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Are Bus Routes Encyclopaedic?

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

This is a perennial discussion on Wikipedia, and we have Wikipedia:OUTCOMES#Transportation which indicates that in general in AfD discussions some bus/train routes are kept and some are not. The views given within this discussion tend to reflect what happens at AfD, that if there are appropriate sources a bus/train route article is kept, that if a route is seen as significant it is kept, and if an article does not have reliable sources and it appears unlikely they will have such sources then it is deleted. There have been some attempts to draw up advice on this matter - Wikipedia:Notability (organizations and companies), Wikipedia:Places of local interest, Wikipedia:Notability (Railway lines and stations), Wikipedia:WikiProject Buses/Bus route list guide, Wikipedia:WikiProject Trains/Manual of style - though it might be useful for some people to pull together a notability essay on transport in general, which refers to the existing essays, guidelines and AfD outcomes, and gives advice on how to deal with articles on various transport aspects, such as bus and train routes. The consensus is that if a subject has been written about significantly in reliable sources (ie. at least two independent sources - rather than one or more Wikipedia editors - has seen that the subject is notable) then we should have an article on that subject, and this principle is enshrined in our guidelines and polices and doesn't significantly differ according to the topic. While some editors may passionately feel that a particular topic (such as bus routes or porn stars) should be included on principle and others feel that the same topic should not be covered on principle, this doesn't reflect the general consensus which is as it always has been - judge each subject within a topic on its merits, and only have a stand alone article on those subjects for which independent reliable sources have shown are notable. It is a shame that some AfDs get closed as No consensus, and it would be prefered that if a closer can't read the consensus or doesn't know the appropriate guidelines, that the closer should not attempt to close that AfD or should relist until consensus is clear, however it just happens that sometimes consensus on a particular subject cannot be found and No consensus is the most appropriate close. The consensus here and on Wikipedia, however, is clear, that bus routes (same as any other topic - other than significant geographic locations) are not inherently notable, but if there are appropriate sources on the route, and the material is more than can be contained in a parent article, then a stand alone article is appropriate. In short, bus routes are to be treated the same as any other topic, and judgement is made on a case by case basis with relevance to appropriate policies, guidelines and essays. SilkTork *^{Tea time} 11:47, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

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Recently a number of Lists of UK Bus Routes have come up for AfD, two closed on Delete and more closed on No Consensus.

Postdlf's closing statement on the last of these would seem sum up the problems associated with these debates:

The result was NO CONSENSUS. ...to delete outright, at least. The principle Thyduulf supports is unresolved (see also Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of bus routes in Peterborough) as to whether such bus route lists should be viewed as in furtherance of Wikipedia's coverage of real places, or should be viewed as a WP:NOTDIR violation. The assertion that "Wikipedia is not a bus directory" doesn't help answer the question, even if "true" (i.e., consensus-supported interpretation), as what makes an article a "directory" or not can be a matter purely of detail and presentation (e.g., including ephemeral info such as timetables, street intersections for bus stops) rather than subject matter. Particularly given the vast number of bus route articles that exist (take a look atCategory:Bus routes in England, for example) it would probably be best to have an RFC or other centralized discussion to resolve the issue, rather than try to delete individual lists here or there when the reasons for deletion target the whole subject rather than being specific to that list. This particular list is unsourced at present, but I do not see an argument that it is unverifiable, nor is there a clear way to apply WP:GNG here.

Some of these articles are sourced to Primary sources - Timetables, etc - others remain unsourced.

The arguments against are that the articles fail WP:N, WP:NOTESAL, WP:NOTDIR, WP:NOTTRAVEL, WP:SAL amongst others The arguments for are that such lists do not form a directory or travel guide (removing WP:NOT arguments), that the lists are WP:V, and that if the list meets WP:5P (section #1 - Wikipedia incorporates elements of general and specialized almanacs, and gazetteers.) then notability can be established by the number of sources even if those sources do not meet WP:GNG.

Whilst I've !voted Delete for these AfD's I think there are some ways the lists can be integrated into Notable Articles - For instance some lists are contained not in a SAL but within the articles on the operating companies within each region (articles on first Bus are good examples like First Aberdeen) , Also in some cities a SAL may actually meet GNG and could be justified in remaining.

Finally WikiProject Buses previously considered a set of notability guidelines for Lists of Bus Routes, their now inactive guideline read:

Generally, if the bus routes in an area descended from streetcars, a list is appropriate, and if the system did not exist at all until the 1990s, it is probably not. In between those extremes, use your own judgment.

currently I see no evidence that the age of the routes is being taken into account by the editors creating some of these lists.

So the questions needing discussed.

1. Are lists of Bus routes automatically notable, even if GNG cannot be met?
2. Do Bus route lists establish a directory or Travel guide failing WP:NOT?
3. if not automatically notable, Should a Guideline be established to differentiate lists of routes that are automatically notable due to their longevity, and those that are notable for more recent reasons?

Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 14:56, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

I believe they should be treated the same as databases. The information contained is not notable, in fact shouldn't be referred to unless as a primary source relating to information given by a secondary source. Dmcq (talk) 15:10, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Notability is NOT EVER automatic for anything. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 15:12, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

No special case of notability for any type of schedule that is subject to change - that includes busses, trains, subways, airlines, etc. If the route is notable via the GNG (which I'm sure there are some examples from major cities), an article about it would make sense but even then, the detailed route schedule wouldn't make sense (it's one thing to say "the route is renown for regular hourly punctuality" as a general comment, and a full list of every stop and timetable). --MASEM (t) 15:17, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

I think our coverage of transportation infrastructure in the U.S. and U.K. is an area where we are producing huge volumes of content that are unlikely to be the sort of thing that benefits our users. There is this idea that individual subway stations and now even bus stops and routes are notable and should be included here. What's next? Taxi stands? Cross walks? A major metropolitan transit authority is notable. The individual routes driven by it's buses are not. The individual stops on a railroad or subway are generally not, although there are some exceptions such as Victoria Station which has a fully fleshed out article with 40+ sources. A bus route is extremely unlikely to ever have that depth of coverage. Beeblebrox (talk) 15:23, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Per WP:STATION If it does not meet GNG, include the station or line in a parent article. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 15:34, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

At least one bus route has GA status - The Witch Way, which I wrote based on a whole string of sources I found by accident. Others such as London Buses route 73 are notable but aren't as well written. Lists of bus routes are different in that the general topic doesn't usually receive coverage as a whole, but individual members or smaller groups often do. Perhaps prose articles about the buses in a town or county with written information about individual routes would be a better way forward. Buses in Bristol is a good example, but even that benefits from not having to cover the information in List of bus routes in Bristol. Alzarian16 (talk) 15:40, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

A few thoughts:

• These articles are not schedules. Schedules contain times of arrival and departure, these articles don't (or shouldn't). Anybody who cannot even realise this basic fact before spouting off about how they violate this or that, doesn't deserve an opinion at Afd or in this Rfc.
• These articles are not directories. An actual directory of bus routes would contain information on all stops and all streets served. These don't (or shouldn't). Again, people who don't realise this should have their views weighted accordingly.
• These articles are not even decent travel guides. They are most certianly not intended to be travel guides, whatever anyone thinks. No date of last update is given, no tourist information or telephone helpline information is given, nothing you would find on an actual, useful, usable, travel guide is included in the articles, except the route number, operator, and major way points. This would appear in a travel guide, and it would also appear in an encyclopoedic record, if it wished to document bus routes in an area. These are as much travel guides as road maps are tbh. And Wikipedia has no problem with documenting what road goes where as being a 'travel guide'.
• Merging to company articles is not a satisfactory alternative. Right across the country many routes are operated by multiple operators, often with the same number, or if not, the exact same route. And a good many individual routes have two different operators - a daytime commercial operator and an evening/weeked subsidised one, again with the same route and number. Merging all of this to company articles would simply be a waste of reader's time, and be a pointless potential sources of confusion/obfuscation, if it is accepted that lists of routes is valid content. Infact, several companies don't even have articles, where would their routes get documented, if not in a 'bus routes in place' type article?
• Primary sources exist in abundance, verifiability of any of this content is never an issue frankly, and while it can get out of date if not updated by editors, that's never been a reason for deletion anywhere on Wikipedia
• Changes to bus routes, either individually if the change is siginificant enough, and especially if changing whole networks, will always get at a minimum, independent secondary coverage in the local news. Some will even be protested. Improvements or initiatives, especially governemnt funded ones, also always get their fair share of free publicity. There is no way that national coverage would ever happen, but then again, what national coverage ever exists for schools? Or any other local type of infrastructure that Wikipedia documents?

Having said all that, while I would never in a million years waste the time trying to looking for GNG type coverage of a route directory, I cannot see how anybody can predict what might be found by someone motivated to keep such an article. So, I see no way that the status quo can be improved by a guideline, or by declaring a straight yes/no as to automatic notability. Sending to Afd will have to remain the status quo imho. At best, I would recommend such articles should be kept to county level and above, as these are the level at which bus services are provided/regulated, and that such lists should be incorporated into wider 'bus transport in X' type articles (but per PRESERVE, not deleted until that happens). MickMacNee (talk) 16:07, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

There's also the issue of whether specialist sources like Buses Magazine or Buses Yearbook etc etc are GNG type coverage, as they do contain coverage of whenever major routes/networks are changed. I used to think not, but having seen what sort of aviation-porn type source is routinely held up as the reason for all the 'omfg meets GNG eeeasily' type votes at Afd whenever you dare to suggest to Aviation editors that a small plane crashing in the woods kiliing 10 people but never written about again except in the likes of Flight Magazine or primary sources (which is what NTSB reports are, whatever some people say), just might not be historically notable. MickMacNee (talk) 16:20, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

1) If the article only cites primary sources, it's a good bet it won't pass notability. 2) The difficulty of AfD-ing something shouldn't deter us from setting a guideline on them. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 18:16, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Yet, at the same time, if articles from a certain realm consistently survive AfDs, then the guideline needs to be revised to account for the consensus that these types of articles are considered typically notable. It's a classic case where guidelines don't accurately reflect a wider consensus. A potential pitfall, that is. oknazevad (talk) 20:44, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

We currently have 168 articles with intitle:"Bus Routes" - That suggests 168 lists (there may be a few that aren't lists) Of those 11 have been to AfD (with one 2nd nomination - London) 6 AfDs were No consensus on virtually the same grounds as above - 6 AfDs were keep - yet reviewing them I find them much closer to no consensus - for instance Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Colombo Bus Routes which only had one vote more towards keep. What's worse is that even when these articles are kept they can remain unsourced and unimproved for years after the AfD - even when the closing Admin specifically mentions this needs done. A further 18 not included in the current 168 have actually been deleted.

Above this we have 305 Articles on individual bus Routes - I think 69 have been to AfD with 12 Keep, 8 NC, and a further 22 Deleted. So for both there is currently a balance of keeps and deletes. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 21:55, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

305 sounds too low. Category:Bus routes in England and its four subcategories have 362 between them (it used to be over 600, but many have been redirected to lists or deleted). There are plenty more for other countries too (80 for Canada, about 60 for the USA and 40 in Bucharest to name but a few). So anything that comes out of this discussion will have wide-ranging consequences

Speaking only for the UK, there have been two previous attempts to clean up bus route articles: one in May 2009 as a result of Wikipedia:WikiProject Buses/UK bus route quality drive, which redirected a lot of poor articles but did little to improve the 400 or so that survived, and one in April 2010 which took in this discussion, thirty AfDs and two ANI threads, and basically led to a few articles being improved, a few being deleted, and a proposed task force that never got off the ground. Let's hope this one achieves more, or we'll be at arbitration by next year... Alzarian16 (talk) 22:06, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, a quick look and I can see you're right I was using an intitle search which is fine if the title contains "Bus Route" or "Bus Routes" but would completely miss article titles like "Southern Vectis route 10" Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 22:29, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

