User talk:BilledMammal

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Thank you, the range is very interesting; I will have to consider how best to use this data. BilledMammal (talk) 14:37, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

Just realized that I didn't filter out disambiguations. Unfortunately I can't think of a good way to query the disambiguation status of pages in 2021, besides parsing the full dump. I do have a program for that, so I might adapt it. Alternatively you can take (Data) - (Current disambiguations). Ovinus (talk) 20:45, 9 November 2022 (UTC)

I think the number of articles that existed as something other than disambiguation's in 2021 but don't exist as disambiguation's now will be small enough to make no meaningful difference to the data, so I think your second suggestion will be sufficient. BilledMammal (talk) 05:48, 13 November 2022 (UTC)

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Nomination for deletion of Template:No significant coverage (sports)

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Quarry

Hi BilledMammal, I have noticed you know how to use quarry. I am interested in obtaining some results on userviews of certain articles. Like all articles of a certain category. Like this category. Or all articles an editor has 20%< share of the contributions. Or all articles a user brought to a GA. etc. I would like to be able to conduct such quarry-queries myself, so I could also check another category or editor. Is this possible? Paradise Chronicle (talk) 22:49, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

@Paradise Chronicle: Unfortunately, Quarry doesn't store information on an articles pageviews. Ovinus has downloaded the complete dataset from here (although it seems to only have data up until 2020?) and they might be able to help, but that wouldn't enable you to run your own queries. BilledMammal (talk) 05:38, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

I can get day-granular page views for articles in a category. Let me know if you want that. If you think people would find it useful, I'll try make a web interface, although I've never made a Toolforge bot before. [1] and its ilk contain post-2020 data. Ovinus (talk) 06:06, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for both of your efforts and answers.@BilledMammal@Ovinus. I have downloaded some files, but only one was ca. 2.5+ GB, took several minutes to download and was not very informative at first sight. The next were over 5GB and 2 GB and each would have taken several minutes to download... even if it would give some info that's not practical. Userviews takes a few seconds for most editors and you have it. The ideal would be a tool that provides us with a watchlist, to which one can add the articles. From a watchlist we can add and remove articles. For the notifications an article creator gets, a tool would sure be helpful in maintaining the article, as any article creator at some day in the future will stop to edit wikipedia and then someone else should be able to get the notifications. As to my knowledge, article creators get notifications on links to and from other articles and are listed as article creators in this list. The ones with a share of over 20% contribution will probably be the editors which are interested in maintaining the article.Paradise Chronicle (talk) 13:19, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

It'll be tricky, but a fun exercise, for the authorship %. If you mean simply by number of diffs, that'll be straightforward, as I think there's a list of diffs. If not, I can parse the full history dump, which, although in the terabytes unzipped, can be done as a stream. Much harder is determining authorship percentage of the actual text, since it would definitely require parsing the full dump and performing a rather expensive text diff algorithm on each and tracking what text is authored by whom. Intermediate deleted revisions would induce an apoplexy. But it'd also be useful for CCI, which is an alluring cause. Ovinus (talk) 15:55, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Dear Ovinus, whatever you'll accomplish will do and be a step forward. How about an optional (like a script to be installed?) additional button which for example could be a yellow star beside the blue one (or an icon in a drop down menu of a tool bar), and by clicking on that icon, one would receive the notifications and userviews of the article creator.

If they click again, they wouldn't receive anything anymore. With that, percentages wouldn't matter, it'd be optional and voluntary to request and receive the information. Pageviews would likely be interesting for DYK or the Mainpage as there the coordinators could perform an overview over all the page views of the days articles on the Main Page.

Notifications would be useful in cooperating in maintaining articles. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 01:48, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

And the next reply will be in another venue, as Billed Mammal will likely get notified for every edit we do on their talk page. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 01:50, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

My talk is open, if you'd like. I'm interested in your ideas; the "receive article creator notifications" is possible in a live manner. Ovinus (talk) 01:52, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

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Could you not nominate a bunch of NFL players for deletion right now?

At least wait for the others to complete - its becoming too much work for me. BeanieFan11 (talk) 01:39, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Half Barnstar
	Givin' some WikiLove so that it's clear that even though we are on opposing sides in that ITN discussion, I respect the perspective you bring! Curbon7 (talk) 05:40, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

@Curbon7: Thank you, it is nice to hear that; I appreciate your perspective as well. BilledMammal (talk) 05:45, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

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On the Lugnuts stubs

Sorry I edited a page in your user space. I thought it was some discussion. Good idea, thanks for the ping, and yes, I am also on it a bit. Do by chance have access to the main article creators in the last 1 or 2 months? I'd like to see if these discussions at scale actually have an effect on the quality of mass creation.Paradise Chronicle (talk) 12:30, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

No need to apologize; I do, take a look at Quarry:query/68705 and Quarry:query/71788. They are currently running, but they should be done around ten minutes after I post this message. I reused an older query for these; I have since worked out a solution to include articles created from redirects, and if you want that data included I can do that. BilledMammal (talk) 02:10, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

This

Re this, there has been consensus to accept the new heading format. Silikonz💬 04:51, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

Apologies, I didn't notice that discussion - it didn't fix the issue with the RM tool anyway. BilledMammal (talk) 05:01, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

RMTR requests

Sorry if I spam-pinged you doing the moves, but I moved them without any issues and I fixed all but one of the initial double redirects. I'll leave the rest of the cleanup to you as closer, but feel free to ping me if you want another set of eyes. Sennecaster (Chat) 06:15, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

Thank you. BilledMammal (talk) 09:02, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

Avoiding deletable Stubs/Publishing Threshold

Maybe raising the minimum requirement for publishing an article would be good for tackling the stub discussions. Still everybody can edit, and everybody can publish into main space. But an article needs to have a certain amount of content in order to be "publishable". Like a certain amount of phrases, like 10? If something is notable, I believe there could easily be found ten phrases on it. Or have a certain amount of words... Paradise Chronicle (talk) 05:38, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

I agree, but I'm not certain there would be consensus to add such a requirement - on consensus to enforce it, if it was added. I think smaller steps, such as requiring all articles to have at least one source plausibly containing WP:SIGCOV to remain in mainspace, would be how to start. BilledMammal (talk) 12:56, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

Page mover granted

Hello, BilledMammal. Your account has been granted the "extendedmover" user right, either following a request for it or demonstrating familiarity with working with article names and moving pages. You are now able to rename pages without leaving behind a redirect, move subpages when moving the parent page(s), and move category pages.

Please take a moment to review Wikipedia:Page mover for more information on this user right, especially the criteria for moving pages without leaving a redirect. Please remember to follow post-move cleanup procedures and make link corrections where necessary, including broken double-redirects when suppressredirect is used. This can be done using Special:WhatLinksHere. It is also very important that no one else be allowed to access your account, so you should consider taking a few moments to secure your password. As with all user rights, be aware that if abused, or used in controversial ways without consensus, your page mover status can be revoked.

Useful links:

• Wikipedia:Requested moves
• Category:Requested moves, for article renaming requests awaiting action.

If you do not want the page mover right anymore, just let me know, and I'll remove it. Thank you, and happy editing! Salvio ^giuliano 12:35, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

Looking forward to your timely assistance at the RMT. Thanks, ─ The Aafī (talk) 12:45, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

Thank you Salvio, and thank you TheAafi for endorsing my request. BilledMammal (talk) 12:45, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

I enjoy doing a number of things on several projects. From taking care of Urdu Wikipedia's Main Page's In The News section, and translation administration on several multilingual projects, and clearing backlog at the RMT here. These three tasks put together with my volunteering on the VRT make my days good. I always feel glad when competent and helpful editors come around to help and that's what made me endorse your request. ─ The Aafī (talk) 12:51, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

Forgive the roll-back

Was out of line, self-reverted, can discuss later but not right now Red Slash 23:14, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

Kusasi people

I am a bit perplexed how on earth you perceived a consensus to move the page "Kusasi people" to Kusaal people. I think you may have had your Kusasi and Kusaal confused. Only two people replied - myself, who strenuously objected to it, brought evidence from plenty of RSs for it and at no point conceded that Kusaal was anything but a language, that the name for the people is and must be Kusasi. I never, ever conceded to any move. The only other replier was Kwami, who, although voting for the Kusaal move, could not find RSs for it and admitted "Kusasi people" was more common. The consensus would be to NOT move the page. Walrasiad (talk) 23:52, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

My reading of the discussion was that both of you presented RS', but that the proposal was supported by the various naming convention policies despite not being the WP:COMMONNAME. However, reviewing the sources I see that the working link is not a reliable source, and the PDF links are not working for me either, meaning that the issue isn't on your end.

Based on that, I've overturned to no consensus. BilledMammal (talk) 04:52, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

I don't know how either of you could fail to access the sources. They're standard SIL publications. If you can read a PDF, you should be able to access them. I just tried the minimalist Falkon browser, and it can access them too, so the problem must indeed be on your end, some browser or preference fault that the two of you share. — kwami (talk) 09:11, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

I tried again, and I don't know why I couldn't access them last time; I am able to access them now. I'm going to revert my clone and allow someone else to close this. BilledMammal (talk) 12:34, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

Notice of edit warring noticeboard discussion

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Altered speedy deletion rationale: Anton Solovyov

Hello BilledMammal. I am just letting you know that I deleted Anton Solovyov, a page you tagged for speedy deletion, under a different criterion from the one you provided, which didn't fit the page in question. Thank you. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 14:56, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Thank you, I wasn't sure what criteria best applied - I missed G14. BilledMammal (talk) 14:57, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I thought the script would leave a more descriptive message. You tagged under WP:A3 which is for articles with no content, but a disambiguation page with entries has content even if the entries link to deleted pages or no page at all. At first I declined your tag, then went back and deleted under WP:G14 (which is for unneeded disambiguation pages specifically) instead. Thanks. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 15:03, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

List removals

BilledMammal, the two articles you restored here should not have been restored. As Cbl62 said, "I supported this extraordinary proposal only on specific conditions, including the absence of any SIGCOV. If SIGCOV have even arguably been added to some small portion of the articles, those articles should be stricken from the list." - and then from casualdejekyll: "Ok, no, this proposal is about stubs with zero sigcov references. Not stubs with one reference. Zero. Considering you're the most vocal advocate of the proposal, I was hoping you would already know that, @BilledMammal." Both of those articles had coverage that is arguably SIGCOV and should not be on that list. BeanieFan11 (talk) 15:24, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

This proposal is about articles that met a given criteria when the RfC was opened. The criteria for restoring these articles is different from this criteria, though in deference to Cbl's position I don't object to some removing articles where a single source has been added, so long as that single source is extensive. BilledMammal (talk) 16:25, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Its rather ridiculous to say that this does not cover the topic "directly and in detail, so that no original research is need to extract the content," and its quite arguable that this source also constitutes SIGCOV. Your support voters have made it clear they do not want articles with coverage that could even arguably be considered to be SIGCOV on that list ("Ok, no, this proposal is about stubs with zero sigcov references. Not stubs with one reference. Zero. Considering you're the most vocal advocate of the proposal, I was hoping you would already know that, @BilledMammal —casualdejekyll"; "This is troubling. I supported this extraordinary proposal only on specific conditions, including the absence of any SIGCOV. If SIGCOV have even arguably been added to some small portion of the articles, those articles should be stricken from the list. Otherwise, the grounds underlying the "support" votes (including mine) have changed. —Cbl62"; "If SIGCOV is met, those should be excluded ... and evaluated on their own merits. —Rlendog") BeanieFan11 (talk) 17:49, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

I'm not saying that it doesn't. I'm saying that one source isn't enough to demonstrate WP:GNG. BilledMammal (talk) 17:51, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

@BeanieFan11: You don't have my permission to edit my comments, which per WP:TPO is required. Please stop reverting, and if you think my proposal is wrong you may argue against it - you may not try to correct it. BilledMammal (talk) 18:01, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Concern

Your bag of geo moves is ill considered. I would suggest you withdraw the RM and submit them separately. In ictu oculi (talk) 16:32, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

I opposed both moves, but I like the underlying idea: a report of dab pages containing a single link. Seems like a good way to catch all sorts of oddities, but yeah, in at least half of cases, the solution is to move the article. These two RMs were juts the top of the iceberg, right? If it's a big list, then you can post it at WT:WPDAB: people there might be interested in helping with the manual checks. Also a ping to Shhhnotsoloud, who if I recall correctly used to track similar deficient dabs. – Uanfala (talk) 20:59, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Will do. There are others User:Uanfala, I wasn’t sure how to deal with them but posting them there is a good idea. BilledMammal (talk) 22:37, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Local culture

I read your RFC about the early Olympic athletes. I think one of the themes in the opposition to this kind of proposal is that they run counter to the m:Vision. The proponents say, "Look, we currently have 🟥🟨🟦🟧🟩🟫 worth of knowledge on the wiki, and we know we're missing knowledge about 🟪⬜️ and probably ⬛️, too, but that 🟧 bit is IMO substandard because it's [fill in the blank: too short, doesn't have enough refs, isn't an important subject, is out of date, doesn't get read, has the wrong POV, etc.], so how about instead of having the sum of all knowledge, we instead have a little bit less than we could right now?

