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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 172.254.222.178 (talk) at 00:05, 26 April 2022 (→‎Proposed amendment to WP:NPOV: Re.). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

"WP:VPP" redirects here. For proposals, see Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals).
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The policy section of the village pump is used to discuss proposed policies and guidelines and changes to existing policies and guidelines.

Please see this FAQ page for a list of frequently rejected or ignored proposals. Discussions are automatically archived after remaining inactive for two weeks.



Should good articles be nominated for deletion?

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Historical background of the 2014 pro-Russian unrest in Ukraine

--Knight Skywalker (talk) 14:06, 5 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

My answer was to the implicit question "should deletion be prohibited for GA's?". In practice, deletion of a GA would rarely be a suitable action. North8000 (talk) 20:22, 20 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with that, and, in an ideal world, no article that should be deleted would get anywhere near being a GA. Unfortunately this is not an ideal world, so "rarely" is not the same as "never", Phil Bridger (talk) 21:01, 20 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yes, they obviously can be deleted (and sometimes even should be), with a caveat. GA status means that an article has had a lot of fine-combed attention paid to it - while it is definitely true that GA doesn't evaluate articles for notability or some of the other reasons we might delete them, it should at least be very unusual for such core problems to go unremarked. In particular the sourcing requirements for a GA would usually force an article to pass the WP:GNG. Likewise the focus on making sure something is well-sourced should normally prevent a hoax from passing GA (but as we've seen that isn't always the case.) --Aquillion (talk) 15:54, 20 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • In theory, good articles should be deleted if is found that the topic doesn't meet the notability criteria. However, such an incident would be rare; good articles require all the main aspects of the topic to be addressed and various aspects like material that has been challenged to be sourced, along with there being no original research or plagiarism. This means that if the main aspects of the topic being addressed are incredibly minuscule without original research, it should be noticed by a good article nomination reviewer. However, it is possible for a reviewer to miss the problems thereof, especially since only one reviewer is needed for a good article nomination to pass. As a result, if an editor has a valid case that supports the notion that a good article is not notable, they should be able to nominate it for deletion. They should be aware, however, that their case will be more carefully scrutinized in such a deletion nomination. In regards to the discussion you have linked, it appears that there was a consensus that Historical background of the 2014 pro-Russian unrest in Ukraine should be kept for reasons outside of it being a good article, as they did notice improvements to its neutrality and synthesis could be addressed. Lazman321 (talk) 18:16, 20 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Lipstick on a pig scenario, except in reverse. I guess. casualdejekyll 22:48, 28 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yes, they are not exempt. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 21:40, 5 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • No. GA or featured content should always be de-certified before an AfD is allowed; AfDs routinely return nonsensical results based on the whims of participants and admins who just count noses rather than looking at actual policy basis of arguments. Jclemens (talk) 02:13, 17 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yes. GAs and FAs are not in any way insulated from the usual notability rules and processes; content review processes like FA and GA routinely return nonsensical results based on the whims of participants and coordinators who just count referrors rather than looking at actual quality of articles. Levivich 15:38, 17 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • That's not fair. The reviewers look at the quality of the content of the article; a determination of its suitability for inclusion is the purview of the AfD process. There have been cases where GAs have been deleted despite their quality and notability. An article on a sensitive subject like the one above is always vulnerable at AfD. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 21:48, 17 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • I agree with Hawkeye7 - especially as it relates to an FA promotion. How many of the editors here who are discounting them as mergeable/deletable, etc. have promoted/reviewed a GA or FA? confused face icon Just curious... I'm of the mind there needs to be a valid reason for considering an FA promoted article as a candidate for anything. Those are the articles that are featured on the main page of Wikipedia. GAs would be an easier mark but even then, the reason needs to be as close to indisputable as one can get. Adding: Wikipedia:Former featured articles - demoted first, then some were merged, such as Patriot Act, Title III, Subtitle A (deleted or redirected) Atsme 💬 📧 00:18, 23 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia usernames and article content

When both the username and real name of a Wikipedia editor are widely reported by reliable sources, to what extent should Wikipedia blanketly prohibit articles in the mainspace from stating that such a person edits under that account name (except when that person has voluntarily posted their own real name, or links to information containing their real name, on Wikipedia)? — Mhawk10 (talk) 21:10, 15 March 2022 (UTC) (updated: 02:26, 16 March 2022 (UTC))[reply]

Discussion: Wikipedia usernames and article content

  • There have been a few cases of this that I've encountered on-wiki recently, and I'm really not sure how to handle this. WP:OUTING seems to be a behavioral policy that considers outing someone to be harassment. But this seems to be a behavioral policy rather than a content policy, and it seems to juxtapose with the principle that Wikipedia is Not Censored when these sorts of things might be relevant in a Wikipedia article (for example, when a person's principle notability comes from their Wikipedia activity/reactions thereto). While there's always WP:IAR, policy could be more explicit in terms of how suppression should be handled in these cases and what the expectations are for editors who are writing articles that involve these edge cases. — Mhawk10 (talk) 21:13, 15 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Per WP:OSPOL the problem goes beyond mentioning real name + username, since that policy indicates that any links to WP:RS that does the WP:OUTING must be redacted from any WP-space. Talk:Ketanji Brown Jackson has a recent example. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 21:40, 15 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    I do think that prohibiting links to reliable sources that also happen to connect an editor to a username (such as in the KBJ article), restricts article content in a way that's not exactly consistent with Wikipedia not being censored. If the vast majority of articles that cover the event also contain the username of the editor, then this might result in us being unable to cite particular reliable sources for facts that don't involve the editor's name. That being said, I can think of a few editors where there is intense public speculation about their private identity that has been discussed in mainstream media (even naming alleged names) without those sources saying anything conclusive about the identity. In general, I think that speculation like this is less likely to be of encyclopedic value, and so the privacy considerations of the editor are relatively much stronger. Editors are living people, too. — Mhawk10 (talk) 03:13, 16 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • This seems kinda pointless since we cannot prevent RS from reporting things and likewise, can't prevent RS from being used on Wikipedia. This is kind of like when someone doesn't want negative information in an article about them but it's widely reported by RS. Similarly, our COI policy/guideline would prevent this since in theory the editor would have to disclose anyway. CUPIDICAE💕 22:44, 15 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    The assumption that our COI policy/guideline would prevent this since in theory the editor would have to disclose anyway implies that the only reason that someone would get widespread media coverage for editing Wikipedia was for COI. I don't think that this is universally true. — Mhawk10 (talk) 22:49, 15 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    It most definitely is not true that COI is the only reason someone gets widespread media coverage for editing Wikipedia. Pierre-sur-Haute military radio station#Controversy over Wikipedia article and Wikipedia Seigenthaler biography incident are just the first two examples that come to mind. Thryduulf (talk) 17:20, 16 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • It shouldn't be mentioned just for the sake of it. However, if it has been reported by reliable sources and is relevant and germane to the article, it should be used in it. The anti-outing policy is a conduct policy, not a content policy. It is absolutely not intended to forbid the use of relevant and verifiable information in an article, especially when, by virtue of having been reported in reliable references, the information is no longer private anyway. Seraphimblade Talk to me 23:13, 15 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    That is not how the OS team currently implements the policy. If a reliable source outs a Wikipedian, links to that source are oversighted in all namespaces, including main and talk. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 00:40, 16 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Since this RfC is probably prompted by Mark Bernstein (Wikimedian): @Barkeep49: I presume the OS team exercises some discretion (given that said article hasn't been OS'd yet)? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 01:42, 16 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    I can't reveal what discussions (if any) there have been about Bernstein. My comment was about consensus across multiple discussions, which felt appropriate for an RfC that is at the Village Pump and whose outcome would not impact only a single article. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 01:55, 16 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    @Barkeep49, I wonder if I can have your input on the "allowed-ness" on this: I cite a source like the Ketanji Brown Jackson Politico article or the Mark Bernstein Haaretz somewhere on-WP, not for username, but reasonable WP:DUE/WP:PROPORTION stuff, and I don't include a url in the cite. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:04, 16 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    That's an edge case I don't feel comfortable speaking about. I really don't know how that would go down with the OS team. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 14:35, 16 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Barkeep49, are there any considerations besides WP:OUTING that guide current OS practice? ToS, UCoC, etc? I guess I'm wondering if it's something that can be changed by changing the outing policy or if a different approach is needed. –dlthewave ☎ 18:29, 16 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    @Dlthewave I want to ping @Thryduulf who has been doing an excellent job of describing current practice in this discussion, but from the discussions I can think of, decisions have been made based on OUTING and based on the OS teams' understanding of community preference in applying it. ToS and UCoC are both minimum expectations and our OS policy goes beyond even the global minimum for OS. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 18:49, 16 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm pretty certain that the UCoC has never coming up in discussions about specific outing concern incidents - obviously that may change in the future if/when it comes into force, but based on my current understanding I don't thi2nk it will have a significant impact. I know ToS has come up in discussions on the Oversight list, but I don't recall any this context (my recollection is that its most often mentioned in the context of self-disclosure by (apparent) minors). As Barkeep notes the main considerations are the OUTING and oversight policies and our collective and individual understands of how the community wants us to deal with these things. Those understandings are built in part on discussions like this one but also other on-and-off wiki discussions, feedback and comments about editors' and readers' priorities and desires for what Wikipedia should be like. That it should be a safe space where people don't need to fear being outed is frequently a strongly expressed preference, which is one of the reasons we generally treat it very strongly. Obviously we also take the individual circumstances into account, including the nature of the publication and article. Thryduulf (talk) 22:29, 16 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • It's hard to know what should happen in a hypothetical case since there are always other factors. What prompted this discussion was the arrest of a Wikipedia editor. The article should never have been created, since it lacks notability. If we had followed policy in the first place, the issue would never have arisen. TFD (talk) 02:18, 16 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Hi all! I've received an email from an arbitrator who has expressed substantial concerns about the RfC. Seeing as nobody has !voted yet and it's been entirely a discussion, I've withdrawn the RfC tag and deleted the survey section. I think that this is OK per WP:TPO (I don't think this distorts anybody's comments), but if anybody who commented objects to the change in the format of the discussion then I have no objection to them reverting my edit that removed the RfC tag and survey section. — Mhawk10 (talk) 02:26, 16 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    That arb was not me, but I'm glad the RfC tags were removed. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 02:44, 16 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    I can confirm that Barkeep was not the arb. — Mhawk10 (talk) 02:49, 16 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    I think it is a discussion that we need to have, as WP:NOTCENSORED and WP:OUTING currently contradict each other. I don't see a WP:TPO issue though I disagree with the withdrawal and I am concerned by the fact that the discussion that prompted the withdrawal of a formal discussion took place off-wiki. BilledMammal (talk) 03:31, 16 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    To be clear, the extent of "discussion that prompted the withdrawal of a formal discussion" was a single email from an arb that I did not reply to until after I withdrew the RfC. I'm also not claiming that there's a consensus here already on whether or not an RfC is appropriate. — Mhawk10 (talk) 03:47, 16 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Mhawk10, would you be willing to share the nature of the concerns to the extent that you feel comfortable? This could be helpful for other editors who might want to move forward with a formal proposal. –dlthewave ☎ 18:24, 16 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Barkeep49 and Mhawk10, I echo the concerns about the RfC being suspended or aborted (which one is it, even?) due to an off-wiki conversation. This discussion is about what the policy should be; all of us can go read what it currently is. I am not sure how that discussion is to be had without soliciting community feedback, and that is what an RfC is for. Seraphimblade Talk to me 04:09, 16 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm not sure why you're pinging me as I was very much discussing this publicly and was not aware an email had been sent until Mhawk posted it here. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 04:17, 16 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    This is currently a WP:CENT-posted discussion posted at the Village pump; I think that community feedback can be obtained in a somewhat unstructured manner before we come to a particular proposal (or set of proposals) to !vote on. — Mhawk10 (talk) 05:01, 16 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm not sure what further input is needed, in a pre-RfC sense. It's a pretty straight up-or-down "Yes, a link between a username and identity is permitted in articles if verified by reliable sources" or "No, a link between a username and identity is not permitted in articles." Is there something besides those options that particularly requires more input? (I'm also not certain how my comment wasn't a clear "Yes, it should be"—granted, I didn't bold anything, but I don't generally find that to be particularly necessary when it's clear what I'm advocating.) Seraphimblade Talk to me 05:30, 16 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    If you feel like a straight up-down thing is worth RfCing, then I can't stop you from (re-)launching an RfC. I think that there might be a grey area where privacy is a real concern (I indicated one such case in my response to GGS above). It might be better to break it out case-by-case on a few proposals. For example, one idea could be:

    When both the username and real name of a Wikipedia editor are reported by reliable sources, to what extent should Wikipedia prohibit articles in the mainspace from stating that such a person edits under that account name?