• I'm agreeing with what Beeblebrox wrote above. While I admit to being a staunch inclusionist, I have a hard time imagining why anyone would want to consult Wikipedia for this kind of information. How does having having a separate list of bus routes, without detailed schedule or route information, meet a need that having articles like Public transportation in X or Public transit in X fails to address? Even interurban bus routes can be handled with a sentence in the respective articles, e.g. "Weekly bus service from here to there is provided by Acme Coach". I'm open to persuasion that I'm wrong, but I just don't see a need for these kinds of articles. -- llywrch (talk) 22:51, 30 March 2011 (UTC)
• This comment by MickMacNee, caught my attention '"Infact, several companies don't even have articles, where would their routes get documented, if not in a 'bus routes in place' type article?", If the company is not notable enough for an article, how could it's product (a bus route) be notable? The answer to MickMacNee's question is that bus routes get documented in a bus schedule, which Wikipedia is not. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 10:58, 31 March 2011 (UTC)
  • I had the same question and you beat me to it; There was a comment in one recent AfD that suggested that "scheduled public transport are generally considered notable"; if this is a widespread presumption of notability it doesn't seem to be vindicated by available sources. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 11:14, 31 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Bus routes aren't 'products', they are part of physical geography. A 'bus routes in X' article is in no way comparable to a 'list of company X's products' article. Not least because they include routes from different operators. To suggest we would only include routes by companies with an article is absurd. And that comment was a rebuttal of the merge argument, it was not an argument that the articles themselves are automatically notable, so you were rebutting a point I never actually made. And as I said above, people who cannot appreciate the difference between a route and a schedule should have their opinions weighted accordingly, they aren't the same. MickMacNee (talk) 11:56, 31 March 2011 (UTC)
    • I'm sorry but Bus Routes are not physical geography in the way that a road or train line are. They are constructs that may have similarities to physical geography but they arbitrarily change at the whims of Drivers, Schedulers, Road Works, Weather conditions; even the time if day. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 12:31, 31 March 2011 (UTC)
      • No, not at all. While the actual route taken on any one day may change due to transient effects, the design of the route is very much a fixed item, which does not infact change, in the UK at least, half as much as some here might want to make out. And how many times has this got to be said? The issue is documenting routes, NOT schedules (timings, frequencies etc). And as someone else said I think, it's surprising how many routes have varied little from the (very fixed) geography of trolleybus systems, which were mostly dismantled in the 1950s. Just because they can change, doesn't mean they have, or even do. In London, the routes are infact fixed for 7 year periods, and most have not actually been altered for decades. In the rest of the UK, the design of the route is fixed for the term of the registration - penalties are imposed for not sticking to it in full, or simply withdrawing it. Active competition aside, which is also very regulated as to what you can and can't change, and why, the design of routes is only really substantially changed due to changes in physical geography, such as new roads/estates. Any large scale changes for simply operational reasons are likely to be covered by secondary sources for their basic impact on the town/city's basic transport system - just search for Firstbus and their large scale 'Overground' network changes made in many cities, and you'll find coverage all over the place in local news, for no other reason than it involves changes to the design of many long standing fixed bus routes. If all of this isn't convincing as to the physical nature of bus routes, one thing's for certain, bus routes in the UK certainly cannot simply be changed at a 'whim' of anybody, and certainly not in any unverifiable and unpredictable way, not at all. And on a side note, while trains tracks don't change, train services do - and Wikipedia devotes massive amounts of coverage to documenting such services in addition to the tracks they run over. In terms of encyclopoedic worth and verifiabiltiy/notabilty, there's really not much difference between train services and bus routes tbh, not in the UK at least. MickMacNee (talk) 13:53, 31 March 2011 (UTC)
        • "there's really not much difference between train services and bus routes"; Per WP:STATION If it does not meet GNG, include the station or line in a parent article. It is pretty simple either there are independent source the meet GNG or not, if there are add them to the article and it passes WP:N. Else delete or merge and redirect. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 15:24, 31 March 2011 (UTC)
          • I really don't see the revelance of guidance on what to do for individual station articles has to articles about whole bus route networks. Particularly when there would be no merge or redirect target for several of the routes, as already said. If your'e trying to claim that the millions of train services (not lines) are backed up by GNG type coverage, I think your'e just wrong. If you're trying to simply say list of bus routes must have GNG coverage, I haven't actually disagreed with you there have I? MickMacNee (talk)
            • We agree that each article needs to meet GNG, I don't see what the relivance of what "no merge or redirect target" is. If it fails WP:N it either gets deleted or it merges, if there is no place to merge to then you either create the article (assuming it meets WPN), or you delete the content without merge. A completely off topic example would be an article on the "left foot of thumper", if his foot does not meet WP:N, then we can merge and redirect to the artilce on Thumper (Bambi), or up the next stage to Bambi, failing that up the next stage to Walt Disney. If the only place to merge to is content on "left foot of Thumper" is to Walt Disney, then merge and redirect there, where it may stay (or more likely) be deleted. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 16:00, 31 March 2011 (UTC)
        • There's an important issue being avoided here: bus routes, unless shown otherwise, are transient. In other words, ignoring the asserted case of the UK, bus routes can be changed, dropped or renamed at any time. While in many cases the transit organization must negotiate some amount of government red tape, a bus route is far more transient than either a road or railway. In those cases, there is the cost & labor required in acquiring right-of-way, & creating the infrastructure. (Admittedly, there are temporary railroads -- they were common in the early 20th century & used in the NW United States to move harvested timber by loggers -- but these individual railroads would not be notable by Wikipedia standards.) This whole issue is, IMHO, just another example of Wikipedia editors confusing the trees for the forest: we have countless articles on specific subjects, some highly developed, yet generalized articles on more generalized subjects lack proper attention. -- llywrch (talk) 19:47, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

• I'm surprised that there hasn't been any discussion yet of municipal/public bus service coverage versus commercial bus service coverage. From List of bus routes in Bristol, it looks like even the "city, suburban, and county services" are run by private companies (in addition to the "coach services") rather than government transit authorities? I can see an argument to some extent for treating municipal transit authority bus routes (the kind you will find in American cities) as infrastructure, even tolerating some primary sourcing for the sake of completeness (and such primary sources would ultimately be produced by municipal transit authorities, and so reliable). Given the vicissitudes of public funding, service coverage to needed areas, etc., you would even expect a good degree of (local) secondary source commentary on individual routes whenever changes are proposed, at least. But is there any reason to treat commercial bus lines the same way rather than impose the standard notability requirements, and the usual summary treatment of stating that "Company X services Towns A, B, and C"? postdlf (talk) 12:06, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

  I see no reason to do so. Municipal ownership and operation is only a tiny part of UK bus provision - only in Northern Ireland and a few remaining outposts. There's no difference in reliability between sources from local authorities and private companies, and local authorities tend to provide information on both anyway - even wholly commercial services have to be registered as regards timing/route details for set periods of validitiy. London aside, where buses are still run by (many) private companies even though the network is municipally designed, on the whole the only role local authorities play elsewhere in GB is to subsidise socially necessary routes not provided commercially - and these in no way can be logically seperated from the commercial networks, not least as they mostly parallel them, just in the evenings/weekends. As such, I don't think comparisons to US authorities/practices is relevant really, and to consider one system notable and the other not, would probably be a case of WP:BIAS. MickMacNee (talk) 13:53, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

  Prior to 1986, we had three kinds of bus operator in Great Britain - those owned by one or more of the local authorities (which were generally confined within the boundaries of the local authorities concerned, except where one LA operated services on behalf of another); the state-owned operators, which agreed their areas of operation amongst themselves; and the independent privately-owned operators. Bus operators falling into either the second or third group had to get a license from the local authority, and if a bus route crossed a local authority boundary, it needed licensing by both authorities.

  Bristol was a city with no purely municipal bus operator - all the bus services there were provided by the Bristol Omnibus Company, which was jointly owned by the state and by Bristol City Council, and whose area extended many miles from the city boundary - they had depots as far north as Cheltenham, as far east as Swindon, and as far south as Warminster, and operated even further - such as to Oxford, some 70 miles from Bristol.

  In 1986 we had Bus deregulation in Great Britain, which had several effects: the larger operators were broken down into smaller units; all the state-owned operators were sold into private hands, as were the majority of the municipal operators (a minority, such as Reading Transport, remain owned by the local authority); all the boundaries and area agreements were dissolved; licensing was relaxed but not entirely eliminated - operators could, technically, run buses wherever and whenever they liked provided that they gave the local authority eight weeks notice.

  This is why there are now so many private bus operators in Bristol: the state aren't allowed to, and the city council is discouraged from doing so. Bristol is by no means the worst case; Manchester is utterly crazy. London is now the only part of Great Britain where the local authority has any proper control over the bus routes, and even there, they're all privately-operated. --Redrose64 (talk) 13:11, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

• I don't think that modern bus routes are encyclopedic. I wouldn't necessarily object to a List of bus routes in Hometown that says things like "Route 2: serves northeast end of town, running from downtown to the Foo Hospital and Public School #3", but except for WP:SIZE issues, I think such a description should would be better off in the article about the agency that operates the routes. I would not include a complete list of stops anywhere: That job should be delegated to the bus agency's own website. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:31, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Break

This RFC never closed, as it was archived instead, however it has subsequently received a further comment whilst in the archive which may inspire further comment; and as it is relevant to a current AFD it seems prudent to get it closed formally. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 12:18, 21 April 2011 (UTC) Another comment from those supporting these articles which might inspire further debate on the subject:

1. If these routes have been mapped interdependently of the operator (By Local authority, or Federal mapping agency) then this map is a reliable secondary source asserting the notability of the route system.

A few archived threads on both WP:OR and WP:RS suggest that this should not be the case. but it's certainly a claim being made here. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 14:48, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

• YMMV Buses are much the same as trains, planes and other forms of mass transit. The extent to which they are notable varies and our coverage will vary accordingly. Each case therefore has to be judged on its merits. London buses certainly merit detailed coverage as there are copious sources which detail their history. Colonel Warden (talk) 09:55, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
• When in question, notability is pretty easy to show. Add independent reliable secondary references to the articles. If there are severel it is notable if, not... JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 10:24, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

• I agree with both points but several AfDs are closing where the subject does meet what would be considered notability for any other subject and are bending policy and guideline in a manner that takes extreme liberties with the intent/spirit of these guidelines. However closing admin's have little guidance on whether the liberal interpretation is a valid interpretation and have been closing on no consensus rather than a keep or delete. In general the history of an extremely large city's bus routes are liable to be the subject of reliable secondary analysis so List of bus routes in London is sourced to the Guardian Newspaper and works specifically about the history of those routes, similarly List of bus routes in Manhattan is sourced to the New York Times, as well as Histories of the routes. By contrast a small city, large conurbation, county may have sources that discuss bus transport within the area but only give a general overview of any actual routes or network - in this case a prose article similar to Buses in London, or Buses in Bristol or a history of a specific operator such as History of Lothian Buses is more appropriate than these list articles and a condensed list of important routes should be discussed in that article. The only exception would be if the size of the Prose article is already large where spinning the list out into another article may be appropriate (and I don't see this as the current case with List of bus routes in Bristol which I feel should be condensed and merged into Buses in Bristol.

The problem appears to be that lists of Bus routes are Fancruft to some people. On one users talk page, I saw him declare that he didn't care about types of bus or the general bus history of regions but he was a big fan of learning "where buses go" - to me recording "where buses go" is an indiscriminate list of information and essentially a database both of which are things that Wikipedia is not. Repeatedly I've heard the argument that these lists fulfil our remit to be a gazetteer - hence claiming notability from the existence of a map rather than a source giving an actual discussion of the route system, but even gazetteers have a level of discrimination which varies from gazetteer to gazetteer. Some gazetteers draw the line at towns of a specific size; others document every post box; we have no policy or guideline to set that level of discrimination for our articles other than the GNG, whilst some editors claim that the GNG doesn't apply to our remit to be a gazetteer - only to our remit to be an encyclopaedia. Ideally we need some sort of guideline to establish when articles for individual routes are appropriate, when articles for lists of routes are appropriate, and when articles on the general state of bus transport within a city are appropriate and this would help to guide both those editors churning out these articles particularly in the UK where a lot of the editors creating these articles (at least 3) are extremely young and perhaps need the extra guidance, but also Admins who could use a clear guideline/policy on which to judge the keep/delete arguments. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 12:25, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

WP:Secondary does not mean independent. If someone unrelated to the transit operator creates an entirely new map from scratch, that new map is a primary source from an WP:Independent source.

What makes something be a "secondary" source is the fact that the author based his work on stuff written by other people. "Secondary" is about how the source was created. "Independence" is about who created it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:32, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Is representing someone else's data in a different format without adding some sort of analysis of the data even enough to move a source from primary to secondary? I would say no, though if the bus company routelist is assumed to be primary then that is what is being claimed about the map by those defending it as a reliable secondary source. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 20:14, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

I think bus routes could be encyclopedic, especially if someone can figure out how they get that way. I mean, some of the lunatic bus layouts in the U.S. seem like a five year old child could think of a smarter way to arrange them to get people around, and you wonder how such bad decisions are made.

Actually, I think that Wikipedia should abandon WP:NOTDIR. We have the servers, we have the people, we have the inclination --- just make directory articles like this, give them a special tag, or put them in a special namespace. They'll serve the public and do no harm. Those limitations in WP:NOT aren't some kind of moral crusade, but just a statement of incapacity from the earliest days of Wikipedia. Get rid of them. Wnt (talk) 08:31, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

and another AfD closes as no consensus List of bus routes in Colchester there is a need for a clear guideline on the subject . Unlike Wnt, I believe notability serves the key purpose of maintaining the signal-to-noise ratio of the encyclopaedia. Allowing directory style lists just because something is verifiable fills the encyclopaedia with articles that are of very specialist interest and may be misleading to general readers. What would people think about working together and thrashing out a potential guideline at Wikipedia:Notability_(buses)? Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 14:16, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Let's try to avoid making a new notability guideline just because something wasn't deleted (or was deleted) to one's disliking. The problem here is understanding what WP:NOTDIR is meant to apply to. Clearly details of bus routes should be falling under that, but there's some that feel that we should have that info somewhere. (Note: I see nothing wrong with putting details of bus routes to something like WikiSource or another sister project). Maybe the better solution is a larger RFC that is to identify the role of NOTDIR with public transportation schedules, instead of trying to focus on a single AFD. --MASEM (t) 14:25, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

There already is a projects specifically tailored to (at least the UK part) on Wikia but at least one of the editors responding in this latest AfD claimed that the wiki there wasn't popular enough (seen by enough people) and I could see similar arguments appearing for any sister project. My issue isn't that something wasn't deleted (or was deleted) but that now for the 5th AfD on the subject in a row no decision whatsoever has been made. It's also the second time this RFC has been delisted and a neutral summary of the points raised by an uninvolved editor or admin may assist in showing the direction required. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 14:51, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Since this discussion seems to have died again, is there any benefit in moving it to a centralised discussion page e.g; Wikipedia talk:Centralized discussion/Bus Routes and is there anywhere that this discussion has not been advertised that might ignite further debate? My concern is that this discussion has generally erred on the "These lists don't belong" consensus but whenever an AfD is started a whole host of editors who are not involving themselves in this debate (despite the debate being raised at the relevant wikiproject) appear and lead to no consenus being formed. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 15:55, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

One of the Articles that sparked this RfC has now been nominated for a second time since none of the issues raised in the first AfD have been addressed. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 23:09, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Some minor adjustment of WP:NOTGUIDE is needed to make it clear that it covers non notable bus routes under directory. At present the gazetteer argument is being pushed way beyond any sensible limits by an editor who at the same time admits that the lists are unencyclopedic. Bus routes are not fixed infrastructure in the way that rail and tram tracks are and are liable to change with varying degrees of frequency. Even if we wanted to provide this sort of information, and there is no reason why we should, it would be uncertain whether it would be kept up to date, depending on the continued interest of particular editors. It could become a source of misinformation.--Charles (talk) 08:50, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Having reread WP:NOT I think a lot of NOTDIR should already cover this and perhaps explicit mention should be made of bus routes - particularly in mentions of "an article on a radio station should not list ... current schedules", and in specifically ruling out the creation of lists of Patent Filings by Company - Lists of Bus Routes by County would seem to be very comparable to the patent example. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 23:23, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

I've restored the thread in hopes that a neutral Admin can close and give a summary of the next step forward. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 07:51, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

• I was asked if I could close this, but upon reading it I find that I have a strong opinion on the subject, so I'm going to comment instead: the idea of individual bus routes, or lists thereof, being "inherently" notable is ludicrous. Something is notable if independent secondary sources discuss it. For many of these "articles" (quotes necessary because many of these pages are far from being anything like an encyclopedia article), there is nothing but primary sources in them, and no reason to believe secondary sources exist. The presumption (note: presumptions are defeasible) of notability for some types of subjects (such as towns) is based on the reasonable belief that such subjects are likely to be covered in secondary sources, even if the specific sources aren't already cited in the article. Does anyone really think bus routes almost invariably covered in independent secondary sources? I don't believe that for a minute. In cases where there is coverage, then by all means create an article and cite that coverage. Otherwise, bus route articles based on primary and non-independent sources should be deleted just as readily as articles on any other non-notable subject. --RL0919 (talk) 20:01, 22 May 2011 (UTC)
• As seems to be usual with all these debates there is much yammer about how individual bus routes can never be notable and therefore lists of them can never be either. However articles about individual bus routes and articles about the bus routes in a certain area are different things and we should be clear on that. Individual bus routes can be notable, but rarely are. Lists of bus routes in a suitably sized geographical area (in the UK that generally means large urban areas and their hinterland, and counties) have a lot of potential to be encyclopaedic. Compare this to air travel, where the only infrastructure needed for a route is a start point and an end point, so they truly are ephemeral constructs, often operating only for one or two seasons. We still have details about which destinations are served from which airports without any shout that it is unencyclopaedic. Bus routes are not ephemeral, and where they change over time it's always either gradual change over decades or a big-bang reorganisation - both of which are important for encyclopaedic coverage of the subject of "public transport in X". Many of the "list of bus routes in X" articles are currently poor, but think of them as the "history of public transport in X" articles that they can easily be and it becomes clear that they are not just "fancruft" or whatever.
  

