (talk) 23:33, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of Life or one of the many daughter projects thereof may have some guidance. Perhaps asking at the Wikiproject talk page may generate some responses on where to find more information. --Jayron32 16:00, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Stricter policies at Articles for deletion

I have been participating in AfDs more, and have seen things that I feel need to be addressed. Three AfDs have spurred me to propose new reforms to this community process:

• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Marina Ovsyannikova - I !voted to delete and redirect the article in question. If you read the AfD, you will see that there are many "keep" !votes, many of them using arguments we should avoid using in deletion discussions, mainly based on personal point of view. Those !votes all came from IPs and accounts whose only purpose was to "save" the subjects article. Ultimately, the article was kept, even though it wasn't because of the SPAs. As someone who rarely gets over the past, I felt that things had to change in AfDs.

• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Let me solo her1 - While patrolling recent changes, I came across this article again, which had been nominated for deletion by a new user. I commented on the AfD because I got suspicious of the fact that newly registered users were able to find a Wikipedia process that I feel can only be found by new accounts when they are pointed to them. Haleth wrote an amazing "keep" opinion, mentioned that they share my concerns about the nominator potentially being a single-purpose account, and said,

  PS: On a side note, why do we even allow random editors below autoconfirmed or extended confirmed status the capability to conduct drive-by AfD nominations, especially when this is a topic area is notorious for rampant bad faith actions from block evading sockpuppets?

• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Victoria Asher - I did not participate in this one, but it reinforces why I think the AfD process should be reformed. In fact, Deepfriedokra protected the page due to the problems I have addressed.

I am thankful that us experienced Wikipedians know about the policies and guidelines, and resist ineffective outside pressure. As ScottishFinnishRadish said when an IP confronted him about his nomination of Victoria Asher for deletion,

melecie covered the rest pretty well. My actions have nothing to do with Asher, and everything to do with how we ascertain notability on Wikipedia.

Now, for my actual reforms:

• !votes that are based on certain arguments to avoid in deletion discussions, such as arguments without arguments and personal point of view, can and should be "thrown out" (removed), which should be followed with a message to the !voter explaining why. We should make a warning template for that purpose.

• !votes from identified single-purpose accounts/IPs should be removed because they will never affect consensus and constitute disruptive editing (this is the reason DFO gave to protect Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Victoria Asher). I know that there are some AfDs that have gotten public attention, so people come to the discussion and push their POVs, a form of advocacy. I also think this constitutes meatpuppetry because it involves recruiting people for disruptive purposes. Meatpuppetry is not allowed because it is a form of sockpuppetry. To prevent bad-faith editors from trying to alter consensus, all AfDs should be pending changes protected (preferably by a bot), allowing IPs and newly registered users to participate while their !vote is reviewed. A pending changes reviewer will be able to take a look at the user's activities on WP and decide if the !vote should be accepted or "rejected".

Let me know if you have other ideas dedicated to stopping bad faith editing on Articles for Deletion. --LPS and MLP Fan (Littlest Pet Shop and My Little Pony Fan) 22:06, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

I have not participated at AfD in a long time. Too contentious. --Deepfriedokra (talk) 22:19, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Okay. PackMecEng (talk) 22:32, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Concern .....simply not the place for content editors Moxy- 19:49, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

I think the percentage of AfDs that have these issues is pretty small, and generally closers are more than willing to discount obvious meat and sock violations. It's also not too difficult to get protection if it's needed.

The only issue I had with how the Asher AfD went was that someone restored a number of obvious meat !votes I had removed after the page was semi'd. Even that didn't effect the outcome, though. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 22:35, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Pinging Graeme Bartlett, as I mentioned them. [30] and [31] are the removal and restoration. Since AfDs are not votes, but discussions on how policy applies, being unfamiliar enough that you don't know where to contribute seems like it should be disqualifying. There should be a fair amount of leeway for removing non-constructive obvious meat-puppet contributions from discussions. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 22:51, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Votes should not be removed because they are poorly formatted or obviously due to canvassing. There is a danger that deleting comments is removing valid votes, and mainly because the remover disagrees. Someone who does not like the comments should instead add a comment about them. Later the closer should consider what they say. If their argument is valid, then it should be considered. And if out of policy then it can be ignored. We have two important things here: an encyclopedia that we are trying to build, and people who want something. The purpose is not to serve the bureaucracy. In the case of Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Victoria_Asher the page should not have been semi protected, as it resulted in votes going on the talk page, making it even more difficult for the closer, than if they had gone on the main page. And once someone put a vote in the wrong place, others followed the wrong example. Most of these votes are not bad faith and are not actually disruptive if they are voting to keep. Disruptive votes from actual socks or trouble makes are much more likely to be delete votes. You are right be be suspicious of delete nominations from a SPA. But they can be speedily kept if obviously bad faith. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 23:27, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Most of these votes are not bad faith and are not actually disruptive if they are voting to keep. Disruptive votes from actual socks or trouble makes are much more likely to be delete votes. You are right be be suspicious of delete nominations from a SPA.

?? I see way more SPA keep !votes trying to promote non-notable subjects than I see !votes for delete driven by off-wiki disputes. Most of those keeps are from COI/UPE/agenda-based accounts and are inherently disruptive. JoelleJay (talk) 06:07, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

@Graeme Bartlett: I hope you are having a good day and I apologize for not replying sooner. Why do you think that votes from people who came to an AfD with an agenda are good faith? Even though ignorance of the law may excuse when dealing with newcomers, bad faith is evident if they come with an agenda. I don't think that single-purpose editors will follow Wikipedia rules (this is why I do not like them). If you look at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Marina Ovsyannikova, there is a single-purpose account who !voted keep, HansClumsy. That account was blocked for making disruptive edits, such as removing the AfD tag of the article, assuming bad faith from other editors, and bothering an admin, Ponyo, over the matter. Their talk page contains proof that canvassed SPAs may have more bad-faith intentions than just attempting to alter the result of an AfD. This AfD had lots of people who came with the intent of having it kept, so it means that it must have been shared online. This makes HansClumsy and the other SPAs and IPs who came to the discussion guilty of a form of sockpuppetry, meatpuppetry. However, I don't think blocking them for meatpuppetry would do much because it's not likely that they would come back after fulfilling their purpose. (pinging ScottishFinnishRadish as they pinged Graeme to the discussion) LPS and MLP Fan (Littlest Pet Shop and My Little Pony Fan) 13:51, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Isn't it more likely that the many editors who came to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Marina Ovsyannikova saw her action in the main headlines of most Western news outlets, came to Wikipedia to see if there was any further information about her, and saw that her article was nominated for deletion? "It means that it must have been shared online" and the subsequent accusations of sockpuppetry and meatpuppetry are themselves assumptions of bad faith. Phil Bridger (talk) 16:55, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

These kinds of proposals come up fairly frequently, but fail to find consensus for a change. That's not to say you can't try again, but you may want to dig through the various village pump and AfD archives to see where they went wrong. I agree that canvassing and meat puppetry are nontrivial problems for AfD. Ideally, closers don't give them much weight, but that's not actually consistent practice. Ultimately, even though it's a !vote, few closers are willing to close against the majority (and go through the inevitable challenges, allegations of supervoting, and DRVs). Only when abuse is egregious and obvious, or when comments are way off the mark, is it uncontroversial to discount them. But it's not clear what a better system would be. We could semi-protect AfDs (or even ECP) by default, but what about new users who bring lots of good sources to the debate -- ok to relegate them to the talk page? What about article creators who are not yet autoconfirmed or extended confirmed? How would we create an exception to them? Canvassing, meat puppetry, etc. can be really hard to prove, so it would also be hard to build rules around degree of certainty... — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 00:01, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

• It's really the job of the closer to disregard weak votes, but the closer should not be mandated to do certain things because it doesn't leave room for compelling arguments and other context specific things. If you feel the closer didn't do the right thing ask them about it, and if they don't give a reasonable reply, see WP:DRV. -- GreenC 00:24, 24 May 2022 (UTC)
• There was just a similar issue at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Coco Bandicoot. Half of the redirect votes were either just WP:PERNOM or WP:JUSTAVOTE. Then when I brought up new sourcing, most of those still in favor of a redirect didn't actually give a reason for their stance, while another editor voted keep based on that sourcing. Hence, I think this discussion should have at least been relisted. I don't think consensus was clear based on the new sourcing I provided. MoonJet (talk) 04:14, 24 May 2022 (UTC)
• Feel free to take any of these to WP:DELREV. That's what it's for. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 04:19, 24 May 2022 (UTC)
• Number 2 is a non-starter, IMO. When we say Wikipedia is the encyclopedia anyone can edit, we really mean it. If someone without an account comes across an article with an AfD banner at the top and follows the link to the discussion, they should be welcome to engage in that discussion (though if their arguments are not compatible with policy, they should be disregarded).
  Number 1 is a recipe for strife. It sounds reasonable on the surface, but the big question is who decides which arguments to strike as non-policy-based? And what happens when editors inevitably disagree about it? Are we going to have sub-discussions to form consensus about whether a particular comment should be struck? That sounds like a nightmarish fractal of infinite bureaucracy. As others have said, it's up to the closer to judge the strength and policy-compliance of each argument. Colin M (talk) 17:43, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

  @Colin M: I understand your concerns. I think I should clarify what I said in my reforms (pinging Rhododendrites as they expressed a similar concern). I suggested that AfDs should be given pending changes protection in order to allow IPs and newly registered users to participate. After reading my statement again, I think it could be interpreted as shutting them out of the process.

  To answer the big question, experienced users, preferably people active in AfDs, should be able to decide which arguments are non-policy-based. However, some arguments that can be struck out are blatantly non compliant with policy. Anyone with some experience will be able to cross those out. For example, if a slew of newly registered users came to an AfD of a non-notable band in order to !vote "keep" with reasons along the lines of WP:ILIKEIT, anyone can strike out their votes because they obviously do not use any policies/guidelines and they could have found the AfD because they were told to (canvassing/meatpuppetry). I don't believe that any reasonable editor would disagree with restoring those kinds of !votes, but like you said, the closer will be the ultimate judge of deciding which !votes get counted.

  Thank you for participating in this discussion. LPS and MLP Fan (Littlest Pet Shop and My Little Pony Fan) 21:31, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

  Thanks for clarifying. I misinterpreted "!votes from identified single-purpose accounts/IPs should be removed" as (single-purpose accounts)/(IPs), rather than single-purpose (accounts/IPs). Still, I disagree with using PCP in this way for the same reason I disagree with reform #1. Colin M (talk) 16:22, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

• Perhaps the !votes of editors who support redirecting and deletion at the same time - which may not be technically possible and is certainly not compliant with policy - should be "thrown out" (removed), which should be followed with a message to the !voter explaining why. That seems reasonable. Newimpartial (talk) 18:11, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

  It's merge and delete that are incompatible without effort (see WP:MAD), not redirect and delete, but they should obviously be done in the reverse order. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:36, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

  In what situation is "delete and redirect" more compliant with policy than "merge and redirect"? Newimpartial (talk) 22:13, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

  When there's no mergeable content. This happens often when the existing content is riddled with copyright infringements, or isn't sourceable. Or the best target for the redirect is unrelated to the subject except for having a similar name. Reyk _YO! 22:27, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

  Actually, COPYVIO was the one limit case where I already saw the potential benefit of a page delete before recreating the page as a redirect. And I suppose where the best redirect target isn't related to the content at AfD, that might also mandate a page delete in some cases.

  But where content "isn't sourceable" (the much more common scenario), what problem is there in retaining it in the page history? I get that "merge and redirect" doesn't apply where there is literally no content to merge, but that doesn't mandate a "delete" (which always means a page delete, no?). Newimpartial (talk) 12:55, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

  My comment was simply to point out that deleting and redirecting does not violate any policy, if that is the outcome of a discussion. Deleting and merging does unless a lot of care is taken (per WP:MAD) to avoid a copyright violation. Phil Bridger (talk) 16:38, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

  While "delete and redirect" may not necessarily violate policy, there ought to be a good reason for the page history to be deleted (such as COPYVIO, or COI editing, or if the page history concerns a different topic entirely). For the vast majority of AfDs that result in a redirect, the page history should be retained, and any DUE, permissible content should be merged to the redirect target per WP:PRESERVE. Newimpartial (talk) 20:08, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

  I think we agree about that issue. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:19, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

• AFD as presently constituted does far more harm than good to the project (the presence of bad content being far less of a problem than the absence of good content; after all these years we still have amazingly little good content, and most of what we have grew slowly from bad content). AFD has been a source of massive toxicity for many years. It would be impossible to tally the damage it has caused or to number the editors it has driven away. I myself can only stand a few days in that atmosphere every few years. Unfortunately, a significant amount of that toxicity can be attributed to people using the WP:ATA essay/wishlist as if it were policy. Low-effort !votes and comments based on handwaving invocations of WP:ATA, or (to get to the nub of the problem) that place the onus on the article's creators/defenders rather than the nom, should be given no weight. (For that matter, IMO, deletion arguments not based on the purposes of the encyclopedia should be given very little weight, recognizing that the notability guidelines are merely a means to an end and applying them indiscriminately can do enormous damage.) In any event, this proposal would take things in exactly the wrong direction. -- Visviva (talk) 02:55, 25 May 2022 (UTC)
• Either a sock/meatpuppet vote is clear enough that someone should label it as such, and therefore will be obvious to the closer (it would usually be obvious even without the post) or it's not clear, in which case we risk removing viable !votes. Thus too, blatant ILIKEIT/IDONTLIKEIT votes. Labelling is also better than deletion because it avoids the risk of GF errors, or at least helps get more eyes on doing such. I've never known an AfD get the wrong result by a clear issue with such, and this proposal is not designed for the less than clear examples. There are reasons non-AC users should participate in AfDs, but I grant that the use-cases for a non-AC user needing to nominate an article would also usually make it easy for them to find another editor to request it for them. Nosebagbear (talk) 10:02, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

One idea is wording at the AFD that urges and creates an expectation that arguments should be made based on the guidelines/policies involved in the nomination criteria. For example, if nominated based on notability that arguments be in terms of GNG and/or relevant SNG guideline. And maybe to go further to say that closes take into account only such arguments. North8000 (talk) 16:33, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

• If it were up to me, all XfD discussions would automatically be semi-protected. There is virtually nothing of use that IPs and newbies can offer in such discussions. I realize that some IPs are longstanding contributors, but this will encourage registration in order to better insure that the IPs we deal with are consistently the same editors. BD2412 T 18:25, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

  This is absurd. Usually when an XfD is being brigaded/canvassed offsite, those doing so register accounts anyways in an effort to be taken more seriously. —Jéské Couriano v^_^v ^{a little blue Bori} 19:05, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

  Semi-protection extends to excluding registered accounts as long as they are less than four days old and have fewer than ten edits. Perhaps we need another intermediate level of protection for a somewhat longer period (figuring that a relisted AfD will run for about two weeks), and requiring somewhat more previous editing. BD2412 T 19:32, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

  @BD2412 and Jéské Couriano: Thanks for participating in the discussion. I agree with BD's idea, though I also think that we should allow IPs and newly registered accounts to participate as well. This is why I suggested that pending changes protection be applied to AfDs. Note that I did not say XfDs because AfDs are about articles, so they serve the most interest to the public. Requiring previous experience will help weed out !voters who came for a reason unrelated to Wikipedia maintenance, but how difficult would that be to enforce? LPS and MLP Fan (Littlest Pet Shop and My Little Pony Fan) 21:59, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

  CRASHlock actually is not an option here (and if it were I'd stop participating in AfDs altogether). The install used by en.wp limits it to mainspace specifically. —Jéské Couriano v^_^v ^{a little blue Bori} 20:40, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

  @Jéské Couriano: This is not true. Notwithstanding policy considerations, PC may be applied to pages in Wikipedia space (and that includes AfDs), as evidenced by this list. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:46, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

A Few Comments

I started one of the discussions about Articles for Deletion in asking about a particular abuse that I see (moving the article to draft space to defeat the AFD). I will also comment on a few of the points in this thread and offer another suggestion.