I think that if we established some common ground about whether we actually prefer the sum of all human knowledge (even if that means some sub-standard and incomplete articles) vs if we actually prefer decent-looking articles (even if that means changing "the sum of all human knowledge" to "the fraction of human knowledge that is presented in a way that meets our quality standards"), then we'd be able to make more progress on this. Either the community would set a minimum standard, and articles could be judged against them (we did this once, for BLPs), or the editors who want to get rid of substandard articles would know that wasn't a realistic outcome. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:59, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

I don’t think that your interpretation of the vision matches the consensus interpretation on enwiki, and it shouldn’t - it would mean abolishing, for example, the requirement to use reliable sources. BilledMammal (talk) 20:59, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

Technically, there isn't a requirement to "use" reliable sources; there is only a requirement that it must be possible for someone to find a reliable source that says the same thing. But the way we have traditionally understood this is that if it's not possible to verify that information in a reliable source, then it's not part of "the sum of all human knowledge" anyway. (Unverifiable information might be one of the addends, but it's not part of the sum of knowledge. ;-) )

But leaving that aside, it sounds like you would prefer that verifiable (even cited) information not be present in Wikipedia unless that presentation meets a certain standard (e.g., a long enough article). Where undisputed, cited, verifiable statements such as "Alice Athlete competed in the 1904 Olympics for Ruritania" are concerned, it sounds like if you were given a choice between a pathetic little stub, and not having this information in the mainspace at all (i.e., "write a beautiful C-class article" is not an available option), you would choose not having this information in the mainspace at all as the lesser of two evils. Have I correctly understood you view? WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:50, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

There is a requirement to provide reliable sources for information; additions of unsourced content will typically be reverted.

It was also only one example of a policy that would need to be abolished to support your interpretation and others also exist; WP:DUE, WP:GNG, WP:NOTDATABASE, etc.

I note that these examples already tell us that verifiability, on its own, is insufficient for inclusion as in your example of Alice Althlete; if you want to change this I suggest proposing changes to WP:N and probably to WP:NOT. Personally, I agree that verifiability alone is insufficient. BilledMammal (talk) 00:01, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

It's poor practice to not cite any sources at all in an article, but WP:N isn't a policy, and nobody would delete User:WhatamIdoing/Christmas candy or any other obviously notable subject merely because sources hadn't been provided yet. If "providing" sources were an absolute requirement, then {{unref}} wouldn't be on one out of every 40 articles.

But as you notice above, I gave my example article not merely one, but two inline citations, so the desire for sources is irrelevant. My question remains unanswered: Would you prefer Wikipedia to not have any article about "Alice Athlete" at all, if the article does not presently meet or exceed your standards for development? WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:14, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

You misunderstand; the issue with Alice Athlete isn’t that it is unsourced, it’s that it is (presumably) fails WP:GNG - and to answer your question, I don’t want Wikipedia to have any articles that fail GNG. BilledMammal (talk) 06:35, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

Why do you assume that an article about an Olympic athlete with two existing inline citations fails GNG? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:41, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

When it's written like that? I can also tell you what the two inline citations are - Olympedia and sportsreference. It's possible that sources exist elsewhere that would allow it to demonstrate GNG, but I think that is unlikely. BilledMammal (talk) 23:39, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

And when it's written by me? WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:35, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

Then I'm slightly less confident that the sources are Olympedia and sportsreference, but having seen thousands of examples of such sub-stubs written by dozens of different editors I would still expect that these hypothetical sources do not contribute to GNG. BilledMammal (talk) 00:53, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

Concur with BilledMammal. Their aim at the RfC is good and there are heaps of wikipedia rules such as WP:NOTDATABASE, WP:NOTWHOSWHO

WP:MASSCREATION, WP:MEATBOT, WP:BOTUSE

(all part of policies) to cite a few that would have prevented the masscreation of the bio stubs if they were only enforced.Paradise Chronicle (talk) 00:26, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

You know, I keep seeing people link to NOTDATABASE, and almost every time, I think about the problems we have because Wikipedia:Nobody reads the directions. WP:NOT mentions databases once. Specifically, it says that Wikipedia itself is not to be used as a lyrics database. It does not say that we cannot cite databases. It does not say that we cannot include information that some editors believe is better suited for a database. It only says to not fill articles about songs with lyrics.

Since I believe that one of the iron laws of the web is that every click costs readers, let me paste the exact, complete text of NOTDATABASE here for you:

• Lyrics databases. An article about a song should provide information about authorship, date of publication, social impact, and so on. Quotations from a song should be kept to a reasonable length relative to the rest of the article, and used to facilitate discussion, or to illustrate the style; the full text can be put on Wikisource and linked from the article. Most song lyrics published after 1927 are protected by copyright; any quotation of them must be kept to a minimum, and used for direct commentary or to illustrate some aspect of style. Never link to the lyrics of copyrighted songs unless the linked-to site clearly has the right to distribute the work. See Wikipedia:Do not include the full text of lengthy primary sources for full discussion.

Let me know if you see anything in there that says we can't or shouldn't write proper encyclopedia articles about subjects that other websites have recorded in a database. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:44, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

What you quoted is WP:NOTLYRICS; the full text of WP:NOTDATABASE is slightly more extensive, and includes the sentence To provide encyclopedic value, data should be put in context with explanations referenced to independent sources. BilledMammal (talk) 00:53, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

So you argue that lyrics databases are not allowed but numbers and tables yes? Check WP:NOTSTATS which comes below lyrics. Statistics should enhance readability, provide context. Also see WP:NOTMIRROR and compare with articles such as this, this and this. They are usually without inline citations but include a mirror page as a general reference as the only other reference other than the winner of the last tournament.Paradise Chronicle (talk) 07:01, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

I quoted the only line in WP:NOT that contains the word database.

Numbers and tables obviously are allowed, because numbers and tables show up in many thousands of articles, including FAs. The point of NOT is to say "Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information...Wikipedia articles should not be: Summary-only descriptions of works – Lyrics databases – Excessive listings of unexplained statistics – Exhaustive logs of software updates". It's an error to interpret the WP:UPPERCASE shortcut as meaning "Editors are not allowed to include information they found in a database" or "Editors are not allowed to cite databases {only | ever}"; that's not what the policy says. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:52, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

There is a false dichotomy lying behind the discussion here. "information not be present in Wikipedia" is being conflated with having a stub. It is perfectly possible for information to be present on Wikipedia, and in an article. "between a pathetic little stub, and not having this information in the mainspace at all" is not a choice we have to make. We have other options. CMD (talk) 02:39, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

Yes, we do, but I'm trying to understand BilledMammal's personal view on whether pathetic little stubs are inherently so bad that we should not have any information, rather than have a pathetic little stub. As a parallel, we have a strong community consensus that no information is preferable to false or misleading information. I want to know whether BilledMammal has a similar view for pathetic little stubs: Is no information preferable to a one- or two-sentence stub? WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:39, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

Can I ask why you want to better understand my views on sub-stubs? And to answer your question, it depends on the sub-stub; sometimes no information will be better, other times it won't - although in almost all cases, if the information does warrant inclusion on Wikipedia, it would be better off in a higher level article than in another sub-stub, as pointed out by CMD. BilledMammal (talk) 00:53, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

Back in the day, we had this idea that any (decent) information was a positive contribution towards the cause. If you wrote something like "Black Beauty is a novel by Anna Sewell, consisting of the fictional autobiography of a horse." (a substub without sources), then people were happy about it. That particular sub-stub was created by an admin in 2003.

But some newer editors (maybe you?) seem to think this type of contribution is actively harmful to Wikipedia. While most older English speakers will recognize that Black Beauty is an obviously notable book, and today the article (though still shorter than it could be) has 1,500 words and 27 sources, that kind of contribution also reduces the average article size, provides less information than you'd get from a Google search page, and increases the number of unsourced articles. I'd like to find someone who is willing to publicly own that position, instead of dancing around it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:37, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, I missed this when you originally posted it. To preface this, I will note that the needs of Wikipedia have changed; what was a positive for the encyclopedia 20 years is not necessarily a positive today. One such example is the original version of Black Beauty; in 2003, it improved the encyclopedia. Today, it would make it worse.

I'm less concerned about reducing the average page size; while generally a lot of short articles on the same topic suggests they should be merged, it isn't always the case (and once again, that reminds me to get back to my effort to upmerge species articles). However, I am willing to own the position that unsourced articles make Wikipedia worse, as it reduces our overall reliability, and that articles that provide the reader less information that they can get from a Google search page makes Wikipedia worse, as it causes readers to waste their time. BilledMammal (talk) 01:28, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

That sounds like two separate considerations:

• An unsourced article makes Wikipedia worse, even if you know that it's completely verifiable, neutral, etc.
• A short article makes Wikipedia worse, even if it is heavily cited.

I think I understand the first one, and I understand how the second could be irritating to some readers (although an extremely short article with many citations is the one time that readers often click on a citation), but I'm not sure how it makes Wikipedia worse. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:02, 31 March 2023 (UTC)

Talk:Malherbe's parakeet#Requested move 12 March 2023

Can you explain why you closed this discussion instead of relisting? The discussion was still ongoing and producing productive conversation in terms of deciding the best alternative name for the title, and your close seems extremely premature. Turnagra (talk) 17:48, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

@Turnagra: For that discussion to be able to come to a consensus the move request would have needed to be altered to propose the move of Orange-fronted parakeet. In a move request with a clear proposed initial title I would have done that, but as this move request lacked that I would also have needed to alter your proposed move to have an explicit target of Orange-fronted parakeet (New Zealand); given that this would have implied you supported that title I considered that inappropriate under WP:TPO.

Instead, I considered the best option was to close that move request and provide space for a new one, with clearly defined moves, to be opened. I still encourage you to do that, but if you prefer that I undo my close and relist I will do so. BilledMammal (talk) 18:26, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

I'd prefer you undoing the close - the reason I'd started a move request was entirely because I wasn't clear on what the best title would be for it and wanted to get other editors' views - almost as a pseudo RfC. While we're definitely moving towards a title and that may involve altering the move request to include a move of Eupsittula canicularis, I don't think we're quite at the point yet and I'd appreciate getting further input from other editors. Turnagra (talk) 18:36, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

Done. BilledMammal (talk) 18:38, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

Iraqi conflict

Hi, in your relisting statement at Talk:Iraqi conflict (2003–present), you said it "would require that article to be notified if editors want to explore that possibility further", but "that article" is simply a redirect to the same page in question; there is only one single page about an "Iraqi conflict". I don't know if that changes anything in the correctness of your decision to relist. Avilich (talk) 19:31, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for letting me know; I have struck that part of my relisting comment. However, it doesn't change the decision to relist; that proposal has still received insufficient discussion to determine whether there is a consensus for it. BilledMammal (talk) 19:34, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

Closed RM for Russkaya mysl

Hi. At Talk:Russkaya mysl#Requested move 10 March 2023 would you write a closing summary that explains which guidelines determined the decision and why it was “not moved” rather than “no consensus”? Thanks.  —Michael Z. 22:08, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

Done. BilledMammal (talk) 02:32, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

Thank you.

One of the opposers wrote “total number of mentions is statistically significant” and, as far as I can tell, did not give an argument supporting the opposition, except that they demanded more information of some type that I could not discern and seemed impossible to produce. It looks like two of three stated that COMMONNAME was achieved.

In these circumstances it seems unfair to convert it into a WP:VOTE, without at least relisting.  —Michael Z. 07:27, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

They were asking for a count of the number of occurrences, to help determine if there was sufficient use for WP:NATURAL to apply, and for information about what sources it appears in. The first is hard to obtain from ngrams but not impossible - you can obtain it by downloading and processing the raw data. I have done this before, such as at Talk:Good cop, bad cop. The second is not possible to obtain from ngrams, but the corpus used for ngrams is similar to the corpus used for google books, allowing such information to be obtained there.

When assessing the discussion I found that the editors opposing the proposal disagreed with the WP:COMMONNAME argument; they weren't convinced that there was sufficient usage in English-language sources to establish a natural name. BilledMammal (talk) 21:52, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

The problem isn't that it's so BOLD it's that it is so INVOLVED

Closing the Vector discussion feels defensible because it was going nowhere. An appropriately BOLD action in my view. Closing it and saying what the process should be when you are going to (I would imagine based on your participation so far) be an active participant in is exactly why we say INVOLVED editors need to think more carefully about taking actions. That conversation should stay closed so I'm not going to undo it to make a point but I will come here to make the point. Barkeep49 (talk) 21:27, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

I appreciate you doing so, and thank you for the feedback; I see your point about the issues regarding INVOLVED actions and the instructions I included in the close. To partially address that, I've toned them down to suggestions. BilledMammal (talk) 21:36, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

Infoboxes

Just a note about your comment on the infobox. I agree with you that creating RfC's for each one of these is a huge waste of time, but adding the infobox is being fought every single time by generally the same group of editors. It's a frustrating process since the boxes are generally viewed by the communtity as an improvement. You are right that most have successfully passed through RfC, but there are exceptions.

I've attempted to get some kind of policy agreement on a path forward, but haven't had much luck. If a group of editors are going to fight this every single time what other recourse is there to get it added? Thanks! Nemov (talk) 14:05, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

The only other recourse is to take the editors involved to WP:ANI for stonewalling and tendentious editing, but I don't know how well such an effort will go - I know in the past infoboxes were a very contentious topic, with a few ARBCOM cases. BilledMammal (talk) 15:31, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

Yes, and I think one of the issues here is the particular editors who have these opinions (i.e. they write lots of featured articles). I am generally not a user who believes any cabal talk, I want to make that clear. But my assessment of this is that there are basically a half dozen users who go around and comment on each other's disputes on various different unrelated articles defending the position of one of those users. One such dispute has been adding infoboxes (which these users are opposed to in nearly every instance I have seen). They also do this on a number of featured articles, to keep their preferred version, and it is quasi-endorsed by their interpretation of WP:FAOWN.