I also take exception to the comments that WP:NOTDIR needs changing to make it cover bus routes because "it was obviously meant to". If it was obviously meant to cover bus routes then they would be listed there either explicitly or under a type of directory that they came under. They are not, so unless there is evidence to the contrary we must assume that bus routes are not included because they were not meant to be included. If you want to include them now, you'll need to get consensus to do so. However as these extensive discussions show that wont be easy to get, because there are many of us who believe they are encyclopaedic in several ways.br> tl;dr version: Individual bus routes can be notable, but only rarely. Lists of bus routes can easily be encyclopaedic when the history is added to the article. WP:NOTDIR doesn't exclude bus routes and there is no evidence that it was intended to, consensus is needed to change this. Thryduulf (talk) 01:36, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

• I don't see NOTDIR preventing articles on bus routes if WP:N is met. I also don't see any automatic inclusion criteria for busroutes making sense and haven't seen a good argument for a SNG for busroutes. I basically I agree with CW and Thryduulf. Hobit (talk) 10:29, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Inline defined references versus list defined references

List defined references has been available since September 2009, but isn't much used sadly. At the moment they are merely described as an advanced features under the MOS, and I think this should be changed. In my opinion all references should always be defined inside the <references/> and not inline. I've done an example conversion at Death of Osama bin Laden (had to use a script (https://gist.github.com/ec7220609b5449cc4023) due to the 20sec edit conflict window), and while it increases the page size a but, it makes the running text readable, and not the usual tagsoup that can exists when there are many references.

The steps I want to be introduced is:

1. remove recommendation for inline reference definitions form mos and make list defined references the norm
2. convert all current inline definitions to list definitions
3. be happy when people actually can edit the pages again :)

I hope yee all agree on the issue. _→AzaToth 18:07, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Personally I find it an annoyance to work with List defined references, and I only use the |group= feature for separating notes (as in asides) from the actual refs. Now it may be I work on relatively unfinished or developing articles where I am adding referencing bit by bit but it's my opinion that it should not be forced on any editor. GraemeLeggett (talk) 18:35, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

The problem I see is that when a page has become like http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Barack_Obama&action=edit&section=2, it's impossible for normal folks to edit. _→AzaToth 18:40, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

that's more a case of using too many refs - and putting them in as one footnote - to support a short paragraph. I can show you a worse case (IMHO) than that: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=British_Eagle&action=edit&section=13 That and other articles done in the same style are a terrible pain to edit - you try and take out one ref as un-needed and have to hunt through the rest of the text for its definition. An article in that condition probably could use your script to make it more editable but in most articles there's not so much of a problem. GraemeLeggett (talk) 19:54, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I strongly prefer list defined references and have converted a number of articles to them. If you introduce the use of {{R}} at the same time, you can usually reduce page size instead of increasing it. My one hesitancy is that I don't much like scrunchedalltogetheronasingleline refs, like at Runescape, on readability grounds, but people use that form in inline cites as much as list-form. I support establishing a MoS preference for using list defined references and converting inline definitions at will. —chaos5023 (talk) 19:17, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

The biggest problem with inline refs in relation to the above is that the default editing tools that put those in place will leave no spaces between terms, thus resulting in a huge mess. These templates all allow for spaces between the argument separators "|" and "=" and other parts of the template turns. Done this way, it is usually second nature to find where the references start and stop and thus make editing easy. But it is a matter of familarity too... --MASEM (t) 21:04, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I personally like list-defined references, but I don't think that we should have an official preference, any more than I think we should have a preference for the highly newbie-friendly parenthetical references over ref tags, or the legible plain text over citation templates. There are advantages and disadvantages to every approach. With consensus (=ask on the talk page first), editors are free to change citation systems on articles. Without consensus, you should stick with what's there, just like most similar "personal preference" issues in the English Wikipedia.

And if you'll let me climb up on my soapbox for a minute to talk about a tangent I think far more important: One of the wonderful things about LDR is that it is 100% compatible with the old style of placing ref-tagged citations in the middle of paragraphs. IMO—and I'm sure that most of you agree with me—folks who notice someone using the "wrong" style in an LDR-using article help the encyclopedia best by silently fixing it, not by fussing at the other user for not noticing the style or not knowing how to add the new citation to it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:40, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Oppose Not a fan at all of LDR's - Firstly they are not newbie friendly in the least bit. Secondly they force editors to have to edit the "whole" page, rather then just a section (or have to edit 2 sections -thus creating an error in the mean time between edits). I dont believe this format should be used at all in new high traffic articles were many non experienced editors will edit. Thirdly new addition later in time will most certainly not use this complicated ref system - but rather will simply add them normally then we are stuck with 2 different formats being used. Death of Osama bin Laden is a great example of were it should not be used in a newly created article - were it has already raised concerns. lots of editors (new ones at that) will/and are simply adding refs by way of <ref>ww.whatever.com</ref>. I have no problem if someone wishes to run after ever edit and convert them by hand - but will they be there in the future to covert refs over time? Moxy (talk) 20:58, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Oppose any preference for the use of LDRs. They are difficult to work with, especially in longer articles where editing by section is the norm. References should be in the edit window right where the inline indicator is. This makes it far easier to locate and repair dead links, reuse a named ref within the same section, or simply identify a reference within the edit window. I shouldn't have to edit a section that needs a correction as well as the References section to fix anything. This creates more edits, more chances for edit conflicts, and a less clear change when reading a page diff to determine what another editor has done. Jim Miller ^{See me | Touch me} 21:16, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Oppose. We can get around the whole 'cluttered up with tags' business with a better editor, but moving to LDRs eliminates the ability to make a full edit within a single second edit - you either have to edit the whole page, or you have to edit the second then edit the references section. And that kind of jumping back and forth is asking for problems. However, {{R}} is pretty swanky and I could find several uses for it, but please, unless we're going to have a semantic citation system, don't suggest deprecating in any way inline-defined references. (And maybe I'm a little bitter that LDRs came about long before alpha groups did :P) --Golbez (talk) 21:55, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

• Wikipedia needs a proper citation-as-metadata (i.e. extra-article transcluded content) management system; this isn't it. Much as I like how LDRs make the markup easier to read, they have a deficiency when it comes to editing, as explained by Moxy's 2nd point. --Cybercobra (talk) 01:56, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
  • Agreed. There have been some discussions in the past about centralization of citations, kind of like a 'commons for cites', but it was never put into actual practice. Useful topic to resurrect, I think, but this wouldn't be the thread to pursue it in. Related to this topic, though, I'd say that an LDR approach would be one way of section-delimiting citation content for meta-data capture, but I think the primary benefit is in usability. As long as citation content is templated, there is a potential for using database queries against the template objects to extract a set of citation meta-data. (I am NOT familiar with direct database query interrogation of Wikipedia ... I just know it is possible.) --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 01:03, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
• I find it much easier to work on the text of an article that uses List Defined References, so I always use them. BTW, I wrote List-defined reference how-to guide to help make it easier for people to use list defined references. - Hydroxonium (T•C•V) 11:08, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
• I found that U.S. Route 113 uses a type of LDR and see this as a quite user friendly approach, particularly for articles with MANY references. I've converted Teva Pharmaceutical Industries to this format in preparation for article expansion (at least expansion of citations). --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 01:41, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose. The proposal itself explains why this is a bad idea—it doesn't scale well to articles with a high volume of edits because you have to edit the whole page, and the Wikimedia merging algorithm is what it is. Plus you get flashy red errors if you add an uncited LDR reference; or at least it did last time someone tried it. Tijfo098 (talk) 00:40, 16 May 2011 (UTC)
• Comment I support the use of LDRs it declutters the paragraph text and I find it easier to edit when using them. Although we should encourage the use of LDRs in the MoS for use in new articles I dont think we need to change articles already in existance whatever the format. MilborneOne (talk) 12:04, 19 May 2011 (UTC)
• Comment. I think an increased use of LDRs would encourage new editors. I remember when I first tried to edit (to fix a few spelling erros) I was bamboozled by the mass of gibberish that appeared when I hit "edit". Anything that reduces the amount of clutter a new edit sees is good in my book. However, while the drawbacks associated with it mean that I would not support changing existing articles to it, I think encouraging more people to make use of it would be a good idea. doomgaze (talk) 12:33, 19 May 2011 (UTC)
  • Comment on a comment: I think that LDRs may make editing less daunting for newbies who want to make a non-ref change to a heavily-ref'd section. However, it would make life more difficult for newbies who want to add new sources where they weren't before (which is something we must surely encourage) - because multiple sections need to be edited &c. Therefore I would oppose a preference for LDRs. Is it possible to find other ways of making the textbox less daunting when somebody clicks on "edit" for the first time? bobrayner (talk) 14:18, 19 May 2011 (UTC)
• Totally oppose. LDRs have no redeeming features that I can see, and make larger articles virtually uneditable by forcing editors either to open the entire article in the edit window, or to edit multiple sections to make a single change. They should never have been introduced (with not even a pretence at "consensus" to do so), and if they're not going to be disabled (my personal preference), they should be as strongly discouraged as possible. – iridescent 19:35, 19 May 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose per arguments that it requires editing the whole page instead of one section. As if we didn't get enough edit conflicts already... --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 19:53, 19 May 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose: Cybercobra nailed it. Until there's a way to simultaneously (or at least rapidly) edit the inline ref and the metadata of that ref the problem will persist. This is not just an LDR issue, as it is also present in other uses of named refs. To fix this we would need to be able to work on two sections of the article at once, something the present editor does not support. LeadSongDog come howl! 20:01, 19 May 2011 (UTC)
• Strong oppose, in fact I would support the discouragement and eventual removal of LDR's, they make editing a pain in the ass. You have to go look trough different section when you want to edit or fix an existent reference, trying to find which one it was, or edit the entire article at once, which is just as annoying, especially with longer articles. It doubles the amount of edits when you use section editing, as you have to add the text, save, and then add the reference in a different section. Which just ends up with more reverts for adding unsourced info or fake/non-existant reference, edit conflicts, and all around annoyances. I never liked LDR's, and why I come across an article with LDR's I usually just ignore it and just add the reference inline as it works just as well, without the multiple editing required. _Xeworlebi ^(talk) 20:16, 19 May 2011 (UTC)
• comment: LDRs make the editing of articles easier but perhaps the editing of refs more complicated. The article source code is extremely complicated to understand for newbies and what we need is not a new reference system but a good wysiwyg editor. It is about time for that. Adornix (talk) 20:20, 19 May 2011 (UTC)
• Strong oppose to forcibly changing ref styles from anything to anything. If you are not contributing anything else to the article, you will either achieve nothing or at best annoy those that are editing. If the article editors wanted a different ref style, they would have changed it themselves. SpinningSpark 18:07, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

RfC on dashes

Dear editors, an RfC entitled simple resolution to disagreements over dashes is live at the Manual of Style talk page. Your participation, opinions, views would be appreciated. Tony (talk) 16:22, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Let us know when this crucial issue, which is obviously vitally important and not a nitpicky waste of time on a subject few users care about, is decided. Beeblebrox (talk) 04:19, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

That type of attitude is part of the reason Wikipedia has trouble retaining editors. Just because an issue isn't important to you doesn't mean it's not important to anybody. While I am not well versed in the issue of hyphens vs en dashes vs em dashes, I respect people who try to develop a consistent and reasonable policy on the issue. Buddy431 (talk) 02:51, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

One might say the fact we have an RfC over dashes is part of the reason Wikipedia has trouble retaining editors. Killiondude (talk) 05:18, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Point to Killiondude. Carrite (talk) 01:40, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Can we open an RfC on whether we give a monkey's? AndyTheGrump (talk) 01:50, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

At long last! I have awaited the day that this controversial issue be put to rest. ☻☻☻Sithman VIII !!☻☻☻ 04:39, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Lol@Killion's thing, and it makes sense for people to just use -. A, no one really cares about the differences between that and the long one; B, no one can actually type out the long one; C, no one knows the proper usage afaik except a few people. So why is it an issue? xD Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie Say Shalom! 04:44, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

No, a mere RFC isn't enough...such a crucial issue needs 3 AN/I threads and an ARBCOM decision...oh wait.... DeCausa (talk) 21:00, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

You mean like Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Date delinking? --Tothwolf (talk) 23:09, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Typing the long one is easy. Alt 0151. As is the short one. Alt 0150. My mnemonic for remembering which is which is that the larger one takes the larger value. I use both almost every day.--SPhilbrickT 19:29, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

There is quite literally not one good reason why readers--you know, the people who use this site and outnumber editors by several million to one--should be forced to use arcane keyboard combinations in order to come up with something that looks like what we use every day. The MOS wankers are, as usual, not only failing to see the forest for the trees, they are in fact arguing over whether trees even exist in the first place and what colour they should be. I cannot wait for the Wikipedia equivalent of Ark B to take off. → ROUX ₪ 20:25, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Ark B is thataway. – iridescent 20:31, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