I strongly disagree with any rule that !votes should be removed or deleted. It is the job of the closer to decide what !votes should be discounted, so that the removal of material before the close is pseudo-closing, which we should not do. Purely disruptive material is of course a special case. It can be redacted as RD3, and so can instead be blanked without redaction. But the original issue was the deletion of stupid !votes, not disruptive material. Leave the stupid stuff on the record. Maybe it should be stricken, but not removed. Robert McClenon (talk) 05:43, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

On the one hand, I agree that AFDs should be semi-protected. One editor asks about article creators who are not yet auto-confirmed. Article creators must be auto-confirmed. The rare exception would be an editor who submits a draft that is approved by a reviewer before the editor has four days and ten edits. An admin should confirm them; it won't happen that often. If we do semi-protect AFDs, we should also specify that talk page requests will be ignored. On the other hand, if we do not routinely semi-protect AFDs, we should have a guideline about the occasional semi-protection of AFDs, and it should specify that talk page requests are ignored. Robert McClenon (talk) 05:43, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

General Sanctions

There are a few editors who either disrupt AFDs, or inject a toxic atmosphere into AFD discussions. Such editors should be sanctioned. The community has a mixed record about disciplining editors who disrupt the AFD process. I would suggest that we ask the community to impose Community General Sanctions, authorizing expedited administrative action, for editors whose participation in AFDs (whether to Keep or to Delete, or simply to insult other editors) is disruptive. The Manual of Style already has ArbCom sanctions. Deletion is a process that is disrupted often enough that expedited administrative action should be authorized. Robert McClenon (talk) 05:43, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

• I think I could support some form of this -- it seems like every couple weeks there is another huge thread on AN/I about someone (or multiple someones) being extremely rude on AfD. Of course, the sanctions themselves would have to be crafted rather carefully. jp×g 07:02, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

I absolutely support this as an effective way to reform AfD. LPS and MLP Fan (Littlest Pet Shop and My Little Pony Fan) 20:29, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

I can support general sanctions for XfDs in general - not just AfD - and I say this knowing full well I've had previous interactions on XfDs that would have led me to getting sanctions were they in place at that point. To me, the points that need to be addressed are both the rudeness and repeatedly bringing up points that have already been dispensed with by multiple XfD commentors, which often results in rudeness (either from the IDHT user or the frustrated people having to reply to the same points over and over). —Jéské Couriano v^_^v ^{a little blue Bori} 20:46, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

@Robert McClenon: Would you be willing to provide examples of times when the community has failed to protect Wikipedia against future disruption by failing to sanction a particular editor (or set of editors) relating to AfD behavior? I recall there was some ANI thread a few months back regarding the Article Rescue Squadron, but I'm generally not familiar with the history here. — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 20:53, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

Every ARS thread before the last one. Levivich 01:03, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Status of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion

Related to #Stricter policies at Articles for deletion above, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion (hereinafter referred to as WP:AFD) is not marked as either a policy or a guideline. Yet it is the description of the process for deleting articles where speedy criteria and "Proposed deletion" do not apply, and is linked from both Wikipedia:Deletion policy (a policy) and Wikipedia:Deletion process (a guideline). An ongoing RfC at Template talk:Article for deletion#RFC: Add Instruction Not to Move seeks to change the text of Template:Article for deletion/dated in a way that would make it differ fundamentally from WP:AFD - specifically, that the template would explicitly prohibit page moves during an AFD, whereas WP:AFD would continue to explicitly permit them.

Should the pages describing a process (whether policy, guideline or other) themselves drive, or may they be driven by, the text of a template used in that process? Where they differ, which one has precedence?

I would like the status of WP:AFD clarified. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:22, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

AFD is more a workspace for the implementation of the policy for deletion, and neither is a policy or guideline. It is expected that editors follow the filing process at AFD as given to make it easy, but we aren't going to take action against those that accidentally misfile or go outside the instructions there. --Masem (t) 20:42, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

I think that all of the XfDs (including RM) aren't tagged as either policy, guideline, information page, etc, so that might be of interest as well. 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 04:13, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

I don't think any 'process' pages (XfD, AN, arbitration, the noticeboards, etc.) are marked as policies or guidelines, are they? Policies and guidelines are about editing; these are just descriptions of how the process works. And if you're going to use a process, it seems obvious that you should follow the instructions unless there's a good reason not to. We have processes to make it easier to work together on common tasks—often ones like AfD that have to handle hundreds of discussions every week—and if someone decides they don't want to follow them just because the page doesn't have a particular template at the top, frankly they're just being a dick. – Joe (talk) 10:13, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

It might be worthwhile to create a template for such process pages that can sit at the top of such pages, something like "This is a process page that supports the implementation of (policy or guideline). It itself is not a policy or guideline, and these instructions should not be used to directly guide content or behavioral decisions of the community." , since we do have so many of these. --Masem (t) 12:33, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

You don't make WP:WIKILAWYERing go away by coddling the trolls. You make it go away by ignoring it; best practices are best practices, and those that argue that we can ignore best practices because of a label on the page where the best practices are written are not people we need to consider in these matters; they need to be stopped at all costs, not catered to with more faux-legalise to act as weapons in their arsenal of bullshit. This is just further WP:CREEP, and not useful. We need less, not more, of this kind of thing. --Jayron32 13:07, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Redrose64 created this thread in response to a question/discussion she and I were having on another page. She called something a guideline that wasn't labeled a guideline and I told her I found this confusing. I'd appreciate it if you guys would be a bit nicer and stop calling me a dick, a troll, telling people to ignore me, etc. This idea that we shouldn't clearly label things because it's too bureaucratic... I find it strange. It is a general principle of good documentation that documentation should be clear and accurate. People shouldn't have to read between the lines, discover something through experience, etc. If a page is regarded to be as strong as a policy or guideline, and it is not labeled as such, then why leave good faith readers to guess how strong it is when we can just tell them? This seems illogical, counter-intuitive, etc. If anything, the wikilawyering here is not me asking the question "should this be labeled as a guideline?", but rather folks trying to say that things that have not passed an official RFC giving them the strength of a policy/guideline are a policy/guideline, shortcutting our system for gathering consensus and allowing the argument that any random page is some kind of secret PAG. How confusing. –Novem Linguae (talk) 19:24, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

My comment wasn't directed at you (or anyone specifically). I have no idea what prior discussions you were having with Redrose64. – Joe (talk) 21:41, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

• Damn dirty trolls aside -- AfD (as well as MfD, TfD, CfD etc) drive the majority of Wikipedia:Deletion policy and Wikipedia:Deletion process (a P and a G, respectively). A lot of what these pages say is along the lines of "the policy is that you follow what it says at WP:AFD". jp×g 17:28, 25 May 2022 (UTC)
• WP:AFD and the other "process pages" like it ought to be made into guidelines, but only after being substantially rewritten and condensed. The reason I think they should be guidelines is to prevent WP:CREEP--to make it so that consensus is required for substantive changes--because otherwise, we end up with a page like what WP:AFD is today: bloated and full of statements that probably don't have consensus, are outdated, and that few people probably read or follow. (I would oppose the promotion of the current pages to guidelines, for the same reason.) Levivich 16:01, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

  I disagree that all process and procedure pages should be approved as guidelines. The main distinguishing characteristic between policies, guidelines, and general "ways of working" guidance is the degree of consensus support underlying them. For all day-to-day operating procedures to become guidelines would mean we would require a high degree of broad community support for each one and every subsequent change. This would be onerous and inflexible, and for many procedures, unnecessary: for the most part, the editors most interested in a given area should have the ability to quickly revise and refine their ways of working, as they are the ones most directly affected. Where there is conflict between ways of working and community-approved guidelines or policies, there should be a discussion to bring them back into alignment.

  I sympathize with the problem of changes to guidance pages which do not reflect consensus practices or views. However this is an ongoing issue regardless of the label on the page, and I think the ensuing discussions proceed in much the same way regardless of how the page is categorized.

  I also sympathize with the problem of guidance pages becoming bloated. For better or worse, English Wikipedia's collaborative environment and consensus-based decision-making traditions make it really hard to copy edit ruthlessly. The path of least resistance is to try to keep everyone happy by letting them add their viewpoints. Most editors just want to get on with editing articles instead of debating how to keep guidance concise and organize it in a way to support this. (Trying to write something in a group conversation is just very difficult.) isaacl (talk) 21:30, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

• The XfDs are process pages, and they derive authority from Wikipedia:Deletion policy. As process pages, they work to keep discussions in a central, well-known, and easily-found place. Where XfD pages produce outcomes that are not deletion, then the outcome relies on WP:Consensus. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:01, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

It's not "marked" as a policy or guideline because Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy. WP:AFD in itself literally functions as a policy/guideline even without being marked as such and is a supplement of the deletion policy. Using common sense, anyone reading WP:AFD should already be able to infer that whatever is stated on that page should be followed the same as any policy/guideline and is itself documented community practice. I don't see any reason to change the status just for the sake of changing it. —Mythdon (talk • contribs) 08:26, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

Mass deletion of footballers

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.

---

User:Sportsfan 1234 has nominated every Tuvaluan footballer for deletion. While it is true that most articles are 1-2 line stubs, there are several (Alopua Petoa especially) who have fairly established careers and decently-sized, well-sourced articles listing out their activities accomplishments in detail. Basically, the rationale is that we the editors cannot find many detailed sources, but this is common for smaller and less-developed countries. I really don’t see how anyone can argue that deleting an article like Alopua Petoa just because Tuvalu doesn’t have good Internet access is helping Wikipedia. There really should be a policy to help avoid this kind of systematic bias and removing good, valuable content. 172.58.30.172 (talk) 08:40, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

They nominated ten articles in the space of 17 minutes. There is no way a proper WP:BEFORE was performed for each one. NemesisAT (talk) 12:47, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

I do my research on a MASS basis first (if I know a lot of articles in a particular topic are leaning towards delete), then proceed with the nominations. With the BOTS doing most of the work, its no surprise 10 were done in 17 minutes. Sportsfan 1234 (talk) 15:41, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

"has nominated every Tuvaluan footballer for deletion." I will stop you right there. That is a lie. Sportsfan 1234 (talk) 15:40, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

All but three you've nominated (Okilani Tinilau, Etimoni Timuani, Joshua Tui Tapasei). BeanieFan11 (talk) 16:22, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

There isn't really anything that should be done policy wise. If they had done like 50, then perhaps we should be putting something in place to allow editors to evaluate the sources for each AfD. However, provided a BEFORE is done, 10 seems fine. If you believe this is done in bad faith, then there are other places to get help, but policy change isn't required. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 17:21, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

• @Lee Vilenski: They did nominate 50 (see every blue link (besides the three I listed above) at List of Tuvalu international footballers). BeanieFan11 (talk) 17:27, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

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

Guidance at WP:NCEVENTS out of step with application of it

I'm not sure if this is the right place for this or not. Happy to close and move it if it's not. TLDR version; the guidance for naming events is out of step from how we actually name those articles. Do we update the guidance, or fix the article names?

At WP:NCEVENTS we have guidance for how to name articles on how to name articles that typically involve significant loss of life. Mass shootings, military and political conflicts, natural disasters, terrorist attacks, transport or industrial accidents, that sort of thing. That guidance has a few conventions for how to name an article when there is a lack of a common name for it. When that is the case, it says that articles should be named using a When, Where, What convention. Examples given in the guidance are 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami and 1993 Russian constitutional crisis. However, if you take a look at Category:2022 mass shootings, as well as its subcategories, half of those articles (18 following NCE, 18 not, 36 total) are not following this pattern. If you look at Category:2021 mass shootings and subcategories, we see similar (19 following NCE, 25 not, 45 total). However I think for 2021 mass shootings, that may be expected as with approximately a year having passed, there has been time for a common name to develop.

My attention was drawn to this by two move discussions happening at Talk:2022 Laguna Woods shooting#Requested move 21 May 2022, and Talk:2022 Buffalo shooting#Requested move 19 May 2022. While I have made an opinion on the merits of both of those moves, having looked deeper I see that this particular issue goes beyond whatever local consensus is established at those two articles. At both move requests, a number of editors have stated that the naming convention for events like mass shootings, is to use Where and What only, excluding When, feeling that When as a disambiguator is only needed whenever there is more than one event at a given Where. If Where, What is indeed the convention, then do we need to update the text at WP:NCE to reflect this? Or is there perhaps instead some extrapolation of a local consensus to a wider set of articles? If so, do we need to rename a subset of articles in categories like 2022 mass shootings, where no common name exists to match the guidance? Or is neither of these appropriate, and perhaps instead we should soften the language at NCE to something like In the majority of cases, it is recommended that the title of the article should contain the following three descriptors:?

Oh and because it may come up, I don't want this to be read as WP:FORUMSHOPPING the name of those two articles. Instead I want to focus on the broader issue of inconsistency between the guidance on naming this set of articles, and the practice of how we're actually naming those articles. Sideswipe9th (talk) 23:13, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

I think in general, Year, Place, Event is descriptive and helpful to readers. Looking at the examples at WP:NCE that do not follow the normal convention, 2 of the 4 have notes distinguishing the article from other similar events at the same location. --Enos733 (talk) 05:02, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

I agree, though my issue isn't with the examples at NCE, but the discontinuity between what the guidance says these types of articles should be named, and how we're actually naming these articles in practice.

Another example appeared around the time I posted this thread. Robb Elementary School shooting. Let me walk you briefly through the page name history there. The article was created at 20:09, 24 May 2022 (UTC) with the name "2022 Uvalde shooting". Three minutes later, at 20:12, 24 May 2022 (UTC) it was moved to "Robb Elementary School shooting", with an edit summary of moved page 2022 Uvalde shooting to Robb Elementary School shooting: per other school shooting articles. It remained there for about forty minutes, before being moved again at 20:51, 24 May 2022 (UTC) to "2022 Robb Elementary School shooting", with no edit summary. Before being moved one last time, at 20:53, 24 May 2022 (UTC) back to "Robb Elementary School shooting" with an edit summary of moved page 2022 Robb Elementary School shooting to Robb Elementary School shooting over redirect: only one such incident occurred here, date unnecessary. Emphasis in both of the quoted edit summaries is mine.

This brief move war is similar to the ones that took place at the Buffalo and Laguna Woods shooting pages. Not withstanding editors who are unfamiliar with WP:NCE, I would suggest that these edit wars have occurred because of the difference between what the guidance tells us these articles should be named, and what editors are actually naming these articles when the events occur. As such, either we have a not insubstantial number of incorrectly named articles, because they do not follow the convention as lain out at NCE, or we have a naming convention at NCE that is fundamentally out of step with how editors are actually naming this type of article. So how do we address this? Sideswipe9th (talk) 23:02, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

It's standard to not include the year when there's only one event of that type at that location. School attacks are usually named after the school.

A more common dispute & inconsistency is that most articles about mass shootings in the US include the victims' names, because most American editors of those articles want them included. However, mass-casualty incidents of other types &/or in other countries usually don't include victims' names because most editors of other nationalities don't want them included. Jim Michael 2 (talk) 10:12, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

Jim, you've been beating this drum repeatedly over the past couple of weeks, but the consensus just isn't with you on this one. In the discussions we've had, at 2022 Buffalo shooting and other venues, the general feeling (which I also share) has been that the year is mostly useful in identifying these things. In a few cases, such as Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, the event is so firmly etched on in the public memory that adding a year isn't necessary, but that's the exception rather than the rule. There was a time when I used to argue the opposite, that we should omit the year per WP:CONCISE, but I have been persuaded otherwise, and from a reader-centric point of view it's definitely very valuable to include it.