    • Option 1: In all cases except when that person has voluntarily posted their own real name, or links to information containing their real name, on Wikipedia ("voluntarily revealed their identity on-wiki").
    • Option 2: In all cases except when the person has voluntarily revealed their identity on-wiki or when multiple high-quality independent reliable sources reports that fact.
    • Option 3: In all cases except when the person has voluntarily revealed their identity on-wiki or when multiple independent reliable sources report that fact.
    • Option 4: In all cases except when the person has voluntarily revealed their identity on-wiki or when at least one independent reliable sources report that fact.
    • Option 5: Other
    I'm not locked into this sort of thing (I'd like to see some deliberation on edge cases and phrasing) but this sort of thing might be better than a simple up-down RfC, such as the one I initially posted, since it allows for nuance and taking into account reasonable privacy concerns. — Mhawk10 (talk) 05:56, 16 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    The alternative approach would be to do what I (abortively) did, which is to get a yes or no on "do any cases exist outside of voluntary self-ID" and go from there. I think we can probably skip that with a properly formatted RfC. Alternatively, it might be worth waiting for oversighters/arbcom to chime in to point out edge cases before an RfC is launched, since they are likely to have some additional experience in that area that could be useful in terms of thinking about things beyond simply the presence of sourcing. Something like the age of a person (which is a bit hard to directly fit into the structure I proposed above) or other factors might be at play. We'd also need to explicitly state something about the use of links that contain WP:OUTING material, as Barkeep49's response to your initial post indicates that current OS practice is to oversight those in the general case as well. — Mhawk10 (talk) 06:10, 16 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Slightly problematically for OSers trying to engage in the discussion, at best, they'll be able to note edge cases where they've decided to leave the material on-wiki - they can't tell us any borderline cases that they just decided to remove, because that would itself be a breach. Nosebagbear (talk) 09:07, 16 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    There have been multiple occasions where we have removed a connection between a username and a real life identity made by independent sources but not by the user in question. The reliability or otherwise of the source is not generally relevant and the namespace where the mention is made is never relevant. When the subject has clearly made the connection themselves we do not oversight as it's purely a content decision whether to include the name or not, we have had some such links reported to us though and I have a hazy recollection that one link was removed and then restored when it became clear that the subject had made the connection themselves (oversight is a tool of first resort so redacting and then unredacting after discussion is normal).
    In general terms, the WP:OUTING policy trumps the WP:NOTCENSORED policy because outing someone against their will is not acceptable under pretty much every circumstance, but NOTCENSORED is a never a reason for inclusion of content (it is a reason not to exclude it). There are of course edge cases, and one fairly recent one does come to mind, but I can't think how to phrase it in a way that doesn't give too much information. Thryduulf (talk) 13:05, 16 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'd imagine that in addition to Bernstein, this question would also apply to pages such as Ira Brad Matetsky. 2601:18C:8B82:9E0:0:0:0:AFF6 (talk) 11:46, 16 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    @Newyorkbrad has disclosed his real name publicly (he clearly links to his biography on from his userpage for example) so there is no issue with mentioning his username in his biography. The question only arises when the subject has not made the link themselves. Thryduulf (talk) 13:07, 16 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    That is correct in my specific case. I had originally intended to edit anonymously, but after I became an arbitrator, Daniel Brandt and possibly some moderators at the old Wikipedia Review had other plans. That was 14 years ago, and I've made no effort to conceal my identity since that time. Newyorkbrad (talk) 21:23, 16 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Privacy also involves degree of public prominence of the information. Changing the situation from somebody screwing up and outing themselves in some obscure RS to publishing it in Wikipedia is a major change, even if the info was technically already "public". The only thing that keeps Wikipedia from being one of the most privacy-violating websites in the world for editors in anonymity. Aside from that it is a published, easily public-searchable record / database of everything the person ever wrote or did on Wikipedia and exactly when they did it. Privacy can be a matter or life and death, persecution, loss of freedom or careers etc. and should trump all other considerations. Option 1,, the most restrictive is best. North8000 (talk) 13:33, 16 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • I am not of the view that there needs to be an elaborate policy statement about a matter such as this which comes up a few times a year. Stifle (talk) 14:24, 16 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    When someone willingly links themselves to their username off-wiki in a highly visible reliable source elsewhere, I'd argue that stating their real name in an article in that case would be reasonable if they are notable. Of course that's an edge case - it would be rather unlikely for someone to so visibly out themselves elsewhere and still be anonymous onwiki. I don't think we should treat the content of articles on Wikipedians differently than any other formerly anonymous person. As a result I think somewhere around option 2 is best. ThePlatypusofDoom (talk) 14:32, 16 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    We are far more likely to be dealing with a situation where someone is being outed by an RS for some kind of accused misconduct in their editing than for someone to have revealed themselves and that's then linked back onwiki. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 14:55, 16 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Readers > editors; content > conduct; NOT, V and NPOV > OUTING. Editors should be permitted to talk about anything in RS as long as that discussion is about summarizing the RS for a Wikipedia article. We can't and shouldn't "filter" the RS just because the RS is talking about one of us. If you're notable and named by RS, but you don't want that info to end up in a Wikipedia article, well that's just too bad, regardless of whether you're a Wikipedia editor or not. Wikipedia shouldn't treat its editors differently or better than any other BLP subject. Editors have the same BLP protections as any other BLP subject (e.g. the rules about low profile/high profile, BLPREQDEL, etc.); they're not entitled to greater protections by virtue of being editors. This RFC ought to run. And I may someday regret this !vote :-) Levivich 16:02, 16 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    My opinion falls closer to yours Levivich than the current practice among the Oversight team. But I want to note that a majority of the people I'm aware of who are named in an RS which have been oversighted are not notable people. I also want to emphasize just how important I find RS to be in this equation. There have been some unreliable media sources which have outed English Wikipedia editors and caused them severe real world harm, including being taken into police custody, and ultimately forced them away from Wikipedia. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:32, 16 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    I do wonder how much harm re-publishing on Wikipedia causes over and above the harm caused by the original outing. If something is already findable on Google, does it matter if it's on Wikipedia or not? If the police have already arrested me, it seems too late to matter whether that's on Wikipedia or not; the cat is well out of the bag.
    I could envision a system where OS can "shut down" a conversation on the grounds that there are not enough quality RS to justify it, i.e. making some kind of "widely reported" vs. "not widely reported" determination. This could prevent Wikipedia from Streissanding something obscure, while also not putting us in the position of ignoring something everyone already knows. The only question is, how do editors appeal OS's decision, and how does OS give enough information (and to whom) for accountability without defeating the purpose of keeping private things private? Maybe, if OS were to invoke this "power" and shut down a conversation, they could send their rationale to Arbcom (privately via email), and arbs can act as a check and balance? Just spitballing here. Levivich 17:10, 16 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    @Levivich The way to appeal an oversight action is, per Wikipedia:Oversight#Complaints, to contact the Arbitration Committee. For most things that are potentially controversial, including every oversight block, the oversighter who performed the action will email the oversight mailing list for peer review anyway. All arbs who are oversighters have full access to that list.
    Something appearing in a Wikipedia article can be extremely amplifying, especially as most journalists read Wikipedia, and there has been at least one case of an arrest occurring only after information was included here. The potential for real world harm is not theoretical, especially when even mere allegations of wrong doing can seriously impact a person's life. e.g. in the UK allegations of rape or paedophilia can end a career, in other parts of the word allegations of things like homosexuality or supporting the wrong political figure can be even more impactful.
    How much information can be shared varies on a case-by-case basis, and we do endeavour to share as much as we can but in some cases that is not much but there isn't anything we can really do about that without defeating the point of oversighting something in the first place. Thryduulf (talk) 17:36, 16 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Surely it would not be appropriate to include editor names on the basis that there is a self-published source that says who the editor is, if there is a low-quality tabloid article that allegedly identifies an editor, or if a random politician accuses somebody they don't like of being an editor on the basis of circumstantial evidence. I don't think that anybody here would argue that editors deserve less protection that other BLPs for sourcing contentious claims. The question to me is whether or not they deserve more protection than an ordinary BLP and, if so, to what extent. — Mhawk10 (talk) 17:17, 16 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    We would obviously not connect a person to their username on any other site if they had not disclosed the connection themselves, doubly so if they were not a notable person. There is no reason why Wikipedia usernames should be any different. Thryduulf (talk) 17:38, 16 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    With respect to if they had not disclosed the connection themselves, that isn't exactly what current policy is. The current outing policy requires disclosure on Wikipedia. Citing the Wall Street Journal for a non-editor admitting to running a particular twitter account appears to be treated differently than citing The Wall Street Journal for an editor admitting to editing Wikipedia from a particular account but not disclosing it on-wiki. — Mhawk10 (talk) 18:39, 16 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think the current state of affairs is satisfactory and need not change. Verifiability does not guarantee inclusion (WP:ONUS); inclusion is subject to consensus, may it be explicit (talk page discussion) or implicit (editing). On top of this, the OS team can remove content when WP:OSPOL is met. Do we really need more? JBchrch talk 17:42, 16 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't think anybody here objects to oversighting people's phone numbers, social security numbers, etc. when they pop up in articles, since they're almost never WP:DUE and almost always raise WP:BLP concerns. The second bullet under WP:OSPOL specifies that [i]dentities of pseudonymous or anonymous individuals who have not made their identity public should be oversighted, but there's a bit of a difference with WP:OUTING (which has the additional requirement that the identity to be made public on Wikipedia). The other snag is when we link to a reliable source that happens to contain the identity of a pseudonymous or anonymous person and use that source to support a statement in the text of a Wikipedia article that itself does not reveal the identity. There have been a few cases of this sort of stuff being oversighted that I can think of that aren't explicitly mandated by the text of WP:OSPOL but WP:OUTING would suggest to oversight. — Mhawk10 (talk) 18:16, 16 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Ok, gotcha. In that case, is it fair to say that the issue can be narrowed down to whether OSPOL 1(b) should not apply to the identities of pseudonymous or anonymous individuals that have been reported by reliable sources (or whichever alternative criteria)? Not that I have a ready-to-wear opinion about this, just thinking about how we can frame the discussion. JBchrch talk 19:03, 16 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Something along those lines would make the most sense to me. The same sort of exception would also need to be placed in WP:OUTING#Exceptions to make it consistent with WP:OSPOL w.r.t. any changes that get made. — Mhawk10 (talk) 19:48, 16 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • I agree with Levivitch's comment, and I think that Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons#Presumption in favor of privacy takes a more appropriate approach for article content than the hard line of WP:OUTING. We're not causing undue harm by publishing information that has already been prominently publicized. This reminds me of mass shootings where the known perpetrator's name is all over the headlines but we can't even mention that an arrest has been made because <whisper>the accused shooter</whisper> would appear in the citation. –dlthewave ☎ 18:21, 16 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don't always agree with Levivich (nor does he always agree with me, and he's let me know that more than once), but I do here. If something has been reported in a reliable source, that information is no longer private. At that point, attempting to "preserve the privacy" of the information is absurd; it is like trying to save the lives of people who are already dead. Seraphimblade Talk to me 08:32, 18 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Here is my reluctance: from my perspective, there has been an erosion, over the past some years, of the idea that we are both an encyclopedia and a community, and that both are worth protecting. Or perhaps it's simply an increasing number of users who seem to be hostile to the notion that we are a community, and that sometimes that means prioritizing a person over a specific change to an article. Perhaps it's in my head, but it seems like there are more Wikipedians than ever who are both pseudonymous themselves and spend most of their time trying to "get" other Wikipedians. Sometimes it's indeed helpful, but it doesn't make for a great atmosphere. (I'm not talking about anyone in particular, but if you think I'm talking about you, hopefully it leads to some reflection about why that may be.) In general, having done this for a long time we're pretty good at balancing the needs of both community and encyclopedia, but there's still a ton of gray area, and this RfC is about one of them. On the surface, I don't think I would disagree with the wording: that if it's widely reported on by reliable sources [such that it would get over a high bar set at WP:NPF and WP:DUE], then it may be ok to mention... but the actual language of the support it's received here gives me pause, because I don't get the sense that people are supporting "we'll be extremely careful and err on the side of excluding," regardless of the wording. So there's my reluctance, anyway. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 15:57, 18 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Would reluctance be resolved if the guidelines were to include language that in the case where it is unclear whether or not the link between the user and their real name has been widely reported by reliable sources, the username should be excluded from the article? — Mhawk10 (talk) 04:09, 21 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    I can easily see that being wikilawyered to death. You'd have to also amend things like WP:NOT3RR for it to be of any effectiveness. –MJL ‐Talk‐☖ 15:38, 21 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'd be inclined to back the B position - that is, there must be a great deal of reliable sourcing making the link, before we would move past OUTING. This is mainly in line with the "degree of privacy loss" aspect. A name being mentioned on a barely seen RS somewhere is not akin to headline notice in a wikipedia article. But if multiple good sources are covering the relation, then the loss is not really noticeable. I would include a "provisionally remove should the editor dispute the link", pending TP discussion. Yes, this comes with obvious flaws, but I think a net gain. In some ways I'd prefer a case by case process to handle rare exceptions, but given that the misteps come with risk of significant conduct violations, I'd want to know who editors should go to for a go/no-go ruling. Nosebagbear (talk) 10:17, 21 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, I think it is vital here that we stress that the default is always to not include or remove anything that might be outing or otherwise disclosing non-public information unless and until it is clear that the inclusion is supported by (ideally multiple) prominent reliable sources, DUE, and would not otherwise cause (additional) harm to whoever's information is being discussed. Thryduulf (talk) 13:01, 21 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Leaving aside the privacy questions, isn't this just trivia? Jimmy Wales is probably the most famous Wikipedian, and yet you will not find his username in the article about him. Adrianne Wadewitz, no username. Amin Azzam, no username. Yaroslav Blanter, no username. Dariusz Jemielniak, no username. There are a few (Ira Brad Matetsky, James Heilman), but most of them don't include a username. I'm not sure that any of them actually should. What benefit does that provide to the (non-editing) reader? It's inside baseball at best, and maybe navel-gazing. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:19, 21 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Given that it is appreciably covered in the articles in cases such as the exemplar case that led to this discussion, I feel like were they not Wikipedians, we'd generally cover it as a point that had had significant coverage - basically, were they, say, famous reditters, without our own OUTING policy in the way, we'd cover it. Nosebagbear (talk) 15:59, 22 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    @Nosebagbear: Counterpoint to that: See the section for Ken Bone (Illinois) on the 2016 US Presidential elections. We mention that Bone has a Reddit account, but we don't actually name it. –MJL ‐Talk‐☖ 03:44, 24 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    An interesting counterpoint, though not quite oranges to oranges, perhaps nectarines to oranges, in that that's a few line section vs the articles in the examples given. Where someone's wikipedia (or whatever) account is responsible for a large portion of their notability and it is well sourced by multiple reliable sources, I'd give it.
    Out of interest @MJL: do you think we should add, say, Jimbo's? Nosebagbear (talk) 09:07, 24 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    @Nosebagbear: Nope! It seems pretty trivial and doesn't add much to the article. You could possibly include it in the external link section, I guess, but Jimbo is the only page I'd say that it might happen for. –MJL ‐Talk‐☖ 16:35, 24 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • This is not the sort of thing that policy can decide. It needs to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis, depending entirely on the article in question. Lets even ignore the WP:OUTING issues, where a person does not publicly acknowledge their own Wikipedia account. If and when to mention some reliably-sourced information is not clear cut, and covered only very broadly by policies such as WP:IINFO and WP:UNDUE and the like. Being true and reliably-sourced are necessary but not sufficient conditions for including some fact. In many cases, the actual Wikipedia user name, even if reliable sources have reported it, may be so trivial as to not bear mentioning in an article about that person. Not every reliably-sourcable fact about a person's life must be included in an article, discretion needs to be taken as to which information is relevant or not, and what works in one article may not be useful in another. --Jayron32 18:22, 22 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • WP:OSPOL and WP:OUTING must apply in all mainspaces. Otherwise there is no point and no coherence to them. You cannot have something that is accepted in mainspace, but if quoted on the talk page of that article would be eligible for suppression. WP:OUTING defines "outing" as Posting another editor's personal information ... unless that person has voluntarily posted their own information, or links to such information, on Wikipedia. (emphasis in original), and goes on to give examples of "personal information". Connecting a Wikipedia username to information about a person, even just a job title, is specifically defined as outing.
    This does not just mean that you cannot mention a Wikipedia username in a mainspace article if the subject has made the on-wiki connection, but you also cannot add {{Connected contributor}} on the talk page, or message them on their talk page saying "This article about you has just been created". Where we fall on linking or referencing RSes that out a Wikipedian is less clear, but see Wikipedia:Linking to external harassment.
    As it stands, this does indeed privilege Wikipedia editors over non-editors in prioritising their privacy over encyclopedic information, but I believe only in very rare edge cases that are difficult to analyse. This is enshrined in WP:HNE's Content and sourcing that comply with the biographies of living persons policy do not violate this policy [that WP:OUTING etc. applies to non-Wikipedians]. To change this, we would need to propose a concrete change to WP:OSPOL or WP:HARASS. — Bilorv (talk) 21:38, 24 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  • I think I said this before or maybe I thought I said it but didn't, but I don't think WP:OUTING should ever override our article content policies. Otherwise we have the IMO unacceptable situation where it's fine to mention that Mitt Romney operated a Twitter account under the name Pierre Delecto as we do in Mitt Romney#Social media but somehow cannot do so if the same situation arises with a Wikipedia account. The privacy of Wikipedia accounts should not be protected in article content over other private matters, this is inconsistent with the purpose of BLP etc.

    Note that as our OUTING is generally understood, an editor needs to themselves make the connection on wiki. So an extremely notable person could publicly talk about how they edited Wikipedia with account X and this could be very widely reported. Yet if this Wikipedia account never made the connection, it's technically still outing. There are good reasons for this, and indeed I just dealt with a case at ANI+NPOVN where I pointed out that whatever had been said on Twitter and whatever the similarities of user names, it was outing to link what had been said on Twitter here unless the editor had themselves linked their Twitter account (which it turned out they did). So I fully support that policy when dealing with editors as editors. But when dealing article content that's a different matter.

    As others have said this doesn't mean we should always give the user name etc or always mention Wikipedia user/allegations just because it was reported in sources, there are plenty of content reasons we may not do so. Indeed navel grazing or whatever you want to call it unfortunately does mean editors are way too quick to add stuff about Wikipedia which is something we should oppose. But there longer we last the more likely we will end up being in a situation when it will be appropriate and we would do for anything else and we should not let OUTING prevent that.

    As I said I'm restricting this article content only. Obviously this means there may need to be discussion about inclusion etc on the article talk pages or other places. Such discussion should be limited to where it's necessary and any editor who appears to be doing so gratuitously or with the purpose of outing the editor should be sanctioned. If it's decided not to include any link, I think it'll generally be fine provided it doesn't cause more confusion to remove the discussion. We can consider rev-deletion but frankly IMO the only times when the discussion would be legitimate in the first place are when it's probably a bit silly since we're rev-deleting something widely covered in sources, still I won't oppose.

    We should generally not tag articles with connected contributor in cases where the editor hasn't made the link and the only link has been in external sources. And editors should not bring up the connection outside of discussing the inclusion of the material i.e. in discussion about the editor. If they have concerns, they can take them to arbcom.

    Note that if we do allow OUTING to override our content policies, not only will this affect our utility and reliability as an encyclopaedia, but this is actually IMO more harmful to editors included editors who may be affected given that I don't think we will ever eliminate navel grazing. An editor A may have linked their account on wiki to a real world identity of someone notable for something that has nothing to do with Wikipedia. They may still prefer it isn't mentioned in articles. In reality navel grazing means it often may be despite the person being notable for something else and very few articles about them mentioning the Wikipedia connection. Unfortunately as anyone with experience with BLP and CoI knows, even if this editor points this out in a reasonable manner, it may be difficult for them to get any action. The editor can try walking back their linkage which we sometimes sort of allow, but that is complicated and could easily make things worse for them, and may not even be what they really want to do. Yet account X where there a multitude of reliable sources connection them to a real life notable person, the person themselves has confirmed the connection and doesn't even oppose the linkage but has never said so on Wiki because they no longer use the account is protected. Unsurprisingly editor A is going to think the situation is incredibly unfair. Yes the primary issue may be our navel grazing that we need to deal with but by not turning OUTING into some sort of overriding policy on article content we may actually help remind editors that what matter is our content policies not our desire to protect an editor.

    Nil Einne (talk) 14:52, 6 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  • We treat such information exactly like any other piece of information, with WP:BURDEN (the people wishing to include it must provide scrupulously reliable sources) and WP:ONUS (the people1 wishing to include it are responsible for convincing others that it is relevant); along with the more stringent WP:BLP guidance. Which is to say can is not equal to should and it must be both well referenced and there must be consensus that it is relevant. --Jayron32 16:25, 6 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding reversion of banned edits

I just reverted an edit that removed legitimate content. Why was that legitimate content removed? Because it was added by a sockpuppet. You can find it in my most recent contributions. Had I not reverted that edit, users may never know the UAE's stance on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This is not the first time this has happened. I can understand if a sockpuppet made a vandal edit, but an edit should not be reverted just on the basis that the user was banned. The same goes for WP:G5, which indicates that any page that is created by a blocked/banned user in violation of a block or ban should be deleted, which leads to the potential deletion of legitimate content. User quarrels should not be carried over into the main namespace. Any legitimate edit or page should not be reverted or deleted on the basis of who made the page. I am not encouraging ban evasion. I am simply saying that more specifically, users should focus on the content of the edit or page rather than the user who made it. Removing legitimate content is detrimental to Wikipedia's mission to provide the sum of all human knowledge, regardless of whose knowledge it is. The policy should be changed so to remove things saying that banned users should have their edits reverted or pages deleted. Only if the edit would be reverted or the page would be deleted anyway due to other criteria. So we get rid of WP:G5 and WP:BANREVERT. Blubabluba9990 (talk) (contribs−) 16:25, 26 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I tend to think that sock edits can and probably ought to be reverted to prevent their gaining by their actions. If the revert is on a hot topic, then someone like yourself will notice and can restore it if thought desirable (as well as taking responsibility for it at the same time). Selfstudier (talk) 16:29, 26 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It depends on the edit. If the edit is clearly helpful then it should remain. In a nutshell, it boils down to focusing on the content of the edit or page rather than the user who created it. Blubabluba9990 (talk) (contribs) 16:32, 26 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Different banned editors behave in different ways. Some of them lie, and make a large number of edits. Editors who revert edits by banned editors should feel free to regard the edits as lies, and revert them, unless it is stunningly obvious that the edits are helpful, correct, that any sources cited actually exist, are reliable, and support the added information. Jc3s5h (talk) 17:07, 26 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
"prevent their gaining by their actions"
And this sort of shallow and pointless vindictiveness by all the people who think like you is just as harmful to Wikipedia as any number of vandals we have on the site. At least the latter are almost always reverted by bots. SilverserenC 17:48, 26 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • I have long called out WP:G5 as one of the worst additions to the CSD criteria ever added. It exists only to support editors who care about Wikipedia as a "we win, they lose" place and who aren't here to actually write an encyclopedia. It's usage almost entirely is to damage Wikipedia, since any actual reasons to remove content from banned editors (such as if there's copyvios or BLP violations) would fall under a different CSD or content removal policy in the first place. There is literally no purpose to G5 that isn't covered by something else and it only exists to allow the removal of actual good content from the encyclopedia under the excuse of it being made by a banned person. SilverserenC 17:52, 26 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Ordinarily, when reverting an edit, editors should assume good faith and make the checks outlined in WP:BURDEN. Perhaps G5 goes a little too far, but when reverting edits by a banned editor, the reverting editor should not be required to assume good faith, nor should the reverting editor be expected to invest any more effort than a cursory scanning of the edit. Jc3s5h (talk) 19:47, 26 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    The reverting editor shouldn't be reverting at all if there's no reason to. That's the point. A banned editor's edits are no different than any other editors'. If they have a known history of certain bad editing, such as copyvios, then that should be checked for in particular. But the edits regardless should only be reverted if there's something wrong with the addition. If it is good content, then I consider anyone reverting it to be vandalizing the article. Anyone enacting G5 on good content is a vandal and a harm to Wikipedia, full stop. SilverserenC 19:50, 26 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Allowing banned editors harms Wikipedia more than blindly reverting and deleting all their contributions. Scrutinizing every edit of a banned editor takes a lot of volunteer time, especially as we can't mark them as reviewed so the work might be done over and over. Far more practical to just revert the lot and allow people to individually reinstate those edits they wish to to take responsibility for. —Kusma (talk) 23:20, 26 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Why do you need to scrutinize any of their edits? If they were banned for making edits that violated things, such as copyvios, then that's a reason to. But simply the act of having been banned is not a reason to revert their edits at all. If they were banned for non-article reasons and socked because they're really addicted to making proper content additions to Wikipedia, reverting their edits is not helping anyone. It is just vindictive punishment BS. SilverserenC 23:27, 26 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    We do not ban editors lightly, so being banned is a reason to revert all their edits. This "vindictive punishment BS", as you call it, is not particularly fun to administer but is preferable to encouraging banned editors to create sock after sock after sock. —Kusma (talk) 23:53, 26 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Except they do that anyways. All of the time. Reverting their edits doesn't stop them, but it does damage Wikipedia and make everything worse than it was before. Hence why I consider G5 reversions to be vandalism and call out the editors doing it as often as I can. Since the ones doing that are a detriment to Wikipedia as a whole. SilverserenC 23:58, 26 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    I disagree, in contentious areas where socks (I am referring specifically to socks) most often show up, reverting all their edits, even if it were sight unseen, is likely to result in a net improvement to the encyclopedia. Of course they do make some good edits in order to stay hidden for as long as possible. But it is just enough for that purpose, the rest are not good edits. Selfstudier (talk) 10:12, 27 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    If you are reverting "sight unseen" you cannot possibly know whether the edits are good or bad. Just as someone reinstating a reverted edit takes responsibility for that edit being an improvement to the encyclopaedia, the person reverting must take responsibility that the reversion is an improvement to the encyclopaedia. Thryduulf (talk) 14:44, 27 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • What do you guys think "ban" means? – Joe (talk) 18:32, 26 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    It should mean "the user's account is banned and any detection of them having made a new account is also banned". But, as noted with G5, it is instead used as "user's new account is banned and any edit they ever made is reverted", even if they sockpuppetted only to make normal articles that have no issues. It's especially annoying when certain editors do such reversions of all edits for people who were banned for behavioral problems and conflicts with others. Since that has nothing to do with their editing and so there's no reason to even think there's any other violation issues with their edits. SilverserenC 19:40, 26 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Are you aware of the difference between a ban and a block? —Kusma (talk) 23:22, 26 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • In the original comment Blubabluba9990 states: “Had I not reverted…users may never know the UAE's stance on the Russian invasion of Ukraine.” This is a flawed assumption. Our articles are never in a “final state”… information is constantly being added, changed, removed, and returned. There is a good chance that, had he not reverted, some other editor would have come along and mentioned the USE’s stance. When good information is removed for procedural reasons, we can assume it is only temporary. It may be annoying to have to re-add good information, but it isn’t the end of the world. Blueboar (talk) 19:56, 26 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Wouldn't that defeat the purpose of removing it in the first place though. Blubabluba9990 (talk) (contribs) 19:00, 4 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Come spend some time in the SPI trenches and you'll get a better appreciation for why we need G5. Throw-away accounts are free and painless to create in bulk. If all an LTA needs do to make an edit is create yet another throw-away account, then banning has no meaning. -- RoySmith (talk) 19:59, 26 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • I have also seen editors who believe all edits by banned users should be automatically reverted, and had to revert some reverts because they caused errors that the banned user fixed. I realize that WP:BANREVERT says good edits "CAN" be allowed to stand, which I think is too weak, good edits "SHOULD" be allowed to stand - and the whole section should be revised so this point will be clear to people who don't read beyond the first sentence. MB 20:02, 26 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • The problem there of course, is that (outside the realm of typo fixing or copyediting) editors may have a different view on what defines a "good" edit. In the end, if you see an edit that has been removed and you believe that it is genuinely positive, there is no problem with you taking responsibility for it yourself and restoring it. Though I would suggest not doing this with anything remotely contentious, and it's always good to leave an edit summary explaining what you are doing. Black Kite (talk) 20:28, 26 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Re-fixing typos and obvious errors (like things that get flagged as errors in the error cats) is a waste of time. The banned-edit reverter should look at the nature of the edit to determine if it is genuinely negative or otherwise contentious. MB 20:53, 26 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • We could have further language along the lines that, while considerations of expediency might make individual attention to every edit at times difficult, editors have a general responsibility for ensuring that their own reverts are not often of good edits. In any case, this is a situation where IAR may be applicable. — Charles Stewart (talk) 15:27, 27 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yup… annoying… but that’s all it is - an annoyance. Blueboar (talk) 20:30, 26 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • If no one catches it, then it is more than an annoyance. Typos and grammatical errors and the like make the encyclopedia look bad to readers. We should not be self-sabotaging our professionalism. BD2412 T 21:05, 26 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • As with so many other things on Wikipedia a bit of thought should go into any edits made, so the answer to the question of whether banned edits should be reverted is "it depends". This encyclopedia seems to be getting more and more dominated by people who can quote a policy or guideline for anything but act as if they are automata incapable of any human thought. Just stop going for quantity of edits and go for quality. Phil Bridger (talk) 21:22, 26 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Good edits should not be reverted, regardless of the editor or the editor's status. There are probably millions of below-par articles in English Wikipedia. Anything that can be done to rectify this should be welcome. The idea that someone else may come along to reinsert the banned editor's good edit is a bit facile. Someone may show up, or they may not: the certainty of the existing good edit is replaced with an unknown probability. In the meantime, a damaging edit (the one that removed the banned editor's positive contribution) is allowed to stand. A much better punishment would be to require banned editors to do a minimum number of supervised, constructive edits. Being in debtor's prison doesn't help one repay their debt. And there will perhaps always be extreme recidivists, this way they may be more readily identifiable. 172.254.222.178 (talk) 22:28, 26 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    If an editor is not banned, their good edits stand and their bad edits are (hopefully) reverted; this requires some degree of triage whether edits are good or not. For banned editors, we can skip the triage bit. For editors that are particularly destructive (like most banned editors), we should skip the triage bit and blindly revert, as protecting the community from the banned editor is more important than whatever typo they fixed. —Kusma (talk) 23:11, 26 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Well, how about protecting the community of readers from bad content? Twenty-plus years into the project, any proper statistical sample of articles may indicate the sorry state of affairs (and I am not referring to proofing errors and related edits). Shouldn't administration be subservient to good content, not the other way around? What has a greater impact on Wikipedia's reputation? The untold number of below-par articles, or the actions of relatively few bad actors? I think these questions should be considered. 68.173.76.118 (talk) 00:21, 27 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Sure, but allowing a "small number of bad actors" to edit won't magically fix our millions of terrible articles. If the ban decision was correct, allowing their edits to stand is not likely to be an overall improvement. —Kusma (talk) 00:30, 27 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Both G5 and BANREVERT are overused, but we definitely need some degree of expediency in handling edits by banned users. At the very least, the provision that the three revert rule does not apply to reverts of edits by banned users is necessary. Likewise we need better oversight of G5, but I'm inclined to agree with RoySmith that there are cases we need it. At the very least, I support the change proposed by MB, 'I realize that WP:BANREVERT says good edits "CAN" be allowed to stand, which I think is too weak, good edits "SHOULD" be allowed to stand'. — Charles Stewart (talk) 23:01, 26 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    I can't immediately spot where that proposal was made but I fully support it. I would also add something to make it clear that a user who is reverting is taking responsibility for that reversion being an improvement to the encyclopaedia. If the reversion leaves the page in a worse state (for any reason) then that is their responsibility. Thryduulf (talk) 14:47, 27 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    That would completely change what a ban means. The key difference between a banned editor and a non-banned editor is that the banned editor is not allowed to make good or neutral edits. —Kusma (talk) 15:25, 27 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    The idea that sock edits may not be reverted unless they have been scrutinized to see if they might just be good edits is not a great idea. That an editor in good standing might be sanctioned for reverting an edit made by a sock is ludicrous. An editor MAY/CAN leave a sock edit in place is the right balance.Selfstudier (talk) 15:41, 27 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    I wonder if there is a metric somewhere showing how many sock edits were not reverted by responding editors. There may be a general tendency to do the easy thing, in this case to just revert indiscriminately. More emphatic language may lead some editors to examine the sock edits in context. I do not think that allowing a constructive sock edit to stand should be considered "unbanning". The banned editor is still banned, and has no control over any of her/his input. 65.88.88.201 (talk) 17:25, 27 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    If you make edits that harm the encyclopaedia why would you not be liable to be sanctioned for it? That the edit you reverted was made by someone (suspected of being) a sock of a banned editor is irrelevant - you are responsible for your own actions, good and bad, regardless of why you made those actions. Indeed there have been several arbitration principles related to this issue, including:
    So it would seem to be up to you to explain why you should not be required to take responsibility for your own actions. Thryduulf (talk) 17:44, 27 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    If you're going to quote ArbCom, how about this one from Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Banning Policy#Banned editors?

