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Improper handling of assessment for inactive WikiProjects
First, I want to be clear this is not intended as a criticism of any particular editor, it is more of an institutional bad habit that has developed over the past few years and went unnoticed and unquestioned.
Anyway, TL;DR, at some point a few years ago (nobody I talked to was able to figure out exactly how this started and what policy supports this), assessment categories related to inactive WikiProjects (ex. Category:Start-Class Popular Culture articles) started to be deleted as part of broadly understood "maintance". In addition to not being policy supported, this is not just unncessary make-work with zero purpose and benefit, but I argue that this is actively determintal to the project (hiding useful statistics and possibly even introducing errors into the main assessment statistics).
An example of the damage caused is visible in the following aspects:
there is no justificable reason to delete/hide such statistics, this is a make-work that does not benefit the project at all and arguably damages it by hiding said statistics. I've seen some statistics cited in scholarly research, I myself became aware of this issue as I cited stats for WikiProject Popculture assessment a while back, wanted to update the numbers - and found that they are gone, and there's no way (that I am aware) to get information such as "list of all start-class articles assessed by that project" - maybe it's doable with Wikidata, I am unsure, but it was much easier before).
since assessment relies on category system, it's possible that this is producing fake results for assessment statistics, as there are some articles where there is no other quality assessment than that of the inactive wikiprojects. Example: Marquis de Sade in popular culture. Such articles may suddenly become reclassified as unassessed as the perfectly fine former assessments by the projects declared as inactive become disconnected (they exists on article's talk pages, but is no longer tied to the category system). This likely affects thousands if not tens of thousands article, ex. WikiProject Popculture had over 3k assessed articles before the statistics were hidden/deleted (see last matrix before the destruction). I am unable to determine the number of such articles (with assessments only from inactive WikiProjects, no longer connected to categories), but it is likely not insiginificant.
The simplest way to do this would presumably be to edit Template:Inactive WikiProject banner so that it produces categories in the same way Template:WPBannerMeta does. A wider point is that a simpler process is needed to shift inactive Wikiprojects into places that receive a few more eyes, perhaps by turning them into taskforces of larger projects. CMD (talk) 07:30, 10 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I've tried to merge a project before, but found the process cumbersome. The template merging is a particularly tricky issue given the interactions with categories and the like. CMD (talk) 13:58, 12 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It is very true, the process is really very difficult. I made so many mistakes in my first attempt. At least, I now know what things not to do. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X})15:01, 12 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for the ping Piotrus. Indeed, the removal of quality & importance data of inactive WikiProjects only help in losing useful stats, with no upside. This also makes it incredibly difficult for an interested editor to reactivate the project because they need to start from scratch, unable to build upon the work by their predecessors as everything is deleted. Merging inactive projects as task forces of larger projects might be a good idea where feasible, see WP:WikiProject Dutch municipalities for example which I merged earlier in the year following a talk page discussion. But outright deletion of such project stats does more harm than favour. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X})08:29, 10 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
There are two quite different types of assessment:
Quality assessment refers to organization, readability, completeness, citations, links etc. and is project-independent
Importance assessment refers to how central the article is to coverage of the project's subject
Removing categories for project-related quality or importance assessments is completely unjustified, assuming the assessments are reasonably accurate. Even is the project is inactive, it is useful to see stats on articles that belong to the project. So yes, all assessment categories and associated pages of inactive WikiProjects need to be restored. Aymatth2 (talk) 14:02, 10 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The "importance" categories generally are fairly useless and not worth the bandwidth. Arguably tagging a newbie article as "low priority" makes importance assessment a net negative. Quality assessments have nothing to do with WikiProjects anymore (except perhaps MilHist, but that is a fairly active, hence atypical project), so they should be moved out of the project banners. —Kusma (talk) 14:15, 10 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