As an aside, I'm wondering if "Robb Elementary School shooting" is actually the best sort of name for that incident at all. The press seem to be mostly referring to it as simply the "Texas school shooting" or similar.[32][33] If I were God of the Wiki I'd probably name this article 2022 Texas school shooting, because at the end of the day it's WP:COMMONNAME that should be guiding our naming first and foremost, not adhering to some nebulous convention.  — Amakuru (talk) 11:23, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

It might be best to wait a few weeks and look at news sources again to see how they routinely call it. In the short term a reasonably neutral name should be selected and I can see either of "2022 Uvalde school shooting" or "Robb Elementary School shooting" right now, but in 2-3 weeks we probably will have a better idea what the media will routinely call it and then it can be moved, as necessary. --Masem (t) 12:21, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

The problem with "2022 Texas school shooting" is that there is almost certainly bound to be more than one school shooting in Texas in 2022. -Indy beetle (talk) 05:25, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

While I can sympathise with the point, at least one of those examples is counter to the guidance at NCE. How do we reconcile that with text that says In the majority of cases, the title of the article should contain the following three descriptors: When the incident happened. Where the incident happened. What happened? Emphasis from the page.

Also I'm not sure if 2-3 weeks is really anywhere near long enough when considered against WP:10YEARTEST. How long was it after the Sandy Hook shooting before Sandy Hook became the COMMONNAME for that event? Sideswipe9th (talk) 03:00, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Another week, another shooting. This time 2022 Warren Clinic shooting. Article move history is similar to Robb Elementary School shooting. It was created at "Warren Clinic shooting". I moved it to "2022 Warren Clinic shooting" citing NCE. Another editor moved it back twenty minutes later to "Warren Clinic shooting".

Serious question, given how frequent these mass shooting are, what can we do to ensure consistent article naming in the immediate to mid-term aftermath of an event such as this? Do we need an RfC to establish whether or not the guidance at NCE should be followed? Sideswipe9th (talk) 01:31, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

I think this brings up another good point: I think it is impossible to know (at least in the USA, sadly) if this will be the only shooting at a location. While there have not been multiple mass shootings of note in the same location or city, that is only a yet.

I also agree with the fact that a common name cannot emerge directly after the shooting. Here's another point: with the frequency of the "smaller" mass shootings, will a common name ever emerge, or will they blend in with other shootings?

My point being this: my opinion is that for a year after the shooting, the naming convention for mass shootings should be Year, City, Type of Facility, shooting i.e 2022 Tulsa hospital shooting. Obviously, things can become clearer quicker than that, but we don't have a WP:CRYSTALBALL. Sheehanpg93 (talk) 20:38, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

If we're seriously considering renaming articles like Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting and Virginia Tech shooting to 2012 Newtown shooting, 2007 Blacksburg shooting, and the like, then we're way out of line. Those are WP:COMMONNAMEs and that is that. Love of Corey (talk) 02:07, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

That is a false equivalence. Articles like Sandy Hook and the Virgina Tech shooting quite clearly have a COMMONNAME. The When, Where, What part of NCE explicitly does not apply to those. What is actually an issue however is articles like the aforementioned Robb Elementary School shooting, 2022 Warren Clinic shooting, 2022 Buffalo shooting, and 2022 Laguna Woods shooting being named or having RMs to be named in a way that is non-compliant with how the guidance states these articles should be named in a lack of COMMONNAME. That is where the When, Where, What naming convention should be used, according to WP:NCE.

Either our guidance is wrong, and needs updating. Or we have a number of articles that are named wrong, and need updating. Sideswipe9th (talk) 02:14, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

Robb Elementary School shooting is clearly the WP:COMMONNAME, though. Love of Corey (talk) 02:17, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

Actually, Robb Elementary School shooting only returns about 19.1 million results. Uvalde school shooting however returns about 33.2 million results. Though given that we primarily use the WP:10YEARTEST assessing recentism issues, we shouldn't be trying to guess what the COMMONNAME is for at least a year. Until that point, I would argue we should roughly follow what our sources do while also following the When, Where, What pattern and call the article 2022 Uvalde school shooting. Sideswipe9th (talk) 02:22, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

And go against years of precedent with literally every U.S. school shooting article we've got? I don't think so. Love of Corey (talk) 02:26, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

If that is the case, then why is the guidance at NCEVENTS entirely at odds with this years of precedent? Why did the RM at the Buffalo article close with a no consensus to move finding if there is consensus against the When, Where, What pattern? Why too is the RM at the Laguna Woods article looking like it may close in the same way? And where was the consensus for that established? Sideswipe9th (talk) 02:30, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

If so, it needs to be reformed to reflect what we've been doing. Love of Corey (talk) 02:36, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

Given that it would require an RfC to change that text, what if the consensus is instead that the guidance is correct and it is the articles are named incorrectly? Sideswipe9th (talk) 02:40, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

The article titles are good just the way they are. Love of Corey (talk) 02:43, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

Clearly there is some significant disagreement over that. Sideswipe9th (talk) 02:43, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

Clearly. Love of Corey (talk) 02:46, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

I will point out that (sadly) there were two shootings at/near Virginia Tech a year apart - the 2007 shooting and a 2006 shooting ("2006 Virginia Tech shooting" redirects to William Morva). - Enos733 (talk) 04:38, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

@Jim Michael 2: said the following at the current Warren Clinic shooting move request and I thought it was relevant to quote here:

Many editors routinely include the year in article titles because they see it in many & assume that it's routinely included. I didn't say that the month is never needed. In a significant minority of articles it's needed because there has been more than one of that event of that type in that place in that year, such as April 2022 Kabul mosque bombing & May 2022 Kabul mosque bombing. We don't include the month in the title unless it's necessary, nor should we the year. People who don't know an event took place aren't going to look it up, let alone the year it happened, so including the year in the title is of no use to anyone. Who could including the year in the title help? Links in articles, templates, categories etc. will work as well regardless of whether or not titles include years. Searches such as [year]/[place]/[type of venue]/[type of event]/[perpetrator] etc. will likewise show what they're looking for regardless. If you mention the Guildford pub bombings to people, they're either going to have heard of them or not. No-one is going to not know of them, but if you say the 1974 Guildford pub bombings, then they'll remember

Diff link to original comment

This I think cuts right to the heart of the issue in this discussion. According to Jim, many editors only include the title because they see it in other article titles and assume it is routine. However the text at WP:NCEVENTS actually says the reverse of this: If there is an established, common name for an event (such as the Great Depression, Cuban Missile Crisis or a "Bloody Sunday"), use that name. In the majority of cases, the title of the article should contain the following three descriptors: When the incident happened. Where the incident happened. What happened. Why is this relevant? I was recently reminded that back in 2020, there was an RfC on the naming conventions at WP:KILLINGS because of a very similar situation involving 35 article move requests over the course of that year, which had resulted in inconsistent article names for that type of article.

We are now six months into 2022, and as of the time of writing in the category Category:2022 mass shootings in the United States are fifteen articles and redirects. Of the fifteen, six use the When, Where, What convention from WP:NCE, and nine do not. Two articles, 2022 Laguna Woods shooting and Warren Clinic shooting have current move requests open. The request at 2022 Laguna Woods shooting is to remove the year and rename the article to Laguna Woods church shooting. The request at Warren Clinic shooting is to add the year and rename the article to 2022 Tulsa hospital shooting because Warren Clinic is only meaningful to Tulsa locals. So like the 2020 situation involving WP:KILLINGS, we have had a number of article creations and move requests that have resulted in inconsistent article names within this topic area. This goes against the policy point WP:CONSIST, which is one of five characteristics that underlay all article naming conventions.

On 2 June, I asked if we needed an RfC to resolve this issue. I now think, especially because there was a remarkably similar RfC in 2020 involving inconsistent article naming for WP:KILLINGS, that the answer is yes, we need an RfC. Is there any editors who would be willing to help draft an RfC to resolve this broader issue of inconsistent article names? Sideswipe9th (talk) 17:03, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

I just don't think we need to be this worked up on the consistent "year place event" naming; that should be the default, but should be recognized that some of this mass events, such as school shootings or events near major landmarks eg Manchester Arena bombing, are going to be named after the building or place more than likely from reliable sources. --Masem (t) 17:08, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

If the title is clearly descriptive & unambiguous, it doesn't need the year. We rarely include all the five Ws in the title, and the rule of three is satisfied by Tulsa hospital shooting. Putting 2022 at the beginning pointlessly lengthens the title & doesn't help anyone. The year will never become part of the common name unless there's another fatal shooting at a Tulsa hospital. No-one will be baffled at that name, and need the year in the title to make them realise what it's about, such as: Oh, the 2022 Tulsa hospital shooting - I hadn't a clue what Tulsa hospital shooting could mean, but now it's preceded by the year I remember it well. Jim Michael 2 (talk) 17:43, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

UCoC Revisions Commitee

I am pleased that the UCoC Revisions Committee has adopted Chatham House rules. This means I can discuss what happens in those meetings more publicly and so I have decided to start a blog of sorts where I highlight things that I find important from the meetings. They are not going to be complete summaries of what happened. I will also say that while I am exercising editorial discretion about what I note in those summaries, I am going to attempt to factually convey what happened rather than give my opinion about it. I hope members of this community find it useful. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:29, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Reporting IPs for sockpuppetry

A month or two ago, I found a user on the enwiki who was blocked for sockpuppetry on another Wiki. I filed an SPI report after they evaded a temporary block by using one of their checkuser-confirmed sockpuppets, and now both accounts are globally blocked.

An Ipv6 address blocked for sockpuppetry on their home wiki is now editing on the enwiki. They are not editing articles they had been edit-warring on beforehand, but it is very clearly the same person. Should I continue to ignore them? Painting17 (talk) 16:47, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

I think you should take this to WP:ANI. GTNO6 (talk) 16:29, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

WP:AIV or ANI for block evasion. Preferably the former, I think. IznoPublic (talk) 18:04, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

No, not AIV. Sometimes, admins are kind and deal with block evasion at AIV, but it's not really designed to handle such matters. It really should be only used for the kind of blindingly obvious vandalism, like inserting poop jokes into article text, and not for anything that requires any prior knowledge or investigation. Please keep AIV clean from inappropriate reports, and use ANI. --Jayron32 18:07, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

AIV is only appropriate if a person, with zero background on the topic, can recognize each edit separately as inappropriate. Anything more complex doesn't belong there. Of course, if an admin does recognize a specific report as belonging to a specific sock farm, the admin may block as a sock per WP:NOBURO. 93.172.252.36 (talk) 03:55, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

Next steps on the Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC) Enforcement guidelines

Hello all,

I’d like to share an update on the work on the Enforcement guidelines for the Universal Code of Conduct.

In 2022 May, the Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC) project team completed a report on the 2022 March ratification vote about the guidelines. Voters cast votes from at least 137 communities. At least 650 participants added comments with their vote. A report is available on Meta-Wiki. (See full announcement)

Following the vote, the Community Affairs committee (CAC) of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees asked that several areas be reviewed for improvements. A Revision Drafting Committee will refine the enforcement guidelines based on community feedback.

To help the Revisions committee, input from the community is requested. Visit the Meta-wiki pages (Enforcement Guidelines revision discussions, Policy text revision discussions) to provide thoughts for the new drafting committee. (See full announcement)

Let me know if you have any questions about these next steps. Xeno (WMF) (talk) 17:12, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

NOTCENSOR, Controversial information, and Potential Vandalism

Can (and shall) controversial information about non-BLP subjects — with no concerns about sourcing or due-ness — be avoided from discussing in article-leads, simply because they are controversial and might escalate vandalism? How does NOTCENSOR apply in such cases?

Opinions are welcome at this discussion. TrangaBellam (talk) 12:37, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

• From my experience, anything relating to castes is potentially controversial. Figuring out what information should and should not go in the lead is a matter of editorial consensus. Nothing “must” be included in the lead, but nothing is barred from the lead. NOTCENSOR applies to whether information should be discussed (somewhere) in an article, not whether that something is highlighted in the lead. Blueboar (talk) 13:00, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

Ditto that it's editorial consensus, and NOTCENSOR and vandalism aren't the primary considerations. I tend to find the two main factors in the lede decision are a high degree of notability regarding the article topic suggesting inclusion in the lede, and a high degree of complexity and nuance to depict the controversy in an NPOV way suggesting absence from the lede. Bakkster Man (talk) 14:15, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

Agree with the other two. Consider an article like Gary Glitter, a famous musician who was convicted of child sex offences. There was quite a lot of discussion around how much focus needed to be given to it in the lede. I appreciate that that article is a BLP, but the same principle applies to any article that it's subject-specific and should be conesnsus driven by the editors working on that particular article. Blanket rules are likely to be abused by those trying to downplay controversy that does deserve mention. Theknightwho (talk) 21:24, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

• Simply assuming that there are no concerns about due-ness or sourcing is a pretty big leap. I'm also generally cautious about people invoking WP:NOTCENSORED for the purposes of arguing for inclusion - it runs the risk of derailing arguments by effectively focusing on the weakest opposition (or violating WP:AGF by ascribing that motive to absolutely all opposition.) Looking at the discussion at Talk:Baidya#Lead, there were several objections raised, not just the fact that it went against a longstanding (local) consensus. For one thing it seems like your edits clearly went against WP:LEADFOLLOWSBODY, which to me is often a red flag that they were WP:UNDUE (since if nobody previously thought it was due to even mention this in the body, how can you reasonably make the argument that it's due to add it directly to the lead?) Or, in other words - at best, NOTCENSORED only allows you to include something; it doesn't require it, so the WP:ONUS is still on you to get consensus, even in a situation where you think everyone's reasons for disagreeing with you are terrible. Because of that, you would be better off focusing on reasons why you think it is leadworthy (its importance to the topic, etc) instead. Also, since you implied the edits reverting you could be vandalism - it's important to understand that an edit made in good faith is never vandalism. No matter how strongly you believe that their arguments are wrong and invalid, as long as they sincerely believe them and sincerely believe they are improving the article or Wikipedia a whole by making them, it at least passes the very low threshold of not being vandalism. --Aquillion (talk) 03:01, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

Mandatory draftification of poorly sourced articles

Proposal: All articles not deletable under WP:BLPPROD having no sources in their history,

and all articles with sources in their history that are all

- unambiguously not reliable independent sources(e.g. Facebook page, deprecated sources, normal forums...)

- sources which were found to be not reliable or not independent for this article after substantial discussion at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard

may be moved to draftspace with a comment including "WP:Mandatory draftification" and with a civil message to the author telling them what they need to do to improve their article.

Articles moved to draftspace by this process may not be moved back without either addressing the concerns or reaching consensus that the draftification was wrong. Creation of policy-compliant redirects is allowed. Unless the reason was the age of the article articles may not be draftified under this process after consensus against their draftification.

Articles created before 2015 but after 2010 may not be moved to draftspace under this process before 2023. Articles created before 2011 may not be moved to draftspace under this process before 2024.

General Sanctions are authorized against any editor using this process to draftify articles. Admins may restrict or prohibit editors from using this process to draftify articles if they find the editor to have abused this process in any way, including bitey messages to the author. Appeals can be made to WP:AN or WP:ARBCOM.

End of proposal

Articles without any sources are a disservice for the reader. The reader cannot rely on the article, but if the reader does, then the reader may rely on an article containing WP:OR, incomplete information, accidental false information or even a hoax.

Articles with only bad sources are an even worse disservice for the reader. The reader might rely on the article and assume that these bad sources are telling the truth, feeling confident in something that is biased or totally wrong. These articles need to be removed from the eyes of the readers.