    When an editor's conduct is exceptionally disruptive or inappropriate, that user may be banned from editing Wikipedia. Banned editors are prohibited from editing Wikipedia in any way, from any account or anonymously, and all contributions made in defiance of a ban are subject to immediate removal. While users in good standing are permitted to restore content from banned users by taking ownership of that content, such restoration should be undertaken rarely and with extreme caution, as banned editors have already had to be removed for disruptive and problematic behavior. A user who nonetheless chooses to do so accepts full responsibility for the consequences of the material so restored.

    Anomie⚔ 17:57, 27 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Exactly so, we are talking about socks here, not editing in the normal course. No-one is preventing an effort to alter policy, anyone can make the case for that and see what happens. Selfstudier (talk) 18:02, 27 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Everybody agrees that edits made by socks may be reverted. The question is whether they should always be reverted. If the content is actually disruptive, then obviously remove it. However if it improves the encyclopaedia then the action that is disruptive and inappropriate is the reversion - note that that very case also quotes the principle that the purpose of Wikipedia is to create a high quality encyclopaedia and that editors may be asked to refrain from actions that are detrimental to that goal. Reverting an edit that improves the encyclopaedia is detrimental to that goal. Thryduulf (talk) 18:19, 27 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Revert all of a sock's edits would be unrealistic since they would have a minimum 500 under their belts to be editing in any controversial area. But I don't want to be jammed up for reverting any of their edits if I think that's the right thing to do and anyone disagrees with a revert has the right to restore if they want to. Socks should not get to make work for ordinary editors, they cause enough time wasting already.Selfstudier (talk) 18:28, 27 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    If you look at an edit without knowing or caring who the author is and think it makes the encyclopaedia worse in some way, then revert it. If you look at that same edit without knowing or caring who the author is and think it makes the encyclopaedia better in some way, then don't revert it. If your only reason for reverting is who made the edit then you are not improving the encyclopaedia - at best you are wasting your time and the time of everyone who evaluates your edit, at worst you are harming the project. Thryduulf (talk) 18:57, 27 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Socks harm the project not good editors.19:10, 27 March 2022 (UTC) Selfstudier (talk) 19:10, 27 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    You have it backwards - good editors are those who do not harm the project. Bad editors are those who do harm the project - whether either is a sock is irrelevant. If an editor inserts a BLP vio into an article that is a bad edit, regardless of who made it. If an editor inserts a sourced mention of something DUE that is a good edit regardless of who made it.
    Would you revert the removal of profanity from an FA just because the editor who reverted it was a sock? If no then you are agreeing with my point that it is the content of the edit that matters. If yes, then you are actively harming the project. Thryduulf (talk) 20:42, 27 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    My position is quite simple. I am not a sock and I am subject to WP rules and regs same as anyone else. Your position, it seems to me, is to support, even if indirectly, sock activity. So we will have to agree to disagree and should there be a legitimate complaint against me for any revert I make, then I will deal with that eventuality then.Selfstudier (talk) 21:16, 27 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Your position is that it matters who makes an edit more than it matters what the content of that edit is. My position is that the content of an edit is all that matters - edits that improve the encyclopaedia should stand, edits that don't should not. Sock or not sock is irrelevant. Thryduulf (talk) 22:08, 27 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    I appreciate that it is irrelevant to you and you are entitled to that view. I simply don't agree for the reasons I have given.Selfstudier (talk) 22:15, 27 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Regarding the blockquote by Anomie above: 1. "subject to" is a condition, not a set course of action. 2. Constructive edits are not in "defiance of the ban", as it is assumed the ban resulted from non-constructive actions. Either ArbCom should use more exacting language, or that wording does not support blanket removal of sock edits. I have no legal experience whatsoever. My comment is based on logical, not legal analysis. 71.245.250.98 (talk) 19:12, 27 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Your logic is faulty, as you're starting from a false premise regarding the definition and intent of a ban. Anomie⚔ 21:33, 27 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    The blockquote is self-contradictory. It states that banned editors are not to edit period, but then proceeds to muddy the waters stating that such edits are "subject to" removal and talks about edits done "in defiance of a ban". Is one to presume that some edits may be excluded? Why not just state "all edits by banned editors will be removed". The definition and intent of a ban, stated in that quote, doesn't help the contradiction. 172.254.222.178 (talk) 21:59, 27 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yeah, that sort of reversion is just a blatant piece of blanking vandalism. If I didn't AGF, I would think that the sockpuppet investigation edit summary claim was just a cover for an edit attempting to make that sort of major change. SilverserenC 23:48, 27 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • All edits by a banned user after they are banned should be reverted, regardless of account. That means all edits by socks after the sockmaster has been banned/blocked. Socking is, IMO, one of Wikipedia's chief weaknesses as it concerns both damaging content and harmful behavior. If you don't like that something was reverted, just reinstate it, saying that you take responsibility for it. The latter is important, because it means if there's a copyright violation, BLP violation, or other form of violation, it's on you. Just reverting and saying "it looks productive" isn't sufficient. If the banned user is actually a positive contributor such that we should permit them to make as many edits as they want as long as they create a new account each time they're banned, they shouldn't be banned. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 13:56, 29 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    All edits by a banned user after they are banned should be reverted, regardless of account. Does this imply that all edits before the ban should be considered legitimate? Did the editor suddenly break bad after a certain number of good edits? Or should pre-ban edits be scrutinized to weed out the bad ones? And if that is the case shouldn't such scrutiny be also applied after the ban? I think we should be smart about this and accept constructive edits that further Wikipedia wherever they come from. This is not all about banned editors, though some of them may bask at the attention or may aim to have discussions like this going on forever. 74.64.150.19 (talk) 12:14, 30 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    all edits before the ban should be considered legitimate? - Legitimate insofar as we don't automatically revert them all, but obviously not immune from scrutiny. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 21:32, 30 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Every time this comes up, I always wonder about the situation where an editor is banned not because of their edits, but because of their behavior when making their edits. A lot of the discussion above seems to be focusing on editors who are indeffed or banned for making disruptive edits or otherwise damaging the encyclopedia. However, I know there are cases where a user's edits were not blatant vandalism or disruption, but the user was banned because they couldn't contribute collaboratively (the specific case I have in mind is WP:BKFIP but I'm sure there are others). My belief is that instead of blindly reverting, people should take note of who the sock in question actually is (or is alleged to be). If the master has a history of making edits that violate content policies, sure, revert the lot. However, if the master was only banned for communication issues, and their edits wouldn't get anyone who could communicate effectively sanctioned, then they shouldn't be reverted simply because they were made by a banned editor. All cases of edits made by socks of users banned simply for behavioral issues and not for content issues should be evaluated individually. 2601:18C:8B82:9E0:0:0:0:3BDB (talk) 00:53, 30 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    As an aside, this is also the reason why IMO all blocked socks should always be tagged (as along as the alleged master is known and there aren't any privacy issues with making the connection public). This way patrollers know who the master is alleged to be and can determine the appropriate level of scrutiny for any given sock edits. 2601:18C:8B82:9E0:0:0:0:3BDB (talk) 00:53, 30 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Even with editors banned for content problems we will very often lose nothing by evaluating the edit. Even someone banned for copyright violations - if they add a paragraph of text then yes we need to check whether it is a copyvio but we harm the encyclopaedia by reverting their correction of a typo. There seems to be a default assumption that every banned editor only ever makes one type of contribution and that all of them are wholly and unquestionably negative. While this is the case for a handful of editors it simply is not true for the majority. Thryduulf (talk) 11:16, 30 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    When material is added by a banned editor, it must be evaluated. The question is: who is best qualified to conduct that evaluation? The answer to that is: the other editors who watch the page (and know the topic and its sources). This means that the automatic removal is not the end of the evaluation process… but the beginning of it. Other editors who watch the page need to follow up after a ban removal… and evaluate whether the removed material is acceptable or not… and if acceptable return it to the article under their username. Blueboar (talk) 12:37, 30 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    In other words automatic removal makes works for other people (which may or may not get done) without necessarily bringing any benefit to the encyclopaedia at all. The alternative would be to do the evaluation before removal. If it's clearly good, leave it in benefiting the encyclopaedia. If it's clearly bad, remove it also benefiting the encyclopaedia. If it's not clear then explicitly flag it as needing review. That way those who know the subject do not have their time wasted undoing work that just needs to be reinstated, readers benefit from an improved encyclopaedia and nobody loses. Thryduulf (talk) 14:03, 30 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    That makes no sense. It requires just as much work to review it after it has been removed, than before it has been removed. However, with a banned editor, we know upfront there is a better-than-average chance of the edit being disruptive, and we at least try to discourage them from continuing to sock. In your scenario, the edits may remain unreviewed for a very long time (just look at e.g. the time CCI's take), making it a lot more interesting for the sock to continue socking again and again. Fram (talk) 14:31, 30 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    there is a better-than-average chance of the edit being disruptive Is there any actual evidence for this? I see it (and variations of it) time and time again in discussions like this but I've never seen anybody present any actual evidence for it. Sure some individual editors' contributions are more likely to be disruptive (note: not always) but this is not true of all banned editors (because some are banned for reasons other than making disruptive content) and I'm not convinced it's true of even a majority of banned editors. As for the socking arguments, so what? Nobody has explained why a sock improving the encyclopaedia is actually a bad thing? If the edit is disruptive, remove it - nobody is suggesting otherwise. We're just suggesting that instead of expending effort reverting a good edit and then expecting someone else to expend more effort reviewing it and reinstating it that the review happens first and so no energy is wasted. Thryduulf (talk) 15:33, 30 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    The counter-suggestion is to save time by just assuming bad faith of all sock edits, using simple blunt tools like User:Writ Keeper/Scripts/massRollback.js. Sock puppetry is highly destructive to all of our editing and decision mechanisms, and the main way to discourage it is to simply not let any sock edits stand, whatever their quality. Yes, this loses good edits of Icewhiz and Greg Kohs and a couple dozen other smart people. However, if we let their good edits stand, it means we allow them to edit, as the vast majority of their edits are good. What do you think "Icewhiz is banned" should mean in practice when a checkuser discovers an Icewhiz sock? —Kusma (talk) 16:24, 30 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Indeed. The effort to reverse sock edits is in many cases minimal. The review effort stays the same, so the main question is do we let edits by known problematic editors stand until review, or do we only accept them after review. Seems like a no-brainer to me, certainly when taking into account that one approach encourages socks, and the other discourages it. Fram (talk) 17:10, 30 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Somewhat confusing. Editor X is banned. X edits again via Xsock1. Xsock1 is discovered and also banned, while at the same time Xsock1edit1 is allowed because it is deemed constructive, while Xsock1edits2 to 10 are reverted as negative. And so on. Why is this considered as X being allowed to edit? All of X's edits are owned and managed by responding admins/editors. 72.89.161.42 (talk) 19:25, 30 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Related proposition: sock edits allowed to stand could be (re)signed as revisions of the responding admin/editor. 72.89.161.42 (talk) 19:33, 30 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    There's a copyright/plagiarism problem, but the general principle of this is already true: anyone can reinstate the edits if they want to take responsibility for them. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 21:32, 30 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    That's not true for articles deleted under G5. BilledMammal (talk) 03:27, 31 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Why not? I mean, obviously you need to ask an admin to restore it so you can take responsibility for it, but there's no rule that an article deleted under G5 cannot be restored for any reason AFAIK. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 03:48, 31 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Because you can't determine the quality of the content prior to restoring; it becomes a fishing expedition. I don't know about reverting in general, but I think removing G5 might be a good idea, and instead require the articles to be taken through the normal deletion process if they are not appropriate for Wikipedia. BilledMammal (talk) 04:11, 31 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Deleting articles created by the socks of banned users is part of the core concept of a ban (it is the enforcement of "not allowed to edit"). If you suggest we stop enforcing bans, I suggest to start a discussion to repeal the banning policy instead. —Kusma (talk) 10:41, 31 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    instead of blindly reverting, people should take note of who the sock in question actually is if we blocked the person from editing, for whatever reason, we've decided we no longer want that person's contributions. There are many possible interventions for behavioral (as opposed to content) issues before arriving at the last, most severe tool of blocking the person. If the behavioral issues are so severe that we get to that point, we're saying we don't want that person to be here anymore, not that we don't want a specific account to stop editing. You can look at a sock's edits and say they're good just like you can look at that blocked person's main account's edits as say their good... it just so happens that the bad outweighed the good. I would strongly object to any sort of exception to "well, this person was just a toxic jerk or a chronic edit warrior or POV pusher -- so much so that we had to stop them from being able to edit -- but if they break further behavioral rules by creating a sock puppet their edits should be allowed to stand if they're good." If it's true that their content is worth allowing them to continue to run afoul of behavioral rules, just unblock their main account because we got it wrong. Until that point, in order for our blocks to actually mean anything they have to actually block the person without letting others jump in to complain about treating a blocked editor like a blocked editor. If you want to reinstate the edits, reinstate them and take responsibility for them. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 21:32, 30 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • I guess the long and short of it is that I strongly agree with the "readers first" philosophy. Every action that editors or admins take (well, minus WP:OFFICE stuff) should be prioritizing readers over editors, content over authors. Remember, we are more or less instructed that "If a rule prevents you from improving the encyclopedia, ignore it". Reverting or deleting the edits of a blocked sock is following the rules, granted. However, if the encyclopedia's content and/or the overall experience of the casual reader would be diminished or damaged by reverting sock edits where the only problem is who made them, the rule should be ignored in the interest of the readers. As I alluded to above, if the edits in question wouldn't get an editor in good standing reported or sanctioned, it's best to leave them alone. (Same user as above, for the record. Damn these dynamic IPs.) 2601:18C:8B82:9E0:A5CE:109A:272:9B9F (talk) 01:45, 31 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remember, we are more or less instructed that - but you've changed the text of IAR. It's "if a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it." If "readers first" were a suicide pact, we'd never be able to ban people who harass, dox, stalk, attack, etc. other editors. Wikipedia isn't just an encyclopedia -- it's an encyclopedia project continuously edited by a community of volunteers. It also doesn't take much of a leap to conclude that it is not in the readers' best interest to allow toxic, abusive, or just plain disruptive editors to keep editing. Or rather, it's a short-sighted sort of reader-first priority. What happens to the readers of all the articles that other people would've worked on if they hadn't been busy fixing problems created by the banned user, chilled from participating by intimidating behavior, endlessly fighting the same battles against POV pushing, etc.? On a volunteer, community-written and maintained encyclopedia, what's good for the long-term health of the community is good for the readers. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 03:48, 31 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • It also doesn't take much of a leap to conclude that it is not in the readers' best interest to allow toxic, abusive, or just plain disruptive editors to keep editing. Correction, it's not in reader's best interests to let them edit disruptively. It is very definitely not in readers' best interests to disrupt Wikipedia by reverting edits that improve the encyclopaedia.
  • Once again nobody is asking for copyvios, POV pushing, etc. to be retained, we're saying that only the copyvios, POV pushing and other edits that are actually harmful are reverted. Thryduulf (talk) 10:05, 31 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • It often takes a massive amount of time and effort to discover copyvio's, POV pushing, subtle vandalism, ... often enough to get someone fnally blocked. It often takes considerable effort to find the socks and get them blocked as well. And then you ask us to spend the same effort again to make sure that every edit that those socks made is also a copyvio, subtle vandalism, ... And somehow, it is in the readers interest to let those edits from known problematic editors remain in the mainspace because some may be beneficial, and whoever removes them wholesale, with the possibility to reinstate beneficial ones afterwards, is disruptive? Staggering. What you are actually arguing is that we should never block or ban anyone, as it will have no consequences at all, they can just start editing again with a new account and their edits will not be treated any different from those of non-blocked editors. You are giving free reign to the abusers, putting a considerable extra burden on people trying to keep such editors out, and in general you are ancouraging the sockers and discouraging the people trying to fight such issues. I don't think you fully appreciate the time it may take to e.g. find copyvio translations, which no automated tool reports, and which you don't see by just popping some sentences in Google search. You are advocating that when such an editor returns and is found, we should again prove, page by page, edit by edit, that their contributions all have the same issues. Who will ever do this, and why were they then blocked in the fuirst place if in reality that block doesn't help us one bit. A completely unrealistic and destructive approach under the guise of "thnk about the readers" who are actually done a huge disservice by this approach. Fram (talk) 10:21, 31 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    However, it seems that most of what you describe is related to the ease of sock creation/operation and of other forms of editing under assumed identities. I wouldn't pin the inherent weaknesses of an open platform on those who advocate a bit more discretion in the reverting of edits. 65.88.88.76 (talk) 20:35, 31 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Correction, it's not in reader's best interests to let them edit disruptively. Completely disagree that we should allow banned editors -- people who we've decided either cannot contribute constructively or cause too many problems to continue whatever constructive edits they do make -- to continue receiving the benefit of the doubt as far as their contributions as long as they just keep making new sockpuppets. Toss out the exceptions to WP:CLEANSTART, too, while we're at it, because we're willing to take your edits under every new account you make. Again, if someone contributes constructively, that may be cause to revisit whether we got it wrong when they were banned, but it's not reason to just ignore the fact that they were banned (the user, all the user's edits, under any account). — Rhododendrites talk \\ 13:56, 31 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Interesting read thus far. I pretty much always revert whatever a banned user posts or edits. They are banned and their edits should not stand. That said, I do read the edits (unless they made hundreds against the ban), and if I find an edit fully worthwhile I will re-add it under my handle while perhaps tweaking the language. If they are banned from talk pages I may revert it all or I may strike it through with a note that the post was from a banned editor. Fyunck(click) (talk) 06:27, 31 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • The recent application of WP:G5 to an article I contributed to resulted in a sequence of events (some of which was certainly my fault) which made me very sad, and reduced my desire to edit Wikipedia by ~95%.☹️  Tewdar  16:04, 31 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • (edit conflict) It should also be pointed out that the "anyone can reinstate edits made by banned users and take responsibility for them" concept is flawed. It's simply not true that anyone can reinstate edits - only experienced, registered users can reinstate edits. Any registered account that doesn't have X amount of experience (the variable here seems to constantly change), as well as any anonymous user regardless of experience, that makes a request for a refund of a G5'd page, recreates such a page themselves, and/or directly reinstates edits, will more likely than not be accused of being a sock of the same user and wind up blocked. If this is the approach that we as the community want to take towards edits where the only problem is who originally made them (revert procedurally and let others reinstate), we need to stop considering anyone who does reinstate or request refunds to be a sock simply for doing so, even if they don't have a long tenure/high edit count/certain user rights/whatever. 2601:18C:8B82:9E0:8423:8282:6E8F:5572 (talk) 16:31, 31 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • The cynicism/skepticism you're describing is a bigger issue than what we're talking about here. It's true insofar as unregistered or newly registered users are more likely to be accused of being a sock whenever they reinstate an edit (or, really, do much of anything that requires nontrivial knowledge of how Wikipedia works). That people throw around sock accusations without sufficient evidence or have a bad attitude towards new/IP editors is a problem, but it's not specific to the topic at hand. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 17:04, 31 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Also, blocks/bans are not meant as a form of punishment but rather to prevent disruption. If a user starts making good edits they may be allowed to appeal to their talk page if they feel remorseful about past actions. If the edit would be reverted normally (i.e. as spam or vandalism) then it should be reverted. But good edits or pages should NEVER be reverted or deleted, regardless of who made the edit. This has long been a pet peeve of mine. 2600:6C65:627F:FA3D:F588:8D5F:537C:2F52 (talk) 20:01, 5 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

That was me I forgot to log in. Blubabluba9990 (talk) (contribs) 20:03, 5 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • The problem is that many such edits require extensive research to determine if they are even good. Users may violate copyright, may misrepresent source material, may create hoaxes, may be a continuous edit-warrior where neither version is objectively better, etc. Asking editors to carefully comb through every edit, spend hours digging through source material, etc. for banned editors is not a reasonable requirement. If someone is banned, it means we can't trust them to edit Wikipedia anymore. If someone else wants to come along and add the same content, or create the same article, by all means do so. But that doesn't mean that we should waste any more time on a banned editor's work than we have to. --Jayron32 16:18, 6 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Additional comment: I do understand where people are coming from. However, if the edit is clearly good (such as reverting vandalism, correcting typos, or adding reliably sourced information) it should be kept regardless. I just realized there was apparently an ArbCom policy mentioned above (I was too lazy to read this whole discussion initially). Basically what I am saying is we should treat edits by banned users as we would treat any other edit. Because the edit that I reinstated as mentioned above in the beginning is sourced. In addition, as I mentioned above, there is the possibility of allowing banned users to appeal for bans and apologize after reasonable time has passed, or of topic bans from namespaces other than the main namespace. Blubabluba9990 (talk) (contribs) 00:26, 20 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Why aren't the Five Pillars a policy?