To return to Piotrus' original point, we should certainly always display article quality ratings, independent of whether the corresponding project is "active" or not. Many projects were founded not because of editor interest, but only to provide a framework for quality assessment. Unsurprisingly, many of these projects aren't very active, but that is no reason not to display quality ratings. —Kusma (talk) 14:19, 10 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Personally I think that importance ratings are okay because it, in theory, helps to streamline efforts to improve an article to FA/GA status. For example, if an editor interested in computer software were to put in effort to get an FA, they may start with the High-importance software article, rather than the low-importance one. So, I'd not want to remove them totally. However, several WikiProjects have a local consensus to not use importance ratings and that is respected, as their templates lack this functionality. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X})16:00, 10 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
In theory, Top-Importance helps people focus on the right articles to work on (haven't seen this happen in practice, ever). In practice, Low-Importance gives newbies a kick in the teeth. In the last 15 years, I haven't been made aware of a theoretical or practical use of Mid-Importance or High-Importance. —Kusma (talk) 17:06, 10 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, this does happen, sometimes. I'm not sure how you think you would "see" this, short of a specific discussion on a project talk page (which also has been known to happen). Not that I disagree that that both ratings are little used, and people whio spend lots of time updating them are largely wasting their effort. Johnbod (talk) 18:32, 10 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
While in theory low/mid/high might have some use, they are of little importance and consequence. I think we all however agree that the quality assessments are useuful. Let's not get side tracket into the discussion of the marginal importance of the, well, importance ratings... Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here07:59, 12 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
While in theory importance ratings help editors prioritise which articles they work on, does this ever happen in practice? If an editor is sufficiently interested in a subject to bring articles up to GA, let alone FA, I would imagine that if they are concerned about article importance at all, they will be making their own subjective assessment, rather than relying on what is fundamentally the subjective assessment of some random person often a decade or more ago, some of which are frankly bizarre – looking at articles I have nominated for GA, Neaira (hetaira) is listed as high importance to WikiProject Greece, while Women in Classical Athens is low importance to the same WikiProject! I've never encountered anyone who was put off of writing about a subject they were interested in because someone had tagged it low importance, or who had started improving an article because it was tagged top importance. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 17:37, 10 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I've basically been ignoring both the importance and quality ratings for several years, now. Even when I was adding project banners to talk pages, I never rated an article as anything other than 'stub' or 'start'. GA and FA are based on formal reviews, but the other, intermediate, ratings I have always seen as highly subjective, as are the importance ratings. I only follow the projects I belong to for things like notices of AfDs and discussions about problems with articles within the projects' scopes. - Donald Albury15:18, 10 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
C- and B-class aren't really arbitrary, but there can be wide variation, some of which seems to be due to a reluctance to make major changes to outdated ratings. Even if it really is a B-class article, if it was previously tagged as a Start-class article, editors worry that perhaps the other guy knew more about it than they do.
I think the stub ratings should be applied by bot (mw:ORES has basically no false positives for stubs, though it does skip a few that are on the border between stub and Start), and that anything currently rated C-class or higher that the bot thinks is a stub should be flagged for manual review. Sending a bot around would halve the unassessed-article backlog. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:13, 10 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Assessments are often not based on the guidelines. A high quality and complete article will rarely get assessed higher than start/low if it is short. But that is a different issue. The question here is whether wikiproject assessment categories should be removed if the project becomes inactive. I can see no reason to make it harder to find Stub-Class Ruritania articles or Low-importance Ruritania articles just because not much is happening with Wikiproject Ruritania. Aymatth2 (talk) 13:57, 11 December 2022 (UTC)]][reply]
@Wakelamp: The 350-odd inactive wikiprojects may include tens or hundreds of thousands of articles. They were assigned to categories by the project templates, but now the templates have been changed to disable the category assignment, That is the issue being discussed here. Aymatth2 (talk) 00:03, 6 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
FWIW, years ago I took the time to review the ratings of a number of stub-Class articles for one of the WikiProjects, & found about a quarter could reasonably be considered "start" quality, & another 10% even higher quality. So the oft-bemoaned issue that about half of all Wikipedia articles are stubs may be wrong, & the true number of stubs is closer to a third -- not great, but not as bad as many people believe. -- llywrch (talk) 21:22, 17 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Piotrus Another thing that might go into limbo is the log file of class changes . It only goes back 7 days though. For academics couldn't they just data mine the last time the article had a project? Or use wikidata?