The last time one of these editors was brought to AN/ANI, it became much more about how "valuable a contributor" that user was, rather than their disruptive and rude attitude or other bludgeoning/misconduct. I think that entire process left a very sour taste in my mouth, and gives me (and I'm sure many others) very little interest in pursuing anything in AN/ANI about this or any related dispute. Better to just do this the old fashioned way and establish consensuses where applicable (not every article needs an infobox, but some do!) that these users cannot contravene in such a concerted group. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 16:49, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

I agree with Shibbolethink. That would be a difficult road to travel. I don't think infoboxes are a contentious topic now, but any discussion at the ANI level will prove to be unproduction because of things that happened many years ago. Nemov (talk) 18:12, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

LOCAL culture (/vent)

I'm relieved you noticed and weighed in on that coach AfD, after that initial wave of !votes from CFB members I was beginning to think old-timey American football was returning to its previous unassailable status. Sportspeople AfDs in general have gotten to the point where (as predicted) pretty much everyone who used to !vote "keep meets [SSG]" now just insists the coverage of those subjects meets GNG. And lately there is a critical mass of editors of that alignment participating that we get some painfully drawn-out affairs[2][3] (some of the mid-February AfDs I referenced in the first NSPORT talk link are still ongoing); it's at the point where the same group of editors will just refbomb a dozen transactional announcements, non-independent/secondary releases, routine local news, even facebook and blog posts; declare WP:HEY; like-minded editors will come in and vouch that GNG is met; and the AfD will get closed as keep even if there is detailed P&G-based dissection of the sources. [4][5][6] Then there was this shameful exercise where a 15-year-old playing exclusively U-17 footy who had just two hyper-local interview sources with two independent sentences each was initially kept (and would have been an easy endorse at DRV because the keeps were a supermajority and "policy-based"), thankfully reopened, and then finally after attention from the wider community was closed as an uncontroversial delete (with the statline N-K-K-K-K-D-K-WK-(closed)-(reopened)-K-D-D-D-D-D-D (plus the last two keeps were struck)).

Anyway, some of the main points of contention I've identified are 1) NOTNEWS (and actually even ROUTINE) applies to sportspeople and that transactional announcements fall under that category; 2) a reporter repeating what the subject/affiliates said or felt is primary/non-independent even if the material isn't in quotes (e.g. here, for this source); 3) "routine" can be linked to how LOCAL the coverage is, as stated in YOUNGATH, and this should probably be mentioned at both NOTNEWS and NSPORT; 4) how NBASIC interacts with SPORTSBASIC (IMO if the only claim to significance a subject has is sports-related, SPORTSBASIC should override NBASIC); 5) GNG/NBASIC is not met with mundane details (like unremarkable high school/college stats, quotes of primary descriptions of the subject, promotional pieces in local news), and filling a bio with such details violates NOT; 6) SUSTAINED applies to everyone and is not overcome with snippets of coverage existing outside the main period of attention. I'm thinking we're overdue for a discussion on at least one of these points, and I'd be especially interested in what your thoughts are on locality of coverage. JoelleJay (talk) 18:50, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

I think there are three aspects we should try to address in the short term. First, we need to address the canvassing of WikiProjects; WikiProject College football was notified here, despite clearly being partisan on the topic of the notability of involved individuals - I suspect that is why you saw that wave of CFB keep !voters. I am planning to open a discussion at WP:VPI about a broad overhaul to canvass; a preliminary discussion can be found here.

Second, I think it may be worth discussing whether WP:AUD should be split from WP:NCORP and applied more widely; I suspect there would be consensus to do so. This would address the issue of "local papers writes once about person"; I've noticed this to also be an issue when people write self-promotional articles, so there is a good reason beyond resolving this dispute to do so.

Third, I think we should update the procedural rules of AfD to make it clear that refbombing is not tolerated; editors are expected to provide their strongest few (perhaps even explicitly defined as three) sources. This should make the entire process less onerous for all involved, both inside and outside of this topic area. BilledMammal (talk) 00:47, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

Yep, as soon as I saw those !votes coming in I checked CFB. I agree that WikiProject canvassing is a real issue and I had been keeping tabs on the the INAPPNOTE thread in the hopes more discussion would arise from it.

I'm less optimistic about AUD gaining consensus, as there are a lot of seasoned editors who rely very heavily on local news to write articles. I think a smaller step would go over better, such as clarifying that the language and terms used by NEVENT are derived straight from NOTNEWS and are applicable elsewhere (which is already established with e.g. NSPORT's invocations of ROUTINE and local); otherwise why would there be guidance at ROUTINE that could only realistically apply to non-events ("local-person-wins-award"). It's pretty clear that local coverage already frequently fits the definition of "routine" given in NOTNEWS, so this should also be made more explicit there and at NSPORT.

And of course I agree the AfD rules need updating re: refbombing. JoelleJay (talk) 02:49, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

RE: NEVENT, that is a good idea.

I'll create a discussion at WP:VPI soon; my current thoughts are that the initial topics should be:

1. Whether the items listed at APPNOTE are exceptions to INAPPNOTE, or merely examples
2. Whether it is appropriate to notify WikiProjects that an editor might have reasonable cause to believe to are partisan on a topic
3. Whether there should be a requirement to inform discussions of any notices issued.

BilledMammal (talk) 03:44, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

My thought is that drawing a line between truly trivial coverage (stats lists, game narratives, named in a list of players) and the plausibly significant (including local coverage) would cut back on the "Look! I found 12 sources!" and "Look! They found 12 sources!" !votes and force a more in-depth discussion about a smaller number of sources. I'm thinking this would be fairly well accepted at the community level and would give us an objective way to point out clearly disruptive !voting. –dlthewave ☎ 03:38, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

What are your thoughts on the best way to do this? My thought was that by limiting editors to x number of sources we don't need to worry about pre-defining what sources are truly trivial; it should instead force editors to exclude such sources as they won't be convincing and due to the limited number of sources they are able to provide will be easy to identify as unconvincing. BilledMammal (talk) 03:42, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

As a user who generally is more inclusive as to what can be considrerd WP:SIGCOV, I would also certainly get behind a limit to refbombig. I believe it needs to be a specific number (I would say three or four) since saying "a few" sources is ambiguous. If a user has 15 passing/routine/primary sources where a couple "might" have GNG content, nobody needs to see anything more than those couple. If a user has 15 legitimate GNG sources, then three would suffice in keeping an article (though such an article is unlikely to be on AFD in the first place). Unfortunately I don't even think some of the AFD users look at the source, they just see hits from publications they may recognize and post them. Also, I agree something should be done about wikiproject canvassing (across the board, not just on sports wikiprojects) as I do not like being dragged into accusations that my vote was canvassed just because I have an interest in American football and (soccer) football topics and happen to follow those AFD-sort lists. Frank Anchor 14:01, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

WP:THREE is fairly well accepted and might be a good starting point for formalizing something, however if 4 editors each brought 3 sources we'd be right back to where we are now. One option would be to leave talk page warnings for the most egregious refbombers and go to ANI if they continue to violate WP:SIGCOV. –dlthewave ☎ 20:18, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

User:RoySmith/Three best sources ("WP:THREE") is a user essay in which one editor says, of himself, that " I'm not willing to slog through dozens of sources to evaluate them. I am, however, willing to look at a few sources in detail if somebody else (i.e. you) does the footwork to figure out which ones are the best." It's not really a rule that you can require others to follow. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:07, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

I agree that setting a limit on the number of sources presented would be the best option. That would really cut down on both the amount of work editors who actually evaluate sources have to put in and the mounting irritation doing so evokes.

As for the wikiproject canvassing, I think this will be really tricky. Some projects on broad areas, particularly academic ones, won't have much partisanship because their focus is on quality/accuracy of how their subjects are presented rather than on increasing the number of standalone articles on them. It's the projects on topics with extensive database entries that might fit some presumptive notability criterion, can be churned out as stubs using a template, demand no specialized understanding to summarize, have obsessive fanbases or activists for a cause etc. that are the issue. And it's especially the case for projects that have at some point developed their own walled garden of notability criteria that is divorced from that of the rest of wikipedia (e.g. highways). I don't know if there's a great way of distinguishing these project types; certainly anyone in the fanclub ones will strongly object to restrictions on AfD notifications. JoelleJay (talk) 23:00, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

On the three numbered items, I think that #2 has zero chance of changing (every organized group of editors will defend their right to be informed of discussions that interest them), and that your wording is poor. Specifically, if the rules say not to do this if/when "an editor might have reasonable cause to believe to are partisan on a topic", is this based on the poster's belief that they're partisan, or is it based on any other editor's belief? Because you might notify a group that you expect to be 100% impartial, but I might see that same group as wildly biased, and are you just supposed to read my mind to know that I might think that was unfair?

Also, couldn't the same objection be made for anyone signed up to specific subjects in Wikipedia:Feedback request service? Maybe the reason someone signs up under Wikipedia:Feedback request service#Society, sports, and culture is so that they'll be able to weigh in on every sports-related RFC.

But on the flip side: Subject-matter based WikiProjects are the best place to find people who know what they're talking about. If you have an RFC about COVID-19, and you don't notify Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine or Wikipedia:WikiProject COVID-19, the quality of responses you should expect might be the same as if you posted the question on social media. That's not exactly helping us write an encyclopedia. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:58, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

After having to review several "WP:HEY expansions" of recent AfD'd athlete articles I'm starting to think a lot of the problems in the sports projects re: N arise from the long-held practice of basing their articles around transfer announcements/routine match recaps/other isolated news stories rather than comprehensive secondary coverage. This has resulted in thousands of articles that are superficially lengthy but for which almost all content is cited to primary sources, in contravention of policy. But because there are so many of them, and because the quality of these articles hasn't been challenged, editors are of the belief that such format is an acceptable standard and thus if it's possible to write multiple paragraphs of essentially prosified stats then the subject is notable. This is amplified by the rejection of sports news ever being "routine" or non-proportional and the position that contemporary newspaper articles are, contrary to what WP:SECONDARY and its cited refs say, always solid secondary sources. JoelleJay (talk) 18:00, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

@JoelleJay, no policy requires "comprehensive" coverage by sources.

We do have a policy saying that what experienced editors do is more important than following the letter of the law, though. You've probably read something along the lines of "the written rules themselves do not set accepted practice. Rather, they document already-existing community consensus regarding what should be accepted and what should be rejected"? It's disappointing to the few folks who have high standards, of course, but once something actually becomes standard in a subject area, then it actually is acceptable per basic policy. We have to change consensus, not just point to a series of written rules and definitions (though I personally agree with you about WP:PRIMARYNEWS problem for sports). WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:29, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

That goes directly against LOCALCON. Wikiprojects do not get to selectively ignore policies. JoelleJay (talk) 23:43, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

Who said anything about a WikiProject? A WikiProject is a (semi-)organized group of editors who want to work together to improve Wikipedia. It is not all the editors who edit articles about sports.

If the editors who happen to work in a given area – regardless of whether they consider themselves to be members of any particular group of editors – believe that something is good for the articles in that area, then it's not a case of "local" consensus. That is real consensus.

LOCALCON exists because of the infobox wars, and specifically because WikiProject Composers declared in 2007 that infoboxes were not permitted in "their" articles, even if nobody in that group had ever edited the article before. You can read the modern version of their recommendation at Wikipedia:WikiProject Composers#Biographical infoboxes, where it is now framed as "Many members of this project think" instead of "They should not be used without first obtaining consensus on the article's talk page" (2008 version), though I note that elsewhere on the page it still says "It is the consensus of this WikiProject that the lead should not contain an infobox", which is less than ideal.

Wikipedia is in some respects described as a "do-ocracy". If the people who are actually doing the work on those articles genuinely believe that this is the best way to write these articles, then you and I, whose edits to sports-related articles are approximately nil, don't have a lot of right to stand over here on the side lines and tell them that they're doing everything wrong and the wiki would be better off if all of them (and there are thousands of them) obeyed the two of us. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:02, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

If the people who are actually doing the work on those articles genuinely believe that this is the best way to write these articles, then you and I, whose edits to sports-related articles are approximately nil, don't have a lot of right to stand over here on the side lines and tell them that they're doing everything wrong and the wiki would be better off if all of them (and there are thousands of them) obeyed the two of us. When it comes to whether the articles should exist I disagree with that description, and would argue that historically that has not been the case.

The best example of this would be the various fancruft that has been cleaned up from the site over the years; if it was left to the editors involved with those articles they would have been kept and expanded, but instead the broader community stepped in and said that this sort of content was not compatible with the goals of this project.

A similar example is going on now, with the RfC on mass-draftifying Olympian stubs; the broader community is stepping in to tell the sports editors that sports articles must follow the same rules as all other articles, despite what the doers might think. BilledMammal (talk) 01:55, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

Fancruft problems tend to be a very small number of articles overall. Your mass-draftifying proposal, for example, could affect 0.015% of articles. The Pokémon fan cruft problem, which is the canonical example, affected about 500 articles and resulted in merging non-notable characters into lists. We have never yet had an instance of "the broader community" telling the editors of more than a million articles that their opinions and actions are just a local consensus, and I don't think we ever will. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:40, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

It's irrelevant what spurred the creation of LOCALCON. A small minority of subject editors do not get to ignore a global consensus, especially on policy. Otherwise articles on movies/TV shows consisting entirely of plot summaries, character backgrounds, and trivia would be considered GA+, nobility biographies would still be allowed to cite thepeerage.com and host giant ahnentafelen, and in-universe quackery would be permitted in ayurveda and TCM pages. JoelleJay (talk) 22:26, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

• The editors who write sports-related articles are not "a small minority". I understand that the football (soccer) articles alone get 1,500 registered editors making 5+ edits each month, not mention more than 1,000 unregistered editors (who almost never make more than one edit to anything), to football articles alone. Something like one out of every 15 articles is about football – and that's just one sport. More than 30% of our biographies are about sports. This is a huge group of editors working on a huge swath of articles.
• The written policy says that the primary source of written policy is the actual practice of thousands of editors. You are arguing that the source of policy should be whatever the tiny, tiny, tiny minority of editors like me write on a page that has a particular tag at the top, instead of the practice of the editors writing the articles. Perhaps the wiki-world would be more efficient if I were made queen, but for better or worse, that's not how it actually works.