The Five Pillars are a long-established part of Wikipedia. They are listed prominently at Wikipedia:List of policies and guidelines and are frequently referenced by members of the community. As described in the talk page FAQ, they are a statement of Wikipedia's fundamental principles. We recently had an in-depth discussion and RfC around the wording of the first pillar which demonstrated its importance and relevance to the community.

Given all that, is there any reason why an RfC hasn't been held to formally make the Five Pillars a Wikipedia policy? It would give the 5P the formal heft that they seem to have gained informally. I see that this has been discussed occasionally on the talk page (here, for example), but not for quite a while, so I thought it would be worthwhile to ask. Ganesha811 (talk) 16:10, 2 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

From a corporate speak - the 5P set our the internal mission/goals (that is, how we want to build articles that meet the larger outward Foundation mission), implemented through key corporate policies (here being NOT, V, NOR, NPOV, BLP, and a few others) with support of other P&G. So itself it is not a policy but what all policies and guidelines should be written in mind with. --Masem (t) 16:36, 2 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) Just my opinion, but when things - especially major policies like the verifiability policy and a few others - get made policy they tend to be enforced fairly literally. The 5P are principles, not statutes. (Yes, nothing here is a statute but there are some policies and parts of policies which are enforced in accordance with the words of the policy far more than others. And those are the ones that are most important to the encyclopedia.) Making the 5P a policy would put emphasis on their exact words rather than their meaning and because they weren't written with that kind of interpretation in mind, it would result in outcomes unintended by the legions of editors who have worked on the 5P. Regards, TransporterMan (TALK) 16:48, 2 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you both for your answers. I appreciate the perspectives, especially the point about precise wording. Ganesha811 (talk) 20:02, 4 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]


Further to what Masem and TransporterMan said, we probably need such a category, and a few more (superconsensused-only) pages in it defining objectives which policies and guidelines are supposed to implement. North8000 (talk) 12:29, 13 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Results from the Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement guidelines ratification vote published

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The Trust and Safety Policy team published the results of the Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement guidelines ratification vote. The vote ended 21 March 2022. See the results and read more on Meta-wiki.

Hello, this is a follow up to the thread above. I'm also cross-posting the message originally posted to wikimedia-l and m:Talk:Universal Code of Conduct/Enforcement guidelines#Results from the Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement guidelines ratification vote that outlines the next step in the process: ("The Board will review input given during the vote, and examine whether there are aspects of the Guidelines that need further refinement.")

There is an upcoming Board Community Affairs Committee meeting 21 April 2022 at 10:00 UTC. Xeno (WMF) (talk) 01:29, 6 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

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Hello all,

We would like to thank the over 2,300 Wikimedians who participated in the recently concluded community vote on the Enforcement Guidelines for the Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC). At this time, the volunteer scrutinizing group has completed the review of the accuracy of the vote and the final results are available on Meta-wiki. A quick summary can be found below:

  • 58.6% Yes, 41.4% No
  • Contributors from 128 home wikis participated in the vote
  • Over thirty languages were supported in the ballot

What this outcome means is that there is enough support for the Board to review the document. It does not mean that the Enforcement Guidelines are automatically complete.

From here, the project team will collate and summarize the comments provided in the voting process, and publish them on Meta-wiki. The Enforcement Guidelines will be submitted to the Board of Trustees for their consideration. The Board will review input given during the vote, and examine whether there are aspects of the Guidelines that need further refinement. If so, these comments, and the input provided through Meta-wiki and other community conversations, will provide a good starting point for revising the Guidelines to meet the needs expressed by communities in the voter's responses.

In the event the Board moves forward with ratification, the UCoC project team will begin supporting specific proposals in the Guidelines. Some of these proposals include working with community members to form the U4C Building Committee, starting consultations on training, and supporting conversations on improving our reporting systems. There is still a lot to be done, but we will be able to move into the next phase of this work.

Many people took part in making sure the policy and the enforcement guidelines work for our communities. We will continue to collaboratively work on the details of the strong proposals outlined in the Guidelines as presented by the Wikimedians who engaged with the project in different ways over the last year.

Once again, we thank everyone who participated in the ratification of the Enforcement Guidelines.

For more information regarding the results, please refer to the Results page.

Regards,

Stella Ng on behalf of the UCoC Project Team

Senior Manager, Trust and Safety Policy

User:SNg (WMF) 00:42, 6 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

For convenience, I have cross-posted a message from the senior manager of T&S Policy above that outlines next steps in the project. Xeno (WMF) (talk) 01:29, 6 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I've placed a message below that outlines next steps in the process "to reconvene the drafting committee and to undertake another community engagement to refine the enforcement guidelines based on the community feedback received from the recently concluded vote." Xeno (WMF) (talk) 00:22, 20 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Next steps: Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC) and UCoC Enforcement Guidelines

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The Community Affairs Committee of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees would like to thank everyone who participated in the recently concluded community vote on the Enforcement Guidelines for the Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC).

The volunteer scrutinizing group has completed the review of the accuracy of the vote and has reported the total number of votes received as 2,283. Out of the 2,283 votes received, a total of 1,338 (58.6%) community members voted for the enforcement guidelines, and a total of 945 (41.4%) community members voted against it. In addition, 658 participants left comments with 77% of the comments written in English.

We recognize and appreciate the passion and commitment that community members have demonstrated in creating a safe and welcoming culture that stops hostile and toxic behavior, supports people targeted by such behavior, and encourages good faith people to be productive on the Wikimedia projects.

Even at this incomplete stage, this is evident in the comments received. While the Enforcement Guidelines did reach a threshold of support necessary for the Board to review, we encouraged voters, regardless of which way they were voting, to provide feedback on the elements of the enforcement guidelines that they felt needed to be changed or fixed, as well as why, in case it seemed advisable to launch a further round of edits that would address community concerns.

Foundation staff who have been reviewing comments have advised us of some of the emerging themes, and as a result we have decided as Community Affairs Committee to ask the Foundation to reconvene the drafting committee and to undertake another community engagement to refine the enforcement guidelines based on the community feedback received from the recently concluded vote.

For clarity, this feedback has been clustered into 4 sections as follows:

  1. To identify the type, purpose, and applicability of the training;
  2. To simplify the language for easier translation and comprehension by non-experts;
  3. To explore the concept of affirmation, including its pros and cons;
  4. To review the conflicting roles of privacy/victim protection and right to be heard.

Other issues may emerge during conversations, and particularly as the draft Enforcement Guidelines evolve, but we see these as the primary areas of concern for voters and are asking staff to facilitate review of these issues. After further engagement, the Foundation should re-run the community vote to evaluate the revamped Enforcement Outline to see if the new document is then ready for its official ratification.

Further, we are aware of the concerns with the note 3.1 in the Universal Code of Conduct Policy. We are directing the Foundation to facilitate a review of this language to ensure that the Policy meets its intended purposes of supporting a safe and inclusive community, without waiting for the planned review of the entire Policy at the end of year.

Again, we thank all who participated, thinking about these critical and difficult challenges and contributing to better approaches across the movement to working together well.

Best,

Rosie

Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight (she/her)
Acting Chair, Community Affairs Committee
Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees

As a reminder, there is an upcoming Board Community Affairs Committee meeting 21 April 2022 at 10:00 UTC: the first in a series of conversations about the Foundation 2022-2023 Annual Plan draft. Xeno (WMF) (talk) 00:22, 20 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

RfC: Add a question mark to Dubious Template

Proposal

Should we change {{Dubious}} to say [dubious? – discuss] rather than [dubious – discuss] like [original research?].

Rationale

{{Dubious}} is meant to be discussed rather than fully stated.

Comments for / against

If you truly intend to conduct an RfC, I'd recommend reading WP:RFC, as this is malformed. Also, an RfC generally shouldn't be conducted if the matter hasn't already been discussed to some degree. Is there an existing conversation? Lastly, I suppose I'm just curious as to why this isn't posted at the Talk page for the template. DonIago (talk) 02:07, 9 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Here’s the Original discussion. 2603:7080:DA3C:7A33:F4FF:3B44:570:60A8 (talk) 02:19, 9 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
That's not a discussion, that's a request to update the template before a discussion has even occurred. As to whether discussion should now occur here or there, I'm not sure I have a strong opinion, though if the discussion occurs here then there should be a notification there. DonIago (talk) 02:47, 9 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Added discussion. 2603:7080:DA3C:7A33:F4FF:3B44:570:60A8 (talk) 03:05, 9 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks; that looks good. DonIago (talk) 03:07, 9 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
How is it malformed? 2603:7080:DA3C:7A33:F4FF:3B44:570:60A8 (talk) 03:45, 9 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
A couple objections. Firstly, the rationale seems incorrect. When someone places this template, they are not asking whether the content is dubious, but rather they are in fact making the observation that the content is dubious and that effort should be spent investigating whether the cited source is accurate. Secondly, even if we accept the rationale as correct, this seems like an incredibly trivial issue. It's not clear to me what substantive confusion is caused by the absence of a question mark that would necessitate a full-fledged RfC to alleviate. See also WP:SLOP and WP:BIKESHED. Mz7 (talk) 05:26, 9 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, added more reasoning. 2603:7080:DA3C:7A33:F4FF:3B44:570:60A8 (talk) 05:35, 9 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
If it’s not subjective then why does it say “[dubious — discuss]” rather than just “[dubious]”? 2603:7080:DA3C:7A33:F4FF:3B44:570:60A8 (talk) 11:44, 9 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
There's already an implied question mark: "discuss" = "?". The editor asks for others to discuss whether her/his assessment is correct. 68.173.76.118 (talk) 12:45, 9 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Adding a question mark improves clarity though. 2603:7080:DA3C:7A33:F4FF:3B44:570:60A8 (talk) 12:50, 9 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Then why does {{Original research inline}} it? 2603:7080:DA3C:7A33:F4FF:3B44:570:60A8 (talk) 12:53, 9 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Well, you can always start an RfC to replace [original research?] with [original research - discuss] since the question mark implies an invitation for comment. 68.173.76.118 (talk) 13:14, 9 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

By :2603:7080:DA3C:7A33:F4FF:3B44:570:60A8 (talk) 23:38, 8 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  • I can accept either “dubious?” or “dubious - discuss”. Both indicate that the person adding the template thinks the tagged material needs review and discussion. Blueboar (talk) 13:10, 9 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • "How is it malformed?"—I've added the rfc-tech category template to the section on Template talk:Dubious. The category template is a necessary piece. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 13:26, 9 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose The term "dubious" already implies doubt; adding a question mark is redundant. * Pppery * it has begun... 14:18, 9 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Was it incorrect for me to have added the category template on the template talk page? I thought that was the current proper procedure. Thanks. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 14:46, 9 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Personally, given that this discussion concerns a template, I think the discussion itself should be occurring on the template's Talk page, not here, and I'm not sure the proper process has been followed for listing this as an RfC (no use of the standard template, for instance). It seems to me we should be at the level of a standard discussion in any case rather than an RfC, but...it's not worth turning a molehill into a mountain. DonIago (talk) 03:22, 10 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support -- I agree with the rationale that "dubious" implies a statement in wikivoice, the same way that "citation needed" makes a statement. If there's a discussion, it's not clear that it's dubious (and if we are sure something really is dubious, it should be tagged with something more aggressive or removed). jp×g 06:49, 11 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    I think that you may be confusing editor annotation/markup with the annotation's target (the related statements in the article, and their handling in the talk page). This is an RfC involving the presentation of (fairly common) editor markup. 172.254.222.178 (talk) 11:51, 11 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Jimmy Wales and banning users

In the early days of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales played a big role when it comes to banning users. Nowadays, he doesn't get involved in these decisions. I made this edit to the banning policy to indicate that and my edit was reverted and was hoping to get community consensus on whether this edit is justified. Also, in this discussion, I would also like the community to decide whether Wales should still have the authority to ban users despite not doing it anymore. I think if I made this proposal early in Wikipedia's history, it would likely fail, but times are different and I do think it has a reasonable chance of succeeding. Interstellarity (talk) 21:00, 11 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

As suggested here you should get consensus first before making any changes to policy. As to the question whether Jimbo should have the authority to ban users, I think that's up to him to decide since he does own Wikipedia, even though most (if not everything) in terms of policy is left to the community anyway. Since this is a proposal regarding Jimbo Wales, you probably should notify him on his talk page (if you haven't already). —Mythdon (talk • contribs) 21:06, 11 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Jimmy Wales does not 'own Wikipedia'. AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:42, 11 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Just notified him now. I came here to get a consensus on changing policy since this page is monitored more than the talk page. That was the point of bringing it here for discussion. Interstellarity (talk) 23:01, 11 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Jimbo is the only thing we can trust at that top tier (WMF). While this is a not-directly-related issue, I'm against any actions to reduce his authority. North8000 (talk) 23:07, 11 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Why should we be compelled to rely on 'trust' in relation to the governance of Wikipedia? AndyTheGrump (talk) 23:11, 11 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Isn't it all about trust? WP:ADMIN at the very top says Administrators are volunteers trusted with access to certain tools. The community puts trust in Special:RandomInCategory/Wikipedia administrators, much the same way that the person you replied to states that he trust Jimbo. Happy Editing--IAmChaos 05:13, 12 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
He's worth a million of anyone's money. Hardly the aforesaid volunteer. And if any of us had a conflict-of-interest as big as his, we'd have been down the road years ago. SN54129 16:36, 12 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

He still has the ability to ban users? I thought those sorts of actions (and admin actions in general) were removed from him back when the community decided to remove his founder flag and other privileges after he massively went against the community and tried to enact whole category deletions on his own. Why is banning something he's still allowed to do? SilverserenC 23:14, 11 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Silver seren you are conflating changes made about Jimbo's access on "all WMF projects" with things here on the English Wikipedia. — xaosflux Talk 23:18, 11 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I presumed changes made on "all WMF projects" included English Wikipedia as well, yes. Since English Wikipedia is a WMF project. SilverserenC 23:24, 11 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Silver seren he had global permissions, and also local permissions - the global permissions were removed but it had no impact on local permissions. Local projects are mostly free to decide who has what type of access to their own project. — xaosflux Talk 00:57, 12 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Back in August of 2009, he "decided to simply give up the use of the block tool permanently" after it was discussed by the community/ArbCom. Since then, he did use the block tool again after he'd said he was done with the block tool. Jimbo himself had said he "can't use the block tool normally, because people over-interpret it.".—Mythdon (talk • contribs) 23:28, 11 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

A weird provision in written policy that, in practice, has long departed the realm of actual policy. Should be no room for any non-elected individual, irrelevant of who it is, to hold perpetual power to act by fiat. Good luck getting the policy page to reflect that practice, though. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 23:26, 11 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, he should keep whatever influence and control options he has. Per North8000 and others. Jimbo's superpowers and Wikipediacentric focus serve to protect the site from Foundation overreach (the foundation was created to fund and support Wikipedia, not to "run" it) and should not only be maintained but would be nice if he'd use them more often. Randy Kryn (talk) 23:49, 11 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

You were presumably around (since you've been here since 2007) during all the incidents where Jimbo went against the Wikipedia community and consensus on subjects. He lost most of his powers for a reason, because he abused them based on his own opinion of what was right and not what the community's stance was. So I vehemently disagree with you and North8000. SilverserenC 23:59, 11 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
If the site needs 'protection' from the WMF, shouldn't those who create the content do the protection themselves? Why should we have to rely on someone who's position in this regard seems to come down to having been here first (or among the first...) AndyTheGrump (talk) 00:02, 12 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Giving admin authority to the people who create the content? That's crazy talk. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 01:13, 12 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think this is an interesting discussion but misses an important nuance. If some terrible series of events were to happen such that the community would feel need of "protection" from the WMF, then I think you will definitely want me on your side. We have always resisted strongly the model followed by virtually every other community site (message boards like reddit, social networks like Facebook and Twitter, etc.)in which a dispute between the company and the community has a pretty clear result, the typical result that we would expect from the feudal model. Imagine a news story which ends up pitched as "glorious WMF wins battle over obnoxious troll community" - that's in no way possible at the present time (the WMF is actually good!) but I think about the next 20 years and how that might not be impossible. I see for myself a role in always reminding the board and the WMF that the community is the ultimate source of authority and in being prepared - as a person with a big public voice - to continue talking about that to the world - to protect the community.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:43, 12 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I know. Next thing you know, we'll be asking for double helpings of gruel... AndyTheGrump (talk) 01:20, 12 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
No, I was around but not in the back rooms until 2015, when Dicklyon downcased something and drew me in. So in terms of knowing conflict history with Wales, I'm not aware of it. But arguably, his Wikipedia founder superpowers may be needed again at some point to counter a foundation overreach decision, so it seems to me a reasonable use of an unusual and maybe unique decision-making wikiform. If the need arises I'm glad he's available. As for banning users, seems fine even if he never uses it, and admins would reverse an incorrect ban immediately, so seems no harm in Wales having the ability to ban (although sounds like he doesn't want it). Randy Kryn (talk) 03:12, 12 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Jimbo deserves to have all the rights he currently does. If nothing else, just so the Foundation isn't the end-all-be-all. casualdejekyll 03:38, 12 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • The most recent instance I am aware of in which Jimbo Wales exercised this authority to ban—please correct me if I'm wrong—was in late 2011, when he indefinitely site-banned the user TimidGuy based on allegations that that user was engaging in undisclosed paid editing. TimidGuy appealed the ban to ArbCom, which vacated the ban in February 2012 as unjustified, see Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/TimidGuy ban appeal. Since then, I don't think Jimbo Wales has banned anyone else.
    Because of this, I think the content of Interstellarity's edit—that Jimbo banned users during Wikipedia's early history, but very rarely bans users today—is technically correct. However, I do think it's important that, if we want to change the wording of this provision, we do so following a thorough discussion, as the text of this policy here would be heavily scrutinized when and if Jimbo ever exercises his authority to ban in the future. Personally, I'm in the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" camp. It's important to point out that although the policy states that Jimbo retains the authority to ban editors, it does not state that that authority is absolute—any ban imposed by Jimbo could be appealed to ArbCom (as the TimidGuy ban appeal case demonstrates). I'm inclined to leave this line in the policy as is until a more concrete situation makes it clearer that we need to amend it (e.g. if Jimbo ever unreasonably bans someone again). If an editor reading the policy is looking for more historical context into Jimbo's role on Wikipedia, they can simply click on the "Jimbo Wales" link, which takes them to Wikipedia:Role of Jimmy Wales. Mz7 (talk) 04:09, 12 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
To the extent that there are concerns about WMF overreach - concerns which I think are often overblown but well worth considering as a theoretical matter - it is not clear to me how me taking what would undoubtably be a very controversial step to personally ban a user would help with that. It is my position that the community predates the Foundation and is "sovereign" in the sense that the WMF does not rule over the community and ought to be very circumscribed in their "moderation" role - to deal with cases that are difficult or impossible for the community to deal with, and to offer support to make sure that community control is facilitated and supported. This is pretty much the position of the WMF too, I believe, but I don't speak for the WMF in this matter.
There is also the matter of a potentially rogue ArbCom, which has never been an issue and is unlikely to be an issue, but here, too, I think that there is a constitutional question that I think very important. Our traditional understanding has been that given sufficient community uproar (undefined) that new elections for ArbCom should be called. That role has traditionally been mine and the way I have always thought about it is that if there were a community !vote showing a majority support for new elections, I would call for new elections, and it is difficult to see how ArbCom or the WMF could or would refuse that. That would be an extraordinary circumstance to be sure - and if the community would prefer to put staff at the WMF in charge of that, or to create a new consensus policy that a majority vote for snap elections would be enough - that's a different way forward both of which I see currently as solving a problem that doesn't really exist.
In order to prevent any further controversy on the immediate question, though, I have personally removed the line in question from the policy and assert affirmatively that I do not have the right to ban users unilaterally.
I'd like to note, separately and for the record, that I dispute Silverseren's misreading of several points of Wikipedia history. I made edits myself to my own Founder flag rights as a matter of personal judgment, just as today I am making this change.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:35, 12 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Jimbo Wales Thank you for doing that. WormTT(talk) 10:22, 12 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Any policy can change, even policies that say how polices change. If we did have a rouge arbcom and there was a strong community consensus of that I don't see what would stop a community revolt - that is I don't think the stewards or WMF would step in and reverse say blocking/community-banning all of the arbcom members and declaring arbcom defunct. Basically, if we were at the point where such community consensus existed - we wouldn't really need Jimbo's blessing. So where could the Jimbo "reserve powers" still be useful now?: If there was only a weak support that something was wrong with arbcom, and Jimbo declared arbcom defective, that could raise the community support for new elections. — xaosflux Talk 11:04, 12 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Personally, I like that Jimmy is there as a backstop. I'm sure it would cause untold controversy if he came in and started banning people left right and centre, but I don't see him doing that... and if he did, yes, we as a community could do something about it. More likely is a hypothetical situation where there is already controversy and a rift in the community over how to handle it (say, a split in the functionaries team or arbcom, over a sitting very trusted user - or hijacking of the project by a non-benevolent external group) and Jimmy may need to cut the Gordian knot. None of the situations are likely, and the community should be mature enough to handle them - but simply put, I'd still like Jimmy to keep those tools, just in case. WormTT(talk) 10:19, 12 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Yeah. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 13:17, 12 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Agree! Donald Albury 20:17, 12 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