(ec) No, they're planning a feasibility study to explore product placement strategies for "wood." Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 20:35, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Not long after I first started editing Wikipedia several years ago I came across an argument over dashes on some article talk page. I could scarcely believe that anyone thought it important enough to argue about. I haven't bothered to keep count of how many times I have seen similar arguments since then, but unfortunately I have long since reached the point where it doesn't surprise me in the least that this stupid discussion is being conducted. A very large proportion of the disputes that take up time at ANI, RFC, and so on stem from the fact that editors get really worked up about matters that they could easily walk away from and forget, but this must really be one of the silliest of all. If and when this pointless discussion comes to a conclusion, what will have been achieved? The vast majority of editors will not know about the decision, and so will carry on as before. Some of us who do know about it will think it's pointless and will ignore it. And, most important of all, the overwhelming majority of people who use Wikipedia as a source of information will never notice the difference, and of those few who do most will have better things to do with their brains and will have the sense not to care. JamesBWatson (talk) 07:52, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Order please

Okay folks, one way to kill disputes is to get a consensus - the final voting is taking place at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/dash drafting, but we are just finalising the questions (to see if any were left out). For all those who think this is not worth voting over, if you do vote for whichever you feel slightly in favour of for whatever reason, we strengthen the case for consensus so we don't keep having these arguments. This is one of those "strike while the iron is hot" moments where we can nail this and move on to more productive pursuits. So please, everyone keep calm and focussed - really focus on looking forwards and not backwards. Under the arbitration motion, admins can be proactive in monitoring reversions and civility. So this is general advice for everyone to keep their cool. Please. Casliber (talk · contribs) 11:41, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Wow, you really don't get it do you? Beeblebrox (talk) 08:33, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't get "it", whatever "it" refers to here. Care to explain?
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 08:40, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

The above section is chock of full of comments about how utterly unimportant this is to 99.999% of the world, and yet here we have a user trying to get everyone riled up to come and "vote for whichever you feel slightly in favour of for whatever reason" which rather misses the point that most people don't know or care what the difference is and will not abide by or even want to know what the result of this process is. I hope that clarifies matters for you. Beeblebrox (talk) 16:35, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

I think you might be trying to say this is like Parkinson's Law of Triviality about a committee's deciding the colour of a bicycle shed compared to the siting of a nuclear plant. I would reject that utterly. This is a very important point, consistency in doing this will stop people always wondering which of the three different symbols to use and stop an enormous amount of time wasting and indirection in Wikipedia. You only have to look at the amount of trouble and dissention this point has caused to see it is not a trtivial matter. Dmcq (talk) 16:49, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

TBH I think the wider view of the community is that it doesn't matter one jot what symbol individual editors use, and that the fact this is still an issue amongst a small faction of editors is becoming tedious. You know, perhaps the easiest way to solve this is propose the same ideas as with references; do not disturb the existing practice on an article. That would probaly pass nice and easy. Let's propose it here, get consensus and put an end to the bickering. --Errant ^(chat!) 16:58, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

Here's the thing: this isn't a user conduct issue. People involved in the debate here (rightly) aren't particularly concerned about "what symbol individual editors use". The issue is what symbols our articles should use generally, under various circumstances. It also includes a component of deciding exactly how much or how little role Wikipedia guidelines and policy plays. yourself and others may be either anarchists, or would prefer to stick your heads in the sand, but there are others who are not (obviously), including the Arbitration Committee at the moment.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 23:10, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

That's the same sort of overblown hyperbole about the importance of this non-issue that caused all this pointless ruckus in the first place. Not caring one way or the other about something so incredibly trivial is not an indication of being an anarchist or an isolationist. ArbCom hasn't said much beyond telling everyone involved to come down off their collective ledge and make a decision, they don't seem to care what that decision is any more than the rest of us. Reminder: we aren't here to show off how well we can craft a consistent policy on the use of small horizontal lines, we are here to build the best encyclopedia this earth has ever seen. Our readers, the people we are doing this for, are never going to know or care what the result of this flaming ruin of a debate is. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:56, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Like Killiondude (talk) 19:00, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Right, because caring about how we write (collectively) is so obviously a waste of time.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 19:06, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

How did you do that Killiondude? Oh yeah, Like. SpinningSpark 19:19, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

bots that revert blindly

This seems to be a problem. Suppose I am a newbie or anonymous user. I spend hours of time writing an article and making changes, and I decide -- hey! Why don't I link to an excellent article on blogspot or point out the namesake's facebook page at the same time? BAM, along comes a bot that reverts ALL of my additions and every single revision that I added, instead of simply removing my mistaken addition -- or even just removing my last revision.

Why do bots do this? Does it make sense to make them revert to the last non-problematic revision only? Or do we instantly villify the user who added that external link? This mainly applies to XlinkBot, but I am now forced to wonder (after returning from an absence of several years) how many indiscriminate reversions not yet detected there are. For example, I recovered a lot, a lot of deleted content buried in the page history that though unformatted was useful -- but no one could work on it all because a bot blindly reverted good contributions. Elle _{vécut heureuse} ^{à jamais} (be free) 12:10, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Bots can not be perfect given early 21st century technology - please see Turing test. However, Wikipedia has little hope of succeeding without bots. The best way would be provide feedback so specific bots can be given shorter leashes. That is the only way. Bots can not be suddenly terminated without causing havoc in Wikipedia. Some bots need improvement and many more are needed. In 3 years the situation will be much better. History2007 (talk) 12:24, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

I have seen this also where a new editor does good work and then adds a link that is reverted by xlinkbot. The editor then leaves and that work is hidden under that revert. Versageek is the owner of XlinkBot. They would be the best person to answer whether the bot could be modified to take out the last edit rather than all edits by a specific editor. GB fan (talk) 12:35, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

I see no reason why the bot could not be modified to do that - but I am not sure of the effort required, not having seen how it is written. History2007 (talk) 18:33, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

I think it does more good then bad. If a bot only reverts the last edit which triggers the bot, then the other edits they did might go unnoticed, and they could be bad. It would be best to revert the whole of them and let involved editors use their own discretion on what, if any, content to bring back. _Blake ^{(Talk·Edits)} 23:37, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Bots should be limited to obvious mundane tasks. Wikipedia is letting them go too far....they should be cut back. North8000 (talk) 23:57, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

I think it is hard to make general statements about all bots. Different bots do different things and some (e.g. Cluebot) are getting rather clever now - but many have a long way to go. My prediction: in 5 years there will be "very clever" bots and without them Wikipedia will struggle. If and when I get to it I will write a general "clever bot" system that can be adjusted by others - probably next year. History2007 (talk) 00:32, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm not expert on bots or programming, but I think that for a bot to function as well as an editor, you'd need to give it an advanced AI that can think for itself. We don't have the ability to make such a thing though afaik. Though if we did, I suspect it would become evil, take over everyone's comps, take control of Russia's nukes and then finally delete Wikipedia... all for the lulz of course. (note, everything after afaik was something of a joke). But yeah, basically the way these bots detect certain things and patterns is programmed. I don't think they can learn. Like I said though, I am no expert and for the most part do not know what I'm talking about. =p Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie Say Shalom! 02:00, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

No, Cluebot uses a neural net and adjusts based on examples. It is not pre-programmed. History2007 (talk) 19:49, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Lies, lies and deciet. =p Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | Say Shalom! 20:02, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Excuse me? History2007 (talk) 20:41, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Please read joke, (notice the =p) you need to get some more exposure to net culture, my friend. =p Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | Say Shalom! 13:04, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

The net has culture? Who would have thought... History2007 (talk) 20:19, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

With a good supercomputer I'm pretty sure we could make bots that were a great deal better than many editors at extracting sense out of source documents and following the policies and guidelines reasonably well never mind at spotting vandalism or other bad edits! Be that as it may it does look like in this case the robot needs upgrading to check the rest of an edit as well for good or bad content and flag edits with a reasonable amount of content and a low vandalism index as needing human intervention. If the bots could communicate their ratings to each other it would help. Dmcq (talk) 08:42, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

We are getting off topic now, but a supercomputer would not be the way to go and would not help in this type of problem which does not require a "peak processing" numerical computation system. This is mostly a software issue regarding symbolic computation. But we are a long way from even using a 10 person programming team. Most of these bots are written by a single person, with part time effort - and some do nicely given the resources. Think of it this way, a Word processor like MS-Word had an army of full time developers, so compared to that these bots have done well with so few people working part time. History2007 (talk) 19:49, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

(re: History) Indeed, and ClueBot only messes up a few times compared to programs like Word which can have a lot of strange issues. Luckily you guys are improving him based on reports by users when he messes up. You can check the error report, get to the route of the problem, correct it so it might not happen in the future and you have one less instance where it becomes an issue. Or am I wrong? =p The way I see it is that these free bots are a work of pride that gets better with time. Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | Say Shalom! 20:02, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

As a clarification, I am not the Cluebot developer. I am just observing a few these bots for now as a matter of interest. History2007 (talk) 20:38, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Points still stand. =) Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | Say Shalom! 13:04, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

(responding to Blake) I don't think it is consistent with AGF to have a bot revert all the contiguous edits by a user just because they added a non-offensive link that is flagged as un-encyclopedic. Some bots are already programed to only make the necessary reverts, such as the CSD patrol bot (the name of which eludes me) that restores CSD tags without undoing any other edits made at the same time the tag was removed. That is what should be done here as well, remove the link, leave the rest for human editors to review. Monty₈₄₅ 19:58, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Probably so, but that is a single issue with a specific bot that may need to be given a shorter leash. That is all. History2007 (talk) 20:38, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

A new idea

The discussion above made me think: "why not get 7 full time developers to do a more powerful content protection bot?" It will, of course, need funding. But suppose we do this:

• We help Wikimedia foundation write a specific proposal for a $500k or $700k donation just for this anti-vandal bot project.

• They shop it around to specific "big ticket" donors. They have little to lose, given that it will not come out of the general budget.

• The donations may not even have to be be in cash, but in terms of programmer time, e.g. programmers on loan for 6 months from a few of the valley computer/software companies.

It would also help if we suggest having copyvio check features etc. but those are really easy to implement.

In my experience, if there is a will, funding/resources can usually be obtained if the underling idea is solid and it is for a good cause. Then after a year or so there will be serious protection from a bot that was not done through the heroic efforts of a single, part time programmer. I am prepared to help write the proposal, but having other people contribute to it will help. And of course we need to find out how to sell the idea to the foundation.

Ideas? History2007 (talk) 14:10, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Just to put the figures you're throwing about in perspective, the total internet hosting cost for all Wikimedia projects is $1,047,000 per annum. There's no possibly way we could justify as a legitimate use of charitable funds paying 50–70% of that figure to someone for writing a piece of software which would virtually duplicate the software which currently does the same job for nothing. – iridescent 20:52, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Is that all? A million a year? How about the staff costs? What is the budget for the staff? That must be more. But if that is the type of budget that Wikipedia operates on, then I agree with you that $500k is just out of the ball park. I guess I am thinking in the framework of corporate type IS budgets where $500k gets spent on mid-sized projects - and 50% of them fail anyway. So I agree with you on that issue.

But I can not in any way agree with the "virtually duplicates the software which currently does the same job". The current software is just a starting point and can and will see significant improvements in the future. I can think of 20 different ways it can be improved, but each one needs 9-12 months. The current bots remind me of the "early days of MS DOS" - it worked but was just a start. It is a question of how that can happen. Have companies donated "staff time" before if that type of cash donation is out of the ball park? If they just donate people then it will not look that bad. History2007 (talk) 22:22, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

A million a year is the hosting costs (i.e., the servers and the web hosting bill). The total expenditure per annum (for the whole WMF, not just en-wikipedia) is $10,267,000 including depreciation and amortization; roughly 40% of that is staff costs and travel. (The full summary of the accounts are here if you want them.)

You could obviously try to persuade Jimmy Wales and Sue Gardner of the merits of this—a decision of this magnitude would have to be taken by them—but I think it's very unlikely it would be accepted. Even the vague and amorphous relationship with Google causes questions to be asked; a formal working relationship with a major corporation would seriously compromise Wikipedia's neutrality and possibly spark an editor exodus. As has been alluded to elsewhere, you haven't specified what any putative "content protection bot" would actually do; with the exception of the glaringly obvious "poop!" and page blanking stuff which is already picked up by ClueBot, I can't imagine how a piece of software able to recognize vandalism while allowing legitimate edits would work. Wikipedia's problem isn't the "eric is a fag lol" IP nonsense, it's the deliberate insertion of false information, and there's no realistic way a bot could spot that. – iridescent 23:11, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

That link had interesting info, thanks. Live and learn I guess. The telling item was: "Donations $10,000 and above" only had 32 elements in it. I wonder if there were any in the $100k and above. That tells me that the current funding model for Wikipedia is geared towards a large number of small donations. And changing the basic model under which an organization works is a major issue and in any case, it is not something I would try, although I can not but think that there are most probably many larger ticket donations out there that can be sought.

Regarding your question of what an "industrial strength bot" can do that Cluebot and others do not currently do, I have been keeping some lists of those, e.g.:

• Very basic elements: Even "very simple", repeating character vandalisms e.g. this or even this type of "HIiiidsjfijdddisjdfkkdfjdsk " edits are not currently detected, and have to be hand reverted. These are very easy to detect using a variety of other approaches, but as of now they have to be hand reverted. I have told the Cluebot people about these issues - by the way. For this, someone can just write a "repeat bot" and do that, but it shows that the current system has huge gaps in it. And there are many other gaps like this.

• Format: Again even basic format items are missed. This one can be easily detected by a bot that parses format. I should not have had to revert this by hand. But again there is absolutely no way the current Cluebot (or any other bot) in use on Wikipedia now could have helped me.

• Images: It missed the change of an image, this could have been done if it checked that the image suggested was a valid entry in Commons. This is easy to detect but the current Cluebot architecture will probably never be able to do it. At the moment, Cleubot has no hope of even approaching this type of "content protection" but a different bot can do that if it has access to Commons. In general, bots should be able to access the existing structure of Wikipedia as part of their heuristics - none does that now.