Improvement of these articles would normally be a better option, but would, sadly, take much longer, and it evidently does not work:Category:Articles lacking sources

Age restrictions for articles prevent draftification flooding.Lurking shadow (talk) 08:45, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

• We have to strike a balance between encouraging high quality, readily verifiable content and welcoming imperfect contributions, which is how Wikipedia grows and attracts new editors. I think our current policies around unsourced material—WP:NOCITE and WP:BURDEN—do a good job of that. If we do something like this, we'd have to mark core policies like WP:PRESERVE (prefer fixing or tagging problems over removing them) and WP:ATD (deletion is a last resort and alternatives should be discussed first) as historical. – Joe (talk) 09:07, 3 June 2022 (UTC)
  • This is not mandatory instant deletion. If the user making these imperfect contributions is politely notified - a requirement under this policy - and has a chance to fix the article in draftspace then we will mostly avoid scaring off editors. The growing number of very imperfect articles is a good sign that our current balance is wrong. Fixing articles takes much more time than removing them to draftspace. We also need to balance the wish to improve articles instead of removing them against the ability of editors to actually do so and the harm these articles present to readers. The evidence I provided strongly suggests that we are not balancing this correctly.Lurking shadow (talk) 09:17, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

    Although that was the intention behind draftspace, I'm afraid it isn't the reality. Nowadays the vast majority of articles moved to draft are never edited again and automatically deleted after six months. By evidence, I assume you mean Category:Articles lacking sources? There are 143,400 pages in it, a mere 2% of the total number of articles we have, so you could say that it shows quite the opposite. – Joe (talk) 09:32, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

    Not really. It is correct. The vast majority of articles moved to draft space are never edited again. That means the editor lost interest on their own, or was bitten. The requirement of giving the author a polite message that instructs that editor on how to fix is in this proposal for this reason, and the GS authorization, too, to allow admins to quickly stop any biting behaviour. This proposal is broader than just Category:Articles lacking sources. That's just the number of articles without any references. The number of articles having only terrible references is likely much higher. At minimum, Category:Articles lacking reliable references and probably at least some articles in Category:All articles needing additional references. But it is not just the percentage. Look at the dates. Around January 2007. That's a backlog of more than 15 years of articles. A backlog of 15 years and hundred-thousand of articles strongly suggests that we are not able to do it our preferred way, by improvement. And the sad reality is that these articles - in their present state - are more a disservice to our readers than a service. Not easily verifiable statements, possibly wrong statements, hoaxes, promotion/bias.. I am just talking about articles without sources or only with clearly inappropiate usage of sources(only primary sources, clearly unreliable sources). What I am proposing is not really exceptional, it is an extension of our core content policy on verifiability.Lurking shadow (talk) 10:42, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

    I get where you're coming from, and would probably be on board if draftspace was functional. But unfortunately nearly a decade of experience has taught us that, whatever the intention, most editors do interpret their creation being move to draft as a "bite", and no amount of well-meaning template messages changes that. Also, who do you think is going to work on drafts of articles that were created 15 years ago? – Joe (talk) 17:28, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

    Category:Articles_lacking_sources_from_January_2007 has been reduced by 87%. That's amazing, don't you think? It's not perfect, I agree. But it's not 15% either, it shows things are working along the 80/20 rule which is a pretty good standard. Perhaps 20% of them are just not worth saving, or are difficult to source. Let's not toss the other 80% which are easier to source. -- GreenC 07:09, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

    Do we have any equivalent figures for, say, 2007, as that year has been mentioned in this discussion and it was the year of my first edit? I'd be flabbergasted if the percentage of articles that didn't have sources wasn't much higher then than 2%. If my gut feeling is correct then we are doing something right already. Phil Bridger (talk) 15:45, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

    Exactly. Back in 2007, it was typical not to use inline footnotes. Or, this was the year it became more standard, 2006 and earlier you could get away with anything. Vast tracks of Wikipedia had no inline footnotes, nor even a list of general references. Much of that has been resolved. The contention that this is a "growing" problem is incorrect it has actually been the opposite, a shrinking problem. -- GreenC 06:56, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

  • The proposal is a good idea, if only for starting this discussion. A small (but not unrelated) detour, regarding the following quote: We have to strike a balance between encouraging high quality, readily verifiable content and welcoming imperfect contributions, which is how Wikipedia grows and attracts new editors. Is it suggested that Wikipedia must strike a balance between applying a policy and not applying it? If quantity in contributions and editors is an objective whether as part of some balancing act or not, one has to ask what kind of knowledge is then imparted to readers. What is the use of having zillions of contributions & contributors justified by a hope their content may somehow be verified in the future? While this future fails to appear, unreliable, misleading and biased information may proliferate thanks to Wikipedia. The only thing that transforms scribbling on an online platform into knowledge worth acquiring is the existence of easily accessible proof that the scribblings are factual and interesting. This is not an ideal or some utopian view. It can and should happen with every contribution. This proposal seems to be in agreement. 50.75.226.250 (talk) 15:04, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

Not at all. WP:PRESERVE, WP:NOCITE and WP:ATD are also policies, some of our oldest, and for that reason WP:V doesn't say "delete unsourced content", it says "try to find a source or ask someone else to if you don't have the option, then, if all else fails, remove or consider deleting it". There seems to be a widespread misconception that "unsourced" means "unverifiable", but only information for which no source can be found is actually unverifiable and should be immediately removed. In an ideal world everyone would make it easy to verify anything they add with well-formatted citations, but new editors in particular often don't know that they have to or how to. We shouldn't reject what can be fixed. – Joe (talk) 17:21, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

There's a problem with the application of these policies, in the sense that the verification of content lags far behind the quantity of it, without any clear way to resolve. These policies don't seem to work well. This as seen from the proper angle, i e. that of the reader. As far as readers are concerned unsourced=unverified. In a platform of anonymous/pseudonymous contributors, unverified information is more prudently viewed as fiction until proven otherwise. Sure, contributors love to contribute even without proper attribution, but it's not about them. It is a simple thing: if one contributes something, there must be a source for one's knowledge. We need to know what it is. If one doesn't provide that info, for practical purposes the source doesn't exist. The related contribution is not publishable in an encyclopedia, and should be draftified until it is. 24.168.24.89 (talk) 18:23, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

Support the general idea of codifying that finding sources (and thus determining whether or not they exist) is a core part of creating an article, and needs to be the job of the 1,000,000 editors, not the buried 30 NPP'ers or the folks at AFD. But it would be sufficient to just say that going to draft is the normal thing that should happen to these. We really don't need the "mandatory" type wording or being prescriptive on what happens next. Even if the exact proposed wording fails (which I think it will) this proposal should be pursued and evolved. North8000 (talk) 12:36, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

I also support in general. If articles have been tagged for this (sounds as if they should have been) and there is no discussion about fixing it within some time period, seems logical to remove them from mainspace because of breach of V. Selfstudier (talk) 12:40, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

What do you not support in this specific proposal, even if you support the idea? Lurking shadow (talk) 12:44, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

I didn't want to wade through and think about what looked a bit like legalese so I just made a couple of assumptions, that said articles had been tagged for want of sources and nothing was done about it, remedy being draftication. If there is something you can say simply that isn't included in there just ask and I likely will support it.Selfstudier (talk) 12:50, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

• I think there's something here, but I don't think it would be a good idea as written. (1) As to old articles, the timeline for improving them is unrealistically short (2023 is right around the corner, and 2024 comes right after that), and most creators have long since given up on this place, so this would basically just be a slow-motion deletion without process. Yet as a reader I've definitely gained a lot of value from older unreferenced articles, which often at least oriented me to an unfamiliar concept and gave me quick access to the basic facts about a topic (which I could then use to research further, just as I would with any other article). So it's not clear to me that (appropriately tagged) unsourced articles are a disservice to the reader, or that they detract from Wikipedia's overall value proposition. By and large I think they add value, just not as much as we would like. After all, there's a reason that the requirement of citing sources at all -- that factual statements should be not merely verifiable, but visibly verified even if they have never been challenged -- took many years to develop (and was not widely accepted at the time of the project's greatest success and growth, see e.g. WP:V as of 2007-12-31). (2) As to both old and new articles, the existing six-month deadline under G13 is not particularly realistic and does nothing to help the ultimate goal of article creation and improvement. It's quite common for articles to sit for years without being improved or expanded, which is fine because there is no deadline and article improvement is a lot easier when there's an existing article to improve. Without changing G13 (and the general approach to draftspace that it represents), this proposal would again just be a slow-motion mass deletion of encyclopedic content, which would hinder rather than help our shared goal of building a comprehensive summation of human knowledge. -- Visviva (talk) 15:19, 3 June 2022 (UTC)
• I'm not sure blindly shunting all articles in Category:Articles lacking sources off to draft space to be deleted after 6 months is the best solution. Some of them can be saved, some cannot, some would be better redirected to a more comprehensive target (even if they could be sourced, the information would be better presented in a larger context), for some another solution might be ideal. Each one needs someone to give it time and consideration. At that point you're back where we are now, with thousands of poorly sourced articles in need of some sort of attention and not enough people willing to give them that attention. We should probably organize some sort of backlog drive or competition for Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Unreferenced articles. I drafted an idea for a backlog competition based on Wikipedia:Stub Contest a few years ago, but my attention shifted and it never got run - plus there are kinks to work out in my idea. But if anyone wants to work with me on something similar, it wouldn't be a bad idea. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 15:20, 3 June 2022 (UTC)
• Draftification is certainly an option for dealing with unsourced or poorly sourced articles, but I hesitate on making it mandatory (or automatic) - there are, after all, other options (ranging from fixing the problem yourself, to saying the situation is hopeless and outright deleting the article). One of the reasons why we have the AFD process is to explore these other options, and find consensus on which option is best for a specific article. Blueboar (talk) 15:32, 3 June 2022 (UTC)
• Support idea and I support pursuing it. I'd suggest instead of "mandatory" we simply make it "optional": that is, any editor can choose to draftify an article if it is unsourced, and if that happens, then the article can't be moved back into mainspace until it is sourced. Anyone moving the article to draftspace for being unsourced should leave a message at the article talk page explaining that. (The creator's user talk page is not the best place for the explanation; the article talk page is, so it will be seen not just by the creator but also other watchers and anyone coming across the draft in the future.) Levivich 16:02, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

  Except it's already an option for new pages, and there was a recent RFC that banned draftification for articles more than 90 days old. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 16:57, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

  The problem is we have lots of unsourced old pages, not just new ones; this proposal would address that problem. I do not agree that the RFC (linked to and quoted below) actually "banned draftification for articles more than 90 days old"; "banned" is the wrong word to use, IMO, to describe the outcome of that RFC. But even if you're right, WP:CCC, and I see no reason we couldn't or shouldn't have another RFC to see if there is consensus for this idea, which wasn't raised during the last RFC. Levivich 17:13, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

• Question How does this play with the recent RfC (Special:Permalink/1078979320#Proposal to ban draftifying articles more than 90 days old without consensus) which concluded that old articles needed an AfD to get a consensus for moving to draft? Schazjmd (talk) 16:34, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

  It would pretty much reverse that RFC. ϢereSpielChequers 16:36, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

  No, it would carve out an exception to that RFC for unsourced articles. Also, note that RFC closing statements says: ...while there is a rough consensus for the proposal in principle, there was significant disagreement about its implementation. The "90 day rule", supported by a plurality of participants, should be considered a starting for further discussion and refinement. This seems like refinement to me. Also, the numerical count on that was 46-46, not exactly strong consensus. I really do see this idea as a good second step for that RFC. We'd probably get stronger consensus if we treated sourced v. unsourced articles differently when it comes to draftification. Levivich 16:47, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

• oppose - we can't have things both ways after this RfC. If this were to pass, we'd literally be saying that in the first 89 days after something is written, we can draftify after one notice, but the moment it goes over 90, it's impossible. I don't think we gain anything from draftifying articles on clearly notable topics. In draft space there is very little pushing people in the direction of someone else's draft, and if someone has created a poorly sourced article in the first place, there's a high likelihood they wouldn't improve it in draft space, having moved on, away from the project, or feeling annoyed at no longer having the article in mainspace. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 16:44, 3 June 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose don't kid yourselves: this is a proposal to delete all unsourced articles. Draftification is at best a fig leaf for deletion, because we delete all drafts which haven't been edited in six months. Very, very few of these articles will have an interested maintainer and there is no way other interested editors can do much in the very short timescale proposed, so almost all of them will be deleted. The idea that it isn't possible to source this number of articles isn't correct at all: we used to have 50,000+ unsourced BLPs, all of which were eventually either sourced or deleted (without using BLP PROD). Nor am I really persuaded that deletion is the best way to help the encyclopedia here. While it would definitely be better if these articles had sources, I'm not sure the unsourced versions are so bad we should delete them all. At least with BLPs there's a reasonable argument that they might be dangerous or harmful. Hut 8.5 16:54, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

  What's wrong with deleting all unsourced articles? Isn't no information better than unsourced information? Levivich 17:19, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

  It is much easier for everyone to check the reliability of a sourced statement and its sources. Unsourced statements or articles could be everything. Correct, biased, partially incorrect, hoaxes... It is impossible to know what applies. WP:A8 applies to all BLP's. A significant number of BLP's was probably removed by that quick method. If there was enough interest to clear the backlog permanently it would be gone by now. And yes, this is partially a backdoor to deletion, but it avoids biting new editors who want to improve the articles. Which is why I would not endorse CSD for unreferenced articles except BLP's. Lurking shadow (talk) 17:19, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

  I'm not saying unsourced content is OK, or that having unsourced content isn't a problem. Quite the contrary. However it doesn't follow from this that all unsourced content should be summarily removed. Even you don't appear to believe that, because you haven't proposed the removal of all unsourced content on Wikipedia, and the verifiability policy doesn't support that. I was involved in the effort to reduce the number of unsourced BLPs and I can assure you that the vast majority were resolved by either adding citations or sending the article through PROD or AfD because the reviewing editor couldn't find suitable citations. Very few were speedily deleted (certainly not under A8, which hasn't existed for a very long time). I don't agree that it's partially a backdoor to deletion, it's almost entirely a backdoor for deletion, at least for the articles which have existed for a while (which is almost all of them). Hut 8.5 17:47, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose we need to fix draftspace before feeding more articles into it. The original idea was a safe space for improving articles, but collaborative editing continues to be a mainspace thing. ϢereSpielChequers 17:17, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

  A big number of articles in draftspace stays in draftspace because they cannot be improved(lack of notability). Draftspace is still a safe space to improve articles if you are the author, and are interested in improving it. Lurking shadow (talk) 17:23, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

  I don't understand the desire to keep unsourced articles anyway, just give them a decent burial, if an article is needed someone will (re)create it. Selfstudier (talk) 17:52, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose See for example Category:Articles_lacking_sources_from_January_2007. At the top a history of how many in the category. It has been reduced over time by 80%. This is how it should be done, and is done. Deletion of weak articles from mainspace undermines what makes Wikipedia work. -- GreenC 20:09, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

  That only indicates how many articles were tagged this way in January 2007. There are probably still thousands of unsourced articles from even before then(like Finnish bread, 2004-2022) The total number in the parent category is going down, but very slowly. We're still 10-15 years away from the category nearing zero. Dege31 (talk) 05:49, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

  "Only"? It is one of many categories, one for each month/year. What this month demonstrates is the community has been able to reduce this category 87% through normal improvements (or deletions). This idea that we must not allow no-source articles goes against what makes Wikipedia work, why it works. Perfection is the enemy. Also, sources are strongly encouraged, but they not required, unless someone challenges the content on reasonable grounds not through mass blind removals. -- GreenC GreenC 06:48, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

  "It is one of many" Yes, that's what I said.

  "This idea that we must not allow no-source articles goes against what makes Wikipedia work, why it works" They are already not allowed if newly created, more or less. How does this go against what makes Wikipedia work? The project already has problems with factual accuracy, citogenesis, etc, so I don't think no-source articles help. Do we need more decade-old hoaxes?

  "Perfection is the enemy." Verifiability is a minimum.