A structural reason to be concerned about WMF overreach is that it is designed so that WMF can easily go rogue and / or insultate itself from input or guidance by the community. Imagine a place where the ruling "body" can re-write the constitution with a mere majority vote by themselves and that it already been re-written that a good portion of the group is appointed by themselves, and that they set the rules and procedures for joining their group. North8000 (talk) 12:34, 12 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This section, titled "Jimmy Wales and banning users", has the narrow scope of Jimmy Wales's unilateral banning powers. Its scope is not yet another general discussion on WMF authority. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 12:54, 12 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Being an existential threat, it probably needs it's own big separate discussion, but it was brought up by many as relating to the narrower question at hand. North8000 (talk) 12:59, 12 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think it makes sense for Wales to not have banning powers, but have the power to review ban appeals. I would like the community input as well as input from Wales regarding whether he has the authority to reverse bans. Nowadays, he doesn't play much of a role regarding when users want to appeal bans. I was wondering if he would be willing to give up his authority to reverse bans. Interstellarity (talk) 16:30, 12 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This is all kind of counting entities on a pin, as the WMF holds the ultimate rule of the server (whoever owns the server makes the rules). If the project ever reaches a point where the WMF overrules the judgement of the community on banning a user, either the WMF board will have to be persuaded to override WMF management, or the community will have to fork. Having a single board member overrule WMF management isn't a sustainable position for the project. isaacl (talk) 20:35, 12 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I see no issue with being able to reverse bans but not impose them. There's lots of parallels in IRL legal systems where appeal courts have the ability to overturn (in various ways) sanctions imposed of lower courts, but not impose those same sanctions themselves. The classic example (from a US-centric viewpoint) would be the President of the United States having the power to pardon people convicted of federal crimes, but no authority at all to convict anybody in the first place.
I'm not arguing either way that Jimmy needs to have that power or not. Just that there's nothing fundamentally incongruous about having one ability without the other. -- RoySmith (talk) 20:38, 12 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think it makes even less sense to try to forcibly give Jimbo back a power he just voluntarily removed from himself. I personally am under the view that all of this was a solution looking for a problem - as mentioned prior, Jimbo hasn't banned anyone since TimidGuy a decade ago. While there was no good reason to remove it, now that it's been removed, I think there's also no good reason to add it back. casualdejekyll 21:38, 12 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
He's already spoken for himself and can speak for himself. He can even decide to change his mind later, but either way, this discussion seems to be more hypothetical and based on hypothetical situations than anything. Not much else can possibly come out of this discussion now that Jimbo has already spoken (notwithstanding how the community at large feels about it). —Mythdon (talk • contribs) 21:52, 12 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with RoySmith that there's nothing fundamentally incongruous about having the ability to reverse bans without having the ability to impose bans. In light of that, I'm inclined to leave everything as it currently is—no need for further change. To be clear, our policies only allow Jimbo to unilaterally overrule bans (and other decisions) placed by the Arbitration Committee. Based on the text at WP:BAN#Appeal to Jimbo Wales, it seems unlikely that Jimbo has unilateral authority to overrule other kinds of bans, such as those placed by community consensus or by the WMF. This setup has the effect of limiting this aspect of Jimbo's authority solely to being an ArbCom safety valve of sorts: the last resort against a "rogue ArbCom", as he describes above. The hope is that this safety valve will never have to be used.
On a matter of principle, I do think it is important that there be some kind of check on the Arbitration Committee to prevent it from asserting theoretically absolute authority over the English Wikipedia. Under the current policy, this check is Jimbo Wales. Back in 2015, there was a similar discussion about removing this check on ArbCom here: Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Archive 18#RfC: Ability of Jimbo Wales to amend or grant appeals to ArbCom remedies. There was a general feeling in that discussion that if we want to remove Jimbo's ability to review ArbCom decisions, we should first think of another person or group that would replace him in that role. I can't really think of a good candidate, though. WMF Trust and Safety, perhaps? Or perhaps another kind of elected panel whose sole responsibility is to review ArbCom's decisions? Should such a hypothetical panel limit themselves to only procedural questions (e.g. "Do our policies allow ArbCom to take a certain action?"), or should such a hypothetical panel also be able to consider issues "on the merits" (e.g. "Should ArbCom have taken a certain action?")? But I digress. Let's just keep Jimbo as the safety valve for now. Mz7 (talk) 05:03, 13 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Mz7 while not really appropriate to deal with individual actions (like a single user ban) - the community can deal with a "rogue ArbCom" by abolishing arbcom. — xaosflux Talk 10:30, 13 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
If an arbitration committee truly went rogue, the community would, in the short term, ignore their rulings, and in the intermediate term, amend the arbitration policy to hold a special election. Arbitrators have no special powers to force the community to follow its decisions; they rely on the good will of editors to comply. isaacl (talk) 15:12, 13 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Ahh, you and Xaosflux make great points. WP:ARBPOL#Ratification and amendment does allow the community to make amendments to the arbitration policy by submitting a petition signed by at least one hundred editors in good standing. If there is ever a wildly unpopular ArbCom decision, the community could use this provision as a bit of a nuclear option to reform or abolish ArbCom. In that sense, I suppose it's true that ArbCom could never assert "theoretically absolute authority" even if we remove the Jimbo appeal avenue. The community has this as an alternative safety valve. I suppose the question then turns to whether we want a separate review body for "individual actions", as Xaosflux says, as a replacement for Jimbo. Mz7 (talk) 01:09, 14 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • In my opinion, Jimbo should only have the power to make blocks if he also makes the time to hear appeals (WP:JWAPPEAL). While I haven't appealed my TBAN on COVID-19 origins to him, I was told he doesn't use his powers anymore and that I shouldn't even bother trying. Since power comes with responsibility, I might try appealing my TBAN to him, as a test of sorts. CutePeach (talk) 12:40, 13 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove the whole line. Jimbo is an admin, which means he can block people just like any other admin, under the same rules that apply to all the other admins, no more, no less. There is no reason to have a special sentence in WP:BANPOL highlighting that Jimbo can block people. Levivich 00:11, 14 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • @Levivich: I might have misunderstood something here, but there's a difference between blocks and bans, right? The impression I'm left with after reading the banning policy is that typically adminstrators don't ban people outside of enforcing discretionary sanctions. WP:BANAUTH makes this slightly more confusing, but if Jimbo can ban people I'm assuming he'd be an unspecified #7. Unless the thread title is equating blocks and bans and we really are just talking about blocks? Clovermoss (talk) 23:28, 17 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • I managed to miss what Jimbo had already wrote above in this thread, and I see now that he removed a line that previously existed in BANAUTH that stated that he "retains the authority to ban editors" [1]. Clovermoss (talk) 23:33, 17 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Only citing from one source

On many articles (Example: Baywood, New York) The only source cited is the US Census bureau. Is this correct with Wikipedia Policy, or should I fix it? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Commander0034 (talk • contribs) 16:04, 12 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

That depends. What do you mean by "fix it"? VernoWhitney (talk) 16:39, 12 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Notice of RfC

This message provides notice that I have started an RfC at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (broadcasting)#2022 revision proposal on a proposed rewrite/update to the text of Wikipedia:Naming conventions (broadcasting). Your comments are welcome. Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 03:53, 13 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

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

Should WP:NGEO have its own criteria on the creation of stand-alone pages? A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 11:04, 13 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Clarification:The criteria should be discussed at a follow-up RfC if this one passes, this proposal is just about whether it would be beneficial for NGEO to have such a set of criteria at all.A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 16:37, 13 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Survey

  • Yes, as proposer Before outlining my vote, I will first mention some important aspects of Wikipedia policies and guidelines for context. Firstly, notability is not the same as stand-alone page creation criteria. From Wikipedia:Notability: [Presumption of notability] is not a guarantee that a topic will necessarily be handled as a separate, stand-alone page. Editors may use their discretion to merge or group two or more related topics into a single article. From Wikipedia:Notability#Whether_to_create_standalone_pages: Sometimes, understanding is best achieved by presenting the material on a dedicated standalone page, but it is not required that we do so. There are other times when it is better to cover notable topics, that clearly should be included in Wikipedia, as part of a larger page about a broader topic, with more context. A decision to cover a notable topic only as part of a broader page does not in any way disparage the importance of the topic. Secondly, there is no strong community consensus or policy argument against the existence of stubs, although guidelines support their existence if and when they are capable of expansion (WP:AVOIDSPLIT: If only a few sentences could be written and supported by sources about the subject, that subject does not qualify for a separate article, but should instead be merged into an article about a larger topic or relevant list., WP:STUB: A stub is an article that, although providing some useful information, lacks the breadth of coverage expected from an encyclopedia, and that is capable of expansion. bolding my own). Finally, WP:NGEO currently presumes all legally recognized places to be notable. This means that there are hundreds of thousands of articles (mostly stubs) that can be created off of a single source.
    I will now provide some arguments for why I think having specific criteria for stand-alone geo pages would be useful. To begin with, the ratio of active geo editors to geo pages is almost negligibly small. This means that not only do geo editors need to patrol many articles for them to be kept up to date or prevent misinformation, but also that large-scale misinformation campaigns or long-standing mistakes are unlikely to be caught in a timely manner (the Abadi mistranslation issue being a particularly notable mistake requiring over 13,000 page deletions). Thus, there are practical issues for the community when it comes to managing the geo pages effectively based on the current NGEO guideline. Secondly, geography stubs are unlikely to be of much use to our readers in an encyclopedic manner. Confirming that a town exists or finding out there is a town in Turkey called Afşar gives our readers very little information. Having some criteria for when to merge geostubs into their parent article or some list article could greatly improve the context and breadth of information that readers receive, without removing the information that is currently accessible as a geostub article. Finally, having more guidance on when and how to create separate articles for geographical features would be useful to new editors who don't have the experience to understand the unspoken nuances in the notability guidelines or community expectations.
    In conclusion, I think having a separate section of NGEO outlining criteria for when and how to create stand-alone pages for geographic features would be of significant benefit to the community in the future. A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 11:04, 13 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. If all we can write about a location is a few sentences, then it is more useful for the reader if we place those few sentences into a table or a list - modifying the guidelines to encourage this is a good idea. BilledMammal (talk) 11:28, 13 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support having criteria, but it may be hard to get agreement on what they are. Merging geostubs into a list makes less pages to be monitored and reduces the number of AfD's, but makes it harder to show the entries on a map, although {{GeoGroup}} may help, and may discourage addition of information. Aymatth2 (talk) 11:58, 13 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Aymatth2 my idea was to have a follow-up discussion on what the possible criteria could be at WP:VPIL if this RfC passes and from that discussion propose various options in this noticeboard at a later date. A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 12:23, 13 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Fair enough. See Rivers of Lake County, California for a list-type article created during an inconclusive discussion with Uncle G. It sort-of covers the gazetteer aspect of Wikipedia and sweeps up all the stubs on rivers in this county, but carries forward the inaccuracies of the primary source, and the mass of detail has questionable value to readers. There would be over 3,000 of these if we tried to cover the USA at this level. Aymatth2 (talk) 12:36, 13 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • You need to reword this To me the RFC sentence itself does not make sense. Being an SNG, NGEO already is such a guide. So then I read the proposer's statement of opinion to try to understand what they would like to propose. For potential use as being the RFC question, it is somewhat long and indirect (and has some issues which mean it can't be interpreted as being the RFC question) but seems to be proposing raising the NGEO bar at least a bit, which I would support. But the RFC isn't really going to get somewhere with the current wording issue. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 12:44, 13 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    North8000 I am proposing for NGEO to have a section clarifying how WP:NOPAGE applies to geographical features, without proposing a specific section mysel. The status quo (notability justifies having its separate page always and by default as long as it passes NGEO, with merges being discouraged) is problematic, as I outlined in my vote. A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 14:15, 13 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks for the explanation and your efforts. On a procedure side, the RFC should clearly explain the proposed change. It should not require interpreting things from someone's vote. But if it got clarified per your explanation, I would oppose. You'd be basically proposing putting something into a prominent high impact notability guideline that gives geo-specific interpretation to a non-notability advisory page located elsewhere. IMO not the place for it. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 14:28, 13 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't understand what you mean by putting something into a prominent high impact notability guideline that gives geo-specific interpretation to a non-notability advisory page located elsewhere North8000, and would appreciate some clarification. A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 14:31, 13 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Happy to. Well the gist of it is that a wp:notability guideline should contain only wp:notability related content. What you are proposing in your explanation is adding something that is not wp:notability related. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 14:35, 13 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    So then by non-notability advisory page you mean WP:NOPAGE, which is a section of WP:N? A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 14:43, 13 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    I am with A. C. Santacruz on this. WP:N defines whether a topic qualifies for having a stand-alone article, but WP:NOPAGE points out that a notable topic may be best covered as part of a broader article. It would be suitable for WP:NGEO to make the same point and give some geography examples. Aymatth2 (talk) 14:59, 13 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose This is a wp Notability guideline and should contain only wp:notability related items. Why don't you propose accomplishing the same thing here by raising the geo wp:notability bar a bit? North8000 (talk) 16:47, 13 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • You need to reword this as it's not clear what changes are being suggested. Usually RFCs have a longer summary at the topic highlighting the issues being discussed, but it's not clear from this what changes are being suggested. Joseph2302 (talk) 13:41, 13 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Partial oppose if the proposal is to merge settlements/administrative units which only have population data. Generally (but not always) settlements that have a stated population from a census (as opposed to a tourist or community website) are generally to my awareness inherently notable and there is not a requirement for additional sources such as prose. For settlements without such data they may be subject to this such as if no information other than location is known for a settlement it then might redirect to a list or its municipality. Its fine to have exceptions to the rule of administrative units/census settlements being inherently notable such as census tracts and possibly the likes of abadi. With regard to NOPAGE we have the essay Wikipedia:Separate articles for administrative divisions to settlements that I created that discusses if we need separate pages for divisions with the same name as settlements. Crouch, Swale (talk) 16:27, 13 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • As with others above, there's a kernel of a good idea here, but this could have used some more workshopping before going to an RFC. May I suggest that the OP voluntarily end the RFC as written, and start a discussion at WP:VPIL, which is more suited to workshopping ideas like this. I'd be willing to contribute to such a discussion; for better or worse RFCs tend to be a pseudo-vote with rationales, rather than a good place to work out details. --Jayron32 16:32, 13 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose This proposal is an unclear and unfinished attempt to limit the scope of notability under NGEO and even if not, would lead to instruction creep. Also most of the simplest NGEO articles were often bulk created, a procedure we cracked down on recently. I am strongly opposed to this idea. SportingFlyer T·C 21:51, 13 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose unnecessary bureaucracy, imv Atlantic306 (talk) 23:04, 13 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Procedural Oppose I have absolutely no clue what you're proposing other than "change WP:NGEO" and that's far too broad for me to agree with. casualdejekyll 01:23, 14 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - This seems like limiting what can be a standalone article for editors' sake rather than readers' sake. Stubs can always be expanded, lists usually only provide limited information on the subject. ミラー強斗武 (StG88ぬ会話) 02:04, 14 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose We need to raise the bar on WP:NGEO, not create more administrivia. --Whiteguru (talk) 09:19, 17 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Procedural Oppose / ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Per Casualdejekyll, North8000. This RfC is too vague. The clarification note doesn't make sense– what's the point of having 2 RfCs with the first figuring out if there should be a second. Just propose your changes in one go. — Mcguy15 (talk, contribs) 01:12, 21 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

New RFC

Look You the vote and discussion section Mass merging of unnamed identical references and naming of those references. ✍️ Dušan Kreheľ (talk) 12:47, 16 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

In 2022 do you need an RfC to make substantive changes to policies/guidelines?