And these are just simple example. I can go on, and on and on, e.g. using WordNet within a bot, or using the existing Category and ontology structure within bots, etc., etc. etc. I think as a starting point for a first system Cluebot has done "great" for a system written by a single person as a donation to Wikipedia. But we have a really long way to go yet. History2007 (talk) 07:04, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

The problem is that you get into sort of a diminishing returns issue. If I'm a donor with $700k to spend, am I really going to use that to save a handful of Wikipedia editors a few minutes of work per day? Even if I've already decided to donate it to the WMF, there are probably more effective uses of the money. As Iridescent noted, the type of vandalism this would catch is not the vandalism that can cause real problems. Mr.Z-man 19:42, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

No, the $700k donation idea is dead, given the analysis above. But the fact that there are big gaps in the current bots remains valid. As for "is not the vandalism that can cause real problems" I do not agree. It wastes my time as I check and revert it - to me that is a very real problem. Really.

I am now thinking that if he problem is broken into smaller pieces, maybe we can talk some professors to give them as class assignments. The "repeat bot", "format bot", etc. are examples of items that are too simple s a Master's thesis, and can just be class assignments. More complicated ones can become a Master's thesis project if it is suggested. Then in 5 years there can be a set of nice bots out there.

Under the least desirable scenario, yours truly will write a few in the next year or two.... But let us see if that can be avoided.... History2007 (talk) 19:53, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Actually, a "format bot" is more difficult than it sounds. If wikitext was just HTML or a one-to-one conversion to HTML, it wouldn't be very hard. But the MediaWiki parser is designed so that there is no such thing as invalid markup. Some have even argued that it's technically not a real parser because wikitext doesn't have a defined grammar. On top of that, HTML Tidy (almost) ensures that everything will be valid HTML. Everything will render as something. The bot would have to try to determine whether that something is actually desirable. Mr.Z-man 20:24, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

No, because it does not have to catch everything, just some items as the example above showed. And it would not need to define a grammar for wikitext, it would use its own matching routines for specific items that stand out, e.g. == vs ==== in a section header, missing blockquote closer, etc. and use weights etc. And if it is not sure, it will not revert. Now, by the time we finish talking about it, it may end up getting written... History2007 (talk) 20:33, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

But if anything else happened in the edit, you don't actually want those changes reverted. A minor typo that affects the formatting should not result in hours of good content work being reverted. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:05, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

No, there are multiple situations here, it can act if that is the only change as in this example from above, and it does not know the user's edit history etc. Else can just correct that change and leave the rest in place, etc. etc. etc... These are simple design issues, and we have not even opened the Pandora's box of the serious algorithms yet. So let me go off and do a design, then I will see what needs to be done. It seems that fate is declaring that "worst case scenario above" is likely to happen: yours truly will do it. But I am hereby absolutely demanding a 15% salary increase... or else, I am going straight to the employment department and complain. History2007 (talk) 01:34, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

A final comment, as this edit shows errors are not just introduced by vandals, but through mistakes. In this case, as I copied a template when I wrote the article in April, I must have forgotten to change the artist name, and the glaring error was sitting there util mid May, calling a Rubens painting a del Castagno. Once the category Rubens paintings was added by another user, a bot should have left me, or the other user a message on the talk page to look at that. And it takes no invention to implement this type of bot, just takes time and effort. Without them errors just float around Wikipedia and reduce reliability of the content. History2007 (talk) 18:27, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Mediation has been marked as a policy

Wikipedia:Mediation (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

This discussion has been open for months, and attracted the attention of three editors (including the proposer), all of whom fully supported labeling it as a policy. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:04, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

One of those editors is an Arbitrator (and former Mediator) and the other two are official Mediators, so I'm OK with that. NW (Talk) 22:35, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Abuse of powers?

I was looking at the recent changes a few days ago and I caught sight of the blocking of User:Vintageceilingfans. Kuru apparently blocked the user after witnessing sevral vandalism issues, one being very disruptive, on celing fan, the others being minor annoyances and trolling. I saw that they immediatly blocked Vintageceilingfans by accusing him of being a sockpuppet. VCF then tried to unblock, saying: "I just joined wikipedia and I now understand It is possible to be blocked so I'll never do that again." to which User:Boing! said Zebedee replied: "Blatant disruptive sock". With this, I see no evidence of sockpuppetry, and Zebedee also did not give VCF. VCF then tried to request an unblock again, saying: "What do you mean I'm a sock? I'm a person." User:jpgordon replied: "Checkuser verified abuser of multiple accounts", which I do not believe. Another admin blocked VCF's talking rights, saying: inappropriate use of user talk page while blocked: enough. I believe this is a possible misuse of powers and should be review by an administrator. Shakinglord (talk) 20:40, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

The proper venue for this sort of thing is located at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 20:53, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Though if you do take it to another venue, some actual evidence other than "I don't believe it" will help your case. Mr.Z-man 20:59, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

• The users involved are
  • Vintageceilingfans (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
  • Kuru (talk · contribs · logs)
  • Boing! said Zebedee (talk · contribs · logs)
  • jpgordon (talk · contribs · logs)
• This is not the appropriate discussion venue for a review on administrative actions. You need to visit Administrator's Noticeboard Hasteur (talk) 21:06, 19 May 2011 (UTC)
  • Oh, you bunch of policy wonks, pointing him in two directions without bothering to help the guy out. We may claim we are not a fucking bureacracy, but I only see evidence to the contrary. Shakinglord, I suggest that you read this sockpuppet investigation page first though, as Boing said Zebedee explains there why this was a sock and you can see evidence of the wp:Checkuser confirmation by user:Muzemike. Yoenit (talk) 22:50, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

    Um... yea, OK. You may be alright with spreading user conduct (and admin conduct) issues all over the site, but myself and most other users are not. The Village pump (policy) page is certainly not the venue for this sort of discussion. You may see that as bureaucratic, you're entitled to your opinion, but I fail to see how making derisive statements about myself and others who have replied here is at all helpful. Pointing out the sockpuppet investigation page was helpful, at least.
    — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 23:23, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

I would feel little sympathy for the OP if they had to jump through some hoops for an answer after their '"Checkuser verified abuser of multiple accounts", which I do not believe.' Might I point to WP:AGF and the appropriate question if they have doubts would have been how they could see the evidence of the sockpuppetry please. Plus I don't think sticking 'fucking' in helps anyone. Dmcq (talk) 00:19, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps he did not know what a wp:Checkuser is? That is how I read it. While I agree that any serious discussion on conduct belongs on ANI, a few helpfull links might clear this up for the user and avoid the need for said ANI post altogether. I agree some parts of my comment were inappropriate and have stricken them. Yoenit (talk) 08:36, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

• • Based on the fact that this was a inquiry and raising a question instead of a "Immediate action is needed to prevent harm to wikipedia" I reccomended the regular Administrator's Notice board instead of the Incidents board. To my understanding, ANI is immediate action needed, whereas AN is for less urgent (and more considered) discourse. I think putting the user links in allows us to understand what the context of the issue is rather than the redlinks to the users the OP put in. Hasteur (talk) 12:39, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Voting without comment

Hello, I am involved in an Afd, and a user voted, writing "*Keep. ~~~~", without explanation. I was pretty sure that this was against policy guidelines, but have been unable to find anything regarding the matter. Any help would be appreciated. Gage (talk) 00:40, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Not against policy but the closing admin will take the "vote" for what it's worth. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 00:44, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Not policy per se, but is WP:PERNOM was you were thinking of?. doomgaze (talk) 01:31, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

It is sort of against WP:NOTVOTE, which is a behavioral guideline. Whenever I see that I always drop that user a note explaining that it is not a vote and that simply saying keep or delete without a word of explanation will be ignored by the closer and will not influence the outcome. There is also {{uw-notvote}}, which is under the "single issue notices" menu in Twinkle. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:26, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

I agree with NeilN here, with the caveat that "what it's worth" isn't necessarily zero. I don't summarily dismiss such votes, because I don't see much difference between an unreasoned vote, and a vote which endorses and supports someone else's reasonable argument. I interpret a "Keep. ~~~~" given in good faith as a general agreement with the other keep opinions. Thus, it enters into the "vote count", which indicates the strength of the consensus behind each position, but it contributes nothing to the "balance of arguments". However, AFDs are not determined by numerical voting with a fixed threshold for deletion, and in AFDs where the result may be in doubt the "balance of arguments" is often the most critical factor for determining the outcome. In AFDs where the result isn't in doubt, an unreasoned vote either way would not make any difference to the result anyway. Also, other administrators may not deal with unreasoned votes in the manner which I prefer, and they may indeed give such votes no weight at all. I would therefore strongly encourage AFD participants to make their reasoning explicit. Sjakkalle (Check!) 14:53, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Restoring to Account Creators the Ability to Edit Editnotices

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

---

I was informed earlier on the Wikipedia Account Creation Assistance channel ( #wikipedia-en-accounts ^connect ), that the ability for account creators to edit the editnotices was removed. To my knowledge, this was due to admins giving it out simply to allow some users to edit the editnotices. Therefore, this was removed with the Abuse Filters. This wasn't the right thing to do in my opinion and along with the other ACC users, we agree, the admins are addressing a "problem" that doesn't exist directly to the Account Creators. It was helpful for me and Ancient Appreciation to edit the editnotices at WP:ABUSE for assisting users, I know this was done elsewhere too. There is a much easier solution, don't give the right to people without ACC access. Removing this right from the account creators is just another action in my opinion of admins fixing what isn't really broke. The real account creators haven't abused it, so why remove it? We have only helped to contribute to Wikipedia. Here I am to propose that this ability is restored to the real account creators and that it is removed from those without ACC tool access.  JoeGazz  ▲  01:19, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Could you explain what this right allows an editor to do? It sounds like you are letting people change the Edit Summaries that an editor places when they make a new edit? Is this correct? -- Avanu (talk) 08:08, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Editnotice
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 08:18, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

• Support - As Proposer  JoeGazz  ▲  01:19, 20 May 2011 (UTC)
• Support - per nom. ~ Matthewrbowker ^{Say hi!} 01:27, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Id like to propose an alternative. Two, actually. One obvious alternative is WP:RFA. More to the point of this though, why don't we add an editnotice permission? ("editnotice editor"? yuck, but it's descriptive.)
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 01:32, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Well, I like the second one, but we still should see an action taken on this temp fix, this wasn't discussed with community. Some of us don't want RfA, it is just a big putdown for some users.  JoeGazz  ▲  01:35, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm not particularly keen on becoming an admin myself (kinda sorta for the reasons that Ajraddatz mentions below, but also just because... well, because), so believe me when I tell you that I'm sympathetic. But, you know that this will be the main response to this proposal, if for no other reason then the question that Mr.Z-man is asking below.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 04:03, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Your first option might work if the said process wasn't very broken, and filled with people who regularly confuse adminship with a big deal. Another group would work, too, but I support this proposal since there has never been any harm in letting account creators edit the editnotices. Ajraddatz (Talk) 01:36, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Was giving account creators the ability to edit editnotices ever discussed with the community in the first place? Mr.Z-man 03:45, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

It wasn't. However technically they still have this ability, I'm just blocking it with the AbuseFilter pending bugzilla:29006. So it isn't actually removed at this point. One could argue that such a filter is pointless and will only stop good edits. That would be true. But I don't want to get in the habit of making account creators for reasons that have nothing to do with creating accounts. Prodego ^talk 04:09, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Then don't. It wouldn't be that hard to make another group (Editfilter managers?) designed entirely to do this. I think that this would also solve the entire issue - the account creators will still be able to, by getting the new flag, and anyone else is also able to. Seems like a win-win to me. Ajraddatz (Talk) 04:20, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose - Is there any real harm in letting account creators edit editnotices? Probably not. Is editing editnotices related in any way to what the account creator group was created for? Not in the slightest. Is there a real need for this? I'm not seeing it. Template:Editnotices/Group/Wikipedia:Abuse response has had 7 edits ever, that's not something that's going to overwhelm the {{editprotected}} system. Mr.Z-man 03:45, 20 May 2011 (UTC)
• Support remove the AbuseFilter conditional check until we have a better long term solution (where was this even discussed?).

  As for a long term solution, perhaps we need a user bit specifically for editing templates which have historically been full protected ("Template editors" perhaps?) We had a different proposal recently for editing protected templates and editnotices already live in the Template namespace. It seems to me a long term solution would be a separate user group that allows the editing of templates in a different protection class, basically something in-between semi and full protection. --Tothwolf (talk) 05:44, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose, per Mr.Z-man. The purpose behind the accountcreator usergroup has nothing to do with edit notices. If you want to edit editnotices, either pass RFA or gain consensus for a new editnotice editor usergroup. NW (Talk)
• Support disabling this edit filter. It only squanders limited resources of the abuse filter extension on something that essentially a replication of the Titleblacklist. Account creators can do many other things that they were not supposed to do when the group was created. For instance, they can create/move articles to the prohibited titles or exceed any rate limits. Changing edit notices is a very minor issue as compared to those that I mentioned above. So, unless Prodego is going to completely duplicate the titleblacklist with the edit filter (infeasible), the filter should be disabled. Ruslik_Zero 07:59, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

  I completely agree with this statement. Like he says, account creators also the noratelimits right - good luck making a filter that blocks that one outside of account creations. I think that the whole point here is that this "fix" is fixing something which was never broken. Account creators have never abused this, and as such, there is really no reason to remove it. Ajraddatz (Talk) 15:07, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

  The noratelimits right is actually needed for account creators to bypass the limit on account creations. Editing editnotices is 100% unrelated. Mr.Z-man 01:49, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

  Actually, the group was initially created to bypass the rate limit[1] [stwalkerster|talk] 14:16, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

• Support It may be that the Account Creator group was never intended for editing edit notices but it is equally true that the AbuseFilter was never intended for stopping them doing it either. Unless there is some evidence of abuse of edit notices by account creators (or even abuse of the account creation privilege by edit notice editors) then blocking this is very inappropriate. Finding a new beneficial use for an existing tool is to be congratulated, rather than hit with an accusation of abuse. SpinningSpark 18:26, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

  Except from this is exactly why it is called the edit filter now, rather than the abuse filter. - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 03:58, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose: editing editnotices is an administrative task. that would make it a perfect fit for the administrator user group. there's no need to separate this out. -Atmoz (talk) 19:04, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Then please tell me why all of the sudden this is a big issue? This has been done in small scale by accontcreators not abusing the right. It only helps admins focus on things that REQUIRE admins. I personally think this takes away from the idea that wikipedia is open and that the WHOLE community should help.  JoeGazz  ▲  22:46, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

• Support disabling this filter, and oppose in the strongest possible terms the attempt to use an abuse filter to change, without discussion, what had de facto been allowed for at least a year. The abuse filter is meant to, well, prevent abuse, not impose one's own view without talking about it first. Courcelles 23:11, 20 May 2011 (UTC)
• Can't agree more with Courcelles' support. If NW would like to nominate me so that i can pass RFA, rescind this action, and then resign admin rights i shall gladly accept the nomination. This is a case of someone doing what they want against the accepted and everyone looking for support to undo it. How about it just be undone and the person who put this through in the first place seek support to re-enact it? That would be the sane way to go about it. Or we could go more vigilante and seek a community ban for whomever did this and by default undo this as part of reverting their disruption. By contrast there is more abuse by admins of the right to block people than there is of account creators messing around with editnotices. Shall "block" be removed from admins?
  @ Atmoz, everything is an administrative task.
  Can we get an admin to unilaterally strip the rights of the founder group and see how long it takes to have that rescinded? I doubt there would be a community discussion about restoring those rights.
  If NW wants a new user group i concurrently request that admins NOT have access to the edit filer but that such be distributed from higher up rather than laterally and that all possessing it currently be stripped of it. After all that is what happened here and he supports it happening to others. delirious & lost ☯ ^~hugs~ 23:50, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

  Since you brought it up, I'm down with breaking out the block user-right into a separate group from the "System administrator" user group.
  — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 01:31, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

  I can't find any reason to object to that. Splitting that off would take away the "specialness" of the admin bit and perhaps result in an RFA process closer to the way the admin bit used to be handed out.