@Llywrch "So the oft-bemoaned issue that about half of all Wikipedia articles are stubs may be wrong, & the true number of stubs is closer to a third -" Do many articles actually get reclassified? There doesn't see to be anyway to see a project's process in improving class and importance over time? (Aside : I just found out that [[Wikipedia:Content assessment| "assessing an article as "A-Class" generally requires the agreement of at least two editors"]) Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 11:13, 5 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Wakelamp Re: "For academics couldn't they just data mine the last time the article had a project? Or use wikidata?". Maybe. If they have the right skills. I don't and for my research I reply on WikiProject statistics, and when they are deleted, I am at a loss of what to do. For example, in a paper I am writing I had some statistics about WikiProject Popular Culture, I wanted to update them - but I cannot. And this can be of interest to readers; in another article I have recently written (see wikiversity:WikiJournal Preprints/Where experts and amateurs meet: the ideological hobby of medical volunteering on Wikipedia), a reviewer just asked for some statistics related to WikiProject Medicine. I was able to add/update those b/c that project is still active, but the paper on popular culture cites a year-old statistics that can no longer be udpated or refined with my skills, not until the system I am familiar with is restored. I hope that gives you an idea of the trouble the current (totally pointless) deletion of data is having on some research. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here12:16, 5 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
There should be a technical fix to make {{Inactive WikiProject banner}} simply display the "Inactive project" warning and then invoke {{WPBannerMeta}} to display the normal project parameters. I do not see an easy way to recreate all the deleted categories.
One way to get the missing categories is to ask an admin for a WP:REFUND. Given that there are 10K possible pages involved, it would be much nicer if it could be managed by bot.
The easiest way would be to add the |inactive= parameter to {{WPBannerMeta}} and deprecating the {{Inactive WikiProject banner}}. I can add a edit request for it. Although, I was wondering if the language could be improved in a way that encourages the banner reader to reactivate the project, or should the language be kept as it is. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X})21:35, 17 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The easy way to recreate the 10k categories would be to authorise a bot to do it. Or authorise an WP:ADMINBOT to WP:REFUND them to preserve history. ADMINBOT requires Village Pump consensus though, which we can gather in a subsection if needed. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X})21:40, 17 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The entire concept of inactive projects is IMHO wrong, but that's a discussion for a different issue. For now, the key point is that assessment infrastructure should not be affected by the activity of a wikiproject.. Depraciating Inactive WikiProject banner is a good idea, there is no need for asessement banner to inform at all about the status of a project. And yes, we probably need an ADMINBOT to REFUND all these categories. It would be nice if one of the people responsible for creating this, well, problem (i.e. deleting stuff for no good reason and with no policy justification), would step up to help. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here11:07, 18 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps this is a discussion for a different place, but a WikiProject is a group of editors who want to work together to improve Wikipedia (and not, e.g., a collection of articles or other pages). Of course a group of people can become inactive. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:42, 19 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Suggest reconsider. Many WikiProjects have been set up by a single editor and have never gained traction. Some relate to a single TV programme, game, university or foodstuff. Examples include: Wikipedia:WikiProject Bacon, Wikipedia:WikiProject Warhammer 40,000 or Wikipedia:WikiProject Cal Poly Pomona. That does not mean we need to indefinitely maintain a whole tree of categories. Please do not blindly restore categories of all inactive projects; I believe this would have little value and just add to the clutter of categories at the bottom of the page. Instead we could work on selective restoration, which could be triggered by a parameter in Template:Inactive WikiProject banner? Better still if a group of interested editors want to revive a project, then we can just switch it back to active again. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:03, 19 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Those projects should be merged, but all articles covered by them should have quality ratings displayed. Of course, the better solution would be to stop pretending that quality ratings are related to WikiProjects. —Kusma (talk) 10:24, 19 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