Our policy on policy changes suggests that formal RfCs are not necessary even for substantive changes to policy. But is that actually true? There is currently an RfC to change the crat activity level to match the recently passed one for admins. Everyone pretty much agrees, and even agreed before the rfc went live, that this was uncontroversial. Yet there was still a feeling that it needed to be an RfC lest a change cause controversy. Several editors (myself included) have noted that it's not always how we did this. So is our policy on changing policies (a phrase that strikes me as so Wikipedian) still what has community consensus or should we be holding an RfC to reword/remove it? Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:41, 20 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I say we just boldly change it. Mostly for the entertaining rip in the timespace continuum that paradox would cause. --Floquenbeam (talk) 16:48, 20 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • WP:BRD applies to policy pages as equally as it does to article pages. Feel free to make any changes you see fit; though it should be noted, if you anticipate pushback (or rightly should anticipate such pushback) then it is prudent to skip the "B" part. But that's also true for likely controversial changes to articles as well. Basically, be bold, unless you already know it's going to be challenged, if so, then establish consensus first. --Jayron32 16:56, 20 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • The problem with this in practice is that people go and revert the change without challenging its contents just because "you did not establish consensus first". The "R" part in BRD should be based on a disagreement with the "B" change, but it is often based on "I want to waste your time by making you start a formal RfC". —Kusma (talk) 17:01, 20 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
      What Kusma said. In the example I linked no one anticipated pushback and indeed there hasn't been any so far (or at least none that couldn't have been resolved through further BOLD editing around the wording) and yet the feeling was still that it needed a formal (CENT-linked) RFC. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:04, 20 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
      And importantly in that example there would have been discussion before the change so it wouldn't have been BRD. It would have been DBRR (discussion, bold edit, revert, rfc) if someone had reverted on the basis of "it needs an RfC". Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:08, 20 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
      The deal is, you need to be clear on what you mean by "substantive change". If you notice a grammar error, just freaking fix it. No one needs to start an RFC. If, however, you wish to make a change to what people are actually allowed to do at Wikipedia, like for example, changing WP:V to say "No sources are needed anymore, we just assume that everything written here is correct", then you're damned right that is always going to be a controversial change, and needs to be discussed first. So no, not every change to a policy page needs a discussion, but every change that alters the way in which editors are supposed to behave at Wikipedia should absolutely be discussed. Any such changes should be forseen as controversial. --Jayron32 17:22, 20 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
      What I mean by substantive changes is what the section at the policy means - its wording from the policy not mine (which also agrees with you on grammar changes). Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:56, 20 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
      Way back when (in 2006) I made a habit for a while of reverting edits to policy pages because consensus had not been established for the change. That resulted in the sole oppose cast at my RfA, with the comment that I was too bureaucratic. So, I stopped doing that. I do feel that policy and guideline pages should be somewhat sticky, i.e., not as easy to change in substance as articles are. - Donald Albury 18:03, 20 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • On occassion I've found PAG pages with prose boldly added, in some cases edit-warred in, and then used in discussions to represent a rule, even though the claimed rule had no support behind it at all. One example is the background to Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 166 § RfC: Can editors request community review of the blocks of others?. I share Swarm's position expressed in [2][3]. For the crat RFC, I feel like you'd have difficulty enforcing that with any legitimacy if there hasn't been a discussion on it beforehand. An RFC process provides an opportunity for anyone interested to add comments and feel like they were able to have a say in the creation/change of policy, which is a big factor in a policy having legitimacy. Not all substantive changes should require one (eg if a practice has obviously become obsolete but still remains 'in the books', a bold removal seems fine; or if something has become a significant practice but isn't documented then adding it seems fine), but any meaningful change from the status quo should require proof (in the form of a discussion) that the community agrees to such a change. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 17:05, 20 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    As I say that, I remember making some changes to WP:PGBOLD last yr (see left-side diff here) which I felt were a reasonable middle ground, ensuring checks and balances against the unilateral creation of policy and edit-warring it in, while not forcing every change through the RFC process. It was reverted; there's a discussion here but I lost energy in following up the change after a while, and not enough editors were interested in the issue at the time. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 17:23, 20 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • There are three examples of bad bold PAG edits that immediately come to mind:
    • In 2019, at the guideline WP:UNBLOCK, a bold addition was made that prohibited third-party block appeals. This was reverted in 2020 and reinstated and led to a little bit of slow-motion multi-party edit-warring. A discussion in 2020 on the talk page (started by me) led to no consensus (because PAG talk page watchers are not representative of the broader community), but a 2021 RFC led to removal of the prohibition. This was a lot of work to undo a bold 2019 edit that never should have been made in the first place, because it did not have consensus, not in 2019, and not in 2021. For two years, the PAG was incorrect and out of consensus, all because of one bold edit.
    • In 2020, at the guideline WP:N, an entire new section about "Subject-specific notability guidelines" was boldly added. That led to a bunch of multi-party edit-warring, and hundreds of thousands of bytes of text. A 2021 RFC found virtually no support for the bold addition, and it was changed. For almost a full year, the PAG was incorrect and out of consensus, all because of one bold edit.
    • Last month, a table was added to the policy WP:NOR. This was removed; discussion on the talk page shows no consensus for this inclusion. It's a good thing no one is edit warring this time, and we won't need an RFC to remove it. But it does show that major bold changes continue to happen to our most important PAGs.
  • Our PAGs are terrible. They are way too long, they are vague, they contradict each other at places, and are altogether confusing. By and large, nobody really reads them in their entirety, and none of us feel confident that we know what they all say. This is the product of 20 years of well-intentioned people making changes they think no one would object to. In 2022, Wikipedia is too big, with too many regulars, for any one of us to claim we really know what global consensus is or will be, and, frankly, there is also a smaller contingent of long-time regulars who take it upon themselves to make major changes to our PAGs because they think they know what's best. This is a combustible mix for bold PAG additions: a large, non-homogenous community, and a small group of "superusers" who think they can speak for that community or read its mind.
  • I'm one of the people who will watchlists PAGs just to be on the lookout for major undiscussed changes (but only if I substantively disagree with the change; I also hate reverting for the sake of discussion alone). Minor corrections, grammatical improvements, and the like, are always welcome as bold edits, but major changes should be discussed. The risk of major bold PAG changes is a whole ton of editor time wasted to undo a bold edit, plus misguiding an unknown number of editors along the way. Levivich 17:20, 20 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    About the proposed table at NOR: I think that gives us an opportunity to talk about the difference between "a change to the words on the page" and "a change to the meaning". I saw that table as being a pretty simple summary of what the page already said (e.g., repeating a link to a template that's been in ==See also== for years) which doesn't really feel like a substantive change. Substantive changes require more care. It sounds like you might consider the addition of a summary paragraph or a {{nutshell}} summary to be a "major" change, even if there was no change to the actual meaning of anything. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:22, 21 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    I've seen a nutshell be quoted in justification during policy enforcement before... So I guess that can be a major change, yeah. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 00:48, 21 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Even if the nutshell only copied and pasted a sentence or two from elsewhere on the page? WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:07, 21 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    See recent edit history and talk page of NSPORTS for an example of a dispute over a nutshell, both versions using language copied and pasted from the page, but from different parts. Levivich 06:07, 21 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • People objected to such a long-standing table in Project:deletion policy in February 2007, on the grounds that policies should be descriptive not prescriptive. However, that table was very useful, and so I preserved it at User:Uncle G/Wikipedia triage#What to do. It actually already covered much of the ground from that 2022 table, because really the procedure hasn't changed from when this table first came about in June 2004, and it was already long-standing procedure before it was put into table form. Feel free to point to it. ☺ Uncle G (talk) 06:20, 21 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think RFC's are a great way to discuss major changes to policy and/or how Wikipedia works, as it centralizes discussion and calls attention from the community as a whole and anyone that may be interested in participating. To give an example, there was an RFC about whether administrators should be able to unblock themselves, it was a highly controversial change that wouldn't have worked out any other way without the formal process of an RFC. There was also an RFC about whether to protect user pages by default and an RFC about whether "fuck off" should result in sanctions, both of which also had to go through an RFC. There's also currently a discussion above, where one user made what they thought was an uncontroversial change to the banning policy, just to get reverted and to have to start a discussion here anyway. RFC's seem to be the way we're going for just about any policy change and it's better to be safe and start an RFC unnecessarily, than to "be bold" and make a significant change (or any kind of change) to policy just to get reverted and it result in confrontations (and end up having to start a discussion anyway). WP:TALKFIRST doesn't seem to apply so much anymore, from what I've seen, it seems to have already become community practice that any changes (substantial or not) are to be ran by an RFC. —Mythdon (talk • contribs) 17:54, 20 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'd be less opposed if our RfCs didn't suck so much. They are too often poorly prepared, for example by ignoring an important use case of the policy under discussion, or turn into some free-for-all trainwreck. —Kusma (talk) 18:28, 20 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • I would say that for anything more that grammar/typo fixes, discussion is needed. However, that discussion does not necessarily have to be in the form of an official RFC.
    Indeed, I would always start with a non-RFC discussion. Even if it gets to the point where a formal RFC is called for, the RFC will often be more productive when there has been a bit of prior discussion before opening the RFC. The prior (non-RFC) discussion can help clarify what the underlying issues are, and improve the wording of the RFC question. Blueboar (talk) 18:13, 20 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • I agree there is a continuum of types of changes, from copy edits, to procedure clarifications, to minor procedure adjustments, to significant procedure changes, to substantive changes. At some point (probably just past minor procedure adjustments), some preceding discussion would probably help make the change proceed more smoothly (though not necessarily a formal request for comments). At some later point, a discussion followed by an RfC would help ensure there is community consensus for the change.
  • The double-edged sword of trying to make everything consensus-based is that we bend over backwards to please everyone. So if one editor says we should have an RfC, we have a tendency to proceed with one (as has happened here). And due to the large diversity of editors, often there's at least one editor who will consider a bold change to be substantive and ramp up the rhetoric. Unfortunately, it's a hard problem to avoid with English Wikipedia's current decision-making traditions. isaacl (talk) 20:27, 20 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    ^ This. Also, that "one editor" frequently seems to misunderstand either the existing or proposed rules and systems (or both). See, e.g., that table at NOR that Levivich mentioned. Some editors were upset that the table said sources could be "anywhere in the world, in any language". This was an undiscussed substantive change that would ruin Wikipedia! ...except that NOR has said exactly that for years, and WP:V has agreed for even longer. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:30, 21 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • At the very least, RfCs raise awareness of policy changes. I and a lot of editors do not watchlist policy pages and tend to assume that their substantive meaning yesterday will be the same today, unless otherwise notified. Otherwise we'll have a situation like when four users tried to change the pillars of Wikipedia. -Indy beetle (talk) 01:26, 21 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Bold policy edits sound like they would work in theory, but in practice, even if a substantive change seems uncontroversial now, later on down the road if there ever does come a controversy regarding the policy change, it would be so easy for an editor to effectively invalidate the policy by claiming that there was never a consensus to establish the change. To use the bureaucrat activity requirements RfC as an example: Suppose that sometime down the road, a bureaucrat is up for removal under the new inactivity policy. If there was no proof that the inactivity policy had consensus supporting it in the form of an RfC, I would have a hard time convincing myself that that bureaucrat is wrong if they argue it should be the previous version of the inactivity policy that is controlling.
    Because of this, it is always a good idea to get at least some kind of consensus before making substantive changes to policy (i.e. changes that would alter or resolve some ambiguity about the intended meaning of the policy). This doesn't necessarily have to be a 30-day RfC—depending on the size of the change, it could consist of a feeler on the policy's talk page, then the actual edit after a handful of editors agree with the change. There just needs to be some proof of community consensus to give the policy authority later down the road. Mz7 (talk) 06:53, 21 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Those bureaucratic-type complaints don't usually get very far. If the information has consensus (e.g., "Thou shalt not violate copyrights") then there is no amount of "But you didn't say Mother May I? before you added this to the page, so it's invalid" that will get the editor out of trouble. If it doesn't have consensus, then it'll be corrected the first time that someone runs across it and complains. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:37, 21 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    "Thou shalt not violate copyrights" is a bad example because that is a principle that clearly enjoys widespread consensus (since it's already a longstanding policy). The dichotomy isn't often a clear black-and-white between "information has consensus" and "doesn't have consensus". When eventually someone down the road runs across it and complains, not having proof of consensus could really be a thorn in the side. (It could even be years down the road, as we discovered recently when editors at Wikipedia talk:Notability (geographic features)#Wikipedia is not a Gazetteer removed the longstanding text "the encyclopedia includes features of a gazetteer" from WP:NGEO after it was discovered that that text was added boldly, which escalated into a whole RfC about the wording of WP:5P1.) Mz7 (talk) 19:19, 23 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • You should only need RFC if you can't reach talk page consensus. Policy pages are widely watched by a broad spectrum of editors and talk page consensus is therefore robust grounds for change.—S Marshall T/C 12:31, 21 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    This isn't really true. We have so many PAG pages, and even some policies don't have an active talk page audience of currently active editors. Some may have been active in the past but those interested have retired. (see Wikipedia:List of policies - some don't even have 30 total watchers nevermind active ones.) Secondly, even some policy pages with active audiences do not have broad community following, and thus talk page consensus cannot be certain to represent broader community consensus. (not saying that VPP consensus is necessarily a true reflection of community consensus either, but it is potentially broader) ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 15:19, 21 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    To add to this, it's not only current policy and guidelines being edited; it's new ones being added. For example, this notability guideline was created in December 2021, and survived for over a month as a guideline before I noticed and demoted it to proposed guideline. BilledMammal (talk) 15:28, 21 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't think you need an RFC for every change.
    Also, my spot check of about 20 policies turned up none with fewer than 30 page watchers. It appears to be typical for policies to have dozens, and sometimes hundreds, of active editors watching them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:35, 21 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    For any significant change I think you do; I don't know about policies, but I know many guidelines have very few, if any, active editors watching them, and so a change there may go unnoticed until it is considered the status quo - I know this has happened in the past with WP:NZNC, with a major change being implemented through a discussion among two editors. The change was eventually reversed through RFC, but I don't believe there was ever a consensus in favour of the change. BilledMammal (talk) 05:21, 22 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • The policy page at, for example, WP:AT is being constantly tweaked with small wording changes etc, without RFC, and it seems in general that this is acceptable. I do find it slightly irksome when an element that I've been hanging my hat on for years is suddenly absent because someone removed it on a whim, but then again many of the changes made are actually sensible. Not sure what the best answer is...  — Amakuru (talk) 21:38, 21 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don't think that there's an issue with how attempted bold edits on policy changes are handled. Substantive ones (rightly) get reverted moving it to require further discussion and often an RFC. The problem is that once it goes to that, changes seldom or never get made. IMO it would work a lot better if a well-worded RFC was the halfway point of the discussion, not an RFC the beginning. Formulate an excellent proposal, and the everyone who worked on it should support it even if it only 90% matches their opinion. North8000 (talk) 01:54, 22 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Role accounts

At Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Role_account I reported a role account because I knew they weren't allowed and didn't know what the protocol was. Much to my surprise, it seems that there is not a strong consensus there for the outright prohibition on this sort of account. A few concerns were raised:

  • It might cause problems for licensing. However, it is pretty clear to me that this is not the case. The CC license does not have issues when the author is an individual or a group. The only requirement for CC-BY is that attribution is done.
  • It might cause problems if an account claims to be acting on behalf of an organization (the last time a proposal to revisit WP:ROLE was brought up, this was the primary objection) since there may not be a consistent verification scheme possible to ensure that this is the case. While I sympathize with the desire not to get into vetting identities for role accounts, this state of affairs is also the case for individual accounts when they use a person's name. This practice is discouraged but not forbidden and it is clear that Wikipedia is not in the business of giving out "check marks" for accounts. Basically, if an account were to be set-up to allow for more than one person to use it, that is an entirely separate issue from whether it is claiming to be a verified spokesperson.

Some additional problems have been noted with the status quo:

  • It does not seem to be a high-priority enforcement item. And rightly so. The justification for the rule seems somewhat thin, and if there is a rule that is not enforced, the question is whether the rule should exist at all.
  • It has resulted in some SUL accounts from the German wikipedia (which does have a verification scheme) autoblocked here for no other reason than a violation of WP:ROLE. That seems shortsighted.

Now, this rule also affects WP:SHAREDACCOUNT and WP:ISU, so any change to our understanding of WP:ROLE would need to be reflected there as well.

Is it time to have this conversation?