  Deliriousandlost, NW didn't implement the edit filter which caused this, User:Prodego did, on 14 May 2011. (See: Special:AbuseFilter/411) According to the log, [2] it was triggered 25 times. As of 00:06, 21 May 2011 the change history shows it as disabled. --Tothwolf (talk) 03:14, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

  I found out later who did it thanks to IRC. Never said that NW did it but since he thinks it right to have done... As for Prodego being the one to unilaterally abuse his admin rights and the abuse filter to take away the rights he doesn't like another group having i ask that he resign his admin rights in disgrace. Prodego's actions are nothing better than "i don't like it and fuck everyone who doesn't agree with me." Using the abuse filter itself to do the abusing should at minimum be cause to remove his access to the abuse filter (and with still being an admin he could give it back to himself 3 minutes later which is the related problem). I don't really do much with AN & ANI and stuff but if someone would care to tell me where this should be brought to regarding Prodego's actions or point me to an already open topic on his actions that would be nice. delirious & lost ☯ ^~hugs~ 18:29, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

  Let's not get all hyperbolic about anything, here. If you (or anyone) wants to post a proposal, I'd recommend Wikipedia:Requests for comment/User conduct. No one can really force Prodego (or anyone else, for that matter) to do anything here... well, arbcom can. They're that way, but I don't see them doing anything here without at least an RFC/U. Honestly, I don't foresee anything going anywhere here, which is probably a good thing. Here's a thought, why not go to Prodego's talk page and calmly and rationally explain why you think that he should change his mind?
  — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 18:47, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

  Yes, however I did disable this filter 18 hours ago. I am not opposed to giving out the ability to edit edit notices. In fact, I don't see any reason why all editors shouldn't be able edit edit notices - that would be my preferred solution. However, it has nothing to do with account creation, was never intended to be included in that user group. So long as we are restricting edit notices to admins, we should not be using an unintended consequence of how edit notices were set up, and how tboverride was set up to try to get around that. Prodego ^talk 19:00, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

  I've wondered why the ability to edit editnotice pages was restricted to admins from the get go. There's discussion about that in the history, somewhere. Maybe we could gather support now for loosening the restriction itself?
  — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 19:28, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

  It was because they are implemented via a page in the Mediawiki namespace, which is admin only. The Template:Editnotice subpages are just transcluded in to the Mediawiki space. Prodego ^talk 19:34, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

  Right... a major part of the conversation is here: Wikipedia talk:Editnotice/Archive_3#Allow more non-admins to edit? I have to say, I thought then, and I still believe now, that restricting editing to admins is overkill. Especially in User space. Oh well.
  — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 19:51, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

• Strong Support - Per all Supports. Mlpearc powwow 00:00, 21 May 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose in the strongest of terms; there is absolutely fuck-all reason that "account creators" – editors trusted solely with the capability to register accounts for other editors – should in any way have more right to alter editnotices more than any other non-administrator editors. This is a ridiculous proposal, and a barnstar for Prodego for putting a stop to this nonsense. Skomorokh 00:13, 21 May 2011 (UTC)
• Support per Courcelles, this edit filter was made without discussion and there has been no problem in the 2-3 years the account creator permission has been around with account creators sticking their nose into places where it does not belong. A handful of users in the group are in it because editing editnotices is what they were granted the right for. —James ^{(Talk • Contribs)} • 10:18am • 00:18, 21 May 2011 (UTC)
• Weak Support If we are going to remove de facto rights, it needs be done though a discussion. In any case, I'll likely move to a full support if Ancient Apparition's claim about people being granted the right primarily so they could edit editnotices. Hobit (talk) 02:12, 21 May 2011 (UTC)
  • If anything here is a misuse of sysop tools, granting accountcreator to someone for reasons entirely different for why the community created the group is it. The community created the account creator group to allow people to create accounts for users unable to do so on their own, nothing more. It isn't a de facto right, it's an accident of convenience that people exploited. It could have been proposed to the community to officially allow account creators to do it, but no, people just unilaterally chose to use their rights for something the community was never consulted on. Admins have the technical ability to edit any protected page, that doesn't mean that it's appropriate for them to do so whenever they please. I don't see why the same principle shouldn't apply to others. Mr.Z-man 04:00, 21 May 2011 (UTC)
    • yeah, I get that. If this had only been on-going for a few weeks, I'd even agree. But in general, per BRD, we tend to do things and see if anyone objects. If not, it pretty much becomes the status quo. After a year, I think we've hit the "this is now the status quo" level. I can totally see the other side and the claim that this was snuck in and so shouldn't be allowed. But did people really not realize this was bundled until just now? (*I* didn't, so perhaps it was largely unknown, but this is outside of anything I generally pay attention to). Hobit (talk) 19:51, 21 May 2011 (UTC)
      • It wasn't explicitly bundled. Basically, we use the Titleblacklist to restrict editing of editnotices, but we also use it to restrict usernames for vandal/attack names. Originally, only admins could override the blacklist, but the ability was given to account creators so that they could create accounts for people whose names were blocked from creation. My issue is less that account creators can do it, more that it's gotten to the point where users are being given the right primarily for editing editnotices, essentially bypassing the community's wishes regarding the purpose of the accountcreator right. I'm all for BRD when it comes to regular editing and policies, but things on the technical side often have few people watching and can have broad consequences. Mr.Z-man 03:01, 22 May 2011 (UTC)
• Why is this necessary? For what it's worth, I'm one of the rouge accountcreators who's used the right to create an editnotice- in this case to override the namespace one for AfC. Accountcreator wasn't meant to let users edit editnotices. Most of us won't miss the ability to do so. That should be made clear to the sysops granting it, and to the users granted it. However, unilaterally implementing a filter preventing edits that at the end of the day are nowhere near abuse is not only out-of-process but a rather silly solution to something that wasn't a problem. sonia♫ 03:06, 21 May 2011 (UTC)
• Support If this is not reverted, we are essentially setting a precedent, that if an administrator doesn't like a group of users being able to do something, he/she can create an edit filter to stop it, without discussion. If the administrator who created the filter feels that users with the Account Creator permission shouldn't be allowed to create/modify edit notices, then he/she should have started a discussion, not taken the rules in to his/her own hands. The question here is not about whether Account Creators should have the right to create edit notices. Instead, the question here, is should Administrators have full authority to modify tools associated with groups without proper discussion? The answer here is a definite no. AndrewN ^talk 03:31, 21 May 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose, account creation and edit notices have nothing to do with each other. We could just as well add the ability to edit the edit notices to the ipblockexempt permission. Or not. —Кузьма^討論 05:43, 21 May 2011 (UTC)
• I don't really care, but they have nothing to do with each other. The real solution to this is to fix edit notice protection from the kludge of a hack that it is at the moment, possibly implementing a new group to edit them. I'd like to point out that as edit notices are all blacklisted on the title blacklist as a way of protecting them, it's not possible to stop accountcreators from editing them in the current form without the use of the AbuseFilter extension, nor is it possible to only allow people to edit edit notices without giving them the ability to create anything that's listed on the title blacklist. A proper technical solution to this is required for this to be properly fixed. The thing that I really do disagree with is granting accountcreator to people who only want to edit edit notices. [stwalkerster|talk] 14:26, 21 May 2011 (UTC)
• Comment: If you want {{TFA title}} to continue to function, some sort of replacement group with the tboverride right (or some other solution than the title blacklist to prevent editing all these pages, or replacing User:AnomieBOT II with an adminbot) will be required before Template:Bug is fixed. Anomie⚔ 15:55, 21 May 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose. What Mr.Z-man said. But yes, Prodego was a bit silly. Killiondude (talk) 06:43, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

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

Alternative solution

OK, this sounds at the basis almost the opposite of the initial solution, however, I feel it would have a similar effect to the above and also solve the whole thing of account creators being account creators not edit notice managers.

• Revoke tboverride from the account creator group

  Will stop account creators from overriding the title blacklist anywhere (and hence edit notices)

• Grant tboverride-account to the account creator group

  Will allow account creators to override the title blacklist on account creation only

• Create a new group "something" (name doesn't matter at this stage)
• Grant tboverride to "something" group

  A group allowed to generically override the title blacklist

• Add the set of users in the account creator group to "something" group

  ...so current account creators don't get annoyed at losing abilities.

Initially, this will have zero effect to the current way things run (before the filter was implemented).

This should solve:

• Account creators editing edit notices when they "aren't supposed to"
• People being given account creator specifically to edit edit notices
• Account creators getting annoyed at losing abilities

Opinions? [stwalkerster|talk] 19:30, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

• Comment - I like this idea, it would solve the issue, I will give it thought.  JoeGazz  ▲  21:22, 21 May 2011 (UTC)
• Support - As an Account Creator who has "Dabbled" with editnotices this would work just fine. Mlpearc powwow 22:09, 21 May 2011 (UTC)
• Better than the original proposal at least. Skomorokh 23:06, 21 May 2011 (UTC)
• I think this is overkill (is tboverride-account a real right?). The protection policy is plenty sufficient to keep admins from misusing their ability to edit protected pages, a policy restriction should suffice in this case. Mr.Z-man 00:28, 22 May 2011 (UTC)
  • It is, see Template:Bug and rev:76344. Anomie⚔ 02:17, 22 May 2011 (UTC)
    • In that case, support the first 2, oppose the last 3 - Account creators don't need the ability to override the title blacklist except for account creations. However, we don't create new user groups unless there's actually a need for it. Users getting annoyed at losing abilities they weren't meant to have is not a need. Mr.Z-man 15:51, 22 May 2011 (UTC)
      • But some will argue there is a need for non-admins to be able to edit editnotices. That's why I included it initially. It's just a matter of perspective as to whether there's a need or not. [stwalkerster|talk] 17:11, 23 May 2011 (UTC)
        • If people can actually explain what that need is, sure. But I've yet to see such an explanation. Mr.Z-man 03:16, 24 May 2011 (UTC)
• Support Sensible. —James ^{(Talk • Contribs)} • 11:15am • 01:15, 22 May 2011 (UTC)
• Support but possibly only giving the right to those that request it. The right will also give the possibility of renaming files or pages to blacklisted names. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 08:14, 22 May 2011 (UTC)
• Support but yes, as per Graeme, we should not give this right out to all account creators, requests should be made individually, through RFP or admins. The Helpful One 16:18, 22 May 2011 (UTC)
  • Open for discussion - it's just intended to stop complaints by existing account creators. [stwalkerster|talk] 17:11, 23 May 2011 (UTC)
• Comment What problem is this proposal supposed to solve? The current arrangement is satisfactory, IMHO. Ruslik_Zero 17:11, 22 May 2011 (UTC)
  • Given this thread exists, it seems there's some disagreement as to whether or not the current arrangement is satisfactory. I'm only trying to come up with a compromise. [stwalkerster|talk] 17:11, 23 May 2011 (UTC)
• Comment I agree with Rusklik0, the current arrangement is perfectly fine. The ability to edit editnotices has not been abused by account creators. It is really quite odd to create a edit filter just to block the editing of edit notices by account creators considering it hasn't been abused and the filter only blocks the ability to edit edit notices. Other blacklisted pages can still be edited by account creators. Creating yet another user group will serve no purpose except to create further bureaucracy. Should we also remove the administrator ability to edit the MediaWiki namespace? After all, administrators really don't need the ability to do their jobs, it is just useful. However such a proposal would never pass, because there are many administrators who work in that area and would not relish the idea of going through a process just to get a tool they currently already have. So what purpose does it serve to remove the account creator ability to edit edit notices? Alpha Quadrant ^talk 20:21, 22 May 2011 (UTC)
  • ...the idea was not to remove it and force account creators to go through the process to regain something they already had. This is why I proposed adding all existing account creators to the new group. As it "hasn't been abused" as many have said (I've not checked personally), this should be uncontroversial. [stwalkerster|talk] 17:11, 23 May 2011 (UTC)
• Support Thanks for the explanation stwalkerster. That does make perfect sense. Alpha Quadrant ^talk 18:29, 23 May 2011 (UTC)
• Support. Makes sense. Ajraddatz (Talk) 20:09, 23 May 2011 (UTC)
• Support as second choice. I can't imagine the right is highly needed, and I worry a bit about people "gathering rights". So first choice is status quo, just allow account creators to have this right as a bundled right to prevent all these niggly rights. Hobit (talk) 02:21, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

The ability to make edit notices still exists

Go to my talk page and click edit. Testingeditnotics (talk) 16:47, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

Users have always been (and will be) able to edit editnotices in their own userspace. Ruslik_Zero 17:09, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

Not that it's really important here, but that's not true at all. Loosening the grip of control over editnotices so that users could edit the ones in their own user space required a bit of discussion. See the archives at Wikipedia talk:Editnotice.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 22:50, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

Redlinks in lists and dab pages

I would like to start a debate on redlinks in lists. The disapproval of redlinks in lists and dab pages was inserted with this edit into WP:REDLINK apparently without discussion and a rather misleading edit summary. The requirements for featured lists include both completeness and minimal redlinks. That is, some redlinks in a featured list are acceptable; kind of implying that a lesser list might have more redlinks. The redlink issue has been debated numerous times regarding FA and FL and still it remains in the requirements. The most extensive debate concerning FL I could find was Wikipedia talk:Featured list criteria/Archive 2#RfC: Removal of minimal red link criteria in 5a. My reading here is that although controversial, redlinks in lists have consensus.