To combine these points:

When we compare "what a few of us stick on a policy page" against "what editors do in 30% of biographies", the long-standing written policy says that the editors of the ~million biographies outvote us every time. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:30, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

The written policy says that the primary source of written policy is the actual practice of thousands of editors That isn't what it says; it says they they document already-existing community consensus regarding what should be accepted and what should be rejected. We typically determine what the existing community consensus is through formal discussion.

It would also cause significant issues if we set policy as you propose. For example, one of the largest fandoms, Wookieepedia, has 200,000 articles and 700 active editors. If they were to show up and attempt to include their content here, we would rightly reject it on the basis of written policy, despite them having sufficient numbers to establish "actual practice". Why are sports any different? BilledMammal (talk) 16:44, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

Why are thousands of editors here different from hundreds of editors at some other website? WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:13, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

If the only difference is that they are not here, does that mean you would have no problem with tens of thousands of pages of star wars fancruft if they did chose to come here? BilledMammal (talk) 00:15, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

As someone said in one of the movement charter consultations last year, "Project capture has happened and will happen again". It's a real risk, and putting words on a page cannot stop it. After all, it's our written policy that WP:Consensus can change, and you are telling me that consensus is typically determined by the results of a "formal discussion" (I am telling you that consensus is typically determined by what editors do in practice, which is a concept that should sound familiar to anyone who has read WP:EDITCONSENSUS), yet you are trying to convince me that it's not legitimate for consensus to change, even if the consensus is determined through your stated process, if you don't like the result.

In your model, policies are set through an RFC. A policy RFC with a significant, but still reasonably normal, response has maybe a couple dozen editors participating, and the vote spread – because numbers do matter, even if it's not a simple majority vote like the German-language Wikipedia holds – is around 10 or so. Just a couple dozen people could turn a "probably no" into a "strong yes", and it would only take a few days to do it.

And then, hey, we had a "formal discussion" and the policy changed. Including whatever policy it is that said we couldn't have the content that you're decrying as fancruft.

It's much, much, much more difficult to change the actual practice in hundreds of thousands of articles than it is to win a single RFC and re-write a policy or guideline page, and if the official advice pages don't line up with accepted practice, people just IAR their way around the policy and guideline pages anyway – assuming they've even read the directions, which mostly they don't. I have said before that when I change a policy or guideline, that change usually has no effect for years. The written policy is just not that important. It does not provide you with a way to control tens of thousands of experienced editors. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:46, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

You misunderstand WP:EDITCONSENSUS; it allows consensus to be achieved without formal discussion, but it doesn't create an exception to WP:LOCALCONSENSUS. For example, you can get a consensus to change policy by editing the policy, but you can't get a consensus to change policy by editing an article.

yet you are trying to convince me that it's not legitimate for consensus to change, even if the consensus is determined through your stated process, if you don't like the result. I'm trying to convince you that allowing policy to be changed through many local consensuses is a bad idea; the input of the broader community, removed from the individual disputes, brings perspective and a moderating influence. If we had an influx of Wookieepedia editors they would succeed in achieving some local consensuses but any attempt to change policy would be rejected, and editors attempting to overrule those local consensuses would have their position strengthened by policy. BilledMammal (talk) 01:30, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

Maybe it will be clearer in bullet-point format. Here's what I'm hearing:

• You want to decide policy based on "formal discussion".
• You think that (at least sometimes), if hundreds or thousands of editors do something in articles, that's just "local consensus".
• You think that an RFC about what to write on a policy page does not result in "local consensus", even if only a handful of editors reply to it.

But:

• Our rules say that anybody can participate in a policy RFC on an equal footing.
• If 10 Wikipedians and 50 Wookieepedians show up to the policy RFC about fancruft, and the 10 Wikipedians !vote that fancruft is bad for Wikipedia articles and the 50 Wookieepedians all !vote that fancruft is good for Wikipedia articles, then that's consensus to change the policy – according to you.

I don't think that a single discussion is sufficient to make changes that go against our everyday practices. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:13, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

In addition to what BilledMammal said, your interpretation totally removes the possibility of future community-wide consensus, via fait accompli, as it weighs the contributions of thousands of editors from the early days (many of whom are both among the most prolific sportsperson bio creators and are banned because of the problems introduced through their mass creations; this wasn't just Lugnuts, we've also had to delete thousands of articles from e.g. Sander.v.glinkel) and one-edit SPAs the same as the currently active editors who actually contribute to formal consensus-building. Why should the practice of filling athlete biographies with minor details from routine news reports (e.g. match recaps, transfer announcements) override NPOV's requirement 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, just because there are "thousands" of sports editors? Especially when NPOV also says This policy is non-negotiable, and the principles upon which it is based cannot be superseded by other policies or guidelines, nor by editor consensus. And why should we presume all these editors are even partaking in the creation of a standard if so many of them are making small, singular edits that do not reflect either acceptance of or opposition to the standard? Why should we ascribe to those editors who obsessively update the number of fixtures in one active player's infobox a silent approval of how the rest of the article is presented, and yet dismiss the input of editors actually involved in discussions on article presentation? And why should "sports biography" be afforded this monolithic status wherein best practices are dictated exclusively by "sports editors", and not by "biography editors" or "Nigeria editors" or "women editors" or any of the numerous other intersectional topics relevant to a particular biography? JoelleJay (talk) 01:32, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

I don't think so. I think it's the current best practices of the current editors, not the leftover ~150K unsourced articles, that we should follow. If we have (and in sports, we do) hundreds and thousands of current editors who are currently indicating that something is a valuable contribution, then that's evidence of consensus.

Have you seen sports bios appear at FAC, and then have non-sports folks shoot down the nomination because they don't think that the sources are realio trulio proper secondary sources? Have you seen "biography editors" or "Nigeria editors" or "women editors" saying that the community's usual standards for sports articles are much too low, and if you want to write a bio about a Nigerian female athlete like Grace Ebor, then you need to have much better sources than usual? If FAC's accepting it, then that is acceptable to this community.

Sports editors don't get to dictate best practices exclusively. On the other hand, I don't want sports fans to tell me how to write about science and medicine, because most of them don't know as much about writing medical articles on Wikipedia as I do. I return the courtesy by remembering that I don't know as much about sports as they do. We want the people who know what they're talking about in each area to be setting the standards in each area. So to me, these "minor details from routine news reports (e.g. match recaps, transfer announcements)" might feel like "isolated events, quotes, criticisms, or news reports", but apparently to people who understand sportsball, these things are not the kind of random filler that the policy is concerned about. I respect their greater knowledge of their chosen field; I hope that they will in turn respect my greater knowledge of my favorite subjects, when I tell them that Leukemia does not need a list of the thousands of times that this group of diseases has been mentioned in cultural works, or that we actually should have all of those cryptic numbers crammed into that infobox.

That said, if you'll let me drag you a little towards the legal side of things, to have a contract, you have to have a meeting of the minds. When our policies and guidelines acquired the language around secondary sources, one of the editors primarily responsible for that word being used did not share your idea of what "secondary source" means. I think you may find it informative to read her own words about what she thought secondary means. She believed that all newspaper stories are secondary sources, and that only the journalist's original notes – unseen by the public and untouched by any editor – should be counted as primary. She was directly and indirectly responsible for a huge amount of the core content policies, especially NPOV, and when she wrote the word secondary, she meant anything that had been reviewed or edited by another human before being published, including breaking news articles, original scientific publications, and many other sources that you and I would never dream of calling secondary. On similar grounds, she spent years trying to convince me that the corporate website for The Coca-Cola Company was not self-published by the company and should not be considered WP:SPS, because the company had too many lawyers to self-publish anything. So when you see anything about secondary sources in a core policy or guideline, I think you need to ask yourself not "what does this word mean?" but instead "what did the people writing this believe this word meant?" WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:04, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

This comment focuses on irrelevant tangents and straw men instead of addressing the points I made. I never said anything about unsourced articles, but if "widespread practice" is the only metric by which consensus can be established then why would we treat "150k leftover unsourced articles" any differently from 150k leftover stubs or the much smaller number of old articles with the prosified stats format as evidence of a "community consensus" that such pages are approved as an end product?

My point is that the existence of "hundreds of sports editors" does not mean they all support the deficient structure seen in the thousands of articles a small handful of editors created en masse. Again, a person who merely updates infobox numbers is not weighing in on whether the prose and sources in the body are acceptable. Even the editors who deposit dozens of microstubs a month are not implicitly endorsing the prosified stats format that a small number of editors introduce when later "expanding" the stubs.

Have you seen sports bios appear at FAC, and then have non-sports folks shoot down the nomination because they don't think that the sources are realio trulio proper secondary sources? Have you seen "biography editors" or "Nigeria editors" or "women editors" saying that the community's usual standards for sports articles are much too low, and if you want to write a bio about a Nigerian female athlete like Grace Ebor, then you need to have much better sources than usual? If FAC's accepting it, then that is acceptable to this community. So the opinions of a tiny number of FA reviewers can affirm article writing/sourcing practices, but global P&G discussions attended by 100+ editors cannot establish consensus? No one is saying sports bios need "better sources than usual", and obviously these prosified infobox articles that can only be sourced to routine news and stats databases are not passing FA. JoelleJay (talk) 03:23, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

• why would we treat "150k leftover unsourced articles" any differently from 150k leftover stubs? Because widespread current practice is not to create completely unsourced articles, but widespread current practice does accept sourced stubs. You expressed concern about us overweighting the contributions of thousands of editors from the early days; I am telling you that we are not overly beholden to the practices from twenty years ago. Unsourced articles is an example of practices from the early days that are no longer accepted. Consensus has changed on that point.
• I agree with you that the existence of "hundreds of sports editors" does not mean they all support the deficient structure seen in the thousands of articles a small handful of editors created en masse. I would say that it's a certainty that no group of hundreds of editors agrees on any point that is more complex than "copyvios are illegal" or "the English Wikipedia should be written in English". But what I don't see is any significant objection from any of them about the practice of filling athlete biographies with minor details from routine news reports (e.g. match recaps, transfer announcements). You will note that "routine news reports" are exactly what's not being used in the stubs about early Olympic athletes that BilledMammal is trying to have hidden in the Draft: space. If those articles cited newspaper articles, we wouldn't be having that discussion.
• a tiny number of FA reviewers can affirm article writing/sourcing practices, but global P&G discussions attended by 100+ editors cannot establish consensus First, it's not "a tiny number of FA reviewers"; there are hundreds of FAC noms each year, and that means hundreds of editors participating in these discussions. A comparison of page views at WT:FAC vs WT:NOR shows that FAC got more than twice as many people looking at the page over the last two years than NOR/PSTS. Second, when an ongoing processes proceeds not only with no opposition, but with praise and support for the results, then that process has the support of the core community. Third, what global P&G discussions about writing/sourcing practices do you believe were attended by 100+ editors? The only time I remember 100+ editors to have participated in a discussion about a change to any of the core content policies was Wikipedia:Verifiability/2012 RfC. BLP, one of the younger core content policies, was designated a policy via a quick vote in which just 14 editors participated. It is not normal for RFCs to attract participation from 100+ editors, even for significant policy changes. The words in the policies and guidelines are not holy writ. They're pages that were slapped together in an attempt to be helpful to other editors. Most of it was done one little tweak at a time. Sometimes we got it wrong. Some of our mistakes are still in the pages, and still wrong. There's a reason why WP:NOT has said, since before I started editing, not to get hung up on the exact wording of the policies: It's because the wording isn't perfect, and we know it.

WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:21, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

This has nothing to do with BilledMammal's Olympic athletes RfC so I don't know why you keep bringing that up. We are beholden to the contributions of past editors because they generated tens of thousands of articles on subjects who fail GNG but pass an SSG. Current sports editors who opposed the tightening of athlete bio creation criteria try to circumvent the justified deletion of these pages by "expanding" them with prosification of stats. They know it's no longer acceptable to cite this text solely to stats dbs, so instead they cite them to individual game recaps or transfer announcements to give the appearance that the bio is well-supported even though such sources fail NSPORT/NOT. We even have editors claiming biographies that are 95% derived directly from quotes from the subject are encyclopedic and objective! The pages look superficially in-depth, so all it takes is a few editors who, again, actively reject global consensus to shift individual AfDs toward keep by asserting HEY. Insisting that this trend has the numerical support to create practical consensus by pointing to the existence of "thousands of sports editors" and claiming their (presumed) lack of active opposition is implicit endorsement is vapid. Plenty of regular sports editors do oppose this trend--Ravenswing and Alvaldi come to mind, among many others--but there are so many articles and AfDs that monitoring them all is impossible and it requires substantial investigation of each source in a refbomb to confirm an article is shite.