  "Also, sources are strongly encouraged, but they not required" Inline sources are technically not required, with exceptions. Sources, in general, absolutely are. See [[Wikipedia:Verifiability]]. Dege31 (talk) 08:22, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

  What I mean is that WP:V says that information must be verifiable, if challenged. At that point sources are required. Verifiability is a process that happens after something is challenged, if it can't be verified (sources found) then it can be removed. This falls in with the WP:PRESERVE policy to make a good effort to preserve (verify unsourced) before deletion. Preserve says "Wikipedia is a work in progress and perfection is not required", and to find sources instead of deleting. -- GreenC 15:23, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

• Strong oppose draftspace already has a huge issue with too many reviewers using it as a way to slyly delete articles without going through a deletion process. Either just add the sources yourself if they exist on Google or other language Wikipedias, or nominate it for AfD if they don't. This number is probably impossible to come by, but I really am curious percentage-wise how many articles that are draftified are G13 deleted. Eyeballing it from experience, my guess would be at least 70%. As I like to say the best way to improve anything on Wikipedia is to roll up your sleeves and just do it yourself; the maintenance categories are already way more successful in this regard (no personal offense of course, and I respect you for putting yourself out here with this idea that obviously took a while to come up with). Curbon7 (talk) 19:33, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

  I've already used the word "flabbergasted" above, so let's just say here that I'd be amazed if the number wasn't significantly higher than 70%. The proposal should be to automatically delete unsourced articles, which I'm not supporting or opposing here but merely asking for some honesty, because that would be the effect. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:01, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

  I think it's worse than that -- competent paid editors will add sources and move back to mainspace. New editors don't know what to do/aren't expecting the article to evaporate/don't know how to add (inline) citations, and so the good faith material is preferentially lost. Espresso Addict (talk) 01:36, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose even though this is already common practice. User:Hut 8.5 have pretty much said most of what I wanted to say, I'd like to add on that in this event of this proposal, the condition that "sources which were found to be not reliable or not independent for this article after substantial discussion at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard" is going to be in practice enforced by checking Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources since nobody is starting an RSN thread for one article when they can use AfD. "Not reliable" is a distinct concept from "unreliable" at RSP and articles cited only to a "no consensus" source would appear to be covered by this proposal at first glance. While I still disagree with the overall spirit of this proposal, if it is adopted "not reliable" should be changed to "unreliable" to reflect what the actual goal of this proposal is meant to be. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 20:18, 3 June 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose. Draftification is not intended to be a backdoor to deletion. If we're going to make it mandatory to move unsourced articles to the draftspace—a place where they are not indexed by search engines nor easy for a Wikipedian to accidentally encounter it—there should be an expectation that somebody will work on the article. If the article is unsourced because not enough sources exist for an article to be written, WP:AFD is the route to go. If the article is unsourced because it's ancient and gets relatively little attention on Wikipedia anyway, dratification will almost certainly lead to its deletion. And, to be the most strict with WP:MINREF, editors are only required to add inline references in four cases: (1) Direct quotations; (2) Any statement that has been directly challenged; (3) Any statement that is likely to be challenged; and (4) Contentious material, whether negative, positive, or neutral, about living persons. It's quite possible to write a short article that does not hit one of these four cases, so the notion that citations are per se commanded by policy is mistaken. We are a work-in-progress, and the fact that unsourced articles exist serves as an area that we have room to improve, but creating a procedure to move 143K articles to the draft space (where they will almost certainly meet their demise) is not the right way to build an encyclopedia. — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 21:29, 3 June 2022 (UTC)
  • @Mhawk10: I think you misunderstood part of this proposal. It isn't requiring inline citations, but references - which are required by WP:V. In addition, I would have no objection if articles moved to draft space under this proposal are exempt from the six month deletion process; either they are not deleted at all, or they are deleted after an extended period of time. BilledMammal (talk) 03:17, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

    @BilledMammal: Fair point, and it's a goal from Wikipedia's early days to get to inline citations rather than to have bad info. But the only case that there's a difference is where there are general references but no inline citations. I suppose this is marginally narrower and it's consistent with my MINREF analysis, but I still think that the part about draftification being a sneaky backdoor to deletion is weak. If an editor thinks that an unsourced article is clearly non-notable or should otherwise clearly be deleted, the editor is more than welcome under current guidelines to add a WP:PROD tag or to blank-and-redirect it to a related topic without opening up an AfD in all cases except when deletion/redirection has already been objected to or would likely be objected to. — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 03:57, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

• Support idea. Per Levivich and others. I really don't see what benefit there is to an encyclopedia hosting tens of thousands of articles on subjects that only might be encyclopedic, let alone contain content that is even verifiable in RS. If in 15 (or 10, or 5...) years an article still hasn't gotten sourced appropriately, who is to say it ever will or could be? Why should the burden always fall completely on the few editors who patrol maintenance tags rather than the article creator? Allowing this stuff to exist in mainspace indefinitely sounds like a good way to violate WP:INDISCRIMINATE. There's also no rush for particular material to be included in WP, either -- it's not like the world is losing its only source of info on something if it's deleted here. And I don't believe for a second that enforcing a requirement for RS would discourage new editors any more than our general editing environment already does. I also don't think draftification is as big a deal to people unfamiliar with wikipedia as it's made out to be -- like yeah it's insulting(?) I guess for it to happen to regular editors, but they're also the ones who actually stick around long enough to notice and should be familiar with the proper remedies. Having your article deleted because it didn't meet extremely minimal standards and you didn't edit it for 6 months is a lot less ego-crushing than it going through AfD or being speedied. JoelleJay (talk) 21:55, 3 June 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose. I think we may as well accept that moving to draftspace is nearly always just six-month-delayed deletion. If there are sources to be found, they are going to be found by AfD or by reference tags in mainspace, not an unindexed, ungoogled heap of stuff that nobody ever looks at. Espresso Addict (talk) 01:30, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

  Could we make drafts tagged with "promising draft" more visible to editors especially newer ones?Slywriter (talk) 02:26, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

  Yes, move them to mainspace, put them in categories and link them to projects. The whole "promising draft" idea has a highly toxic history, which means no sane person would touch it with a proverbial. Espresso Addict (talk) 02:32, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

• Support. The number of unsourced articles are too high to deal with through normal deletion processes and we need an alternative; this is the only viable one. I would suggest that this should also apply to articles that unambiguously lack WP:SIGCOV. BilledMammal (talk) 03:15, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

  If they unambiguously lack SIGCOV, then just nominate it for deletion, instead of doing what WP:DRAFTIFY unambiguously says not to (use draftspace as a backdoor for deletion). Curbon7 (talk) 03:42, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

  Unfortunately, there are too many for AFD or Prod to handle - and that is only considering the articles covered by the original proposal, not this slight expansion. BilledMammal (talk) 04:01, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

• WP:V: "Any material lacking an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports the material may be removed and should not be restored without an inline citation to a reliable source" except if it's an entire article? Levivich 03:33, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

  WP:HANDLE: Great Wikipedia articles come from a succession of editors' efforts. Rather than delete imperfect content, fix problems if you can, tag or remove them if you can't. The editing policy expects editors to try to fix the lack of citations by doing a good faith search for them before resorting to deletion. That's the pushback here. — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 04:01, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

  A mathematical impossibility (checking for sources for every unsourced article), even accounting for "no deadline". Seriously, do the math in terms of editor hours to go through the backlog accounting for growth in editors and growth in backlog, and you'll see that the time it will take to clear the backlog is forever. And if you doubt it, the fact we have 15-year-old unsourced articles proves it. We are putting out unverified information to the world for fifteen years because of a belief that ... it shouldn't be removed until someone confirms it's not true? No matter how long that takes? That's us saying that potentially false information is better than no information, and that's backwards. This practice makes no sense and is contrary to our fundamental purpose of providing reliable information. Levivich 04:23, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

  If there are 143K articles without sources and people were to spend 10 minutes looking for sources to cite before putting up a PROD, it would take less than three editor-years to completely empty the queue. I do not see this as insurmountable from an editor participation standpoint. The top dozen new page reviewers (excluding bots) have reviewed over over 160K articles over the past year, for comparison. — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 04:41, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

  Would you support a PROD if editors were required to spend ten minutes (say checking the usual Google searches) looking for sources first? Levivich 04:51, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

  If editors spend ten minutes looking for sources before making the determination that the article is non-controversially able to be deleted, then that would make sense to me in general. When I !vote keep at AfD on the basis that I found sources, I usually found the sufficient sources within 10 minutes of looking. It personally seems like a fine rule of thumb for unsourced articles that's in line with WP:EP's notion that we should try to fix problems when we can and tag/remove bad content when we can't. — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 04:55, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

  That makes sense to me too. I'd support a prod that required ten minutes, and I'd also support the same ten minute requirement for either an AfD nom or vote. I agree it's not too much to ask and is a good rule of thumb for implementing the spirit of EP/ATD. Levivich 04:59, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

  So, in short, I'd support it as a rule-of-thumb. It's possible that some articles would take longer (if I expect there to be print newspapers, for example, checking newspapers.com takes up more time), but in general if there are zero sources after ten minutes it's unlikely that you're going to find anything useful from my experience. I generally spend longer than ten minutes looking for sources and formatting a delete !vote at an AfD, but there's more writing involved. — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 05:00, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

  I would disagree with requiring editors spend ten minutes assessing an article before nominating it for deletion, as some articles take less time than that, particularly if groups of closely related articles are being assessed at the same time. In addition, I don't think such a restriction is appropriate unless we also require editors spend at least ten minutes creating an article. BilledMammal (talk) 05:50, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

  Not possible either. Even if you could get enough editors participating, prod cannot handle an extra 120 prods a day for the next three years. BilledMammal (talk) 05:50, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

  Why not? — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 06:38, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

  Because the editors who patrol the prod categories already say they cannot handle the load when that many articles are on the list for a single day. BilledMammal (talk) 06:55, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

  More than fifteen years, really. The backlog is currently going down, so I'm not sure how you calculated "forever". Although, it is basically forever in Internet time by the point we will have only a few thousand tagged(sometime in the 2030s). Dege31 (talk) 06:07, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

• Yes, it should be easier to delete totally unsourced articles than it currently is. This specific proposal isn't exactly the right answer for the reasons articulated by the opposers, but we do need a low-bureaucracy process that does roughly this and can't be torpedoed by our more extremely inclusionist colleagues. Maybe mandatory deletion of anything after a full AfD if it has never had a source and has been tagged as lacking sources for at least two years?—S Marshall T/C 05:40, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

  I don't think that would change anything; articles that go through AFD without any reliable sources being identified always end up being deleted. In addition, the backlog is too large for AFD to handle. Perhaps an alternative would be a prod that ran for a month rather than a week, and required editors who wanted to remove it to find at least one source that a reasonable editor would believe meets the requirements of WP:GNG to remove? BilledMammal (talk) 05:50, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

  Or userfication instead of draftification?—S Marshall T/C 06:11, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

  That is probably a better option that the original proposal; it would allow the editor who created the article as much time as they need to work on it. BilledMammal (talk) 06:14, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose Any editor who thinks that any article does not belong on this encyclopedia has access to three deletion venues, namely WP:CSD, WP: PROD and WP:AFD. The alternative is to voluntarilly choose to improve the article to a status where nobody can make a rational argument for deletion. I have done this hundreds of times, as documented on my user page. These processes work quite well the vast majority of the time. If an article about a notable topic is unreferenced, then it is easy to reference it and bring the challenge to a swift end and resolve the notability concerns. We already have established mechanisms for handling this which is dealing with the problems rather than sending the article on a back avenue path toward unnoticed deletion. We should be quick to delete obviously non-notable content but slow to delete content whose notability is disputed, but can be established by editors willing to do a robust WP:BEFORE search. I strive to be that type of editor. But obviously, we need more of them. Cullen328 (talk) 06:37, 4 June 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose any backtracking on the limitations of WP:DRAFTIFY. Draftifying is only for articles that have a good chance of improvement in draftspace. Otherwise, where PROD is excluded, use AfD. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:26, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

  What about userifying? I still don't understand how an unsourced article provides any benefit to the reader, and especially given Google's promotion of WP in search results it seems actively harmful to keep such articles around indefinitely on the off-chance they happen to be on notable (or even sourceable) subjects. To me, it's a choice between eventualisms: if the topic has an existing unsourced but accurate article it will eventually be properly sourced or deleted, and if it's notable but doesn't have an article someone will eventually create it and properly document and source it. But if it has inaccurate unsourced info, we're now waiting for falsehoods in wikipedia-voice to eventually be noticed and remedied. To me hosting a hoax is worse for an encyclopedia than not having an article on a notable topic, and hosting accurate but unsourced material has basically the same benefit to the reader as they'd get from coming across the same uncited info on some forum. JoelleJay (talk) 19:34, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

  That's a very strong argument. Lurking shadow (talk) 22:43, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

  if it's notable but doesn't have an article someone will eventually create it and properly document and source it not necessarily. I regularly come across topics that I'm surprised still don't have Wikipedia articles. There may be notable subjects that never have an article because nobody ever gets round to making one. So deleting an article on a potentially notable subject may mean it is never recorded in Wikipedia, whereas keeping the unsourced article will eventually prompt people to find and add sources (as has been happening with the recent spree of PRODs and AfDs). NemesisAT (talk) 22:56, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

  Is it not also possible that the net benefit to the encyclopedia would be greater if all the time and energy being spent on trying to fix unsourced articles was spent on something else instead? Like creating new sourced articles.Selfstudier (talk) 23:04, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose. Articles should be improved rather than draftified. If it's not notable, then draftifying it won't help and other processes should be used. If it is notable, leave it where editors are more likely to find it and take an interest. There really is no excuse for draftifying articles that are "not up to scratch". NPP is not the editor-in-chief's personal assistant deciding what should and should not pass his desk. Wikipedia is for anybody to edit, and you learn to edit better by editing, not by having your work thrown on to the G!3 dump pile to die. SpinningSpark 12:34, 4 June 2022 (UTC)
• Comment (already opposed above). If everyone participating in this discussion just went and sourced a few articles in the unsourced categories instead (or decided they were unsourceable and prodded them), the encyclopedia would be improved. Espresso Addict (talk) 02:37, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

• In honor of your comment, @Espresso Addict:, I've gone ahead and referenced two of the articles in the 2007 category discussed above: The Lost Centuries and Ludwig I, Count of Württemberg. Silverseren^C 04:00, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

Further (edit-conflicted) comment. Having taken my own advice and clicked through some of the oldest unsourced category, I found no obvious hoaxes, multiple articles that already had sources of some sort, multiple articles that look like translations of articles in other languages (some of which have sources), multiple articles that are subtopics of an existing article where the higher-level article had an applicable source, multiple articles where putting the name into Google/Wikipedia Library produced sources immediately, several lists of blue-links which arguably don't need sources, and nothing on an obviously living person or still-trading company. I think some of the supporters have little knowledge of what the backlog actually looks like. Espresso Addict (talk) 04:07, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

I notice that the January 2007 backlog has gone from 424 to 287 in the last few days; thanks everyone who has been helping out. Anyone else interested in helping reduce the backlog, rather than discussing it, WP Unreferenced articles is a project to coordinate efforts. Espresso Addict (talk) 01:24, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

• Strong Support - we are talking about unsourced stubs/articles that are sitting in mainspace, and are clearly noncompliant with WP:PAGs, including at minimum, one of the following core content policies: WP:OR, WP:V, and one of the following guidelines WP:GNG and WP:RS. Sending unsourced stubs and articles to draft space is the proper 1st action, but if the concern is a growing draft space, then we should be PRODing them. The onus to source the work is on the article creator - no excuses - and any NPP reviewer who thinks it's worth their time to look for sources and do the work that should have been done by AfC, then that's their choice. NPP should be able to make the decision to draftify, and determine how best to handle violative stubs/articles & redirects, keeping policy first, guidelines second for the sake of the project. How do we know those unsourced articles/stubs are not a hoax or OR or simply fail GNG? How do we know that we're not dealing with a bot-algorithm that's spitting out stubs for some UPE, or PR firm that's capitalizing on the backs of volunteers who are working their tutus off at NPP? Atsme 💬 📧 03:24, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