A list to my mind should be comprehensive, even if that means including redlinks. WP:N and WP:V apply to lists just as much as articles and they are sufficient reasons to remove entries which do not belong. Removing entries solely because they are redlinks is entirely wrong. Dab pages are different, but I think the guidelines at MOS:DAB have got it about right and WP:REDLINK should merely refer to the MoS rather than promulgating contradictory rules. So in short, my proposal for WP:REDLINK is to remove the special exception for lists and refer to MOS:DAB for dab pages. SpinningSpark 18:49, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

As with any case, only links you assume would actually be good articles to write should be linked. If it is obviously not notable, then there is no point linking to it. If you think the article should be written, then link it. So if you are adding redlinks to a featured article/list/dab, then I suppose you should give some hint of notability. There are also two different types of lists. Some lists have all content available, which may have some redlinks, or non-articles. Some lists have limited content because a full list would be gigantic, and they only list the most notable examples. _Blake ^{(Talk·Edits)} 18:59, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm not disagreeing with any of that, and my proposal does not change the notability requirement for inclusion as documented at WP:SAL. To be clear, what I am trying to remove is the link to the essay WP:Write the article first which wants list items left out until an article is written, which I do not believe has consensus. SpinningSpark 20:28, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

I think this edit is fine. It is suggested to write the article first. It is not policy that you MUST write the article first. It is just encouraged. _Blake ^{(Talk·Edits)} 03:16, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure I agree. I certainly -- although sparingly -- add redlinks when I think that there would be 1) a reasonable case that the article should exist and 2) a reasonable expectation that an article might exist in the future. I've created a couple-few articles based on seeing redlinks, and they do offer a bit of nudge to editors, although they should be used sparingly. I don't know why this wouldn't apply to lists and dab pages as much as any other article. I would say that the editor would be justified in going ahead and WP:BOLDly remove the material if she wants, and it would be a good idea for her post a note on the talk page to the effect of what she has done and why, and see what develops. Herostratus (talk) 03:24, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

"Encouraged" not to add redlinks is pretty much telling editors not to do it, even if pedantically there is no hard rule. Redlinks to notable subjects should be encouraged in lists, not discouraged. SpinningSpark 09:29, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

It is not discouraging redlinks. That is not at all what it is saying. It is just saying that before adding them, you should think about writing it. _Blake ^{(Talk·Edits)} 10:53, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

Umm...if you write the article first then it won't be a redlink, it will be blue. The corollary of encouraging writing the article first is to discourage redlinks - that is merely logic. The linked essay most definitely comes down on the side of having no entry rather than a redlink. You seem to be saying you are not for discouraging redlinks, if so I take it you would not object to a rewrite making that clear. Editors should be encouraged to write articles from list redlinks in the same sense that editors are encouraged to write articles, that should not be turned round to discouraging redlinks. SpinningSpark 20:46, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

There is a distinction to be made between disambiguation pages and list articles. Dab pages are supposed to be navigational aids, and aren't really "articles" per se, so they have their own rules, and most places STRONGLY discourage (as strong as can be done without violating WP:IAR) redlinks in dab pages. Lists are another topic entirely. List articles each need to be adjudged of their own accord. Some lists, in the interest of completeness, may have a mix of blue links (for existing articles), red links (for yet-to-be-created but obviously needed articles) and unlinked terms (for items which belong on the list, but do not deserve seperate articles of their own. Take a look at List of cheeses, which I think needs a lot of work, but has the right general idea. Somes cheese are notable enough for their own articles, given the copious sources on their history and production and usages. Some cheeses may be so notable, but just haven't had anyone interested enough to write an article yet. And some cheeses may lack any significant reliable sources to support stand-alone articles, but do clearly exist and should perhaps be listed in the interest of keeping the list relatively complete. --Jayron32 03:44, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

• IMO there should normally be zero red links on a disambiguation page.
• IMO whether red links in a non-dab stand-alone list are okay is something determined by the editors of the list, when they define the list selection criteria. You could easily imagine cases where red links are appropriate (e.g., "List of United States Senators": we really ought to have an article about each of them), and cases where red links are not (e.g., "List of television shows", where not just notability but the existence of an article might be used to focus the list).
• IMO red links in (regular, prose-oriented) articles are desirable and should always be accepted whenever Wikipedia ought to have an article on that subject. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:26, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

• Disambiguation pages provide differentiation between wikipedia-notable TOPICS not necessarily all being articles yet. If you know a topic is notable and will get an article eventually, we want it to show in the dab page, where it serves readers and editors who might be looking for it, and provides important structure. There is a standard for keeping redlinks on DAB pages, at MOS:DABRL, which basically requires a supporting bluelink to document that the topic is wikipedia-notable, e.g. by linking to a list-article that shows the same redlink in context. --doncram 15:55, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

• Comment Full disclosure: I made the edit User:Spinningspark identifies as problematic, but additional full disclosure, the edit has been in place for over three years apparently without any problems. In my experience, redlinks in lists (such as those in List of cheeses almost always violate the verifiability policy. And how are we supposed to tell whether redlinked list entries are notable or not? Do we really want List of social networking websites or List of companies of the United States to be "comprehensive" (whatever that means), as User:Spinningspark suggests? In my experience the guideline's current wording (and the link to the essay) has led to a much higher quality of encyclopedia articles since it has been in place. UnitedStatesian (talk) 13:02, 24 May 2011 (UTC)
• MOS:DABRL covers the inclusion of red links on disambiguation pages, with the appropriate limitations. If the difference in language at WP:REDLINK is causing confusion or contention over the use of those kinds of red links on disambiguation pages, we should update the language at WP:REDLINK to be clearer/in agreement with MOS:DABRL. -- JHunterJ (talk) 14:04, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

On the contrary, I believe the current language of WP:REDLINK reflects current WP practice better than the current language of MOS:DABRL; can you point to any examples of DAB pages containing redlinks? UnitedStatesian (talk) 14:54, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Bell River. Many of the NRHP dab pages. -- JHunterJ (talk) 15:09, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Garland House is one example NRHP dab page, i.e. a disambiguation page that includes one or more places listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. General consensus from many past AFDs and other discussions is that NRHP-listed places are Wikipedia-notable, because there exist reliable sources on the places and the NRHP-listing reflects approvals by multiple local and state authorities applying a set of objective standards of notability. The Garland House dab, which I created, includes 2 redlink entries for places named exactly "Garland House" and several of format "Firstname Garland House" that a reader could be looking for. Having the dab page with its redlink entries immediately serves readers who learn elsewhere of an NRHP-listed place and want to find their way to an article or to find out that there is not yet an article for it. It also serves the general development of wikipedia by assisting in the removal of article name conflicts from NRHP list-articles like National Register of Historic Places listings in Dubuque County, Iowa and National Register of Historic Places listings in Union Parish, Louisiana, which previously each had a redlink entry for "Garland House" and are now pipelinked to "Garland House (Dubuque, Iowa)" and "Garland House (Bernice, Louisiana)" instead. Having different list-articles link to "Garland House" when meaning a different place is an article name conflict. Consider when an editor would start the Louisiana article at the "Garland House" name, say, rendering the Iowa list-article inaccurate, leading to need for Requested Move debates and dispute over which one is possibly primaryusage, because the first creators tend to think their one is primary. Putting the redlink entries into the dab page clarifies upfront that there are several places of the same name and allows for orderly fixing of all the list-articles that link to the dab page. There is a dabsolver tool which works well in fixing such article name conflicts, if and only if the redlinks on dab pages are there.

Another consideration is that there are NRHP editors are very adamantly against starting stub articles for the NRHP-listed places, and prefer for their entries to stay as redlinks until an article of a certain quality can be created (with varying views of what the minimum quality suffices).

My evolving view is that the NRHP articles could/should be created as stubs sooner rather than later, but there are many thousands of these. The redlinks on dab pages and in list-articles are essential and cannot simply be removed. --doncram 15:45, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

I mostly agree with WP:MOSDABRL, in that we have to have some criteria for why we deem a subject notable enough for a redlink. Mention and links in the English Wikipedia are a logical place to look for such justification. The one extension of this I've long wanted to see is to allow redlinks when foreign-language Wikipedias have encyclopedic treatment of subjects we still lack here. This comes up a lot in foreign literature, geography, etc. For one thing, templates like {{ill}} and {{ill2}} would allow us to point multi-lingual readers to articles on the subjects they want. (It's not that our average reader reads language X; it's that so many readers perusing "List of rivers in Brazil" or "Some Russian Name (disambiguation)" do!) Wareh (talk) 15:58, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

I also agree that we have to have some criteria for redlinks inclusion, and find MOSDABRL too limited. I'm not sure whether a foreign-language encyclopedia link would be a useful addition, though—after all, the notability criteria in those Wikipedias aren't always compatible with ours (but it's also likely that I'm over-thinking this part). What I think would be useful, however, is an ability to add an external link, which would simultaneously show the notability of the redlink, verify it, and serve as a starting point for article creation.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 24, 2011; 16:52 (UTC)

Wikipedia disambiguation pages disambiguate topics that are ambiguous on Wikipedia. If the topic isn't on Wikipedia, it doesn't need to be disambiguated on Wikipedia. A red link in the article space (with citation, as needed) would show the notability of the red link, verify it, and serve as a starting point for article creation, no problem. -- JHunterJ (talk) 16:56, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

That's providing there is an article to add such redlink to. All too often (especially with geographic entities) there is a high-level article where the red link in question would be out of place but there is not yet a lower-level article, where the red link would be right at home. MOSDABRL in its present form is totally in the way of doing anything about such cases—it's bureaucracy for the sake of bureaucracy.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 24, 2011; 17:07 (UTC)

If the not even the homey lower-level article has been created, perhaps the even-lower-level entity is not actually notable enough for an English-language encyclopedia? And please assume good faith: MOS:DABRL in its present form is a guard against explosions of non-notable red links. -- JHunterJ (talk) 17:14, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't doubt that for some cases the answer would be "yes", but for the hundreds and hundreds of such cases I myself have encountered over the years it would be a sound "no". As your own comment confirms, MOSDABRL dictates a very specific workflow ("always work from top to bottom") which in my line work is the most time-consuming, maintenance-creating, and generally inefficient (which, when multiplied by the sheer scale of the project, results in literally months of time wasted on nothing more than satisfying rigid bureaucratic requirements of MOSDABRL). Surely I'm not alone to feel that way—there must be other process where "bottom-to-top" approach works better but can't be efficiently employed because something like MOSDABRL stands in the way. When a guideline actually impedes useful work, that's a good sign there is a problem with the guideline, not with the work being done. As for your good faith remark, I don't quite understand what it is in reference to—could you clarify what it is you mean? I'm not at all saying that MOSDABRL is completely useless and should be scrapped—it is in fact a good starting point—but it sure enough could use more flexibility. What does "good faith" have to do with me pointing it out?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 24, 2011; 17:59 (UTC)

The problem here is that you're assuming the fix for that inefficiency must lie in a change in the guidelines. The guidelines do not work on a top-to-bottom assumption -- the red link in the article space can be in a "lower" article, or a "sibling" article, or an article that's not in the hierarchy at all. But if Wikipedia doesn't cover the topic somewhere, that topic isn't ambiguous with the title on Wikipedia. -- JHunterJ (talk) 18:08, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

I more or less agree, but for my purposes, and those of many other readers, "on Wikipedia" is usefully defined as "on all Wikipedias." Yes we have different administrations enforcing rules, but that is not a reason why I should have to search a dozen Wikipedias to know if there's a Wikipedia article that could be useful to me. Maybe down the line more sophisticated technology will allow readers to welcome more information of this kind. The idea that such a measure would lead to lots of links to foreign articles that don't meet our notability criteria seems very far-fetched to me. In sum, I don't see this as an issue put to rest by the "link explosion" or "on Wikipedia" tests. Wareh (talk) 18:32, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

• My opinion In my opinion red links should be in lists but not in Disambiguous pages. A dab page is supposed to disambiguate between existing pages not pages that might someday exist if we get around to creating them. For lists, it is very helpful and needed for red links to be in lists because it helps to identify the articles for that list that still need to be created. Additionally, if we just start removing the items from the list (names for example) then the list is automatically incomplete. --Kumioko (talk) 18:16, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

  A dab page disambiguate between existing topics that are covered on Wikipedia, whether in their own articles or as mentions on other articles. In the second case, mentions, the mention might red link to the topic. In those instances, the dab page can (and should) use the same red link that exists in the article space. That's the summary of MOS:DABRL and MOS:DABMENTION. -- JHunterJ (talk) 18:28, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

• I think I need to clarify a couple of points of my proposal. Firstly, we seem to have got sidetracked on dab pages. The proposal was never about dab pages, I think MOS:DAB is fine as it is on redlinks, perhaps we need a separate thread on that. Secondly, my comment on "comprehensiveness" was not meant to mean that all non-notable additions to, say, list of operating systems should be allowed and redlinked. Spam can be kept out by challenging it under WP:V and requiring references before reinsertion - exactly the same rules that apply to any article. SpinningSpark 19:12, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

I would agree with what you suggest: a change to instead discourage unreferenced redlinks from list articles and templates. UnitedStatesian (talk) 12:55, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

The other kind of RFCs

Are automatically linked RFCs, e.g., RFC 1149 an exception to the rule of avoiding external links in article bodies? If not, should they always be escaped with <nowiki> when so used? Feezo (send a signal | watch the sky) 21:37, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