First, it's not "a tiny number of FA reviewers"; there are hundreds of FAC noms each year, and that means hundreds of editors participating in these discussions. A comparison of page views at WT:FAC vs WT:NOR shows that FAC got more than twice as many people looking at the page over the last two years than NOR/PSTS. What a ridiculous argument. To start, as I said, the articles in question do not pass FAC. But regardless of that, #page views != #people viewing and certainly != #people participating (both TPs had around 150 editors over the last two years, while the NOR noticeboard had ~400). You can't claim any given FAC receives hundreds of participants. We CAN claim that NSPORTS2022, which you created the subpage for, had 15k+ page views and 127 editors in under 3 months (and that doesn't include the pre-split activity); the 2017 RfC with some of the same findings didn't have its own subpage but VPP over its <2 month span had almost 50k views and 300 editors; compare these with 5200/34 for WT:FAC. JoelleJay (talk) 19:52, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

Why do you believe that "individual game recaps or transfer announcements...fail NSPORT/NOT"? AFAICT, neither NSPORT nor NOT mention individual game recaps or transfer announcements.

Is your line of thinking something like:

• NSPORT requires secondary sources;
• JoelleJay believes an individual game recap or transfer announcement is a primary source;
• therefore, individual game recaps and transfer announcements do not indicate notability?

If that's your general line, then I suggest to you that, even if you are absolutely correct in every single instance in that second point, that your view is definitely not shared by all other editors, and – for better or (mostly) worse – it is possible that it is not shared even by half of current editors, which has implications for what we think the current consensus is. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:11, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

NOT: routine news coverage of announcements, events, sports, or celebrities, while sometimes useful, is not by itself a sufficient basis for inclusion of the subject of that coverage. Standard transfer and injury reports are always announcements, however, the lack of guidance on the NSPORT page specifically spelling out that transactional coverage doesn't count towards GNG is literally why I started this thread with BilledMammal.

NSPORT defines ROUTINE news several places: must provide reports beyond routine game coverage and non-trivial media coverage beyond merely a repeating of their statistics, mentions in game summaries, or other WP:ROUTINE coverage and clearly goes beyond WP:ROUTINE coverage. [...] excludes the majority of local coverage in both news sources and sports specific publications. It especially excludes using game play summaries, statistical results, or routine interviews as sources to establish notability, which each refer directly to Planned coverage of scheduled events, especially when those involved in the event are also promoting it, is considered to be routine. Wedding announcements, sports scores, crime logs, and other items that tend to get an exemption from newsworthiness discussions should be considered routine. Routine events such as sports matches, film premieres, press conferences etc. may be better covered as part of another article, if at all.

The first 10 (out of ~200) AfD transfer coverage precedents in my bookmarks (there are many more than 200 though): [7][8] this 2013 AfD where a participant states transfer announcements do not amount to significant coverage is a long-standing consensus.[9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16]. JoelleJay (talk) 03:51, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

Whether a source provides "significant coverage" has nothing to do with whether the source is "secondary".

Also, that 2013 AFD contains the quote you mention, followed by another participant stating "Err, no. WP:NSPORT says no such thing", with nobody else agreeing with the assertion that this is a long-standing consensus. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:19, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

Routine material can be both primary and non-significant. I opened this post with BilledMammal to discuss multiple issues, among them the fact that sportsperson bios often rely on routine sources that fail secondariness and/or SIGCOV and/or independence. The interpretation of the editor you quoted disagreeing with SirSputnik was not upheld in that AfD, as all four subsequent participants !voted to delete due to not meeting GNG. JoelleJay (talk) 00:12, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

One of the open questions about SIGCOV is whether the significant coverage must be found in a single source, or whether all of the independent reliable sources should be considered in aggregate.

The fundamental problem with "sources that fail secondariness" is that not everyone agrees on what a secondary source is ...and if they did (i.e., if they came to a proper understanding of secondariness), I wonder whether the GNG might be changed to no longer require (true) secondary sources. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:38, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

• The proposals above, even if successful, won't mean much if you can't get administrators to enforce them. Currently, AfD outcomes depend largely on how many show up, less so on the actual rules. If a host of editors claim that winning a Google docs poll counts towards ANYBIO, and that a copy of a Facebook post is a reliable and independent source, they will be believed even when contradicted, simply because they are numerous. In the case of sports articles, whenever you see the usual suspects citing dubious sources in AfD, the outcome largely depends on how many of the inclusionist or deletionist side show up. No closer is going to actually check if sources are independent or non-routine, even if the guidelines do lay these requirements. Avilich (talk) 23:10, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

"(as predicted) pretty much everyone who used to !vote "keep meets [SSG]" now just insists the coverage of those subjects meets GNG" - Yup. Something like WP:100WORDS needs to be added to WP:SIGCOV. I fully support effectively moving WP:AUD and WP:ORGIND from NCORP to WP:N. To me, the question about WikiProject notification is: is there a legitimate reason to post on the talk page, when there are already WP:DELSORTs on the front page of every WikiProject? It works in reverse, though, too: what does it matter what is posted on the talk page, when there are already DELSORTs on the front page? Levivich (talk) 00:49, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

I like the idea of quantify SIGCOV, but I suspect adding something like 100WORDS will result in people pointing at interviews that contain 20 words of independent coverage and say "100 words, meets the requirements".

For WikiProject notifications, my main question is what benefit does such notifications bring, regardless of the presence of DELSORT? I don't believe that this is a problem limited to deletion discussions; the Olympics RfC and the Maps RfC both contain examples of excessive notification of WikiProjects. BilledMammal (talk) 01:17, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, setting a numerical lower bound would definitely result in editors counting every word that appears in a source regardless of whether it contains anything encyclopedic. NOTNEWS is already completely ignored at AfD, so that would automatically let in every single person profiled in the local-interest section of a small-town paper. JoelleJay (talk) 23:50, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

I find that most people cite NOTNEWS in irrelevant circumstances, and if AFD regulars have had the same experience, then they might have "been taught" to ignore it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:58, 31 March 2023 (UTC)

About refbombing/three sources: I've long felt that it should be a rule that every "Keep" !vote (for a topic that must meet GNG) must link to two plausible GNG sources, or point to two sources already linked in another !vote, or else it can't be considered by the closer. Two and only two. Delete !voters must say why the two sources linked by keep !voters aren't GNG, or else their vote isn't considered. By requiring two and only two, we ensure "multiple" while keeping the discussion laser-focused on whether there exist two GNG sources or not (because if the answer is yes, there is no need to consider a third source for purposes of AFD). I think we'd have more efficient, productive, civil, and correct AFDs if we had a two-source-rule. Levivich (talk) 00:53, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

"For the closer to be permitted to consider a keep !vote that argues a topic meets GNG, the !vote must either contain two sources that the editor believes meets the GNG criteria, or it must refer to a !vote that contains two sources. !Votes that contain more than two sources will be considered refbombing and may not be considered."

"For the closer to be permitted to consider a delete !vote that argues a topic does not meet GNG, the !vote must either argue why previous presented sources do not meet GNG, or refer to a !vote that presents such an argument."

Word smithing needed, but I think that wording might find consensus. BilledMammal (talk) 01:17, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

Honestly, I'd rather have 5000 un(der)sourced permastubs than whatever puritanical hellscape this is that you're envisioning. –Fredddie™ 03:43, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

I'd also rather have 5000 permastubs than the hundreds of thousands (millions?) that are out there now. Levivich (talk) 03:49, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

5000 or 500 million permastubs; I don't care. There's still more value in them than in whatever is going on here. Policy purity will be the death of Wikipedia. –Fredddie™ 04:02, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

500 million permastubs would be the death of Wikipedia, but can you explain what issues you believe regulating conduct at AfD in this manner would cause? It may be that the proposal can be modified to address your concerns. BilledMammal (talk) 04:08, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

What really gets me going are the policy wonks who don't write articles trying to set and enforce policies on those who do. If we're creating ridiculous proposals, maybe AfD should be limited to those who have written a Featured Article. –Fredddie™ 04:33, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

I would be OK with that rule, it would solve a ton of problems in one fell swoop, but it won't get consensus. Levivich (talk) 05:17, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

The FA criteria would need to include "subject demonstrably passes notability requirements with flying colors" first. And given the "Neil Harvey..." debacle and some of those road articles it's clear reviewers don't actually pay attention to things like "don't base an article on primary sources" and "don't base an article on sources that don't cover the subject directly". JoelleJay (talk) 00:00, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

@Fredddie, BilledMammal has created some articles: https://xtools.wmflabs.org/pages/en.wikipedia.org/BilledMammal The mainspace doesn't appear to be a key focus for him, but we need editors with a variety of interests and skills, not just article creators. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:13, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I'm aware we need all types of editors and I wasn't singling out BilledMammal specifically; it's much wider than that. I'd like to think that the people I decry have their noses so far into the policies that they can only see them in black and white when in reality, there is color, nuance, and even gray areas within them. Our policies and guidelines are not supposed to be rigid (per WP:5P5) so the prostration to GNG (as seen above), for example, just doesn't make sense to me. –Fredddie™ 21:07, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

Well, Wikipedia has been described as a honeypot for people with WP:OCD tendencies, and we get a fair number of teenagers (and even some younger kids), so having people who not only rigidly follow the rules, but who believe that rigidly following the rules is always The Right Thing™, is something we should expect. It's one of the reasons that I say Wikipedia:Policy writing is hard. You have to write clearly enough that people can understand and follow the best practice, but not so forcefully that others think that the whole point of Wikipedia is to follow the rules.

Then we add in the usual diversity of opinions (one citation per sentence? three-source minimum? old material that's recently been disputed should be kept or tossed?) and the confusion caused by sloppy use of jargon (e.g., saying "unverifiable" when you mean "uncited"), not to mention the problems caused by learning the rules by word of mouth because Wikipedia:Nobody reads the directions, and it's hardly surprising that not only do people elevate The Rules™ above what Wikipedia:Ignore all rules permits, but also that we end up with editors insisting that their personal understanding of the rules must be enforced at all times. We could end up mirroring a favorite poem from Jack Prelutsky's There'll Be a Slight Delay: And Other Poems for Grown-Ups:

"I am a staunch Citationcrat

Whose party's never wrong,

Our platform's unimpeachable,

Our policies are strong.

The Judgmentcans are nasty knaves

Who don't know how to dress,

They're patently the reason

For our current content mess." WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:32, 31 March 2023 (UTC)

Discussion at WP:VPI

As discussed, I've opened a discussion at VPI about possible modifications to CANVASS. BilledMammal (talk) 07:53, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Domestic slave trade (disambiguation)

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A tag has been placed on Domestic slave trade (disambiguation) requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section G14 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is a disambiguation page which either

• disambiguates only one extant Wikipedia page and whose title ends in "(disambiguation)" (i.e., there is a primary topic);
• disambiguates zero extant Wikipedia pages, regardless of its title; or
• is an orphaned redirect with a title ending in "(disambiguation)" that does not target a disambiguation page or page that has a disambiguation-like function.

Under the criteria for speedy deletion, such pages may be deleted at any time. Please see the disambiguation page guidelines for more information.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. If the page is deleted, and you wish to retrieve the deleted material for future reference or improvement, then please contact the deleting administrator. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 20:13, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

Frak

Would you mind reverting your close of the Frak RM? Looks like I just missed it. I know it probably won’t matter to the outcome but I’d like to weigh in. Thx. —В²C ☎ 02:54, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

Done. BilledMammal (talk) 03:43, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

Thx. Done as well. --В²C ☎ 05:24, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

The article MediaWorks New Zealand should be restored to it’s former form

Hey @BilledMammal, I think that the article MediaWorks New Zealand should be restored to its former form, because it will confuse readers otherwise. Additionally, a separate Warner Bros. Discovery New Zealand article, should then be created, to reduce confusion to readers. Yours sincerely, Bas. Regards, Bassie f (his talk page) 04:58, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

Hi Bassie f, there is no clear version to revert to that would not result in the loss of content. However, I encourage you to WP:BOLDly make any edits you believe are appropriate, and to create a new article at Warner Bros. Discovery New Zealand. BilledMammal (talk) 05:01, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

Did this task, just 10mins ago, I can’t remember exactly. Regards, Bassie f (his talk page) 10:21, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Original Barnstar
	For pushing against a false consensus with a well-thought out and reasonable close review. Toa Nidhiki05 17:20, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

Thank you; unfortunate that it didn't go our way, but now we just have to focus on making Vector-2022 the best we can. BilledMammal (talk) 23:04, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

Egyptian Super Cup

Articles have been moved to wrong titles. The editors who voted were not aware of the matter and did not bring reliable sources supporting their opinion. Sakiv (talk) 23:54, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

The editors who voted were aware that this might not be what they are officially called, but believed that using the year the game was played in as the title was both more consistent and less confusing - the latter of which I interpreted as being in reference to our policies or recognizability and precision. BilledMammal (talk) 23:57, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

I am the one who constantly edits these articles and is aware of the news of Egyptian football, and I can confirm that the Super Cup is referred to by the season it belongs to and not based on the year in which it was played. I will appeal your decision.--Sakiv (talk) 00:08, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

When you do please notify me. BilledMammal (talk) 00:15, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

Well, I will leave the articles and you take care of them if that's good for you. I cited several sources supporting my request, but you completely ignored them and move them to names that have nothing to do with reality. Sakiv (talk) 00:36, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

@Sakiv: though you say you constantly edit these articles, I've noted that you have yet to make an edit to the Egyptian Super Cup article. Let's resume the discussion at Talk:Egyptian Super Cup, as that's the best place to resolve this. BilledMammal may join us there, but based on their RM close, I don't think they're interested. – wbm1058 (talk) 13:31, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

I don't understand why the 2015 Egyptian Super Cup match was played on 14 September 2014 and not sometime in calendar year 2015, nor why it was necessary for you to move the page twice when you closed the RM. – wbm1058 (talk) 11:43, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

I'll revert the move of the 2015 Egyptian Super Cup; the arguments made for the others clearly do not apply to it. I moved it twice because the first time I accidentally moved it to the wrong title. BilledMammal (talk) 22:44, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