  @Atsme: This proposal does not propose draftification of policy noncompliant articles. It is proposing draftification of all unreferenced articles. This is not the same thing at all, it says it right there in WP:V, the policy you are so concerned about, However, notability is based on the existence of suitable sources, not on the state of sourcing in an article. Being unsourced is certainly not a good test of whether an article is OR or a hoax. Such articles commonly do have plenty of sources included while unsourced articles frequently are notable. SpinningSpark 16:01, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

  What's the evidence for unsourced articles frequently being notable? Levivich 17:00, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

  • Spinningspark - If no reliable, independent sources can be found on a topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it (i.e., the topic is not notable). However, notability is based on the existence of suitable sources, not on the state of sourcing in an article (WP:NEXIST). The state of sourcing does not refer to "no sources" or "unreliable sources". According to your intepretation, all hoaxes, poorly referenced articles, and non-notable stubs/articles should be accepted. How does that make sense when our policies state the exact opposite? Regardless, NEXIST refers to the Notability guideline which is superceded by V, a core content policy. If V has not been satisfied, then WP should not have an article on it - we draftify it in an effort to save it, and allow the article creator to get busy citing what they created/want included. Again, the onus is on the article creator, not the NPP reviewer. Finding sources is a voluntary option, not mandatory, and we certainly don't risk the credibility of the project to save an unsourced stub; therefore, if you & the other oppose votes want to spend your time sourcing unsourced articles/stubs created by who knows who or what, then please do so while they're draftified before they get auto deleted. We have reached a point in WP history where automation needs to be a serious consideration, or the garbage will eventually overtake the project because it's coming to us via BOTs & other means of AI. Are you aware of Botipedia? Atsme 💬 📧 17:40, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

  @Atsme: I absolutely did not recommend keeping hoaxes and non-notable articles and it is scandalous that you are suggesting that is what I did say. My point was that hoaxes are heavily referenced and consequently cannot usually be identified by lack of sources. You claim "The state of sourcing does not refer to 'no sources' or 'unreliable sources'". I could not disagree more, that is exactly what it means. The policy page points to NEXIST which elaborates with The absence of sources or citations in an article (as distinct from the non-existence of sources) does not indicate that a subject is not notable. You can demand all you want that editors come back to the article they created to fix problems, but the kind of editor that NPP comes up against (at least the good faith ones) are not regular Wikipedia contributors and are not monitoring what has happened to their work. They have created a legitimate article as a volunteer. It is not for anyone else to demand that they do more work, and they probably won't get the message if you do. The kind of people who will monitor, add a few refs, and post the article again are marketing professionals writing just the kind of articles we don't want. So the net result of this proposal will be to throw out legitimate, but poorly sourced, articles and let through highly suspect articles. Often, it is obvious if an article is a hoax/OR/spam, but in general, the only way to tell for sure is by actually reading the refs provided or looking for new ones. SpinningSpark 15:21, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose. It seems to me that there are classes of articles that customarily don't have sources, I don't trust that any implementation of this proposal would take that into account. Then again, I don't accept the premise that articles without sources aren't useful. Arguably, the only truly trustworthy articles are those without sources, because they don't attest to any of their content. Even if sources are readily accessible, the sources selected may misrepresent the facts or provide links that aren't working or that are only available if you subscribe or that require you to have a book shipped from a remote library or to purchase it, so 99% of the time, such citations are a joke. Never mind that people can intentionally choose sources which do not reflect what's generally regarded as reality, and this happens any time somebody wants to do it, except for those relatively small number of articles for which there is somebody actively monitoring for this. Stop kidding ourselves, nothing we do here can provide a warranty as to the accuracy of the information, so we should avoid discriminating against articles on the basis of lacking the sources we would wish them to have. Fabrickator (talk) 03:32, 5 June 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose. Any excuse provided for ordinary editors to draftify articles will be used as an edit-war tactic in fraught areas of the project. Add a "sources needed" template. Tag it for an admin to look at it. For heaven's sake do not allow ordinary editors to do this on their own. Zero^talk 11:22, 5 June 2022 (UTC)
• I could support this IF we got rid of the idea of automatic deletion from draftspace (the “back door to deletion”). I have never understood why we need that. I see no reason why a potential article cannot simply sit in draftspace until someone improves it… even if that improvement takes years to achieve. Draftspace should be a nice half-way compromise between inclusionist and deletionist mentalities. It should be a place where we can retain articles that might be viable at some point… but aren’t viable YET. Blueboar (talk) 13:05, 5 June 2022 (UTC)
  • +1. I wonder how others feel about this. Levivich 13:24, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

    I would be doubtful that others will readily go in to improve someone else's (abandoned) draft, and depending on the state of the draft, it can be more difficult to work-off a dodgy draft than to start with a blank slate. Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:06, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

    I agree that for the topics that are truly do meet English Wikipedia's standards of having an article, it can be desirable to start afresh. Due to the collaborative nature of the community, there is a tendency to try to preserve previous work as possible, which can hamper resolving issues which caused a draft to fail to be accepted into mainspace. isaacl (talk) 15:17, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

  • Not all drafts are on topics that meet English Wikipedia's standards for having an article. To make it easier for editors seeking to find promising drafts in draftspace, there should be a process to winnow out unsuitable topics. The regular deletion process isn't a good fit, since by their nature, draft articles are ones that editors are working on to find appropriate sources so that they can be kept after a deletion discussion. A time limit based on last edit is an imperfect measure, but a reasonable first approximation on whether or not there is anyone still actively working on finding sources. isaacl (talk) 15:31, 5 June 2022 (UTC)
    • isaacl has it right here. The relevant principle is WP:NOTWEBHOST: we cannot let the draft space become an unrestricted dumping ground for articles about subjects that will never be suitable for mainspace (see WP:OVERCOME). We get enough spam from startups trying to use Wikipedia for search engine optimization, anyway. With that being said, while I don't see G13 as the perfect solution. In the past, some editors have suggested alternatives like a "DRAFT PROD" process that would provide a 7-day buffer instead of the currently instant deletion after 6 months—I am sympathetic to that proposal, although that's probably a topic for a different discussion. Mz7 (talk) 19:33, 5 June 2022 (UTC)
• Support either that or usefication, as a necessary corollary to WP:Verifiability. Unsourced articles are a disservice to readers. This is a problem that can't be fixed through 'normal editing' due to the sheer volume of candidates. If necessary as a compromise, increase the incubation period from 6 months to several years (or even indefinitely) for articles draftified after the last RfC. Avilich (talk) 15:27, 5 June 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose Draftification makes improvement of articles less likely rather than more likely. That's because it puts the articles where readers will not find them and where there's no incentive for editors to work on them and so only jobsworths hang out there. The emphasis on citations is spurious because these do little to ensure that content is actually accurate. That's because a citation is mechanically independent of the text that it is attached to and so there's no guarantee of any coherence or consistency between them. The fundamental nature of Wikipedia is that it's quick and dirty and unreliable. That's embedded in its very name and every page carries a clear disclaimer to state this emphatically: "WIKIPEDIA MAKES NO GUARANTEE OF VALIDITY". People who think it should be otherwise don't seem to understand the project's history. That started with Nupedia in which the process required careful drafting and cautious approvals. It was an utter failure and so it's futile trying to recreate that approach. "Perfect is the enemy of good". Andrew🐉(talk) 17:00, 5 June 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose Even among the articles that have been unsourced since the 2000s, there are still a lot of articles that I'd consider low-hanging fruit; articles on notable topics that shouldn't be hard to verify and aren't in terrible shape. I was able to remove over 30 articles from Category:Articles lacking sources from January 2007 because I noticed they were all about stations in Hiroshima's streetcar network and could be easily verified using the official English-language route map. I wouldn't be opposed to more aggressively PRODding/AFDing the borderline articles, but draftifying everything without sources would cost us thousands of easily fixable articles. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 18:06, 5 June 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose. The draftification of articles that are not recently created is often described as a "backdoor to deletion" because oftentimes no one pays attention to the draftified article, and it eventually gets deleted via WP:G13. Accordingly, this proposal is functionally equivalent to suggesting deletion in most cases for poorly sourced articles, and I cannot agree. This goes back to a philosophy that we decided in the early days of the project: WP:PRESERVE. Essentially, Wikipedia is a work in progress, and with the exception of biographies of living persons, it is okay to have some unsourced or poorly sourced content scattered throughout the project—the preference is towards encouraging editors to find better sources for poorly sourced content rather than to delete all poorly sourced content they can find. Mz7 (talk) 19:19, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

A lot of editors are pointing to WP:PRESERVE, and they are not wrong… However let me point to WP:DON'T PRESERVE (the next section of the same policy). BOTH sections are important. Sometimes preservation is the right answer… but sometimes it ISN’T. Blueboar (talk) 20:31, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

• @Mz7, this proposal actually attempts to save articles. AfC and NPP are the first line of defense in keeping garbage out of the encyclopedia. We are not a "back door to deletion". Where on earth did that idea originate? Perhaps you've misinterpreted our mission or the procedures NPP follows, because you misinterpreted PRESERVE which clearly states: (my bold underline) ...they should be retained if they meet the three article content retention policies: Neutral point of view (which does not mean no point of view), Verifiability, and No original research. The first step in any NPP review is to determine whether an unsourced article is a hoax, OR, and verifiable. They are checked for copyvios if sourced, tagged when needed or we do a little wikignoming if we have time, but when our backlog is sitting around 15,000 unreviewed articles with more coming at us down the pipes, we don't have spare time. We are not draftifying anything as a back door to deletion. When we draftify, the article creator is notified and we offer them assistance or send them to the Tea House. It's customary practice for NPP reviewers to try to fix the problems first, but if there are no sources and a reviewer cannot fix the problems, they either get tagged with CSD, a PROD or go to AfD, unless the reviewer can see potential salvation, and then they go to draftify. I've read the policies over and over again because I was concerned that I might be the one misinterpreting something. We try to keep a close watch on our reviewers - we're not perfect, and worse yet, NPP and AfC is ripe for UPE, so we have to be especially careful. Admins don't automatically get autopatrolled rights anymore, the same way NPP reviewers aren't automatically admins, and have to be approved to get those user rights. The job of NPP reviewers is focused on content which is not too unlike the way the job of administrators is focused on conduct issues. We're at a point in WP's history that requires specialization in some areas so that no single group is overwhelmed. As things stand right now, both NPP & admins are overwhelmed - AfC may be as well – which helps explain how some of the unsourced stubs/articles/hoaxes/OR/nonnotable companies/nonnotable BLPs keep getting into mainspace. I invite all the opposes to volunteer for a while at NPP. Maybe the backlogs will get caught up a lot quicker, and there will be a better understanding of what we're expected to do. Atsme 💬 📧 21:01, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

  +1. Selfstudier (talk) 21:07, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

  RE:We are not a "back door to deletion". Where on earth did that idea originate?: you misunderstood Mz7; they were not talking about NPP, but reiterating the point from WP:DRAFTIFY that that feature isn't meant to be used as the aforementioned backdoor to deletion.

  Looking at this comment and your strong support above, I think you may have misunderstood the proposal to some degree, as this has next to nothing to do with NPP; of course as an NPP reviewer I support the draftification of poorly sourced articles in the NPP feed; however, this proposal is broader than that and encompasses all articles, not just those in the NPP feed. Curbon7 (talk) 00:34, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

  Curbon7 has it right. Essentially, whether this proposal succeeds or fails will have no effect on the work of NPP; it merely proposes expanding draftification to use cases beyond NPP. Currently, new page patrollers can and should draftify poorly sourced articles that were created recently. This is because the creator of the article is often still around and available to improve the draft to a state where it can be moved back to mainspace. In the context of NPP, draftification is not a backdoor to deletion, and I never intended my comment to dismiss or disparage the efforts of AfC and NPP reviewers.

  The problem, however, is with respect to articles that have been around for a while and are no longer part of the NPP process—see the second paragraph of WP:ATD-I. This is similar to a backdoor to deletion because it is likely that no one will be immediately interested in improving random old drafts, especially if the creator of the article has become inactive. The overwhelming majority of articles draftified in this way will simply be deleted via G13 without improvement. That is not saving articles. Mz7 (talk) 01:07, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

The purpose of WP:DON'T PRESERVE is to clarify that WP:PRESERVE doesn't mean we should never get rid of anything. There are indeed some cases where we need to take out the garbage, perhaps if no sources even exist to justify a particular claim in an article. If an entire article consists of such unverifiable claims, then the proper avenue would be WP:AFD—if not enough sources exist to write more than a stub-length article about a subject, then it's likely the subject isn't notable enough for an article to begin with. This does not conflict with the broader policy established by WP:PRESERVE: that is, we should first try to fix problems where we can and only remove problematic content if it cannot be easily fixed. Mz7 (talk) 01:18, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose as this is not helpful in building an encyclopedia. Instead as a non-serious proposal: general sanctions against any one that damages the encyclopedia by unnecessecary draftification. Instead someone that wants to do this move should instead look for some supporting sources to improve the page. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:49, 5 June 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose per Hut 3.5. Also see below. Hobit (talk) 00:05, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

There is a beach with children building sandcastles

Some quite elaborate, decorated with small flat stones found at shore. Others just a pail of sand dumped out with a scraggly gull’s feather on top. But a beach with children building sandcastles.

Some castles are abandoned. Others have small groups with spray bottles and tools, building castles that are a wonder to see. Parents and other adults come by to see the children building their beautiful |sandcastles. A beach with children building beautiful castles.

As at any beach, there are children who delight in kicking down the castles. The abandoned castles, just a pail of sand dumped out with a feather on top. No one will defend those. So stomp they do. Rarely out of malice, just for the raw joy of being a child. Those castles looked out of place next to the soaring castles. A beach with wonderful sandcastles and children building them.

Of course conflict arises, as it will among children. Maybe one wants a great wall covered in stone, while another wants tall rounded towers. Or maybe one knocked over another (it was an accident mommy!) and the two start to yell. Parents step in and where needed rules are made. A beach with beautiful castles and industrious children building them: a wonder to behold.

As time passes the noise and bubbling of the children is less. The serious business of building castles happens with a bit less jostling and a bit more focus. More such wonderful sculptures are made in the sand: pyramids here, Einstein there and fish swimming in a circle. There are no pails of sand dumped out. Children who wish to make their simple first castle are sent farther down the beach. Here is where art is done. A beach of beauty, full of grand designs for all to see.

There is a beach with castles and sculptures.