• My vote is to open a bug and convince someone to change the software so that the auto-linking doesn't happen. This sort of thing is a holdover... linking to internet working group RFC's used to be a "cool thing to do". On the other hand, I don't support <nowiki>'ing those instances where it is used at all. Kludges are never an efficient use of time or resources, and there's no dire emergency here to correct.
  — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 22:57, 22 May 2011 (UTC)
• It looks like it's on the list of magic. I think it's fine. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:24, 23 May 2011 (UTC)
• I don't see the autolinking as a problem. If you want to prevent autolinking, any of these will work (I tend to prefer the first example, as it is the most explicit and easy to understand):
  RFC<nowiki /> 1149
RFC&#32;1149
RFC&nbsp;1149
  For citing IETF RFCs, I'd suggest {{Cite IETF}}. --Tothwolf (talk) 02:54, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/All current discussions has been marked as a policy

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/All current discussions (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

why on earth would we do this? It is not a policy--its a page where we discuss applications of policy. (same comment applies to the others below. I may have missed the discussion, but this makes no sense to me, so if not explained, I shall revert. DGG ( talk ) 08:41, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

It looks like a mistake based on transclusion of a policy onto other pages. This is one of the things that VeblenBot helps us detect so that we can fix it right away. It looks like the problem has been fixed now. — Carl (CBM · talk) 11:38, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

It happened when two categories were added to Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Speedy/Criteria [3] which is widely transcluded. [4] I fixed it with a <noinclude> [5] when I saw the notification here. --Tothwolf (talk) 12:46, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Talk page contributions keep getting deleted by zealous biased 'custodians' of The Church of the SubGenius

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Church_of_the_SubGenius Note the deletion of the post 06:19, 23 May 2011 (diff | hist) Talk:Church of the SubGenius ‎ (sinebot deleted entry from talk page.) (top) which is visible when my user page is viewed. Much as Scientology zealously edits its pages to harmonize with internally perceived notions of how the faith should be perceived, the Church of the SubGenius affiliated editors like to keep any disharmony from their page. Until the last few days, the 'Bob Black Bombing' section of the article proper got itself edited out of 'legal matters'. The reason I have not edited the Kevin Underwood information directly into the article, is that as he was merely associated with a number of church members as opposed to being an actual Reverend (misreported on the Kevin Underwood article) and as such while I think there should be a mention in the article, it isn't precisely something that belongs under legal matters of the church. Nor do I think anyone without a few barnstars is going to have any luck against mob article enforcement. You can expect a series of hostile edits and halfassed hackery in working with this article, the 'frop' paranoia leads to many overzealous 'custodians' working to keep their world-view from being unrepresented in their Wikipedia article. 71.102.18.173 (talk) 16:01, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Hi, this page is for discussing Wikipedia's policies. It is not part of the dispute resolution system. There are many options there for you to pursue, you could also post at the incident noticeboard. Beeblebrox (talk) 17:05, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

I can't find any sign of SineBot deleting anything from the talk page. The "Bob Black Bombing" section was archived automatically by MiszaBot since it was over a year. This isn't evidence of any sort of pro-SubGenius whitewashing of the talk page. Gamaliel (talk) 17:48, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Multiple accounts?

Is it possible for wikipedia editors to have multiple accounts? Not neccesarily a sockpuppet but another account for a contributial editor? Shakinglord (talk) 16:27, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

It is certainly possible, and there are legitimate reasons for one person to have multiple accounts; see Wikipedia:Multiple Accounts. If the account is for another person, then it isn't "multiple accounts" anyway, although if the two people edit from the same place (same computer, or two computers in the same home sharing an external IP address), then it might be a good idea to note the relationship on your user pages to avoid confusion in the event of a sockpuppet investigation. --RL0919 (talk) 16:34, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Ah, thank you, I was thinking about experimenting using a new account. I wanted to try using anti-vandalism software on a new account similar to my account name. Shakinglord (talk) 17:00, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

It doesn't have to be similar to your main account name, although most editors do that. I have one completely different from my main account name just for fun; Hall of Jade. Especially if you create an account close to your name, just make sure you clearly mark it as yours so someone doesn't think it's an impersonator. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 18:24, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

You may want to use {{User Alternate Acc}} & {{User Alternate Acct Name}}. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 15:32, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

a newbee with questions about advertising?

industrial and commercial products / manufacturers are often named directly, referenced or added to picture labels in generic articles. the references often have external links to the commercial web site. I have been corrected that links to external technical references (ASME gas turbine papers) listed and free to obtain at a commercial web site is wrong. this does not look fair. i respect wiki enough not to care what the official policy is, so long as I understand. can someone point me at the relevant wiki material to learn more about this? has anyone found a simple test that works most of the time? p.s. i come from an academic area where if it is not relevant it is edited out.Mkoronowski (talk) 03:41, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

See our rules on external links and more generally our rules against commercial misuse of Wikipedia as a whole. --Orange Mike | Talk 21:02, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

The first given by Orangemike is for the external links section only. I would say that it is ok if other sources are not available. It is always best to link to non-commercial sources and to a stable URL (to avoid any future dead links). -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 22:13, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Do you have any examples of how you are using these links? -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 22:13, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Straw poll regarding lists of mathematics articles

User:JHunterJ has suggested that the broad issues raised at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Straw poll regarding lists of mathematics articles should be discussed at the Village Pump, and not confined to the relatively obscure straw poll where these matters are now being discussed.

To provide a brief summary, there is an alphabetical set of 27 pages in a List of mathematics articles series. These pages are assembled by a maintenance bot, which regularly adds new content to them by adding whatever links fall within any mathematics-related categories. The lists have therefore come to include hundreds of links to disambiguation pages. The Manual of Style for disambiguation pages (WP:MOSDAB) has a policy addressing such links (WP:INTDABLINK) which states that intentional links to disambiguation pages must be piped through a redirect containing "(disambiguation)" in order to make it clear that such links are not errors requiring repair. Efforts to make such repairs to the lists of mathematics articles are overwritten by a maintenance bot, which adds back the direct disambiguation links as part of its routine. This has been brough to the attention of the mathematics project, some members of which have asserted that it is necessary for direct links to disambiguation pages to be present in these lists because the lists themselves are used by various bots to alert editors of changes occurring in project-related pages. Based on this perceived need, those project members have declared the lists to be an exception to MOSDAB. No prior discussion has occurred where these pages were in fact determined to constitute such an exception.

A number of solutions have been proposed to accommodate the needs of all parties, including the exclusion of disambig links from the lists, moving or copying the lists, or certain elements of them, to project space, or moving the disambiguation pages themselves to titles including "(disambiguation)", although the last option would also violate MOSDAB, albeit in a way that does not hinder the work of disambiguators. These proposals have been rejected by at least some members of the effected project as requiring too much work, or being unnecessary in light of the pages having been deemed an exception by those members.

What is really at issue in this discussion are the questions:

1. Can a project make an internal determination that articles constitute an exception to Manual of Style provisions such as those in MOSDAB, which were instituted to enable errors to be repaired (as opposed to those instituted merely to conform to aesthetic norms);
2. Is it permissible to keep lists in article space when the primary function of those lists is to facilitate project maintenance; and
3. Can a bot permissibly be used to revert edits that bring links in line with the Manual of Style, and add links to pages that do not comply with policies or guidelines?

I have tried to present the situation neutrally here, although I am fairly deeply involved in the discussion occuring on the project space, on behalf of disambiguation efforts. On a more personal aesthetic note, I find lists like these (occurring in many projects) generally to be ugly walls of links, of little value to a visitor actually trying to find something. In this particular case, it is impossible to make any substantial reform to the content or layout of any of these pages, as the bot will merely come by and undo any repairs or improvements in its next pass. The bot owner is awaiting the consensus generated by the straw poll to act on this matter. This being the situation, I agree with JHunterJ that wider community input into the situation would be helpful. Cheers! bd2412 T 19:52, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

My opinion is that projects should be able to vary MOS requirements if there is a valid reason. After all it is a guideline only. Lists in article space should only be there if they also have use as an article or navigation tool for readers. If there is no such use, primary or secondary it should go in the WP: space. Instead of proposal 3, isn't there a nobots directive that you can add to a page to keep bots from tampering with it? If not then there should be, and used. We do not need a battle of the bots reversing each others actions. However an alternative proposal could be a nobots template that obfuscates the link enough that bots cannot edit it. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:19, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Graeme, as always, I appreciate your views. The bot being used in this case ignores (in fact, deletes) {{nobots}} tags on these lists; the bot's owner has indicated that he will make whatever changes are necessary to accord with whatever consensus is reached, but we must first develop a consensus in the straw poll for that to happen. As for the namespace issue, it has been proposed that the pages are useful in mainspace for browsing, but I don't see readers getting much use from overstuffed walls of links. Actually, one of the proposals in the straw poll is to maintain two sets of lists, one in article space that conforms to all MOS guidelines and is ordered in a neater and more user-friendly fashion, and one in project space that contains all the links needed for maintenance tasks. bd2412 T 13:16, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

I would prefer the debate be phrased in terms of what is best for producing an encyclopaedia rather than whether some guideline is being followed in a particular case. Dmcq (talk) 21:16, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

I've been unable to find a good solution for a related DAB problem: the disambiguation-with-possibilities page. A clean example is acute leukemia.

It's a legitimate search term, and there's no good guess what the readers are looking for. They might be looking for one of the major types of acute leukemia (acute lymphocytic leukemia or acute myeloid leukemia). They might also be looking for information about one of the rarer types. They might be looking for information about acute leukemias as a class; you could write a reasonable overview article on that page.

It's not really a disambiguation page, because they're all closely related. But I'm not sure that it's exactly what we mean by a set index, either. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:49, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia articles being sold by book companies

Is there a page/discussion on Wikipedia that deals with the issue of companies selling books based on Wikipedia articles e.g. [6] Thanks. Eldumpo (talk) 20:34, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

See User:PrimeHunter/Alphascript Publishing sells free articles as expensive books. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:37, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

The licence of wikipedia clearly allows it, as long as the licence is respected. Cambalachero (talk) 20:42, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for responses. I read through a number of the articles from PrimeHunter's link. Regarding Wikipedia:Buying Wikipedia articles in print or another form, why does the Wikipedia license allow people to redistribute Wikipedia commercially. Why does it not state that it can be republished in free sources, and then only allow paid use via accredited Wikipedia partners e.g. Pedia Press? Also, going beyond that, if 3rd party publishers do charge for Wikipedia articles in a book, why are they not obliged to make it clear the articles come from Wikipedia? Is there a better place I should be asking this/perhaps similar questions have been asked before? Regards. Eldumpo (talk) 08:39, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

As to the second point, the license under which wikipedia text can be used does place a requirement on the user to specify its origin. As to the first, and if I remember correctly, the original license used when submitting text to wikipedi was the GFDL, which does not bar commercial use of the text. Let me turn your question around: why should wikipedia seek to limit the use of its text? Sure, we could have started out down the line you suggest, much like we could have set off down the advertising line for funding. We chose not to. Advantages and disadvantages attach to any of the options that could have been selected. What makes your suggestion better than the current situation? --Tagishsimon (talk) 09:01, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

These "book" sites appear to be internet only, so if people can access them they can access Wikipedia. It can hardly be an encouragement to editors to improve Wikipedia when they see some rip-off company making profits from text they've worked on. I don't see any benefit to Wikipedia in these "books" being offered for sale. Anyone know many of these books are produced/sold? Eldumpo (talk) 11:06, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

It shouldn't be a discouragement to editors: it's what they signed up for, the spread of knowledge. The benefit is not to Wikipedia, the benefit is to the world, and, as such, entirely inkeeping with the Wikimedia project. Okay, so we can think of better ways to spread knowledge, but as Voltaire said, it's a case of the better being the enemy of the good. - Jarry1250 ^{[Weasel? Discuss.]} 13:04, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Except that these books can hardly be called "good", they are a dump of Wikipedia articles without any redaction, ordering, ... You get book titles like "Dylan Dog: Insert SHorror Fiction, Comics, Eponym, Tiziano Sclavi, Publishing, Sergio Bonelli Editore, Dark Horse Comics, English Language, Cemetery Man"[7] or "Folklore of the Low Countries: Epic Poetry, Legend, Fairy Tale, Luxembourg, Dutch Language, Medieval Dutch Literature, Belgium". Most of theirt book titles omit the second part, but they are still created in the same way: you take an article, and add all articles linked from the first one. You don't get a book on one topic, but a book containing one article and a long series of loosely related other articles about terms used in the first one. Fram (talk) 14:40, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Agree with the above. Why does Wikipedia want to enable profits for these shoddy companies. Couldn't it all be avoided by stating that you can freely use/distribute it, but not for commerical purposes. Eldumpo (talk) 16:10, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

This would violate one of the core principles of the Wikimedia Foundation ("Free licensing of content; in practice defined by each project as public domain, GFDL, CC-BY-SA or CC-BY"). It is not going to change; that "If you do not want your writing to be edited, used, and redistributed at will, then do not submit it here" box you're always saying "accept" to means what it says. – iridescent 16:25, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Reusing Wikipedia content, which begins "There are many reusers of Wikipedia's content, and more are welcome. If you want to use Wikipedia's text materials in your own books/articles/web sites or other publications, you can do so..." WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:27, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Undo

Is the message If you are undoing an edit that is not vandalism, explain the reason in the edit summary. Do not use the default message only a suggestion or policy ? Gnevin (talk) 12:41, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Consider it policy. It is an extension of Wikipedia:Editing policy, which says you need to explain your edits. Yoenit (talk) 13:00, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks Gnevin (talk) 14:12, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Which would be what the undo message is doing when you click undo. That being said if it is, it should be put on a policy page somewhere because it is an extremely common use to use undo without an edit summary. And policy is supposed to reflect action not prescribe action after all. -DJSasso (talk) 14:14, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I Am really not planning to use edit summaries for edits like [8]. If people don't realise why I made this undo, they can always ask for an explanation, and if the editor would persist and make the same change again, I would also provide an explanation, but in general for such obvious errors / tests, no edit summary on undo is needed. Fram (talk) 14:28, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

On the contrary, Fram: in the example you use, an edit summary like "fixing formatting" explains what you've done and why. In many cases, something you're undoing may have been done in total good faith by somebody who needs to be told why you're reverting them if they are to learn better. It's part of making this whole project transparent rather than opaque. --Orange Mike | Talk 16:16, 25 May 2011 (UTC)