PetScan can do category intersection. I think the idea is viable, but it would be a major change for the project and we'd need to make sure all the tools and bots can handle it. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:48, 20 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I suspect it will involve moving the classification coding to the banner template instead. For example {{WPBS|class=C|projects=Castles,Netherlands,Middle Ages}} — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:12, 22 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Kusma "Of course, the better solution would be to stop pretending that quality ratings are related to WikiProjects. " A fair point. I rate articles all across Wikipedia (for stub/start/C classes at least), without being a member of most related projects. And for example the inexistence of assessment template Wikipedia:WikiProject Music is quite annoying when it comes to assessing generic music topics, for example (I think we can use assessment for "Music theory" instead, but seriously, that's a pointless split). In either case, my immediate concern is restoring visibility of assessments that have been hidden/disconnected from the main assessment scheme when associated projects have been declared inactive. Btw, a quick check (@MSGJ) shows that Bacon WP never did any assessments, WH40K did some but they have been hidden once the project was declared inactive last year, ditto for the "Cal Poly Pomona". I fully support merge of such projects, but any assessments done under their banners should not be lost. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here12:37, 22 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Is this because you are worried that some articles will not have any assessment, if these ones are hidden? For example are there any games articles which are not now in any assessment category? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:10, 22 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@MSGJ Yes, to your first question (although this is not the only reason, it's arguably the most important for the project). As for the second question, hard to be sure since links backs are broken. If there were game projects which becsame obsolete, it is likely some of them had assessed articles to which nobody added a broader game project assessment, and once they were shut down this became de facto unassessed, just like with that popculure de Sade example. It would take a lot of work to find some examples, as I don't know how to get a list of articles assessed by a defunct WikiProject since the infrastructure that did so (generated such lists) was destroyed. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here04:37, 28 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
PS. I can tell you only that WH40K project assessed 158 articles, CPP, 60, and Bacon, 451 (I guess I was wrong with my first assessment). I did, actually, figure out a way to see the list of all articles assessed by a project, backtracking from the still existing WikiProject assessment templates (ex. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:WikiProject_Warhammer_40,000 for WH40K). But to see which ones have assessments only from a given WikiProject would require manual checking one by one or running a Wikidata querry that's beyond my ability to write. That said, here you go: Eldar (Warhammer 40,000), Ork (Warhammer 40,000), T'au Empire - game related articles, assessed within that project, now no longer linked to any assessment categories. I just "restored" the rating for Battle for Armageddon, adding a Board Games WikiProject banner there, but I have no time or will to manually look through hundreds of articles from just three WikiProjects, and the counts by other above suggest we likely have tens if not hundreds of articles to double check for lost ratings... Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here04:45, 28 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
If assessments have been lost then I agree this is a concern for the project. I may seek technical advice on how we can track down any other articles which have lost their assessments due to inactive project banners. I am confident there will be an easy way to do this; then we will know how urgent the problem is. I will be happy to work with you and others on this issue in 2023, but don't underestimate the scale of the task, especially if we push ahead with the "single assessment rating" idea — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 17:43, 29 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I was interested to see if the PageAssessments database still held the assessment. [1] shows that it remembers the project (Warhammer 40,000) but unfortunately does not hold the class anymore. It looks like the database refreshes itself occasionally and if the banner is no longer there, then the class is removed. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:58, 29 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@MSGJ Indeed. I think we could get the answer through Wikidata. I cannot write a complex query like this, but wikidata has a query writing volunteer section. Think you could ask there if a query can list the number of articles with assessments only for WikiProjects marked as defunct? Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here09:43, 5 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I think the assessment of WikiProject Bacon as never gaining traction when they held multiple yearly installments of competitions with active participants is inaccurate. They may be dead now, but that doesn't mean they were always dead.I do think the WikiProject process could be overhauled. I think it's accurate to say most WikiProjects are dead and a lot of "active" ones are simply categories with a fancy coat of paint. I can only name like, three WikiProjects I'd actually consider active. (For the record: MILHIST, VG, and U.S. Roads. But I'm not a WikiProject expert by any means and I'm sure there's more I don't know about.) One minor change I'd personally make is to say something like WikiProjects can't be created without (three, five, some number) people affirming that they'll join it. casualdejekyll12:42, 5 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I don't agree there's a consensus. A bunch of editors from a particular discussion were pinged, a discussion on VPM (not an active board by any means) was opened up a few weeks ago, and there's a festive period during which a lot of editors are more inactive. I know there have been past discussions on cleaning up inactive WikiProjects, which I think is a pretty supported task. I personally support that cleanup. If we're being realistic, 95%+ of these dead WikiProjects are not getting revived, in line with the general trend that is our editorbase is getting smaller not bigger. WP 1.0 is not really relevant anymore, and aside from a number of well-managed WikiProjects most are pretty useless at this point except from being good topical noticeboards. I think cleanup and merging of inactive WikiProjects is appropriate, although I'm not sure how useful of a task it is, but perceived usefulness isn't a reason against doing a task which is good. As for the comment above about "quality assessments being independent per WikiProject" - while that may be true in theory, because the WikiProject template supports this, it's not really in practice. The same person usually does mass-assessment, and for most articles the quality indicators are the same for all projects, and the priority indicators were set by the same person too and usually arbitrarily. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 22:15, 29 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@ProcrastinatingReader I am afraid you are missing the point. This not about restoring inactive WikiProjects - nobody is advocating for that. This about restoring their assessments, which are no better or worse than other assessments. And indeed, some folks have suggested moving such assessments away from WikiProjects, at least inactive ones, which is in line with your reasoning I think. I really don't see what we don't have consensus on? Are you ok with numerous former assessments being effectively deleted, with no policy supporting depreciating assessments done by formerly active wikiprojects? Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here06:24, 1 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Are you ok with numerous former assessments being effectively deleted, with no policy supporting depreciating assessments done by formerly active wikiprojects? I think WikiProjects are mainly administered through common practice, and not some written rules?
But yea, I'd be fine with these assessments being deleted, if they were the same as the other assessments which still exist on the article. Then nothing of value is lost, and I suspect this is the majority of cases. If it was an assessment that differs from the existing ones, or if it was the only assessment on the article, then I think there's more of a problem, but I suspect that's a minority of cases. Moving assessment away from WikiProjects is something that makes sense to me, and basically reflects current practice, since assessment is generally done en masse (with few exceptions; MILHIST etc). ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 10:24, 1 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@ProcrastinatingReader The point you are missing is that they were not "the same as the other assessments which still exist on the article". There are some articles which had no assessments outside from wikiprojects that became inactive, so obviously, some value is lost. It's hard to be sure how many as nobody has run a wikidata query, but it's likely in thousands if not more. There is no good reason to waste people's effort that went into assessing them, particularly when those people are often not even associated with those wikiprojects, they just used whatever assessment template seemed most relevant (as I did on many occasions, as I assess articles in various areas and I know I used some now-defunct templates; I doubt I was the only person like that. Anyway, I don't think it's fair that assessments I did were invalidated because of a technicality that is not even supported by any policy anyone could locate). Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here09:41, 5 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@ProcrastinatingReader: Quality assessments should be independent of projects. I would like to see them put into a generic quality template. Importance assessments are project-specific and belong in the project templates. Winston Churchill was an important politician, not a very important artist. Aymatth2 (talk) 00:03, 6 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Improper handling of assessment for inactive WikiProjects – break
@Aymatth2 Do we need a vote for that? I totally support the idea, but generally we have a consensus here (for restoring assessments and for moving the quality ones into a single wikiproject-independent template), but how do we implement that?
However, I'll note that even if the quality assessments are split, they should still be connected to WikiProjects, as the active ones like milhist or med certainly care to know how many articles of what quality exist within their sphere. I am sure members of such project would oppose any split that would affect how the system works on their end.