• Strong support per User:Atsme and others. If we're talking about longstanding articles that have never had a good source, yes, move them out. Triage them. Set up a project to find the ones that most likely should remain in the encyclopedia, and add at least one good source to them. Otherwise, let them go. We have lots of stuff that is tagged for sources and never gets them because it's actually no good. BD2412 T 00:41, 6 June 2022 (UTC)
• Strong oppose, there are other processes in place for dealing with this. If an article is unsourced and editors refuse to provide sources, there's always PROD or AFD (where one of the outcomes could be userfication or draftifying). —Locke Cole • t • c 00:56, 6 June 2022 (UTC)
  • This idea that we are going to run 146,000 articles through AfD is just nonsense; I believe that would be more articles than have gone to AfD in the last 20 years? (Or however long AfD has been around.) As for PRODing 146,000 articles, that would also be problematic. If we take 10 minutes per article to process it (whether by AfD or prod or whatever), it would take over 24,000 hours to get through them. When and where are we gonna get 24k hours of editor time to do this? Levivich 01:24, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

    Yes, if I'd proposed only AFD you are correct, it would be just nonsense. We're lucky, then, that I didn't propose just that. Our editing policy is also clear that we should strive to improve articles, not simply delete content that is otherwise useful for an encyclopedia to have (see WP:PRESERVE). As an aside, we're also lucky that Jimbo Wales didn't simply give up on the idea of basically crowdsourcing human knowledge by thinking to himself where are we gonna get XYZ hours of editors time to do this [for free]? I think a better proposal would be finding ways to encourage editors to help with these categories. However you want to spin it, "gamerfying" it, promoting it periodically through watchlist notifications, etc., would be far better than simply punting these articles to draft-space to face CSD. —Locke Cole • t • c 02:21, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

    146,000 PRODs? Seriously? How does that work exactly? Whether it's AFD or PROD, you're talking about a -- let me use bold here -- one by one analysis of 146,000 articles. In 20 years -- despite finding tens of thousands of hours of editor time to write 6 million articles -- we have not gotten anyone to spend the tens of thousands of hours needed to go through these 146,000 unsourced articles. They stretch back to 2007. There is no evidence, no basis, for believing that, given enough time, someone will go through 146,000 articles and figure out if they're verifiable or not. The fact that it hasn't happened in 20 years is a great reason to believe that it will never happen.

    But I'd like to hear some details: how, exactly, are we going to accomplish review of 146,000 articles? Who will do it? How much time will they spend?When will it be completed? In your estimation?

    Whatever your answers are to these questions, why is it better to publish potentially false information for decades, rather than require articles to be sourced? As you balance the pros and cons of 'delete them all' v. 'wait until someone reviews them', how does the pros/cons of the former outweigh the pros/cons of the latter?

    I don't understand the viewpoint that:

    1. If we leave these articles in mainspace, unsourced, someone will eventually source them, BUT
    2. If we delete these articles, they are lost forever and will never be recreated as sourced articles.

    This point was raised above (several times); I have yet to see an "oppose" !voter actually engage with it. Why don't you believe that if we delete unsourced articles, and they're notable, they will be recreated as sourced articles? And why do you believe that unsourced articles will eventually get sourced (in light of the evidence -- 146,000 articles over 15 years -- to the contrary)? Levivich 03:36, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

    Holy hell, calm down. The encyclopedia hasn't blown up because of 146,000 unsourced articles thus far. It's unlikely to blow up in the next week. 20 years; you keep tossing this number around, and yet as you can see, they only go back to 2007. 2022 − 2007 ≠ 20 (15 years). 146,000 articles is 2.2% of the 6,907,245 currently live here. I'm actually really curious what happened in December 2009 that caused there to be nearly 20,000 unsourced articles while most other years are in the 500-600 range. Also, it's disingenuous to misrepresent the situation like you're doing, just look at the category page for December 2009 again:

    • As of 2 April 2022, there are 20,280 articles in this category.
    • As of 27 January 2021, there are 20,986 articles in this category.
    • As of 9 December 2021, there are 21,402 articles in this category.
    • As of 24 August 2021, there are 22,228 articles in this category.
    • As of 31 May 2021, there are 22,700 articles in this category.
    • As of 17 May 2021, there are 22,830 articles in this category.
    • As of 8 Jan 2021, there are 25,000 articles in this category. (Over three quarter way!)
    • As of 11 November 2020, there are 25,479 articles in this category.
    • As of 8 April 2019, there are 30,942 articles in this category.
    • As of 2 November 2018, there are 34,013 articles in this category.
    • As of 18 February 2018, there are 36,448 articles in this category.
    • As of 16 July 2017, there are 38,800 articles in this category.
    • As of 18 February 2017, there are 40,496 articles in this category.
    • As of 5 September 2016, there are 42,521 articles in this category.
    • As of 31 December 2015, there are 46,143 articles in this category.
    • As of 30 August 2015, there are 48,287 articles in this category. (Over half way!)
    • As of 6 February 2015, there were 51,310 articles in this category.
    • As of 2 January 2014, there were 59,109 articles in this category.
    • As of 16 September 2013, there are 61,268 articles in this category.
    • As of December 2009, there were ~100,000 articles in this category.

  Clearly someone has been working on it. Likely these mythical people you seem to think don't exist. I'm not even going to address the rest of what you wrote, clearly this is not a problem to the level that we need to overhaul how we treat articles. Proposals that shine a light on this issue would be a better use of people's time. In so much as this exact proposal though? I am still strongly opposed. —Locke Cole • t • c 04:38, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

  I'm calm, but you're studiously avoiding the issue. Look at your own stats. First, it is 20 years because we've always had unsourced articles. Second, despite the work that's been put in, which includes not only the reduction of some categories, but also the entirety of NPP that attempts to keep up with the new unsourced (or under sourced) articles, we still have 146k today. That's with all the effort already put in, still 146k! How much more effort so we need, over and above what we're already putting in, to catch up? No matter how you slice, we're talking years to get through it, and realistically maybe another 15 years. So, the main issue: during the years (decades?) that we have unsourced articles, why is it better to risk the potential of disseminating misinformation, rather than moving them all out of mainspace (one way or another)? Why isn't the risk of misinformation not a concern for you (and others who are OK with leaving unsourced articles in mainspace for years)? I still don't get it. Levivich 05:15, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

  I would also expect that of the issues that people have been working on, most have been resolved not by sourcing of the unsourced content, but by deletion. BD2412 T 05:24, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

Comment I think what Levivich said in the thread above is pretty indicative of what this proposal is meant to do, as they kinda said the quiet part out loud. There is little to no intent with this proposal to actually assess or rescue these articles. The intent is to delete these articles, as has been stated in the various responses above. Additionally, as !supporters have pointed out above, 146k articles is irreviewable for AfD or PROD, so to follow that same logic, moving them to draftspace is also irreviewable. Let's everyone just be honest with ourselves and skip the formality of draftification and say what you actually want the proposal to say: i.e. CSD all 146k unsourced articles. Everyone here wants to improve the encyclopedia, so I don't want to come across as chastising, and I highly respect everyone for putting their opinions out there, but let's stop beating around the bush and be honest with what this proposal is meant to do. Curbon7 (talk) 04:09, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

• Nothing in our policies prevents any editor from going forth right now and adding a PROD tag to every single long-term unsourced article in the encyclopedia. Maybe another editor would come along and de-PROD them all, or maybe no one would get around to it. Draftification, at least, gives (at least) six months, rather than a week, to check on them. Let's not operate under the assumption, however, that the articles under discussion here are particularly important topics to be covered in an encyclopedia. The things that really matter, we tend to alreday have well-sourced. BD2412 T 04:50, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

  WP:POINT still exists, which a mass PROD of 146,000 articles would surely run afoul of. —Locke Cole • t • c 05:00, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

  Yeah, BD, if I PROD 146k articles will you promise to unblock me and restore my AWB perm? :-) Levivich 05:06, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

  Given a bit of time, I suspect I can find a few hundred Wikipedians who would be willing to PROD a few hundred articles each. Let's say 400 Wikipedians each PRODding one article per day for a year. 400 x 365, as it happens, equals... 146,000 exactly. BD2412 T 05:14, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

  Sign me up! Levivich 05:16, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

  It's not really fair to ascribe my opinions to this proposal because I'm not the proposer. Just because I am in favor of CSDing all 146k articles -- which is no secret btw and not the quiet part, I'm quite vocal about this -- doesn't mean the OP is, nor does it mean that's what this proposal is intended to do (kind of a lack of AGF there btw). Because I am in favor of CSDing all these articles, I'm also in favor of PRODing them (which would give a week for review), or draftifying them (six months), or userfying them (forever). Each of these options are different, not only due to the time periods but also the requirements and procedure. It's not fair to say that a proposal for one of them is really a proposal for another. Levivich 05:06, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose From a quick perusal of the category I find articles like 15th British Academy Film Awards and Registered owner which obviously shouldn't be deleted. There's certainly unimportant things in the category but there's a lot of articles that should be redirected, or are important but just not sourced yet. I certainly strongly supporting sourcing in articles, but tbh I think unsourced parts of existing articles is a much bigger problem while a lot of the articles in the category are also of the "evidently verifiable" kind like the film awards article. Galobtter (pingó mió) 05:27, 6 June 2022 (UTC)
  • (I know I'm badgering, sorry.) No doubt the topics are notable, but that doesn't mean the content of the articles is accurate. The proposal isn't to delete but to draftify... we draftify notable articles already. Even if they do get deleted, they can always be recreated. I don't think the objection is that the topics are not notable, it's that the content is unverified, so we risk spreading misinformation about things like 15th British Academy Film Awards and Registered owner. Levivich 06:08, 6 June 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose - If you want to delete an article, then delete it. Draftification should not be used as a backdoor to this. Poorly sourced articles SHOULD be straight-deleted via PROD/AFD, and if editors are excessively resistant to deletion then this is a problem with those editors simply not understanding sourcing rules. FOARP (talk) 11:11, 6 June 2022 (UTC)
  • The issue is that current policy doesn't allow for the deletion of an article on the basis of not having good sources. Rather, the requirement is that those sources don't exist. What many of us are objecting to is that this is a back-door way of changing the sourcing requirement from "exists" to "in the article". My guess is that is where we are heading, but if so, we should do so with our eyes open. Hobit (talk) 11:34, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

Upper case or lower case in titles

Is there an established policy on the style for referring to people heading academic units? Is the correct form Professor/Dr X, Director/Deputy Director/Chair {whatever term is used by the institution} of the Y Centre/Institute/Department? Mcljlm (talk) 17:26, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

See WP:JOBTITLE, it depends on context, but generally these will be lower case if we're not referring to the specific office name. --Masem (t) 17:45, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

Does that mean "Professor X, Director of the Y Centre" is incorrect? Mcljlm (talk) 18:41, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

"Professor" and "Dr." are titles so should be capitalised just as "Ms." and "Mr." are capitalised, but the other examples you give are simply job positions, not titles, so shouldn't not be capitalised any more than we would capitalise "bus driver" or "gardener". These are simply the rules of English; nothing specific to Wikipedia. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:55, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

Here are a few examples from UK and US universities where director is capitalised, indicating that in at least some cases it should be regarded as a title:

"Margaret Connolly is ... Director of the St Andrews Institute"

"Professor Hanna ... is currently Director of"

"Nigel Gilbert CBE ... is Director of the Centre for ... and Director of the University’s Institute of"

"Professor Catherine Clarke is Director of the Centre for"

"Jack P. Shonkoff is ... Director of the university-wide Center on"

"Robert Berkhofer ... is also currently Deputy Director of the Medieval Institute."

"Dennis Frenchman ... is Director of the Center

"Dr. Banks is Director of the Interdisciplinary Center"

"David C. Barker is ... Director of the Center" Mcljlm (talk) 03:45, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

That just shows that ignorant marketing people (who for some reason think that having capital letters makes the holder of the position look more important) have taken over much communication from universities that should know better. Phil Bridger (talk) 07:38, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

The pages from which I've quoted Phil Bridger appear to be for general information rather than as press releases. Mcljlm (talk) 00:49, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

You're talking about two different types of titles here. Honorifics (Dr., Professor) that go before a person's name are always capitalised, but also generally used sparingly in articles per MOS:HONORIFIC. But I think Mcljlm is right that it's much less clear what we should do about these types of job titles. MOS:JOBTITLES says to capitalise it if it's used as as specific, unmodified, formal title (Jane Smith is Professor of English at the University of Oxbridge) but not in running text (Jane Smith is a professor in the English department at the University of Oxbridge). That's usually followed with professorships but where the title is "director" or "chair" it seems much less consistent. I'd lean towards not capitalising (Jane Smith is the director of the Centre for English Studies at the University of Oxbridge) because I don't think it is a "formal title for a specific entity" in the same way that professorial titles are, but I'm no MOS expert... – Joe (talk) 06:09, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

References

Is WP:NCHESS a notability policy

There is continual problems and confusion over the use of WP:NCHESS at Afd and in the used for justification for reams of badly sources chess bios. As far as a I know it is not policy, except it seems to be continually used as though it is policy, for example at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Alexander Bagrationi (chess). scope_creep^Talk 19:26, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

It doesn't supersede WP:GNG, which it clearly states, so it's a benchmark for likely notability. Though I see that discussion has devolved into arguing its compatibility to NSPORT, which is a contentious SNG that divides the community. Meeting WP:GNG should always be the goal because outside narrow exceptions GNG must be eventually met. NPROF with looser/different standards and NCORP with stricter standards would be examples of actually deviating from GNG.Slywriter (talk) 19:53, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

• The key to understanding how our various Subject Notability Guidelines (SNGs) and our General Notability Guideline (GNG) work in tandem is to understand the word “presumed”… it means that if the article topic meets the SNG criteria, it is highly likely that there will be reliable sources to also pass GNG.

However, this is not guaranteed. It means we give the article a “benefit of the doubt” at AFD… we hesitate, and conduct a thorough search for those presumed sources BEFORE deleting (and ideally before nominating). It does NOT mean we can not delete if it turns out those sources don’t actually exist. Blueboar (talk) 20:15, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

Well, NCHESS isn't even an SNG, so this is ultimately irrelevant. JoelleJay (talk) 21:31, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

Though even giving it the credit of a half step below a SNG (for ease of discussion), the key statement from Blueboar is "benefit of doubt". Reading the AfD that benefit of doubt has been questioned and sourcing should be provided as part of a valid keep rationale.Slywriter (talk) 22:51, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

As discussed elsewhere, even WP:N isn't a policy. It is a guideline, and WP:GNG is the most commonly used and probably most useful guideline to help us determine what is encyclopedically worthy of attention. It and several WP:SNG's have broad community support and longstanding consensus. In the case of WP:NCHESS, it has not achieved broad community consensus. Probably because it is a niche topic. However, this has been developed by subject matter experts, as to which topics are likely worthy of attention for a specialized encyclopedia, so if the topic meets one of the criteria it seems reasonable to give that some weight. That said, NCHESS subjects itself to GNG, so if for instance the topic fails WP:V or WP:NOTDICTIONARY, it would seem reasonable that these issues would supersede any criteria of NCHESS. 78.26 _{(spin me / revolutions)} 02:32, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

It's not a guideline, but it's also not a huge reach. The most inclusive of the components is the claim that GMs are notable. Fewer than 2000 GM titles have ever been issued, and it's one of the most played games in the world. The big problems for sourcing are (a) the GMs who haven't been particularly active in the last 15 years of internet coverage, and (b) most GMs do not live in English-speaking countries (and many of those other countries don't use a Latin script, making searching difficult). This all makes WP:BEFORE challenging. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 03:06, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

Dealing with large numbers of articles that fail WP:N, WP:V, or WP:OR

The following list consists of articles that should either be prodded or taken to AfD, and was produced by reviewing a small number of the articles created by banned sockmaster BlackJack. By reviewing the creations of editors like BlackJack lists this size or longer can be produced every day for years, and this is something that neither AfD nor Prod can handle - and the third option, silently redirecting, is not an option for many of these articles, and is opposed by some editors.

The existence of mass produced stubs that fail our notability guidelines is a problem that needs to be resolved to improve Wikipedia, but our current processes cannot handle that problem.

I believe that moving to user space or draft space all articles that do not include any sources that a reasonable editor could believe meets the requirements of WP:GNG would reduce the scale of the problem to one that can be handled through our normal processes, but based on the discussion above such a proposal would be rejected by the community. Instead, I open this discussion to find an alternative; a different process that would allow us to address the problem without overwhelming our existing processes.