jps (talk) 19:15, 20 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  • I think it's time to have the conversation. As with JPS, I have always assumed that this policy had strong community consensus; if it does not, as the ANI thread seems to suggest, and nobody can remember why it was put in place, then it shouldn't be policy. I can see the advantages of allowing role accounts: I can see that it would encourage paid editors to declare their positions openly, and hopefully to work within our policies and guidelines instead of trying to circumvent them; at the very least, I can't see how it would make it easier for them to circumvent them, if they are editing from a username that openly declares their affiliations. Absent any good arguments for why this policy actually exists, I can see myself supporting a change. Girth Summit (blether) 19:31, 20 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • There are some problems with shared accounts, but none that are difficult to overcome really. For example, if a shared account makes some poor edits you will sometimes get the "little brother" defence. All you have to do is ignore this excuse and treat a shared account like you treat a single user. Overall, I'd be happy to see the policy changed, which will make it easier for declared paid accounts as well as for people who share a computer or people with dissociative identity disorder or similar psychological issues that make them appear like more than one editor on the same account. —Kusma (talk) 19:43, 20 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't have an opinion on the overall question here at this time, but want to comment on the matter of plurality (umbrella term for DID etc.). I've seen a couple new users who happened to be plural run into trouble when saying "we", and indeed one was even initially counseled to create separate accounts for each alter, advice they thankfully didn't take. Getting rid of the association of "we" with "blockable" could be beneficial in those cases. At the same time, I want to stress—not that I think you were necessarily saying this—I don't think the current policy could reasonably be construed to apply to multiple members of a plural system sharing an account. Of all the rationales I've ever heard for the policy, none apply to that use case. After the aforementioned incident where the new user was advised to create multiple accounts, I wrote User:Tamzin/Plurality and multiplicity FAQ, which among other things discusses why SHAREDACCOUNT can't be reasonably said to apply in such cases. (And if it does, I guess I'm overdue for a block!)
    While we're on the topic of SHAREDACCOUNT, I'd be remiss if I didn't put in a plug for something ProcrastinatingReader said to me a while ago about the latter clause of bot accounts that are maintained by more than one contributor, provided the existence of such an arrangement is made clear and has consensus—specifically that it's not clear where the username policy gets the authority to dictate how bots should be operated, and that if you consider that all bots hosted on servers where someone else has admin access, including all Toolforge bots, are on a technical level "maintained by more than one contributor", this provision is routinely violated and essentially a dead letter. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (she/they) 20:13, 20 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Excellent points about using plural self-referential pronouns/adjectives and bots (add them to my above bulleted list)! Eliminating the rule against shared/role accounts would help clarify both of those matters immensely. jps (talk) 20:32, 20 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • I've always thought it was odd that, when someone turns up with a user name like "Kellogg's PR", we block them until they change their name, and then tell them to "declare" their status as a paid editor when they thought they were doing that already with a user name like "Kellogg's PR". That said, allowing people to have usernames like "Kellogg's PR" may further the misconception that an article can/should be "owned" by its subject, which is a misconception such people often seem to have. I do think it's a conversation the community ought to have, because our current policy doesn't make a ton of sense. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 20:12, 20 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • I guess this username hairsplitting comes down to a question of "verification". It is impossible for en-wp to verify that Kellogg's PR is really who they say they are. For better or worse, I guess, the community treats usernames as though they are identity cards in a somewhat uneven fashion. As I understand it, our username policy permits IRL associations with an individual's name while discouraging the practice. Hard to understand why we can't do the same thing with organizations. jps (talk) 20:31, 20 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
      Why do we think this is impossible? VRT does it all the time, and for legally sensitive questions, too (like whether you actually hold the copyright, or if you're just a liar who created an account named real-photog@gmail last night). WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:53, 21 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yes. I think the nom and above comments cover it: we already verify individual accounts, there's not a licensing issue, and User:Kellogg's PR is a pretty efficient way to disclose paid editing. I'm not so concerned with ownership misconceptions arising from role accounts; I think the English-speaking, internet-connected world knows by now that Wikipedia is the encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Levivich 20:28, 20 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • I've always understood that there is a licensing issue, because role accounts can be passed on to a different person, such as, in ONUnicorn's hypothetical example, another member of the PR team at Kellogg's; I'm sure I've seen cases where someone says in effect "I'm the new social media rep for X and so I now operate this account" and gets blocked, and I know I've seen cases where life partners were operating an account jointly (in some cases with "and" or "&" in the username) and were told to pick one holder for that account and have the other person get a new account. We routinely block as compromised accounts where the user admits that one other person has gained access to their password. We not only blocked but banned a long-term gadfly but productive user after they revealed their password. Tamzin above mentions people who use plural 1st-person pronouns falling afoul of this. I thought we had always had a policy against shared accounts, and was shocked to see at AN/I an account that states on its user page precisely that it's been handed on: Previously, the account was under Bowen Yu, a Ph.D. Researcher of Computer Science and Human-Computer Interaction in GroupLens Research at the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities and at the top This is a shared account by a group of undergraduate students working under the supervision of Dr.Haiyi Zhu in the HCI Department at Carnegie Mellon University dismissed as just fine by Floquenbeam. Usually I trust their judgement, but I don't understand this. Is it because this account, after being transferred from one person to a completely different group of people, declares a purpose of experimenting on/testing Wikipedia? In that case, what's to stop any of the people who know its password editing outside those tests, whatever they imply? (I see that ORES is a machine learning service the WMF provides to outside clients.) The AN/I discussion as it has later developed while I was offline, including Floquenbeam's later post, seems to be focusing on "role" accounts in the sense of commercial/corporate entities, like the PR example; but how does the argument not apply to other kinds of shared accounts? It's not as if paid editing is the only potentially problematic type of editing; the problems presented by accounts with names like "FOOCOMPANY-OFFICIAL" and "XCELEBRITY-PR" is distinct from the problem presented by an account where the user name and password may be tacked on a bulletin board in a hallway for all we know. Admittedly, the reverse, one person controlling more than one account, is inherently more problematic, but allowing shared accounts facilitates sock puppetry through the same person using both the individual and the shared account to edit (and isn't that the rationale for blocking compromised accounts, including the one that shared the password?) It seems to me inherently unfair to allow shared accounts, especially if only "role" accounts by some corporation/charity/course/research program and not private individuals who just do everything together (not to mention people who use "we"). If Yu has passed on their password to a research group and that group needs to edit en:wp en bloc, then the account should be treated as compromised and they should get a shared bot account subject to our bot review policy. If they can edit individually for the purposes of their experimentation, they should get individual accounts. Yngvadottir (talk) 21:54, 20 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    @Yngvadottir: It's maybe more a case of sloppy terminology and sloppy thinking on my part. I don't actually really care too much about company role accounts, I'm more concerned with what we have here, a few people productively sharing an account and generally doing good work. I don't want to soft block people like that without a good reason, and I don't think the fact that we have an unnecessarily strict policy (based on no articulable significant concern) is a good reason.
    One of the things that really soured me on WP's administrative structure - an attitude I haven't quite recovered from - was many years ago, when a husband and wife were contributing with a shared account (think similar to User:The Joneses, I can't recall as many details as I'd wish), quietly tweaking an article here and there, when a new page patroller ran across their new user page, which said something like "we are Sally and Tom Jones, helping out where we can". The patroller broke out the zOMG POLICY VIOLATION warning templates and came down on them like a ton of bricks. I tried to intervene, explaining that it was nothing to get upset about, when a bunch of experienced admins joined in and agreed with the patroller that this was unacceptable, and blocked the shared account. Not like one rogue admin, as I recall it was three-ish. One of the couple wrote back that they didn't want to contribute separately, they liked sharing the account, and they were told that's their decision, and in that case they couldn't contribute. What a crazy way to run a railroad.
    It probably has less to do with VPP, and more to do with the ANI thread that started this, but I'm still old school enough to believe that even if the policy isn't changed, in cases like the Joneses, and in cases like the one at ANi that started this, you can ignore the policy if doing so improves the encyclopedia. I don't actually think many people believe in IAR anymore. --Floquenbeam (talk) 22:20, 20 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Exactly. But we can and do block people who use "we", and compromised accounts, and this instance is not merely an organized group, it's explicitly stated that the former user handed it off to others. I haven't examined the edits because ORES sounds to me like an abuse of our volunteer efforts, so I don't know whether they're productive or not judged by the standards applied to normal editors. But it seems to me as if what is being discussed here is giving organized groups an exemption we don't give to couples or other normal people, through focusing far too narrowly on paid editing, and thus breaching our principle of holding individuals responsible for their edits. If compromised accounts are a bad thing, then so are jointly held accounts for researchers as much as inherited accounts for corporate position-holders. If not, then we shouldn't be blocking for "my roommate/cousin/sister mucked about on my laptop", and in general, as The Blade of the Northern Lights implies below, we don't excuse such ordinary compromises of accounts. We have a bot policy (and a hinky mechanism for accommodating courses run by a WMF spinoff). If we relax our policies against shared accounts—and they are effectively policies—it should be for the ordinary editors, including the hypothetical User:TheJoneses and User:Mo&Jeff, not for organized groups: they should be required to make new accounts, User:FIRSTNAMEatCORP or User:NYMatCORP as opposed to USER:WHATEVERITWASatCORP, and User:EXPERIMENTbot or User:FIRSTNAMEatHCICMU or User:NYMatHCICUMU as opposed to User:Bobo.03. So far as I can see, this group have taken flagrant advantage of our good will, not to mention our anonymity policy, which I have defended and will defend. I appreciate your point about IAR, but this is ass-backwards; it's not the ordinary, innocent users who just want to contribute to the encyclopedia being considered for leniency here, it's a carve-out for groups of unknown size and people who want to pass accounts around for their convenience, and I do not think whatever experiments or PR or corporate tracking they have in mind make this desirable or even justified from the point of view of facilitating the writing of an encyclopedia. Yngvadottir (talk) 23:33, 20 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    I think we can make a distinction between authorized shared accounts and unauthorized (compromised) accounts, can't we? The problem with WP:BROTHER is not that more than one person accessed the account. The problem is that there was unauthorized access. And if you gave your brother access and he did a bad thing, well, then, you should hold some responsibility as well. Why should people acting in good faith with role/shared accounts between a couple or a group be considered automatically to be doing a bad thing? jps (talk) 23:38, 20 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    You seem to have an underlying assumption that the bobo.03 group ANI that started this discussion are operating in bad faith or are some kind of corporation. That doesn't seem to me to be the case. I have run across similar threads at ANI about ordinary editors several times, and made the same plaintive plea each time, so I don't think I'm supporting corporations at the expense of ordinary editors. I have no idea why it finally took root this time. I know we "can and do block people who use 'we'", I'm saying we shouldn't. And I'm puzzled by bringing compromised accounts into this, I think we all roughly agree on how they should be handled? I don't know, I'm confused, I feel like we're talking past one another or something. --Floquenbeam (talk) 23:48, 20 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    @Floquenbeam: Yes, I may be being dense. I see a user page saying (my paraphrase): This account was previously one person but now it's being used by a completely different group of people to test something AI-related that the WMF makes available to 3rd parties, and I don't see any benefit to the encyclopedia in that, or any justification for passing the account log-in around, at all. Yet you defend it by making the analogy of ordinary users who just want to contribute to the encyclopedia. And most of the discussion both at AN/I and here is about corporate accounts, and whether they should be allowed to pass log-ins around, and I don't see how their reusing the same account benefits the encyclopedia in any way. I bring up compromised accounts, pace ජපස (jps) because it's not whether the account user wanted to share their account details or not that matters; it would be an obvious way to game WP:MEAT if one could simply have an army of people posting 24-7 under the same account, and if intentionally making one's password available for others' use is ok, then Kumioko should be unbanned. Despite being a poster boy for "disruptive", he was very much here to improve the encyclopedia. Why go out of our way to not just AGF, but bend the rules for explicitly group users whose primary or even sole purpose is not to improve the encyclopedia—whether it's commercial or not? We have existing ways of accommodating their editing and having them identify themselves. Yngvadottir (talk) 02:09, 21 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    it would be an obvious way to game WP:MEAT if one could simply have an army of people posting 24-7 under the same account I don't see how this is true. WP:MEAT really only functions with separate accounts who, for example, all arrive at the same discussion to pile on. Unless you are proposing that people are going to start a bunch of role accounts and then use their own personal account besides and complain when both accounts are blocked -- but such behavior would be an obvious violation of WP:SOCK and if the checkuser shows that two accounts are confirmed as connected in a discussion, it doesn't matter whether the two were declared or not. We already allow alternate accounts but we don't allow illegitimate uses of alternate accounts. I don't think the argument for individuals controlling accounts should be some sort of time limit on account activity. jps (talk) 02:26, 21 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    I've always understood that there is a licensing issue, because role accounts can be passed on to a different person I don't think this is an issue at all according to Creative Commons licenses. The entirety of what rights and privileges authorship entails under CC-BY is that a third-party will give credit to the author of the creative work as it was provided at the time of production. If an author changes their name, that doesn't invalidate the license, for example. As long as the backlink and provenance are clear, there should be no licensing issue at all. jps (talk) 23:30, 20 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Yeah, if it were a licensing issue it wouldn't be permitted on any wikis, and WP:ROLE would be a WMF rule. But it isn't. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 23:55, 20 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Perhaps more obviously, if the PR staff of any non-trivial corporation have not all signed their copyrights over to their employer – thus making the copyright something to be disposed of at Kellogg's pleasure, not by its employee's choice, in this example – then something Very Strange is going on at that company. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:57, 21 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Who owns the copyright on a role account? Who is banned when a role account misbehaves? Are we banning CompanyX writ large when there PR department misbehaves? Who can appeal said block? Do we need the CEO to promise his company will behave?Slywriter (talk) 22:08, 20 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • The question of who owns the copyright on a role account is irrelevant because we release our contributions under a copyleft license. That's part of what we sign up for when you contribute to Wikipedia. I admit that this makes things a little more interesting when an account is banned since there are parts of the WP:BAN and WP:BLOCK policies that are directed towards individuals rather than accounts. But it's not too hard to imagine that if you have access to a role/shared account that gets blocked or banned, you and everyone who has access to that account is blocked/banned under the same sanction. Tough breaks. jps (talk) 23:23, 20 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
      I wouldn't say it's irrelevant for that reason; authors in theory can still pursue licensing violations. It's not that relevant because copyright can be registered to a pseudonymous author, and so no one knows who or how many authors are behind the pseudonym of any Wikipedia account. However the issue of sanctions is a tricky one. If I work for Contoso, create a "ContosoEmployee" role account on my own initiative without any company approval, and vandalize Wikipedia on my own time, I don't think it's reasonable to block "MarkAtContoso" as collateral damage. isaacl (talk) 23:46, 20 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
      Yes, licensing would be more accurate terminology than copyright, but got there just the same, accounts can pursue licensing violations and WMF can't(won't?). Just trying to figure out who bears ownership of a role account and ultimately responsible for its actions. I agree on not banning MarkatConteso for actions of a rogue but PRConteso misbehaves, are all accounts banned from Conteso because we ultimately can not identify the individual who is no longer welcome by the community. Slywriter (talk) 01:40, 21 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
      Okay, so in terms of licensing, as I expressed above, I don't think this is an issue either. The license only requires attribution. It doesn't say anything about it needing to be attributed to a specific individual. The account name suffices and if it is a role account or a shared account, that's not something the license cares about. jps (talk) 02:08, 21 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
      Reiterating my neutrality here—I'm particularly hesitant about expanding the already too broad set of {people who are technically evading blocks without having done much wrong} that we already get when we indef a vandal who years later creates a good-hand account—I do likewise not see the copyright issue. (It is copyright, though. Copyleft is a kind of copyright, and people can sue and have sued for copyright violations of CC-licensed works.) IANAL, but my understanding is: MediaWiki happens to enforce a rule of 1 username:1 account, but there's nothing in CC BY-SA or GFDL requiring that. And attribution only refers to the username associated with an account, not the account itself. If someone creates a copyleft work that incorporates a Wikipedia article I contributed to and also incorporates some other copyleft work by some other person who requested attribution under the name "Tamzin", the resulting ambiguity as to which Tamzin wrote what is not a violation of either of our copyrights: We both requested to be referred to as "Tamzin", and both requests are being honored. So if multiple people contribute under the same username, then they're all requesting to be referred to by the same pseudonym. More broadly, as others have said, I think that if this were a serious copyright concern, this would be in the TOU rather than being a local policy enforced differently on different wikis.
      But that brings us to the Terms of Use. They do not say there's a copyright issue with sharing an account. They do, however, use a singular "you" throughout (singularity evidenced by its equation to "the 'user'") and contain the line You are responsible for safeguarding your own password and should never disclose it to any third party. That doesn't explicitly say "We will ban your account if you don't do this". And if two people are using an account, there's no way for us to know whether they both know the password, or whether only one does and is sharing an already-logged-in session with the other. But, something to keep in mind. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (she/they) 13:43, 21 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
      In the situation where shared accounts were allowed, I think TOU could be interpreted to mean that "safeguarding" and "third-party" refers to someone who is unauthorized to use the account. In any case, there are instances of WP users who for various reasons need to give authorized access to their account to a third party (for example, someone editing with a disability who needs a third-party to aid in installing software access). These "exceptions" seem to indicate to me that the TOU may have been written with a particular set of assumptions in mind that are not necessarily fully appreciative of the practicalities of the situation and the wide range of human experience with them. jps (talk) 12:06, 22 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Enshrining my little brother did it as a valid excuse in policy is an unambiguously bad idea. It's hard enough to keep a lid on things as it is. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 22:46, 20 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • But no one is suggesting that, are they? If you choose to edit as part of a shared account and it gets blocked, you suffer the consequences. You have to know and trust the people you share your account with. --Floquenbeam (talk) 22:50, 20 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
      Are there really that many simultaneously "shared" accounts, compared to serial users? I would expect a certain amount of "Hi, Alice quit, and I'm Bob, the new Alice" in a role account, but I wouldn't expect a lot of "Oh, you were talking to Alice yesterday, and I haven't talked to her yet, so I don't know what you told her". I believe this is what's been recommended to GLAM institutions. You pick one human to be the "point" person for the "corporate" account, and transition as necessary to a different single human when/if necessary. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:00, 21 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The other issue is that in Wikipedia everything behavior related presumes and requires individual responsibility for what an account does. There is a saying the for within a group "if everybody is responsible. nobody is responsible." North8000 (talk) 23:32, 20 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  • I think my only 'concern' would be that it could increase accidental sockpuppetry. Say someone performs actions as a role account (for their company?) and also has a personal account, for example. Sure, you can say these have to be disclosed, but what if their personal account comes afterwards? Most regular editors aren't familiar with the intricacies of the arcane sockpuppetry policy (heck, some long-time ones aren't). I'd be on the side of 'judge by the behaviour of the account' and enforce with common sense, but the sock policy is enforced in different ways by different admins, and is one of the most hardline policies we have; it'd be unfortunate to see people who are trying to comply with policy end up with damaging sock blocks. (Not saying this is an insurmountable hurdle, but mitigations/awareness should be a consideration if WP:ROLE is to be scrapped.) ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 23:50, 20 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • I've never known of a grand reason in principle for WP:ROLE. It doesn't seem comparable to WP:NOR, say, some form of which might well be inevitable once one decides to try building a respectable generalist encyclopedia upon a mostly-open wiki. If anyone had asked, I probably would have guessed that there had been some kerfuffle in the past, and something had to be put in writing as part of fixing it. XOR'easter (talk) 00:34, 21 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    We did have the occasional WP:LITTLEBROTHER problem back in the day, but I think we could make this work. (And, you know, if this or that company can't manage it, then we block the account.) WhatamIdoing

As a narrow example, the entire term "sockpuppet" and all policies and procedures associated with it have no meaning if there is no presumed association between an individual and an account. So if an account does bad stuff and gets blocked, and somebody behind it starts a new role account, they are 100% legal because no person has been blocked. North8000 (talk) 01:03, 21 April 2022 (UTC) (talk) 01:02, 21 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think that's true. If an account gets blocked, then anyone and everyone behind it is blocked. It is not true that "no person has been blocked"; they have all been blocked. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:07, 21 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Currently, English Wikipedia's guidance on role accounts permits approved exceptions to provide a point of contact through email. I can see how it may be potentially useful to allow approved exceptions for organizations that allow a slightly broader set of communication methods. For example, an account could be an official point of contact that edits specific non-article pages. I'm not clear that there is an advantage to Wikipedia in allowing general editing and discussion through a role account versus individual accounts. Individual identity is a big part of how members of an online community build up mental profiles of each member. Having one account change personalities constantly would make this harder. (For the moment, I'm leaving aside the question of an account shared by life partners/best friends/some other closed group of close persons.) isaacl (talk) 02:40, 21 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I think that it is possible that if you knew the account was shared, you would just adjust your theory of mind for the account. I know people are worried that shared accounts would somehow end up wielding undue influence or be given undue deference, but that just isn't really the culture here. Right now, the rule is that we play wack-a-mole with role accounts with pretty strong hammers. I can understand the idea that we might want to encourage people to start individual accounts just as we encourage people to have only one account. But we do permit people to have more than one account and admit there are legitimate reasons to do so and don't require inordinate hoops to jump through to set such a thing up. I presume the same sort of thing could be done for shared and role accounts. jps (talk) 02:53, 21 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think there's a worry about undue influence. I think there's a loss of continuity by having an open-ended set of editors sharing an account, each of which may or may not return or know any past history for the account. This places a burden on the community in managing its interactions with the role account, constantly establishing what context the current user has, and erodes its ability to expect any commitments to be upheld. Serial users, as WhatamIdoing mentioned, would be easier to manage, but I don't see what counterbalancing advantage the community would gain that would warrant trading off having a new individual account, with properly reset privileges and stats. isaacl (talk) 03:17, 21 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
My experience in other online communities that have shared accounts makes me think that this likely wouldn't be an issue. I just don't assume that a shared account has the same continuity as one that is not shared. It's fine. Since Wikipedia discussions tend to be biased towards having a lot of repetition anyway, it may actually be easier here than on Facebook, Twitter, or in one of the many Slack channels where I've experienced this. jps (talk) 03:48, 21 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I find that being able to recall my experiences with a given Wikipedia editor, their discussions, knowledge, interests, and conversational approach help me communicate more effectively and efficiently. I think this benefits both parties, and thus the community as a whole. Given the complex editing ecosystem, I'm loathe to surrender such an important factor, without any significant compensating benefit. isaacl (talk) 04:25, 21 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
No respectable online community with moderation allows account sharing. None. TheNewMinistry (talk) 17:51, 22 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Twitter does. Perhaps you think they are not respectable. jps (talk) 18:25, 22 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
A correct assumption casualdejekyll 18:35, 22 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Twitter is for-profit. Wikipedia is a nonprofit. Your proposal is nakedly acquiescing that profiteering should be allowed on Wikipedia, and now your cited example as the model for restructuring is a for-profit entity. Yikes. TheNewMinistry (talk) 19:02, 22 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Could you please tell us what online communities with moderation you are talking about, TheNewMinistry, because I can't off the top of my head think of any major ones (respectable or not) that don't allow role accounts? Phil Bridger (talk) 19:00, 22 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Question: is it proposed that 'role accounts' be permitted for all organisations, and if so how is 'organisation' going to be defined? AndyTheGrump (talk) 04:34, 21 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Right now "role account" is defined in Wikipedia policy just to disallow such accounts. If we remove the restriction, there would be no more automatic assumption/exhortation that such accounts are to be blocked on sight and no real need to define "organization". jps (talk) 11:38, 21 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Role accounts seem like they would be a headache from an accountability perspective. It seems like it would open the door to a lot of tricky questions. Suppose the role account is editing problematically. If we block that account, does this block then apply to everyone that had access to that account? Suppose that some established editor had a personal account in addition to the role account. Would we need to block that editor's personal account as well? What if they claim that they were not in fact the ones that made the problematic edits under the role account? Alternatively, what should happen to the role account if the personal account is blocked or banned? What if a role account is blocked, and one of the editors with access to it creates a new account that is for personal use only. Are they evading the role account's block in this case? Again, what if the user claims that they weren't the ones that made the problematic edits under the role account? As a principle, the owner of an account should always be accountable for all of the edits they make with that account, and the simplest way to achieve that is the principle of "one editor, one account". Mz7 (talk) 07:18, 21 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    I think the combination of SUL with incompatible rules on different projects (role accounts encouraged on some and prohibited on others) is a worse headache. —Kusma (talk) 08:50, 21 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    In this context, perhaps we should ask people with deeper knowledge of dewiki if they can tell us about their experience with authenticated role accounts. Pinging @DerHexer and @Doc Taxon who both have relevant VRT experience: can you help us by giving your perspective? —Kusma (talk) 09:02, 21 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Also to ask them about the licensing aspects - if many projects allow them that raises the question of why they aren't seeing any licence issues. Also: I think that with many role accounts, work for hire considerations might apply i.e if the account is operated by the employees or contractors of an organization the copyright to the contributions might belong to the organizations and not to the individual. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 11:14, 21 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    If it was a work for hire (probable for role accounts), that would be fine. The organization would still hold the copyright, would still be licensing it under our license by publishing the content here, with attribution to the username of the role account. Creative Commons already handles this: the CC Wiki says: Sometimes, the licensor may want you to give credit to some other entity, like a company or pseudonym. In rare cases, the licensor may not want to be attributed at all. In all of these cases, just do what they request. Attribution to the username works no matter who is in control of the username, because whomever is in control of the username is who pressed the "publish" button. We don't need to know who that person is in order to attribute under the license. For example, "Levivich" is not the name of a real person or organization, but I can still own the copyright, license it under our license, and publish on this website, without anyone knowing the identity of the Licensor. Levivich 17:15, 21 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    If we block that account, does this block then apply to everyone that had access to that account? I would say so. Otherwise it is block evasion. Suppose that some established editor had a personal account in addition to the role account. Would we need to block that editor's personal account as well? If they engaged in block evasion, yes. To be clear, this sort of thorniness is something we already deal with in the unusual circumstances where an editor has an alternate (legitimate use) sock account and is blocked. What if they claim that they were not in fact the ones that made the problematic edits under the role account? Tough. You use a role account, you take on the responsibilities associated with such which can include being caught up in enforcement against others using the account. There may be situations where people claim that they are not part of the role account though they share an IP, for example. But, as before, this is the same situation as when two individual accounts share an IP. We already have the protocol in place. Alternatively, what should happen to the role account if the personal account is blocked or banned? Same answer as before. If the role account is being used to circumvent the block/ban, it gets blocked/banned. What if a role account is blocked, and one of the editors with access to it creates a new account that is for personal use only. Are they evading the role account's block in this case? Yep. If a new account is created to circumvent a block/ban on an account that you have access to, then this is a violation of the sockpuppetry policy. Again, what if the user claims that they weren't the ones that made the problematic edits under the role account? Tough breaks! If you decide to involve yourself with such an account, you assume such risks. jps (talk) 11:50, 21 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Evidently, the proposal is to permit 'role accounts' without actually defining what constitutes one. Can't see that going well... AndyTheGrump (talk) 12:57, 21 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

WP:ROLE, m:Role account. Levivich 15:45, 21 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