So perhaps the way to do it is to keep the current system, but add a master template that copies an existing assessment if one exists, and if not, it can still host a quality assessment. This way we would avoid the trouble with upsetting the system that works for active WikiProjects, and solve the problem of assessments for articles that are not within the scope of any WikiProject (or active one). Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here03:49, 6 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Piotrus: We would have to launch a new discussion to get approval for separating quality assessments from wikiproject importance assessments. The cleanest way, to me, is to move the quality assessment up into {{WikiProject banner shell}}, drop it from the individual wikiproject templates, and make sure that all talk pages with one or more wikiproject templates have them grouped into a {{WikiProject banner shell}}. E.g.
I proposed this above and obviously support this when RfC is started but we need to ensure that it is technically feasible first of all. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X})16:47, 6 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@CX Zoom @Aymatth2 We do, but doing requires working, and sadly all of this is outside my competency. Overall, maybe we should first do the easy thing, which is (1) restore the deleted assessment system, and then we can move on to (2) reforming the assessment by giving the banner shell this "backup" functionality so it can host assessment information even if there is no active project associated with it?
Proposal to fix {{WPBannerMeta/inactive}} so it passes an |inactive=y parameter to {{WPBannerMeta}}, plus all the other parameters, and to change {{WPBannerMeta}} so it displays a note saying the project is inactive, but otherwise shows the assessments and assigns categories as usual. This seems uncontroversial and easy to do.
Request for a bot to recover all the deleted inactive project categories. But it does no harm to have redlinked categories on the talk pages until that is done. Worst case it could be done manually, 10,000 tedious edits.
Idea Lab for comments on how best to get the wikiproject assessment categories added to the talk page when the |class= parameter is collected by {{WikiProject banner shell}}. Seems uncontroversial. I may be missing the obvious technical approach on this one.
Sounds good on all of those. I think we have consensus for points 1 and 2, as they don't change anything (except recovering some content that was deleted without a policy supporting said deletion). And of course Idea Lab is uncontroversial too. Please ping me when you start relevant discussions so I can support. Thank you! Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here09:33, 8 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for pursuing this guys! And sorry I have not been actively engaged in the last few days. However I am not sure there is a consensus for points 1 and 2. I see significant concern that some (possibly valuable) assessments have been lost when projects have been deactivated. But recreating hundreds of unused categories does not seem to be the best way forward. On the other hand the conversation has moved beyond that issue into something much broader. If I may separate the two issues and suggest ways forward:
Inactive WikiProjects: the inactive project template could be made to display the assessment class (if available) but not to categorise. This will obviate the need to recreate all those categories. They will output the assessment via PageAssessments so any tools that use this will start to work again. I can sandbox the code for this and seek comments in next few days.
Single Wikipedia-wide quality scale: suggest starting a formal RfC somewhere appropriate on the single question "Should Wikipedia use a single quality scale for article assessments and deprecate WikiProject specific quality scales?" Based on the support shown in this discussion I expect this will attract support across the community and we can then continue with discussion about its implementation.
As I noted above, I am ready to help with the technical aspects of whatever outcome achieves consensus. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 17:12, 8 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds like the system is working well as intended. Hopefully the Lincolnshire project will be active now. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:13, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@MSGJ Why do you see a problem with restoring the categories? Without the categories the assessment will not be included in the project-wide statistics. Given that the deletion of the categories was done without any identified support in policy or even best practice essay recommendation or whatever, restoring them is a simple reversion of unjustified deletion (abuse of deletion process - deletion without discussion/policy reason), if nothing else. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here03:31, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Piotr: several reasons:
These categories were often created without consensus by a single (or handful of) editors. Many WikiProjects were not created via the formal approval process.
The topics are arbitrary and correspond to the niche interests of the editor(s) who created the project. They are not necessarily a logical way of organising articles in an encyclopedia.
Many of categories have been deleted without comment for several months/years, which suggests the deletion was uncontroversial. I do not think it is helpful to label these as an abuse of the deletion process!
We are talking above about divorcing WikiProjects from the quality assessment. The restoration of all these categories seems to be directly opposed to that movement. We could instead be using these articles with "lost" assessments to demonstrate the potential of a new project-wide quality assessment process.