BilledMammal (talk) 06:24, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

I agree there's a larger issue with mass stubs being created on articles that (used to) meet WP:NSPORT based on database entries, that probably don't have significant coverage since the people only played a couple games. It's an issue with football and other sport articles too. Changing WP:NSPORT was the first step but dealing with the massive amount of stubs already created is a hard issue. However if the articles are so noncontroversial to delete, then a mass AfD should work. Tbh since the articles here are sourced and of dead people I don't think it's that big of an issue that the articles exist, beyond WP:NOTDATABASE. There are mass BLP creations that are more of an issue. Galobtter (pingó mió) 07:07, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

A few mass AFD's have been tried, though smaller than the list above, but they have all been rejected as WP:TRAINWRECKS. Unfortunately, that is also not an option. BilledMammal (talk) 07:30, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

There are a number of problems with the articles which have bee PRODed and, I'm afraid, that articles like these often take a long time to work up - and there aren't that many of us working on cricket articles in the sort of way that they need to be worked on. There are almost certainly people on these lists who are clearly going to turn out to be notable for other stuff - as soon as someone turns out to be an MCC member, for example, you can be reasonably certain that there's stuff written about them somewhere. In other cases there will almost always be sensible redirects which can be employed - in some cases you'll find short biographies on those redirect options and a fairly significant number of articles have already been redirected in similar ways without all the drama associated with this process.

I feel at this point that it's also really, really important to point out that the RfC proposals which were accepted to have "passed" specifically included a grandfather clause "so that if passed, there is not a sudden rush for AFD" (proposal 3, this RfC). That seems to have been conveniently ignored - it was discussed a little in the wall of text, but no conclusions about it were drawn and it could be considered to be a significant flaw in the RfC that it was never returned to.

I would also suggest that there is little if any issue with verifiability at all and that, to my knowledge, anyone who played for either Kent or Nottinghamshire from 1806 onward is likely to have some form of sourcing available if you know where to look (or, in Kent cases, to have already been redirected somewhere sensible or still being worked through): I don't know as much about the sourcing for other counties; that may exist, but just rushing in in such a way - 29 PRODs and an AfD on BlackJack's talk page in half an hour - means that it'll be almost impossible to suitably challenge all of these. So, thanks for that. Blue Square Thing (talk) 07:47, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

e2a (apologies) - there's at least one chap on that list above with a Wisden obituary. Yes, it's a short article - because no one's found time to add to it. Time. But you don't get a Wisden obit without having done something - yet there are no GNG sources here? Bit of a no ball there maybe? Blue Square Thing (talk) 07:50, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

Yes, this is not helpful. 35+prods in double-quick time. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 07:59, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

I think this makes it clear why we need an alternative process - if you don't think prod can handle 30 nominations a day, then the 120 that some editors are proposing above is clearly impossible, and that 120 only addresses the unsourced articles, not the non-notable ones. Do you have any suggestions? BilledMammal (talk) 09:18, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

Could you not just nominate them for deletion at a slow rate? Will take a while but it allows a proper discussion to take place for each one. NemesisAT (talk) 09:36, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

Unfortunately that's not practical. The two areas I have been looking at recently - the 1908 Olympics and articles created by BlackJack - I estimate have 2000 articles between them that need to be taken through deletion discussions. At a slow rate of twenty per day this will take a hundred days to get through, and these just make a small fraction of the articles that we need to go through. BilledMammal (talk) 09:51, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

That refers to BLPs doesn't it? And fails to address the grandfathering which was part of what was discussed in the RfC wall of text and which was never removed from the proposal that was deemed to pass. As Galobtter says above, these are not that big a deal - but people need time to work through lists and then redirect as appropriate (such as, for example, discussed at Talk:List of English cricketers (1826–1840) and the linked discussions). Blue Square Thing (talk) 09:39, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

No, that discussion refers to unsourced articles in general. As for grandfathering/moratorium, I think that should be a separate discussion, either as a new proposal or as a request for clarification on the closers talk page - lets keep this discussion on topic. BilledMammal (talk) 10:06, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

• Comment. As an alternative to user space and draft space, which both have issues, what about moving the articles to sub-pages on the relevant Wikiprojects? For example, all of the above articles could be moved to Wikipedia:WikiProject Cricket, where they won't be lost, and where editors who are interested in developing articles on cricketers know where to find them. BilledMammal (talk) 10:25, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

Having gotten through the first 22 of the list above, there's two that have very limited prose sources that I can find in a very short period of time. There are maybe another 2 or 3 where the sourcing is pretty weak. The others all have an appropriate level of sourcing that is similar to recent keeps at AfD. It helps that they all played for either Nottinghamshire or Middlesex - I didn't realise that most Middlesex chaps have prose sourcing on CricInfo. Some of them are obviously really quite notable - international amateur footballers, for example, and at least two who died in WWI and so will appear in various books about that (Wisden published one for the 2014 anniversary for example, and there's Final Wicket: Test and First Class Cricketers Killed in the Great War by Nigel McCrery which I think deals with every known WW1 death). Once I'm through further I can show what I've found, but none of what I've uncovered was difficult to find from sources I already knew about. Blue Square Thing (talk) 11:04, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

Just got one who got a knighthood. I don't know if that's notable of course, but it seems like it might be to me. For the avoidance of doubt, I wouldn't have created those articles in that way without much better sourcing, but they were and it was deemed, at the time, acceptable. Not sure I've found any that come close to failing V or OR yet btw - and not close to failing either Blue Square Thing (talk) 11:50, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

And please don't assume that a reference to CricInfo is simply a database reference. Some have long prose sections as well - often the contents of a Wisden obituary. Blue Square Thing (talk) 11:55, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

Hopefully you can find GNG compliant sourcing for at least some of them, though I'm not seeing any yet - of the few that have prose at CricInfo most are clearly not WP:SIGCOV - even the George Hart one you link above is mostly statistics and commentary on the club. Meanwhile, Trent Bridge is not an independent source for Nottingham players, and the Nottinghamshire role of honour is sourced to family members, so it isn't independent either; this is likely to be a discussion for WP:AFD, which is part of the issue.

To return to that issue, I mention WP:V and WP:OR as it would be best if we devise a solution that addresses articles that have no sources, as well as articles that are under sourced; what do you think of the proposal to move such articles to WikiProject space? It has the advantage of giving WikiProjects as much time as they need to find suitable sources for the article. BilledMammal (talk) 12:08, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

New page patrol and Articles for Creation help filter out very poorly sourced or unsourced articles. The newly created articles above do appear to have a source (albeit from a database) so these pass WP:OR and WP:V. I don't think there's any pressing need to remove articles from mainspace if they at least pass WP:V, these articles have been here since 2017 after all. The number of unsourced articles should be ever-decreasing as they are PRODed and nominated for deletion over time.

An article is most likely to be improved if it is left in mainspace, where readers can find it. Moving to draft, user, or project space will inevitably lead to these articles being forgotten about and never improved. NemesisAT (talk) 12:20, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

Here's your list. I don't recall who wrote the NCCC profiles, but I'm pretty certain they're based (at least) on the work of Peter Wynne-Thomas who is, lets say, a pretty reliable source. I'm fairly certain there's an old journal of the ACS magazine where he rips BlackJack's research efforts to pieces as well, so it's sort of fitting (tbf, several people did, but I think Wynne-Thomas was one of them). You can try and argue that it's not independent if you want, but given the other sources listed in that obit it's clear that there are non-web sources as well and Wynne-Thomas didn't get the BEM for nothing.

List of articles from above with notes

Robert Tolley - Notts so sourced at NCCC, although mostly statistical Noel Turner (cricketer) - Notts. Played amateur internationals for England as a goalkeeper - clearly notable - NCCC; Wisden obit John Wheeler (cricketer, born 1844) - Notts - long profile at NCCC Herbert Wilson (Nottinghamshire cricketer) - Notts - profile at NCCC Richard Seddon (cricketer) - Notts. Clergy as well NCCC George Paling - Notts; long profile NCCC John Parkin (cricketer) - BLP; Notts - long profile Henry Parr (Nottinghamshire cricketer) - Notts - brief profile, brother of George so might be more associated with that John Pennington (cricketer) - Notts profile Charles Pepper (cricketer) - Notts; died in WWI so will appear in McCleary etc... NCCC; NCC Kenneth Poole - BLP; Notts - long profile David Pullan - BLP; Notts - NCCC Walter Speak - Notts - profile James Stapleton - Notts NCCC Harvey Staunton - Notts, clergy, Cambridge blue at rugby, died in WWI - NCCC Joseph Sulley - Notts - NCCC Percy Oscroft - Notts, taught at Uppingham - NCCC William Gilby - M/sex, one match; one line CI profile Charles Hoare (cricketer, born 1851) - M/sex, Surrey - written profile on CI. Brewer linked to George Hoare somehow Michael Flanagan (cricketer) - M/sex, Ireland???: brief CI written profile Augustus Ford - M/sex; S&B - CI written profile; Wisden obit Thomas Fox (Middlesex cricketer) - M/sex, one match - also football. V short CI profile Arthur Francis (Middlesex cricketer) - M/sex, two matches. V short CI profile Tom Lowe (cricketer) - Notts - NCCC. Brief Walter Lowe - Notts - NCCC. Brief William Marriott (cricketer) - Notts - NCCC Walter Marshall (cricketer) - Notts - NCCC Percy Mason - Notts - NCCC Martin McIntyre - Notts - long profile Michael McIntyre (cricketer) - Notts - NCCC Jack Mee - Notts - long profile Henry Morley (cricketer, born 1852) - Notts, one match - NCCC Thomas Morley (cricketer) - Notts, Norfolk football - NCCC William Jackson (cricketer) - Notts - NCCC Maurice Dauglish - M/sex, Harrow, Oxford - CI written profile Sholto Douglas (cricketer) - M/sex, WWI death - CI profile Frederick Dunkley - M/sex, MCC pro - CI Frederick Mathews - Surrey, two matches Edward Howsin - Notts, doctor - NCCC Humphry Cobb - M/sex. Brief CI - Rosslyn Park FC Arthur Coode - Cambs, M/sex - footballer - CI brief Clement Cottrell - M/sex, Harrow - CI brief Maurice Coxhead - M/sex, Oxford, WWI death - CI brief Gordon Crosdale - M/sex, C/house - 3 matches - CI brief John Gilbert (cricketer, born 1816) - Notts - NCCC William Goodacre - Notts NCCC Christopher Harrison (cricketer) - Notts, clergy - long profile Percy Harrison (cricketer) - Notts, one match - NCCC William Henson (cricketer) - Notts NCCC Francis Buckland (cricketer) - M/sex - CI plus CA profile reffed already Walter Bunting - M/sex, 3 matches, CI v. brief Gerard Burge - M/sex, Marlboro - CI Arthur Burghes - M/sex, Essex - CI Francis Tinley - Notts - NCCC Vincent Tinley - Notts - NCCC Frederick King (cricketer) - Kent - one match; Carlaw, Goulstone Walter Phillips (cricketer) - Kent - two matches; Carlaw - brewer and farmer John Head (cricketer) - M/sex, Clifton captain - CI brief George Hebden (cricketer) - M/sex; served in WWI - CI brief Henry Herbert (cricketer) - M/sex - CI brief Perceval Henery - M/sex, Wis obit - CI Allen Herbert - Kent, M/sex - Carlaw, CI, prob Wisden obit William Holdship - M/sex, 3 matches - CI v brief John Hunt (cricketer) - M/sex, WWI death - CI, Wisden obit John Truswell - Notts - NCCC Charles Cumberlege - Surrey, two matches; Wisden obit William Horncastle - M/sex, 1 match - CI v brief Bob Hurst - M/sex - CI Percy Hale - M/sex, 1 match - v brief CI Kenneth Harper (cricketer) - M/sex, got a knighthood - CI William Harrington (English cricketer) - M/sex, CI. Prob Wisden obit George Hart (cricketer) - M/sex; long profile Obviously notable Samuel Dakin - Notts - NCCC John Day (cricketer, born 1881) - Notts - NCCC Ernest Simpson (cricketer) - Kent, WWI death, Has a chapter in Lewis, plus Carlaw and other sources. Obvs notable Henry Croxford - Kent. Carlaw in some detail Edward Curteis - Kent, Army. Carlaw Tom Pawley - Kent, One of the most important figures in the history of the club around 1900 as he managed the side to 4 championship. Tonnes of sources William Norton (cricketer) - Kent, three matches, Carlaw George Elliott (cricketer) - Kent, Surrey, Wisden obit; Carlaw Frederick Hollands - Kent, detail in Carlaw Charles Marshall (Surrey cricketer) - Surrey. 40+ matches Kevin Mackintosh - Notts, Surrey. BLP - NCCC Benjamin Taylor (cricketer) - Notts - NCCC Bill Taylor (cricketer, born 1947) - Notts. BLP - long profile Ronald Taylor - Notts - NCCC Francis Tinley - repetition Vincent Tinley - repetition John Sparks (cricketer, born 1778) - Surrey, early 19C. 50 fc. Francis Nicholas - early 19C MCC etc... 23 fc William Lambert (cricketer, born 1779) - Carlaw first line on him is "the leading allrounder of his era". Yeah, he's just a touch notable. John Brand (cricketer) - early C19. 28 fc Thomas Vigne - Surrey early C19. 60fc Emmanuel Vincent (cricketer) - Sheffield, 30fc William Palmer (cricketer, born 1736) - very early so would need a careful search Thomas May (cricketer) - the Mays are both tricky ones as they're very early. Are mentioned by Haygarth briefly in prose. There's a list to redirect to Richard May (cricketer) - see above John Walker (cricketer, born 1768) - very early so needs a careful search John Wheeler (Kent cricketer) - I have him earmarked for a probable redirect Edward Woodbridge - Surrey, quite early

Some of them already clearly have prose sources btw. I'll prioritise the BLPs of course, but I do have to go to work this week as well, so 100 articles like this is probably a months work at least, more likely two. Unless you simply want them churned through, which was pretty much the problem in the first place. Blue Square Thing (talk) 12:31, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

See here for discussion of your sources. To return to the topic of how to deal with the huge numbers of articles that warrant being taken through deletion processes; do you have any suggestions, or thoughts on what I proposed above? BilledMammal (talk) 12:42, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

Yes. As NemesisAT says above, the best way for articles such as these to be improved is in mainspace and, as others have said, these articles really aren't an obvious priority. Mainspace is also the best place for people to consider whether articles need to be redirected or not. I'd suggest that at least 75% can be improved significantly, some obviously so. The other 25% or so, there's a case for a hard look to be had. Fwiw I'm fairly certain that I argued at the time many of these articles were created that there was no need to create a short article on every cricketer and that we should focus on producing articles on people who were obviously more notable. But at the time that was against the perceived wisdom. Blue Square Thing (talk) 13:58, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

Notes

There's a few good doable steps that could be taken some of which would be no big deal:

• Establish the expectation that providing wp:notability-related sourcing (and thus determining whether or not it exists) is the job of the 1,000,000 editors, not the 30 NPP'ers or researchers at AFD. Otrherwise the math is horrendous. Each of the million editors can create a non-notable stub in minutes and then 30 NPP'ers are supposed to "prove a negative" that wp:notability-suitable sources don't exist before doing something with the article.
• For new articles dependent on sourcing to meet wp:notability (i.e. not explicitly satisfying a SNG criteria) if the article does not have such sourcing, it gets moved to draft.
• Modify wp:before accordingly.

Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 12:56, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

There's just not a great way to deal with this stuff, for reasons mostly listed above. They're lazy articles on borderline-notable-at-best subjects that add nothing beyond what you could find in a database, but also aren't making outrageous unsourced claims or promoting some product. In short, it's hard to make a case for urgency. The big issue I wanted to bring up is just: have we figured out how to stop these from being created yet? I know one prolific stub-creator has been sanctioned, and the person who created these is blocked, for for other reasons. AFAIK the intersection of policies and guidelines dealing with mass creation (MASSCREATE/MEATBOT) still fail to address this effectively, despite a few people adamantly saying it does. That needs to be the priority, at which point it would be easier to make a decision about what to do with all the stubs created up to that point. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 13:15, 6 June 2022 (UTC)