We should continue to disallow shared accounts by default. By default: one person needs to agree to the terms of service, one person would be the subject of blocks/bans/other sanctions, one person has authorship of the text they upload. It is a matter of accountability, but also of communication. One of the reasons those in the education program make sure people they work with don't allow students to use group accounts (other than them being against the rules) is because it makes for a communication nightmare -- which student did Wikipedian X speak with? What happens when four separate people ask the same question from the same account? There's only one email attached to the account, so unless that email owner is particularly diligent, how do the others know when there's a notification? There are times when a shared account would be useful, but any mainspace edits they make should be the exception, and we should have a clear process in place for them to go through (including agreements that anyone who uses the account now or in the future goes through some part of the process). If we don't have the capacity for establishing and maintaining such a process, we should continue to err on the side of blocking them all. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 13:47, 21 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  • Since people are saying "shared enforcement action", that means we should therefore consider "shared unblock issues". Let's say that an account is blocked, but we know there were both positive and negative edits and users on it. 3 months later, someone comes along and goes "X person has left/was fired because of mucking up here", do we unblock? Figuring out what to ask for them to demonstrate competence would be really tough - asking "what would you do differently" and "nothing" being a correct answer for that individual would be a thorny issue. And they could also have the most competent person do the unblock negotiations while then acting as a cover for the others. I'm not seeing a smooth resolution method here that wouldn't violate wp:PUNITIVE Nosebagbear (talk) 15:14, 21 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Just want to remind everyone that a role account is not the same thing as a shared account, that some Wikipedias already allow role accounts, and that the answer to every "but then how do we...?" question is "exactly the same way we do with individual accounts". How do we verify? Same as we do with individual accounts (email to OTRS from authorized email address). How do we block/unblock? Same as individual accounts (everyone with access to the account is equally responsible). How do we attribute? Same as individual accounts (to the chosen username). Levivich 15:24, 21 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
So if hypothetically the Boy Scouts of America were to ask for a role account, and verify that it was them via email, they'd be permitted to give members of their organisation (over a million, from the age of five years upwards) access to the account to edit Wikipedia on behalf of their organisation? AndyTheGrump (talk) 15:43, 21 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think that being a member of an organization automatically makes that member a spokesperson. A role account works on behalf of a group, it is not merely a group ("shared account"). Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 16:26, 21 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Exactly. The Boy Scouts wouldn't give all their million members access to the Boy Scouts' role account, because that role account would speak on behalf of the organization and would be creating works that are attributed to the organization, and the Boy Scouts would be responsible for anything the role account did. Maybe it's worth linking again: WP:ROLE, m:Role account. Levivich 16:36, 21 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
So a role account is only for people contributing 'on behalf of an organisation', as 'spokespersons'? I'd have thought it was going to involve a lot of work verifying that people requesting 'role accounts' only intended to use them for such purposes. Or is the proposal to approve accounts on request, and sort out the inevitable mess afterwards if accounts aren't being used as we'd like? As it stands, the few 'role accounts' permitted anywhere on Wikimedia projects seem to have been set up for very specific purposes, mostly under strict conditions. If the proposal is to broaden this out, we really need to think through the consequences... AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:51, 21 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Welcome to this discussion, where we are thinking through the consequences. :-) But it's consequences for role accounts, not shared accounts. Having clarified that, let me clarify something else: you keep repeatedly mentioning "the proposal". No one has made a proposal. There is no proposal. This is a discussion about whether to make a change to the status quo or not. The purpose here is to think through the consequences of making a change to role accounts, whether to permit them, under what circumstances, what problems might arise and how do we deal with them, etc.
As to "verifying that people requesting 'role accounts' only intended to use them for such purposes", the answer is "same as we do for individual accounts". How do we verify that someone is using an account for intended purposes and not for other purposes, like promotion, spam, harassment, etc.? We read contribs. We have reporting mechanisms. We have blocking, banning, and locking sanctions.
As to "approve accounts on request, and sort out the inevitable mess afterwards if accounts aren't being used as we'd like", that is actually how we operate currently. Anyone who wants an account can just make one, and we sort out the inevitable mess afterwards.
Verification of role accounts can also be done the same way as we verify accounts now (OTRS email).
I think if we allowed role accounts, the "inevitable mess" would be lower than what we have now. As someone pointed out in this discussion (or the one at AN, I forget), right now, if a person who works for Acme, Inc.'s PR department creates "User:Acme Inc. PR", they'll be blocked until they change their username to an individual one, and then they'll be told to disclose in their individual account that they're a paid editor working for Acme Inc.'s PR department (which we do not verify!). That, to me, does not seem to have any benefit, and several drawbacks. I'd rather have one User:Acme Inc. PR than multiple individual accounts for each PR staff member. It's way easier to trace contribs history with one account. Much more accountability, much less overhead. This is part and parcel of the general rule that disclosed paid editors are better than undisclosed paid editors, to which I would add that a role account by the paying customer is better than a disclosed paid editing account, because it provides more transparency, accountability, and oversight.
I appreciate your input and am interested in hearing your thoughts on this, and I don't mean to be giving you a hard time. But please appreciate that those of us who think this is a good idea are not stupid, we're not ignorant, we're not foolishly rushing ahead with any proposals without thinking them through first, etc. There are good reasons for this. There may be good reasons against it, but there are good reasons for it. This isn't some ill-thought-out proposal; it's not a proposal at all. And, again, it's already being done in dewiki. Levivich 17:04, 21 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Ok then, if this isn't a proposal, I'll leave commenting until someone makes one - a properly-defined one. I really don't see the merit of having an abstract conversation about how we deal with 'Acme Inc. PR' through an undefined change in policy that could have repercussions well beyond that particular case that we aren't going to discuss because this isn't a proposal. AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:16, 21 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think that there may need to be some thought put into how these different kinds of accounts happen. There are both shared accounts and there are role accounts. I think it might be possible to allow for shared accounts and not role accounts. I guess, in principle, you could also allow for role accounts and not shared accounts, but that seems like it would be a real mess. The arguments against shared accounts seem to be one largely of a culture that has valued the "one person=one account" rule which, if we are going to be honest, isn't always followed even now. The arguments against role accounts seem to be ones largely of a culture which has been concerned about paid editing and corporations trying to control content. Again, if we are being honest, such things are happening now. Just because such things are happening now does not mean that we need to suddenly allow either kind of account, but it seems to me that there is a level of flexibility that is associated with the current enforcement practices with regards to both role and shared accounts. Normally policies and guidelines are supposed to reflect the actual way things get done on Wikipedia. Right now, I perceive some tension there. The account that I identified (whether you think it is a role account or just a shared account we can put aside for now), is still allowed to edit. I think that indicates that there may be an understanding for what is permissible at Wikipedia beyond what our WP:ROLE and WP:SHAREDACCOUNT documentation says right now. That's at the level I'm interested in having the conversation, in any case. jps (talk) 11:56, 22 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The mixed list formatting makes it unclear who's responding to whom here, but @Levivich: I used "shared account" because while the heading says "role accounts," the case that led to this section isn't actually a role account. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 16:40, 21 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Role accounts, like paid editing, won't go away if we ban them, however undesirable they may be. Surely it's better if an editor is upfront about working on behalf of an organisation (in law I think it's known as a "legal person") than them hiding behind a random meaningless user name, which is the way our current policy works. Phil Bridger (talk) 17:14, 21 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Wikipedia had an opportunity to ban paid editors and photographers-for-hire. They failed. Now both of those are multi-million dollar industries that stand to disappear overnight if action were taken against them. So anyone with a default position of "we did nothing before, we should do nothing again" when it comes to allowing shared accounts that would make PR firms' lives easier should not be involved with this conversation. TheNewMinistry (talk) 03:01, 22 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Premise 1: We didn't ban disclosed paid editors and photographers for hire before
    Premise 2: Nothing bad happened and in fact the encyclopedia grew by leaps and bounds and is now a top-10 website and a globally-respected source of information, and Commons is filled with millions of images taken by paid photographers that have now been licensed for free re-use
    Therefore: Anyone who thinks we still shouldn't ban disclosed paid editors and photographers for hire should not be involved with this conversation? Levivich 16:16, 22 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    "Nothing bad happened". For-profit entities bragging about brute-forcing edits and not getting reprimanded was when the respectability went out the window. And please give an example of how $3000 head shots are useful to anyone outside of the subject that commissioned them. TheNewMinistry (talk) 17:14, 22 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Easy: The readers of the Wikipedia biography if they are uploaded here. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 13:33, 23 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Advanced permissions

Personally I don't have a problem with role accounts or shared accounts. I do rather have a problem with any form of shared account that has advanced permissions given on a basis of trust, because I think the trust is vested in the person behind the keyboard. So no advanced permissions should be given to shared accounts, and if it becomes clear that an account with advanced permissions is being used by others, that should be grounds for a sysop to revoke those permissions summarily (i.e. on the sysop's own authority, bypassing discussion or consensus).—S Marshall T/C 05:18, 22 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

By this, I presume you meant he permissions associated with administration. I imagine you are referring to Administrator, CheckUser, Oversight, and Bureaucrat. Or are there also other permissions you think would be problematic for shared/role accounts too? jps (talk) 11:49, 22 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Not just those. I think that the autopatrolled permission (the one that effectively hides you from New Page Patrol) would have value to PR agencies, and they might well be willing to purchase the password to an account that has them. And the Page Mover permission could be problematic in the hands of a vandal.—S Marshall T/C 13:18, 22 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Both of those permissions need to be applied for, of course. In general, I think I agree that granting those permissions should not usually be done. Of course, there are already role accounts which have advanced permissions (e.g. WP:OFFICE). A general rule of thumb seems to make sense to say that shared accounts or role accounts shouldn't be given those permissions without a very good justification and, perhaps, community consensus. jps (talk) 13:27, 22 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Sure, but what I also want to ens ure is that sysops are authorized to revoke those permissions if it becomes clear that the account's not exclusively in the hands of the person who requested them.—S Marshall T/C 14:16, 22 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I feel like that authorization should already exist. If someone sees an account behaving as though it was compromised, emergency removal of permissions would happen whether role or shared or not, right? jps (talk) 14:31, 22 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
They would now, because we currently define an account as "compromised" if it's shared. As I understand it we're dealing with a proposal that would change that definition of "compromised".—S Marshall T/C 14:34, 22 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
As I think someone clarified to AndyTheGrump above, at this point we are not "dealing with a proposal" The OP and firs few people commenting were treating this as a discussion about whether we should have a discussion about changing the current policy. Such a discussion could lead to a proposal, but I don't think we're at the proposal stage yet. I do think at this point we've moved on from having a discussion about having a discussion to actually having a discussion, but I still don't think anyone has proposed anything concrete. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 14:49, 22 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe when someone does, they can include something about advanced permissions.  :)—S Marshall T/C 15:19, 22 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
As I understand it we're dealing with a proposal that would change that definition of "compromised". Agreed. I think we should focus more on unauthorized access rather than multiple individual access. Of course, evidence of misbehavior could also be considered prima facie evidence that permissions should be removed regardless of whether the account is actually "compromised". jps (talk) 17:38, 22 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
FWIW I can't imagine a situation where a role account would need or use any permission beyond EC. A role account isn't supposed to be doing "general" editing, but only a specific task/function/role/purpose/what-have-you. So User:Acme, Inc. should only be editing articles about Acme, Inc., not patrolling for vandalism, creating new articles about athletes, or moving pages. Not even voting in RFCs. It's a role account, it's supposed to stick to its role. As for shared, non-role accounts, I'd have similar hesitations about advanced perms, but then I also don't really see a reason why shared, non-role accounts would be a good idea to allow. Levivich 16:12, 22 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I can imagine a situation where a role or shared account might want to be a WP:RESEARCHER. jps (talk) 17:38, 22 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
An account for an affiliate that runs edit-a-thons might want Wikipedia:Event coordinator. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:59, 25 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I am going to echo what others have said regarding accountability and shared accounts. S Marshall made the point I was going to make regarding how this would potentially affects our understanding of compromised accounts, so I will add some thoughts on that. By the very nature of how MediaWiki handles accounts, there isn't a method for sharing an account without multiple people sharing the account's password. That makes the account weaker from a security perspective for a variety of reasons. This is not the case for bots because bot operators can utilize bot passwords (among other things) to access the account without granting every operator full access.
Additionally, since multiple people are going to be accessing the same account anyways, it's going to be more difficult on our end to respond to the bad actor in the event of a compromise. –MJL ‐Talk‐☖ 06:51, 23 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Of course, if a role account is limited to one person at a time, then most of my above points are moot (since once a new person gains access to the account to replace the old, they should just immediately change the password to prevent unauthorized access from the previous account holder). –MJL ‐Talk‐☖ 06:56, 23 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

So what to do?

I am glad that we have had others chime in about their support for current policy against shared and role accounts. "No consensus" seems to be a reasonable summary of the above. The problem is, however, that the policies as currently stated are not consistently enforced and there really seems to be no adequate documentation of what is happening. Thus, I find the status quo somewhat unstable. Wikipedia policy states that even the appearance of having a shared account is grounds for blocking, but the ANI thread that started this discussion is now archived with no action. Maybe no one will ever use that account again, and I understand the preference to let sleeping dogs lie. But uneven enforcement as such ultimately causes a lot of confusion.

The policies as written seem to me to be firmly in the camp of "NO, NEVER ALLOW SHARED OR ROLE ACCOUNTS EXCEPT UNDER CERTAIN SPECIFIC EXCEPTIONS SUCH AS WHEN WMF DEMANDS IT." But the policy as practiced is really more like, "We would prefer if you did not do this and administrators are within their rights to block your account if they have evidence that this is what is going on, but many will just look the other way." or "We don't allow shared accounts and we don't allow role accounts, but whether such an account gets blocked or not is up to administrator discretion." Right now, this disconnect between actual practice and documentation seems rather capricious. Should we try to rewrite some of these things to reflect actual practice? Or maybe we should encourage the admin class to all adopt the more draconian view.

jps (talk) 15:26, 25 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I think the existing pages, as currently written, do not fully reflect community practice, and therefore should be updated.
I think we do still want to ban certain kinds of shared accounts (e.g., User:OurWholeFamily or User:SmallvilleEnglishClass). I think we probably want to allow a few others (e.g., User:BigMuseum, confirmed to be an official account with the legal right to assign a suitable license for material when the museum holds the copyright). WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:08, 25 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding account names, appearance creates reality. If I create a "Fans of German Shepherds" account, that is a pretty clear statement that there is no individual that can be held accountable for what this account does. As a corollary to that, it can't be dealt with as an individual. For example, if a group account gets blocked for edit warring, the individual who did it can just open up another account and they are not socking. Or an individual who get blocked can just edit under the group account and they are not socking. North8000 (talk) 20:19, 25 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed amendment to WP:NPOV

I propose that we add to WP:NPOV:

Evidence and arguments for viewpoints should be clearly articulated in proportion to due weight. Viewpoints should not be subtly undermined by only reporting that certain people or groups hold a viewpoint without clearly explaining the reasoning that they provide in order to create a false impression that due weight has been given to the viewpoint.

Or, alternatively,

When measuring the weight an article gives to viewpoints and comparing it to due weight suggested by reliable sources, the weight that an article gives to a viewpoint should be measured mostly by the amount and detail of the arguments and evidence that are provided in favour of the viewpoint, and not the amount of coverage allocated to attributing the viewpoint to individuals or groups.

I believe this is important because, in many articles, you can see a certain viewpoint being represented only in terms of "X states that he agrees with Y" or "Z denies that this has occurred". This makes it look like these viewpoints are being represented in proportion to due weight, but, in reality, they are only being put there to be discredited by the coverage being given to other viewpoints, which usually does name the actual evidence and arguments. This is not true NPOV. Ipnsaepl28 (talk) 17:08, 21 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Ipnsaepl28, I think I need more information here. What are you trying to accomplish? What problem needs to be solved (and that can't be solved the same way)?
My current best-guess is that the problem you've found sounds something like "Alice says the Earth is round, but Bob denies this". This would give too much weight to the Flat Earthers. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:44, 21 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Without going into details, I think a lot of this type of rebuttal aspects would be better satisfied by codifying RECENTISM into NPOV better. We should be far less focused on opinion given to a topic in the short term (which is the type that seems to want to draw this rebuttal aspects), and wait for events to settle to then use RSes to determine the majority viewpoints well after the fact. --Masem (t) 23:00, 21 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I have some sympathies for your support of the Wikipedia:Recentism essay. OTOH, our most popular articles are frequently about breaking news. Readers really want that from us, even though it isn't possible to write a full, complete, traditional encyclopedia article about any event that is still in progress. It's all well and good for an editor to say that in principle there should be no articles about the Covid pandemic until the pandemic is over and the scholars have written multiple books about it, but that's not going to happen. Realistically, we can't even stop people from writing about things that haven't even happened yet (e.g., Wikipedia:Notability (films)#Future films, incomplete films, and undistributed films, Wikipedia:Notability (events)#Future events – both of which allow articles to be created in advance of a film being released or a major event taking place, so long as you have sources indicating that it is "almost certain" to happen.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:26, 22 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
We can cover breaking news from the objective stance, its when we rush to include the talking-heads commentary - where NPOV comes into play - that is where the problems happen. We shouldn't be trying to assess sides of current events, even if it is clear if there is a side. And when there is such a clear case for one (eg as in the case of the current Russia Ukraine war where nearly all of the world is united against Russia on that), we still should try to avoid getting far too deep into the opinions around that and focus more on the objective reasons why the global opinion is this way. That's still covering breaking news, just not in the emphatic way that mainstream news gets into. --Masem (t) 16:44, 22 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The example re:flat earth is inapplicable. The earth being round is a fact, and any article that includes the blown flat-earth hypothesis and does not mention it as such is biased. The OP seems to be about weight between viewpoints, not between a fact and a non-fact. 71.245.250.98 (talk) 00:38, 22 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
My proposal would not give additional airtime to flat-earthers or other WP:FRINGE viewpoints. As I stated in my proposal, Evidence and arguments for viewpoints should be clearly articulated in proportion to due weight.
The issue I'm trying to respond to is this: let's say that the prominence of viewpoint A and viewpoint B in reliable sources is such that each deserves equal weight in coverage. In other words, neither is a fringe viewpoint. In the status quo, you can make it look like you've given 50:50 weight while actually being biased in favour of A by describing specific arguments and lines of reasoning people have raised in support of A, while listing inane statements like "X, Y, and Z have said that they support B", "X says that A is harmful", "Y denies that an argument raised in favour of A is true" for viewpoint B. This way, the article is, in effect, supporting A. Ipnsaepl28 (talk) 14:48, 22 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Giving equal weight to two or more POVs does not preclude that one or more of them may be true fringe viewpoints (as opposed to fringe viewpoints that are so-named by opponents of those viewpoints). But your overall point has merit, and it does reflect a real situation. However, one could say that the current wording on due weight is sufficient, just at times not applied correctly. I wonder if wading further into explanations may turn out to be counterproductive. The proposed language may seem very confusing (which would require even further explanation), and the formulation may be cherry-picked in endless arguments/wikilawyering. 50.75.226.250 (talk) 15:04, 22 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Getting due weight right is difficult, especially if you care about the subject. It's very easy to think that you have achieved 50–50 when you have actually written 60–40. Similarly, it's easy to look at something that is close to 50–50 and believe that it's lopsided. This is partly because our notion of what's 50–50 is based on what we think plus what we think other people think – and we frequently misjudge that latter category. @Talpedia was just recommending a video by CGP Grey called "This Video Will Make You Angry" that I think is relevant. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:17, 25 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
According to the OP as I understand it, due weight is sometimes misrepresented by giving only cursory attention to some viewpoints. Without providing an acceptable rationale behind them, the article slants towards viewpoints for which rationale is provided. Further, that this superficial mention is actually used to generate even more commentary/weight for other POVs. Even though no concrete examples have been given, this is not an improbable situation, and I believe it is observable in Wikipedia once someone devotes time and attention to it. However, it seems that the current NPOV guidelines are sufficient, and are very clear in the steps an editor must take in order to provide due weight. When it is stated that relevant POVs must be adequately represented, it seems the complaint by the OP is covered. So maybe a change in the guideline is not needed, only a change in its application/enforcement. Especially since the language of the proposed change is abstruse. As for "fringe" viewpoints, if a POV is presented as such in an article (in the true sense of fringe=very-small-minority) then some disinterested proof of its fringe status must be provided. To account for the disproportionately small coverage. 65.88.88.93 (talk) 20:50, 25 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia's approach is to work from concrete examples, rather than abstract theory, so it would be useful to have some examples of how this proposal would change some actual articles. Phil Bridger (talk) 16:38, 22 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'm with Phil Bridger here. The OP obviously has a specific event or events that led them down this path to need to change policy, there has to be some example articles where the change in policy would be necessary to fix. Can we get some of those so we know what we're dealing with? For example, I could read the OP wanting us to restrict reporting on what political positions that say, a public servant has taken in the course of their career. That seems actually relevant to know that "X, Y, and Z have said that they support B" where X, Y, and Z are politicians, and B is a bill before the legislature they wanted to pass. I don't think that is what they mean, but without concrete examples, I don't know what we're trying to fix. --Jayron32 16:49, 22 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Ipnsaepl28 edited Libs of TikTok right before posting here, --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 06:10, 23 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The connection, if any, is unclear to me. 50.74.21.22 (talk) 19:14, 24 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

WP:NPOV & especially WP:Weight need evolution. The first version of the proposal is something that sometimes can help on problems enabled by the current policy. Which is that through wiki-lawyering, "covering" a viewpoint often ends up being limited to coverage by "sources" that are opponents or political opponents of the viewpoint. But such an articulation rule should not be applicable to true fringe viewpoints. Also, the second part of (the first version of) the proposal seems a bit too focused on "displacements" of such coverage rather than on the concept that it should be included.

The second version took me several reads to start understanding it's intent. In essence, articulation of one side of a viewpoint needs to cover what the proponents say, and the other side by what it's opponents say. Coverage of both sides by only what it's opponent sources say doesn't do it. But anything that that takes several reads to even understand the intent isn't ready to get dropped into a core policy. North8000 (talk) 20:03, 25 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed, and again I think this is covered by the existing language. It should be obvious that allowing one side in an argument to articulate both sides (no matter how, supposedly, "objectively" this is done) violates both the spirit and letter of the policy. Also, it would be better to explicitly state each source's leanings in any situation when conflicting POVs are presented. There can be no "reliable" or objective sources when such sources can realistically seem to be leaning towards fixed ideological viewpoints about politics, culture, science, art, religion or any other human activity. Every reference should be examined individually, every time a conflict of any kind is covered. 65.88.88.93 (talk) 21:13, 25 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
You forget that WP:PSCI and WP:GEVAL are website policy.
Sanger's way, which is basically a rejection of the GEVAL policy, was itself rejected and it is not going to come back. tgeorgescu (talk) 22:27, 25 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
No idea what "Sanger's way" is. As for WP:NPOV, the argument made above was that no change to the policy is needed only better application of it. Fringe theories (not pseudoscience theories) were mentioned because articles may tend to characterize a viewpoint as "fringe" without providing any proof (in the form of a reliable citation) that such characterization is not just their opinion. 172.254.222.178 (talk) 00:05, 26 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Per WP:PROFRINGE, only viewpoints held by at a significant minority need to be covered. A lone dissenter does not qualify. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 23:20, 25 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

New 3rr exception

I think we should add the following to WP:3RRNO:

Restoring an XFD tag removed while the discussion is open, or a speedy deletion tag removed by the page's original author.

80.230.56.7 (talk) 05:04, 25 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  • I thought that already was... Are people being blocked or sanctioned for restoring AFD notifications? If they are, they shouldn't be; in practice I'm pretty sure we already consider this a valid exemption. --Jayron32 11:58, 25 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think that might be included under "obvious vandalism", but I see no harm is codifying it explicitly. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 18:45, 25 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Seems a valid exception, although I wouldn't object if people like this are blocked or sanctioned. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 23:12, 25 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
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