@Wbm1058: Happy to continue the discussion there. You should also take into account the reliable RSSSF which they completely ignored. Sakiv (talk) 12:47, 31 March 2023 (UTC)

Hang on

While there was obviously a fairly generalized no consensus wash out across my Arab conquest RMs (thanks to some rather dogged and off-topic opposition in defiance of all things source-based), I do not see this extending to the Egypt discussion, and I am not willing to let this one go quite so quietly. In this discussion there were numerically speaking two support votes (three including my own), one neutral vote (changed from mild support), and one oppose. That is a 3:1 voting ratio. Policy-wise, we had WP:COMMONNAME, based on this mountain versus a molehill, against the following line of argumentation: "Arab is an ethnicity, "Muslims" at this time refers to the polity ..." - no sources, no policy in sight, and followed by some walls of text. As the neutral voter (an oppose voter in the other discussions) concedes: "the ngram shows that the proposed title is a bit more than twice as common in recent published sources". You have mentioned WP:CONSISTENT in your closing summary, but the only one to mention consistency in the actual discussion was myself. Even so, you mention the references to other discussions, where some consistency-based arguments are made regarding other similar pages. However, I do not see any evidence that you have weighed the competing consistency arguments, i.e.: either my overarching consistency case that "*INSERT RELIGION ADHERENT" conquest" is not a format used anywhere else on or off-wiki, or the point that this conquest is part of the Arab–Byzantine wars, a rare A-class in this genre of articles that contrasts with the rather unpolished and neglected C-classes that more generally abound. Iskandar323 (talk) 07:50, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

As the neutral voter (an oppose voter in the other discussions) concedes - that's a good point; I hadn't considered how they switched from oppose elsewhere to supporting in that discussion. I'll go and review my close shortly. BilledMammal (talk) 08:27, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

Done. BilledMammal (talk) 09:09, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

Feedback on close review

Well that's funny. Three times a majority votes against the launch of Vector22 and three times an admin closes as support for a Vector22 launch or a keep for the status quo. Your RfC was well drafted and founded. I was considering to vote overturn even though I supported Vector22 and was rather vocal about it in other discussions. New for me was that the WMF also canvassed. Or that the first closing admin didn't think the WMF had addressed the concerns. And that the closing admin then ignored this canvassing and the disagreeing closing admin, is not ok either.

While I personally like Vector22, I do not like the process of the launch. It doesn't feel good being on the "winners" side, knowing that three times the majority voted against the launch and it sort of just go pushed through. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 21:44, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

I did find that very disappointing, but not much to do; I just hope the closer takes note of the lack of endorsement at AN, even by editors who opposed overturning the close, and keeps that in mind for their future close.

Thank you for your supportive words. BilledMammal (talk) 23:05, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

I agree with Paradise Chronicle. The majority expressed by the community has clearly been disregarded. It is disheartening, and the horror I see every time I log out makes me consider leaving the project. I wonder if at this point the issue can be appealed to the ArbCom. Æo (talk) 12:14, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

We could also launch desysoppings against an admin for willfully misrepresenting consensus even against the closing admin, (I mean given that this is true

). If the WMF doesn't want an RfC about something, ok they can say so, but to launch an RfC and then misrepresent the outcome is not ok.Paradise Chronicle (talk) 16:41, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

Actually, I don't think that a desysopping procedure would help the cause at all. I don't think the admins are to blame for this. Administrators are internal to the project and act independently from the WMF. We could appeal to the ArbCom to ensure that the will of the majority is acknowledged. Æo (talk) 18:13, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

Maybe you are right. I just see it as a dangerous precedent for the finding of consensus on wikipedia and I'll not forget it. I'll likely bring it as an example if I see a questionable interpretation of consensus again, much more of the involved discussion closers. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 06:18, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

Egyptian Super Cup RM

You closed Talk:2022 Egyptian Super Cup#Requested move 13 March 2023 for multiple seasons of the Egyptian Super Cup, and have moved all the articles except for 2014–15 Egyptian Super Cup. Could you move this one to the correct title? Joseph2302 (talk) 14:04, 31 March 2023 (UTC)

I moved that one, but reverted it back as it falls into a different pattern than the others. I believe it should be considered separately. BilledMammal (talk) 17:35, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

Can you please ask User:Fastily to undelete your user page?

Hey @BilledMammal, can you please ask User:Fastily to undelete your user page? He undeleted my user page, so why doesn’t he undelete yours? Regards, TechGeek105 (his talk page) 06:17, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

You can get a WP:REFUND for your own user page from any admin, if you want it.

Some editors keep their user page deleted because they're trying to make their name easier to spot. I find User:Ais523/highlightmyname2.js to be more effective for that purpose (works on all pages, including history pages), but not everyone know about options like that. Other editors just don't want a user page, and that's okay, too. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:07, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

immThis editor is an immediatist.

I'm just dropping by to say that if you are ever decide to create a talk page, you might like this userbox. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:13, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

RM close at Arab conquest of Egypt

I think you should restore your no-consensus close. The whole process was screwed up. These should have been a multi-move. I would have opposed the move on consistency grounds. Srnec (talk) 15:37, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

@Srnec: Consistent with what exactly? This subject is part of the Arab-Byzantine Wars - a page it is only now consistent with, not to mention consistency with the sources. The sources themselves and our most thoroughly vetted A-class pages are the best guiding stars we have. Iskandar323 (talk) 16:16, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

Arab–Byzantine Wars and Early Muslim conquests overlap like a Venn diagram. Not all early Muslim conquests came at the expense of the Byzantines and not all the Arab–Byzantine Wars were (early) Muslim conquests. Until very recently, we never used "Arab conquest" to describe early Muslim conquests (in article titles). This may not have been the best, but it was consistent. I think consistency is important here because the casual reader will have no idea what difference "Muslim conquest of Persia" and "Arab conquest of Egypt" is supposed to convey. (The answer, of course, is "no difference at all.") Srnec (talk) 16:20, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

As the Ngrams shared at 'early Muslim conquests' already made plain, the title there panders to the very worst Wikipedia tendencies of design by committee. It is a grossly contrived nomenclature that is supported only by an extreme minority of sources. Consistency in breach of NPOV re: the reliable sources is not a form of consistency to be emulated. Iskandar323 (talk) 16:48, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

Fabric designer

for all occassions your choice and you seasoned 2601:19B:4800:6360:8D8D:EA7E:50EB:3265 (talk) 15:50, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

Requested move on Neuilly-sur-Seine

Re Talk:Neuilly-sur-Seine#Requested move 17 March 2023, @Uanfala and Joy: correctly pointed out that we needed to wait for the March 2023 WikiNav data to come out since the mention at the top was only added on March 1. WikiNav doesn't yet include the March 2023 data. So it seems premature to close the discussion. --Macrakis (talk) 22:28, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

Responding to ping: I'm not sure leaving the discussion open for longer would be helpful. The existing Wikinav data is already indicative of the absence of a primary topic, and the data for March will only help us see if the recently added more prominent mention of Neuilly-sur-Seine will have resulted in significantly more clickthroughs. However, to get truly useful results, we need to do things first: 1) wait for a period that doesn't coincide with an active RM (as the editor interest this attracts will inevitably skew the results), and 2) fix the 80 or so incoming links to Neuilly, so that the data will more accurately reflect the needs of readers who search for the phrase (vs. those who have landed there following a link).

On an unrelated note, I opposed the RM, but if I were to close it, I would have gone for "no consensus" rather than "not moved". The nominator listed a number of considerations that point to that place as being primary, and as far as I can see, these were countered only by the points Joy and I made about usage here on Wikipedia. As a closer, I wouldn't have placed much weight on the three bolded oppose !votes: only the middle one makes any argument at all (a hypothetical based on population, which is very weak), the last one should probably be all but discarded, while the first one was actually supportive of a primary topic. – Uanfala (talk) 08:48, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

I saw a consensus not to move due to the lack of support for the proposal from any editor other than the nominator, but if you or any other oppose !voter believes no consensus is the more appropriate result I won't argue about; let me know if you want me to change it. BilledMammal (talk) 17:34, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

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Requesting some article expansion help

Greetings @BilledMammal,

Hi, I am User:Bookku, I find information and knowledge gaps create Drafts, try to recruit draft expanding editors and promote drafts articles for further expansion.

Requesting your visit to following drafts, adding to your watch list and help expand the same if any of these interests you.

• Draft:Irrational beliefs
• Draft:Superstitions in Christian societies

Bookku (talk) 11:28, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

April 2023

Hello! Please do not change controversial article content without participating in up-to-date talk page discussion like you did here. Best wishes, --SergeWoodzing (talk) 03:12, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

Keep the eye on the ball

I understand your heavy involvement in the WP:NSPORT discussions and many athlete-related AFDs has left you with a low view of sports editors, but beware not to become radicalized against them. If CFB editors are problematic, editing site-wide guidelines is not the way to fix it. Don't burn the house to kill the rat, as my grandfather used to say. If they are actually problematic, start an ANI thread. There is precedent on doing so. My respect for your judgement remains, but I consider the VPIL thread ill-advised to say the least. — Ixtal ^{( T / C )} ⁂ Non nobis solum. 16:03, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

What I don't understand is why notifying a partisan WikiProject is different from notifying a partisan group organized in a different manner; if the latter is disruptive then so is the former. Because of this, while I have only seen this issue in sports areas, I don't believe it is an issue unique to sports areas. BilledMammal (talk) 16:23, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

Let's start with getting back to the basic policy of "Assume Good Faith". "Partisan Wikiprojects"? We all have biases and beliefs, you included, me included, Ixtal included. So what makes your partisanship valid but others invalid? Dave (talk) 16:18, 22 April 2023 (UTC)

Procedural notification

Hi, I and others have proposed additional options at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#RfC_on_a_procedural_community_desysop. You may wish to review your position in that RfC. TonyBallioni (talk) 02:16, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

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Unreferenced BLP list

Hi, another editor bothering you about Quarry. I know you did some Quarry work on unreferenced BLPs last month. How complicated would it be to find all of the currently unreferenced BLPs that are untagged, and then have an automated or semi-automated process go through and tag them all? Category:All unreferenced BLPs currently shows ~1,600, but I'd like to have a better idea of the actual numbers and be able to incorporate them into PetScan searches. Also, is it possible to come up with a list of living people articles with no external links in them (and therefore should likely be BLPPRODed)? Thebiguglyalien (talk) 18:20, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

See Quarry:query/72074 and Quarry:query/72076. They're just updated versions of the queries I did last month; the first includes all articles without external links, without citation templates, without reflist, and without ISBN's. The second includes all articles without external links, without citation templates, and without ISBN's, but with reflist. The former will include less referenced articles, but as the reflist is included by default many articles include it without including any references.

Unfortunately, it isn't possible to create a list of articles guaranteed to be unreferenced with quarry. To tag them we would then need to put the list into autowikibot and review each article to see whether it does have a reference - I don't have time to do so now, but will in the future. BilledMammal (talk) 06:18, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

The first list seems mostly unreferenced, so I'm going through it manually as there are several different types of issues. The second list looks mostly referenced with just a small handful of issues here and there, so that one would probably be better addressed through semi-automated editing. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 16:16, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

Update: I've checked each article in both of those lists, and I've referenced or tagged them accordingly. The unreferenced BLPs category has increased from about 1,600 to about 2,000. Do you think these searches caught most of the unreferenced BLPs that hadn't been tagged? Thebiguglyalien (talk) 17:05, 1 May 2023 (UTC)

You might be interested

There was blocked someone citing MEATBOT. But in my opinion it was a bit of a hasty block. I'd have preferred they'd be asked to apply at the BRFA before being blocked. Anyway AI is still new and leads us to new challenges.Paradise Chronicle (talk) 04:52, 22 April 2023 (UTC)

Of course the block was hasty while considering that the policies MASSCREATE and MEATBOT are not applied. If they were considered I'd see the block a standard procedure in such a case. I invited them to apply in March, they refused, were approached repeatedly by someone else, then reported at the noticeboards... Paradise Chronicle (talk) 16:33, 22 April 2023 (UTC)

Charles III

Sorry about the situation on Charles's page - I accidentally reverted the wrong thing. I agree with you, not the other contributor. Hope this resolves things. Tim O'Doherty (talk) 21:25, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, it does - sorry, I didn't notice your revert of your revert before posting the talk page comment, and when I went to remove it I saw you had already replied. BilledMammal (talk) 21:27, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

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May 2023

You currently appear to be engaged in an edit war according to the reverts you have made on Wikipedia:Village pump (policy). This means that you are repeatedly changing content back to how you think it should be although other editors disagree. Users are expected to collaborate with others, to avoid editing disruptively, and to try to reach a consensus, rather than repeatedly undoing other users' edits once it is known that there is a disagreement. Points to note: # Edit warring is disruptive regardless of how many reverts you have made; # Do not edit war even if you believe you are right. If you find yourself in an editing dispute, use the article's talk page to discuss controversial changes and work towards a version that represents consensus among editors. You can post a request for help at an appropriate noticeboard or seek dispute resolution. In some cases, it may be appropriate to request temporary page protection. If you engage in an edit war, you may be blocked from editing. Please note WP:3RR; you've reverted three times.--Jerome Frank Disciple 13:18, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

[17] This counts as another revert mate. You absolutely do not get to unilaterally decide what order the options are presented in--Jerome Frank Disciple 13:22, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

@Jerome Frank Disciple: If it counts as a revert, that I apologize. I would self revert to bring myself in compliance with WP:3RR, but I see you have already done so. However, if it counts as a revert then you are now on five, and I ask that you self-revert to address that issue. BilledMammal (talk) 13:25, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

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List of Olympians that may or may not be being directed

Hi, given that the close is still being debated, do you have a list of articles, or can I use the one on the original page, if I can find time to see if any of them are expandable? Red Fiona (talk) 16:37, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

@Redfiona99: I've posted an up to date list here. If you, or anyone else (User:BeanieFan11), improves any please post on the talk page saying so; I've got lists in different formats stored locally that I would need to update. BilledMammal (talk) 16:49, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

Thank you. And will do :) Red Fiona (talk) 20:43, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for your work on the Lugnuts stubs

Too many would rather simply have ignored the issue as overly complex and intractable. I personally did not have much optimism about the proposal to draftify and have to admit my preference is still for straight deletion, but it won many over. Regardless of the outcome of the AN discussion, you have moved the discussion on mass-created articles closer to where it needs to be. FOARP (talk) 08:06, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

Thank you; regarding the choice of draftification, while we may find in the years to come that it wasn't beneficial I personally can't imagine any harm coming from it. BilledMammal (talk) 17:26, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

As I said in the original RFC, this can be a precedent for how to handle other large sets of failing mass-created articles (C46’s Iranian “village” articles, Dr. Blofeld’s “village” articles). I’m thinking we make a redirect to that RFC (WP:LugStubs?) so it can act as a short-hand for what is being discussed. FOARP (talk) 07:05, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

I agree; I'm not sure what group of articles we should try to tackle next (I'll open a discussion on that after the AN discussion is closed or archived), but I have created a quarry query that attempts to define a group of C46's Iranian 'villages' that might be appropriate candidates.

LugStubs or similar sounds like a good idea, when the discussion is archived. BilledMammal (talk) 09:48, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

RE: the querry, is it possible to narrow down on to the ones that have no location data? Whilst the GNS database isn't loading right now most of the ones that have location data appear to have something at the location specified (though whether the name is the same as Carlos put is not clear). Congratulations on getting LugStubs done at last BTW! FOARP (talk) 14:11, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

By location data do you mean coordinates? If you do, it should be possible for me to exclude those articles. BilledMammal (talk) 20:08, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

That's right - the ones that have co-ordinates are more likely to be tied to something real (though often it could be just a big farm, rather than an actual village). FOARP (talk) 20:14, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

I'd very much like to add my appreciation for your willingness to take hold of the yoke here also. XAM2175 ^(T) 18:26, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

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Identifying articles subject to five-year incubation

This may have already been discussed elsewhere so I apologise if I'm retreating old ground, but has anything been discussed as to how the draftified lugstubs will be identified as being protected from speedy-deletion for five years rather than the normal six months? It strikes me as being worth it to drop some sort of maintenance-style tag at the head of each article so as to avoid any accidental drama when the six-month mark comes around. Cheers. XAM2175 ^(T) 18:24, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

@XAM2175: Already done; see William Tritschler, for example. The template may need some copy-editing, but the principle is there.

I'm currently trying to identify if there is any automated tagging of articles older than six months, so I can contact the editors who maintain those bots. BilledMammal (talk) 18:27, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

Ah, excellent! XAM2175 ^(T) 18:37, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

As far as I know, the admins who process G13s (mainly Liz and Explicit) work off of the lists at User:SDZeroBot/G13 soon (and sometimes User:SDZeroBot/G13 eligible), which I'm sure SD0001 would be willing to change to exclude drafts with your new template. There's no automatic tagging, but there might be other database reports I'm not aware of, so maybe follow up with Liz and/or Explicit to make sure. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 21:29, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

Thank you, I'll reach out to them. BilledMammal (talk) 20:09, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Category:All drafts subject to special procedures

A tag has been placed on Category:All drafts subject to special procedures indicating that it is currently empty, and is not a disambiguation category, a category redirect, a featured topics category, under discussion at Categories for discussion, or a project category that by its nature may become empty on occasion. If it remains empty for seven days or more, it may be deleted under section C1 of the criteria for speedy deletion.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 01:40, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

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Enjoy your wikibreak

Damn near blew my mind when I saw your name bluelinked. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 15:29, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

Hahaha, yeah - needed a break after some notability disputes, and I think there is a LTA hounding me. Seems I'm back now, however - and even my "wikibreak" was rather intermittent. BilledMammal (talk) 09:26, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

Oh, I just saw this ^. I have experience should you need to join any dots at any point... Blue Square Thing (talk) 05:40, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

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Henrietta Maria move closure

Hi, BilledMammal. I am disappointed to see that you offered no explanation for setting aside the article titling policy, and the overwhelming evidence of usage in academic sources, when closing the move request at Talk:Henrietta Maria of France. Could you please give one? Surtsicna (talk) 11:12, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

@Surtsicna: The most significant reason is that your position was rejected by editors contributing to the discussion; while consensus is not determined by counting !votes to find in favor of the move when just one editor supported it and four opposed it would require a strength of argument that isn't present here.

Setting aside the community opposition to your proposal, your arguments aren't as strong as you believe. Your argument was that the title was the WP:NATURAL title; in rebuttal to this editors argued that the current title is also natural and used in reliable sources (see the comment by Walrasiad), that it is more WP:RECOGNIZABLE, and that it is WP:CONSISTENT with other articles on royalty.

Even considering the WP:CONCISE argument in favor of your proposal, which was not raised in the discussion, I would consider the arguments against the proposal to be somewhat stronger than the arguments for it. Considering this alongside the level of opposition to the proposal it would be impossible for me to close the discussion any other way. BilledMammal (talk) 11:28, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. The sources cited demonstrate that the current (new) title is not nearly as commonly used as the proposed title, meaning that it is not nearly as natural. It remains unclear how an obscure name is supposed to be "more WP:RECOGNIZABLE" than a vastly more common name. The WP:CONSISTENT argument was shown to be false with an (undisputed) overview of articles within Category:English royal consorts, something already noted in the May discussion by two other editors (whose input was ignored in this discussion). Quite frankly, it is difficult for me to understand the closure as anything but a vote count. Surtsicna (talk) 11:46, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

@Surtsicna: Naturalness isn't a direct function of commonality; they are closely related, but a name being used (for example) twice as much as an alternative doesn't make that name twice as natural.

Regarding recognizability, editors argued that adding the qualifier "of France" provided context for readers and made it easier for readers who are not familiar with the topic to recognize it. This argument was not well-rebutted; you argued It obviously hurts recognizability to use an obscure name instead of the universally used one, but didn't explain why it "obviously" would do so in this case where the names are so closely related and editors opposing the move in turn argued that appending "of France" to the name would neither WP:SURPRISE or confuse readers.

Finally, regarding WP:CONSISTENCY, while English royalty is less consistent than most, the argument was that this is consistent with royalty broadly; for example, editors provided the example of her two sisters, Elisabeth of France (1602–1644) and Christine of France. BilledMammal (talk) 12:02, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

Romani people move closure

I think the reasoning given in your closure at Romani people indicates a "no consensus" outcome. To my understanding, a (rough) consensus should at least be the stronger side according to the weight of arguments (WP:DETCON), though it should ideally also have broad agreement of editors raising good-faith, valid, policy-based arguments. (Note that I participated in favor of not moving, so it's not that I dislike the outcome.)

Notes

– SilverLocust (talk) 04:14, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

If the level of opposition was less, or the arguments in favor much stronger, I would agree, but the strength of argument in support is more than compensated for by the level of opposition. BilledMammal (talk) 04:17, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

Lists and redirects

I thought this would make more sense to discuss here so as not to crowd the RFC. I've just created a list, in response to an AfD discussion. Are you confident that you can pick up all the redirect possibilities from categories, even when someone had played for multiple teams? There are a few issues with the odd Sri Lankan list redirecting to a team page, but the biggest issue is selecting which cat to redirect to and then checking that the list exists.

I mean, I guess I can see how that could be done automatically, but it seems tricky as heck!

But the list at my sandbox7 is definitely out of date anyway, so if that's an essential part of this (which I don't think it is) we'll need to update it. Blue Square Thing (talk) 05:45, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

If someone has played for multiple teams we will need to manually determine which team is more appropriate to redirect to, but it will be able to give us all the options. Regarding lists redirecting to team pages, what do you want to do with those articles?

Regarding the list at sandbox7, I don't think it is, but we'll see. BilledMammal (talk) 21:03, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

That's fine - give us the options and we can make informed (or quick!) decisions fairly easily I think.

Not sure what to do with lists redirecting to team pages. The lists might get made eventually, they might not. I know why they were redirected but I'm not sure what to do with them in the short term. I'll have a think. Blue Square Thing (talk) 08:00, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

I suspect it would be easy to create those lists; I just look for every biography in the relevant category, and then use a little regex to turn the results into a list. The lists would be basic, containing little beyond their name and a reference or two, but it would be better than nothing?

I'll create the list of redirects over the weekend, or earlier if I can find time - I don't think it's overly urgent, there is still a while till the RfC closes? BilledMammal (talk) 08:42, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

I suppose that if we made them that way that we could check them and make changes, additions etc... as necessary which might be quicker than making them from scratch. It would be interesting to see how it goes - maybe start with Orange Free State or Western Province - long established South African teams. OFS has a successor team of Free State so is a little complex.

I agree that there's no rush as such - I'll be largely away from here for a month or so in a few weeks so won't be able to do too much in that time as well. If it needs to wait it can do. More important to establish a good way of doing this I think Blue Square Thing (talk) 10:32, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

I'll give Western Province a go when I have a chance, then. BilledMammal (talk) 00:51, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

Canvassing

No matter what our views on MOS:GENDERID are, posting about the RfC on a whopping five WikiProject talk pages is bordering on canvassing, which is especially egregious considering you've accused editors of such before. LilianaUwU ^{(talk / contributions)} 21:25, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

What? You do realize I was only finishing what Sideswipe9th had started, who didn't finish it themselves only because they got distracted? You're right that I generally lean against notifying WikiProjects, which is why I didn't do so myself initially, but I felt that since someone had already started doing so I might as well finish it. BilledMammal (talk) 21:29, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

Coming into the 20th century

I once suggested to Cordless Larry that he consider getting more modern by changing his name to Bluetooth Larry or Cellular Larry, or even just WiFi-Enabled Larry. Similarly, instead of Billed Mammal, maybe you could be Paypal Mammal or Automated Clearing House Mammal or Monthly Recurring Charge Mammal. Just a thought? EEng 23:18, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

I laughed, twice. When I read the comment the first time, and again when I came back to reply.

Thank you for the suggestion, I will take it under serious consideration. I am genuinely tempted to change my name to "Automated Clearing House Mammal". BilledMammal (talk) 00:09, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

With Automated Clearinghouse Mammal you can certainly be confident of no pesky name conflicts with editors on other wikis. EEng 00:24, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

Or anywhere else on the internet. You may have just managed to organize those words in a way that has never been done before. BilledMammal (talk) 00:31, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

Thinking outside the box. Way outside. EEng 01:08, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

Just a kibbitz, but I for one would find "House Clearing Automated Mammal" more evocative. :p Newimpartial (talk) 01:06, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

Newimpartial, I'm awarding you the EEng Grand Iron Cross of Excellence in Permutated Diction, with Platinum Edging, Laurel Leaves, and Teensy Weensy Sapphire Chips. EEng 01:20, 11 July 2023 (UTC) Just a quibble, but a hyphen is needed: House-Clearing. You can thank me later.

There are too many good ideas here. I might have to start messing with my signature.

Although "House Clearing Automated Mammal" does suggest I am more tidy than I actually am. BilledMammal (talk) 01:15, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

I was imagining a robot skunk that causes unwanted houseguests to flee. EEng 01:43, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

What about ATM Mammal? That would mean everyone who addresses you is really saying "Automated Teller Mammal Mammal", like we do with ATM machine? ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 08:49, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

ATM! ATM! It's me, Dorothy! EEng 09:35, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

Quarry query

Hey mammal -- I am not experienced with the Quarry query process. When you have time, would you mind preparing a query of Category:Players of American football for entries with less than 2,500 bytes and sourced only to a database (e.g. "pro-football-reference.com" or "sports-reference.com" or "profootballarchives.com")? Such a list could be helpful in encouraging an article-improvement campaign. Cbl62 (talk) 17:19, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

I see there's a page to request queries. Will post there. Cbl62 (talk) 17:22, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

I see that Cryptic has already replied; I've added my own comment. BilledMammal (talk) 00:50, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

Well merited ...

		The Defender of the Wiki Barnstar
		For your solid work uncovering the full extent of MIAJudges' shenanigans. Ravenswing 13:13, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

Thank you. BilledMammal (talk) 10:37, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

WP:NOTDIRECTORY closure

• Discussion moved from Jc37's talk page 04:08, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for closing that discussion. I was hoping you could explain how you came to a consensus to remove the sentence? As far as I can tell the proposal to outright remove the sentence did not receive enough attention either way to form a consensus, particularly as that proposal was discussed more extensively in a previous RfC. BilledMammal (talk) 03:45, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

Sure. Happy to clarify.

It was suggested throughout the discussion, and was nearly unianimous in the last section.

As for the previous RfC, the result of that discussion was "No Consensus". - jc37 03:49, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

nearly unianimous in the last section Can you clarify which section you are referring to? BilledMammal (talk) 04:05, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia_talk:What_Wikipedia_is_not#Suggestions_for_rewording - jc37 04:10, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

Looking at that discussion, I see no editors who opposed the overall proposal commented there. Speaking personally, I didn't because that alternative proposal had already been discussed in a previous RfC and I didn't consider that sub-discussion to be a separate proposal that could find a consensus; instead, I saw it as work-shopping for a future proposal. I suspect many other editors who would have opposed it did the same.

I also see that while it was mentioned three times in the "Survey" section, without any explicit opposition to such a proposal, most of the opposes were also framed in such a way that would implicitly oppose that change. For example, Aquillion said Any removal of "notable" from the text here is a complete nonstarter.

Further, even some of the supporters, such as scope_creep, had previously opposed removing the sentence entirely and would likely have done so again had they thought the proposal to be on the table.

Can I suggest that rather than close the RfC now you relist it, and in your relisting comment ping all the editors who contributed to the discussion and say that while there isn't a consensus for the initial proposal there may be a consensus for this alternative proposal? That should be sufficient to get all the editors, on both sides, who didn't see that sub-proposal as an actual proposal to recognize it as such and contribute their thoughts? BilledMammal (talk) 04:26, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

As I noted in the close, there was no consensus as to what (if anything) should replace the text. So feel free to start a new RfC concerning that if you wish. But your decision to join in a discussion (or not) was your choice, the same as everyone else. - jc37 05:42, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

The issue was that there was no indication that it was a proposal that could come to a consensus. Even editors who supported that option didn't think that it was, such as when one said We should scrap this proposal and start over with a proposal to remove the line about disambiguation pages from WP:NOT altogether. This is also indicated by the lack of formal !votes.

I think it was reasonable for editors to consider this a pre-RFC discussion for a future proposal, especially since it was explicitly presented in that manner. Given that, and given that it is rarely a productive use of anyone's time for people to oppose a proposal in a pre-RFC discussion, I don't believe we can reasonably consider this to be a sufficiently considered proposal to elicit consensus either way. This is why I am asking that you relist the discussion and make it clear that this is a proposal that is being considered for consensus in this RfC.

Further, even if you do believe it was sufficiently clear that it was an actual proposal on the table for consideration I am not seeing a consensus for it given the implicit opposition in most of the oppose !votes. How did you determine that this implicit opposition was insufficient to prevent a consensus from forming? BilledMammal (talk) 05:53, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

Again, you have an easy answer for all of this. Start a new discussion, with what you would like replacement text to be. The closure does not prevent that. - jc37 13:08, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

The issue is that you have ascertained a consensus to a proposal that was not offered; that was in fact explicitly not offered. This goes beyond closer discretion, and your suggestions that a new discussion is opened isn't relevant to that. To this end, I agree with Aquillion's revert, and have restored it myself.

Further, your closure fails to explain how you determined a consensus for that. Did you only consider editors who directly respond to it, or did you consider !votes opposing the general proposal that implicitly opposed that proposal? BilledMammal (talk) 13:11, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

In a close of a discussion, the entire discussion is assessed.

Look, I understand you oppose the results. That's not uncommon in a discussion that some of the comments oppose the results. But a discussion is not a vote. If you really feel the close was inappropriate, the next step in the process after talking to the closer is to post to WP:AN. You are welcome to explore that option at your discretion. - jc37 13:17, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

I strongly believe that this is beyond closer discretion.

However, even if we assume for a moment it is not, your closure doesn't explain how you came to that decision. I am hoping you will explain how you did so; if you considered any !votes as being against this proposal, and if you did so both how many you considered to be against it and how you weighted those !votes. BilledMammal (talk) 13:20, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

I suggest that you revert yourself. Reverting a close that you disagree with is considered disruptive, and can lead to sanction. - jc37 13:19, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

Considering the circumstances I disagree - closers aren't permitted to go beyond the question asked and discussed, and attempts to do so may be reverted like any other WP:BOLD edit - but I've self-reverted as adding more heat than light to the current discussion. However, I hope you will respond to the above question and explain how you determined there was a consensus here. BilledMammal (talk) 13:22, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

WP:BOLD is about an edit without prior consensus. So no, an edit implementing a close is not considered a BOLD edit.

Your main argument above, seems to be that you were/are surprised by the result. As I noted above, all of a discussion is assessed. And RfCs often have multiple sections as the commenters try to work things out. It doesn't matter what section people express, all of it contributes. And a close is to reflect the entire discussion, even if those discussing move beyond merely the initial proposal.

As for assessment, multiple people said something similar to: "... I would support simply removing the reference to DABs..." - and not just merely in the last section.

This is simply about assessing consensus. Which, as I'm fairly certain you know, is not a vote. - jc37 13:38, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

So no, an edit implementing a close is not considered a BOLD edit. Which becomes complicated when there is a question of whether it is beyond the scope of the discussion that is being closed. Which is why I continue to ask that you partially revert your close and make it clear that such a question is within the scope and allow editors to participate in the full knowledge of that.

Your main argument above, seems to be that you were/are surprised by the result. I'm surprised you considered it a proposal, considering it was explicitly presented as a pre-proposal discussion. Even if it was taking place under the auspices of another RfC, editors shouldn't be expected to predict that a possibility presented in such a manner is actually being considered during this RfC.

A few did say in their !votes that they supported removing it entirely - by my count three - but I wouldn't consider that a sufficient quorum for such a proposal, particularly given the implicit opposes. Which leads me to what I am trying to understand through these questions; how you assessed such implicit opposition to this possibility. Did you only consider explicit opposes, or did you also consider implicit ones? Further, what editors did you consider to be in implicit opposition to this proposal, and how did you weight their votes? BilledMammal (talk) 13:52, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

Again, this isn't about counting votes. What people contribute is beyond a single bolded word.

And people in contributing may support or oppose many varied things. As they did in this discussion.

For example, there was discussion about whether "notability" should be a factor in the text. But that specific set of discussions had no consensus, between those who supported it and who opposed it.

Again, a discussion can be free to go into any direction the commenters wish to go. And they often do. - jc37 14:04, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

Again, this isn't about counting votes. What people contribute is beyond a single bolded word. In general, I agree. Which is why I am asking how you assessed implicit opposes; if you considered them, and if you did who you considered to be in implicit opposition to this proposal as well as how you weighted their !votes against those !votes that supported this proposal. BilledMammal (talk) 14:15, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

What I think you're asking about is people who you think may be "drive-by" voting. If they make a comment in regards to one thing, and then somethng else comes up which they don't comment on, they are considered to not be voicing an opinion on that (unless they did).

This is not uncommon in discussions to see "Oppose X, but support this other thing, but oppose some other thing". And that doesn't have to be in a single sentence. It could be from things they have said at various places throughot the discussion.

I mentioned this above, and I think it's worth mentioning again. There is no reason that you cannot start a new discussion proposing whatever new text that you would prefer. I said that explicitly in the close. So the closure does not preclude new discussion. - jc37 14:27, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

No, I'm not. I'm asking about votes which comment on one thing, but have clear relevance to a different topic which was brought up later.

To put it as a yes/no question: When assessing consensus, did you find that there was implicit opposition to the proposal in !votes by editors like Aquillion?

(Your "drive-by" voting is a different issue; with RfC's we want broad community input on the question. That input is limited when it isn't clear that there is a question being asked.) BilledMammal (talk) 14:33, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

Were that user's comments assessed along with everyone else's? yes. Did I look over their comments along with everyone else's in regards to everything brought up and discussed? yes.

But it seems to me that what you want to hear is whether their comments applied to the question of wholly removing the text. The answer to that is yes, somewhat. Though their focus was (mostly) concerning removal of notability from the sentence, and by extension, how that would change the meaning of the sentence, and also being opposed to dabmention being included on the page (with the suggestion that that page is substandard in their opinion), both of which, apparently to their view, would change how that sentence then applied to NOTDIRECTORY.

But the nuance of their arguments were that they felt that notability did apply to notdirectory. So even though they did not "implicitly" (your word) oppose said removal, per se, I would obviously not say that they supported it in their comments either.

And I stated this above in general terms already. I'm trying to give you the benefit of the doubt, but this is starting to feel circular.

I'm still not sure why you seem disinclined to start a new discussion, as that option is open to you. - jc37 14:59, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

Because at the moment I don't really have a basis for your close. To quote your complete close: No consensus on initial proposal. There is a consensus to remove the sentence about DAB pages, but no consensus on what to replace it with (if anything).

It lacks explanation for how you determined consensus, what arguments you considered particularly strong, and whether you felt there was a numerical preference in favor of a position or whether you considered strength of argument to overcome a lack of numerical preference.

In the absence of you volunteering a more extensive closing summary, I'm trying to ask questions that address the parts I consider relevant. Thank you for addressing Aquillion's !vote; could you briefly list which other editors you considered to have !votes relevant to the alternative proposal, even if they didn't address it directly?

Further, you say The answer to that is yes, somewhat. Does the "somewhat" mean you provided less weight to the !vote in this regard than you did to !votes that addressed it directly? BilledMammal (talk) 15:15, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

Due to continued reversion, opened a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Reverting_a_close. - jc37 15:43, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

Notice of noticeboard discussion

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. The thread is Closure review - WP:NOT. Thank you. — Newimpartial (talk) 17:57, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

Talk:Rishi#Requested move 4 July 2023

Hi there. I think you could've relisted this discussion given that there appeared to be an emerging consensus, as well as the fact that the arguments against the move were largely rebutted. ‑‑Neveselbert (talk · contribs · email) 19:06, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

Considering it hadn't previously been relisted I've now done so. BilledMammal (talk) 19:07, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

Move close at Labours of Heracles

Hi, in this edit at Talk:Labours of Heracles#Requested move 10 July 2023 you closed the move request in favor of MOVE, acknowledging the complexity of it, and the deeply divided comments, but appealed to the quality of arguments, and you said, "Considered through this lens, we find a very rough consensus to move this article." I disagree with this, because I believe you made an error in evaluation of the data, in what I consider to be your key statement that swayed you in favor of the move:

Normally, when editors argue that the majority of sources are wrong we dismiss those arguments, in line with WP:OR, WP:RGW, or any number of other two- or three-letter initialism. However, in this case the argument is justified by referring to quality of sources; editors in support of this position argue that while popular sources may refer to it as "Labours of Hercules", academic sources prefer "Labours of Heracles".

Yes to the first sentence, but it's the second one where I think you went wrong. Admittedly, I was very late to the discussion, in fact, mine was the very last comment before closure:

• Oppose based on this ngrams plot showing that the current name is approximately ten times as common as the proposed version, thus per WP:COMMONNAME. Mathglot (talk) 17:47, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

I didn't mention it in my comment above because I assume Move-closers are aware, but ngrams is based on google books, and only plots data when there are at least forty books containing the search expression. That's a pretty clear, order of magnitude preference for the pre-move name, and unless we do a deep dive to find that a huge number of these books are not reliable, that's a tough cliff to overcome. But still, books can be unreliable, or SPS, or whatever, so I've just now done these additional tests at Google scholar:

• 3,340: "labours of hercules"
• 662: "labours of heracles"
• 6,450 "labours of hercules" OR "labors of hercules"
• 1,240 "labours of heracles" OR "labors of heracles"

These show roughly 5–1 in favor of the old name, and by definition, are academic sources (doesn't guarantee they aren't predatory). I think the numbers would have to be strongly skewed in the other direction to overturn the long-term stable title. I wonder if you're open to changing the outcome of the move? I apologize for not including the scholar results before the close, but partly I assumed it wasn't necessary (i.e., I was lazy), and partly the Move-expiration bit me.

One other thing: I do want to make it very clear that I *do* support the part of your stated reasoning at the move that it isn't just a tally tug-of-war, and that *yes* it's okay to overturn that, when quality demands it, and I fully recognize that you thought it came down that way here. I would always support your use of that rationale in the future, and so whatever happens here, I don't want you to shy from using that exact same argument in the future, because I think it is a perfectly valid one, and clearly supported by the close guideline. Mathglot (talk) 06:36, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

You make some good points. I don't have the time to properly consider them now, but I will do later in the day. BilledMammal (talk) 06:44, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

I also thought this was a textbook no consensus close. Srnec (talk) 23:31, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, I haven't had time to give this the attention it deserves yet, but I haven't forgotten about it. BilledMammal (talk) 05:24, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

Considering this, I've decided to overturn to "no consensus". First, I did underweight the ngrams results. While such results do include fiction works and other unreliable sources, as a general rule they are more indicative of how high quality sources refer to the subject that Google News searches or similar.

On its own that might not have been enough to convince me to overturn the result, but more convincing are your Google Scholar results, as that directly rebuts the argument in favor of the move. Technically, such evidence should have been provided during the RM, but per WP:NOTBURO I don't think the failure to do so is justification for having the "wrong result". BilledMammal (talk) 04:52, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

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Your close at Talk:Fraser Island#Requested move 20 July 2023

Kia ora BilledMammal - I'm wanting to ask you about your WP:BOLD close of the above discussion and request that you revert this. While I appreciate that there have been a lot of discussions recently, only one of those has generated any substantial discussion. The most recent proposal is a couple months after the substantial one and includes new evidence that wasn't covered in the previous discussion which merits discussion. There was also no talk of a moratorium in previous closes, and given you've been involved in the past it doesn't seem appropriate to prematurely close the discussion a day after it started. Turnagra (talk) 20:42, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

Given that it was, as I said, a "WP:BOLD WP:INVOLVED close", I'll revert it if you object. However, I would encourage you to let this one stand and wait a few months before opening a new one; this would be the fourth move request in four months, and the community appears exhausted by the topic given the lower participation in the third one that was opened a fortnight ago.

I doubt the level of participation will be much higher, or the result any different, from the last discussion. Further, if this one does go forward I'm going to push for a one year moratorium; a four move requests in such a short period is verging on disruptive, five certainly would be.

Let me know. BilledMammal (talk) 04:42, 23 July 2023 (UTC)