Re: 1. Two wrongs don't make a right. The fact that a WP project was not created via the approved procedure (which I concur leads to many dead-on-arrival-or-soon-afterward dud projects) doesn't mean that their assessment schemes should be deleted. As I noted above, many assessments are done not by the members of a wikiproject, but by editors (like me) who assess articles from all fields they are active in without being a member of a relevant wikiproject, since there is no rule saying only members of a wikiproject can do assessments. Do explain to me why some of the assessments I did are now disconnected from the main assessment database? Why is my effort wasted? Because I used an assessment banner of a WikiProject that has been declared inactive, while no other banner seemed appropriate? This should not matter, my assessment should continue to be piped to the main database.
Re: 2. Yes, but that's not relevant to the issue of restoring assessments. It's like saying we should randomly delete categories because there are some that are very detailed while other, arguably more important ones, haven't been created.
Re: 3. I disagree - the lack of controversy was b/c it was a niche technical action that nobody thought through and realized it affects the wider assessments (as the people most likely to raise an objection were the inactive members of the inactive wikiprojects, and nobody bothered to inform the assessment folks at the other end that some data will be removed, or individual editors doing assessments, like me, that our work is being discarded).
Re: 4. There is no contradiction between restoring the old system and eventually moving to the new one (a move which I tentatively support). We can reverse the damage done (restore assessments) without reactivating pointless wikiprojects, and continue discussion on how to move all assessments to a system that won't care about associated wikiproject's activity. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here05:20, 10 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Absolutely your assessments should stand. You were assessing on behalf of the whole project, you were not assessing for a niche WikiProject. Therefore the system has been flawed from the beginning. Let's use our energies to develop a proper topic-free template that we can use to properly assess articles, and not waste time restoring dead project banners. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:40, 10 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@MSGJ I am worried that the latter task will prove too difficult to implant, either due to organizational interia or due to nobody stepping up, and while waiting ad infinitum for this to change, nothing will. Hence why I prefer restoring the status quo in assessment first. Note I am not stopping anyone from pursuing reforming assessment system, in fact I give this my wholehearted blessing - but I want to see my (and others) assessment, deleted/hidden without a policy justifying such a course, restored ASAP (with the additional note that restoration of said assessments, and thus correcting the errors in the project wide assessment statistics, is beneficial to everyone, at least as long as we think quality assessments and their statistics have value). Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here10:47, 10 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Okay I understand your position - it just seemed to be pulling in the wrong direction! I have indicated that I am willing to "step up", but you are right that project inertia should not be under-estimated. What do you think about my idea of restoring the display of assessments but not categorising? Do you have an insight into which tools rely on categorisation and which ones use the PageAssessments database? A possible idea (which could be quick to implement) is to create a generic banner template which categorises straight into Category:C-Class articles, so not attached to any particular project. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:29, 10 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@MSGJ I'd totally support that, although I think this should be a parent category to others. There is nothing wrong with knowing how many military history or popular culture or Poland C-class articles we have, and in fact it's a useful statistic for said WikiProjects and researchers and folks who are just curious about those kind of breakdowns. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here05:59, 13 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@MSGJ That one doesn't seem to be a problem - WikiProject Aliens is inactive but the movie is listed in several other projects, which are active and presumably pipe correctly to the main assessment system. The problem as identified mainly concerns articles which are only within the scope of inactive wikiprojects. Unless I am missing something? Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here05:33, 11 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Quality assessments should be project-independent, since they refer to how well an article covers a subject, regardless of which projects are interested in the subject. But categories giving quality by project are useful. Category:C class Ruritania articles is more useful than Category:C class articles. It may be hard for a generic template to capture a quality assessment and pass it transparently to all the project templates so they can add project-specific categories. But there must be a solution. Aymatth2 (talk) 14:47, 11 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
as discussed above, we should only take the quality assessment out and leave the importance assessments with the wikiprojects
this proposal will fail as active wikiprojects like milhist will never agree to give up their well-estabilished and functional assessments
we should not propose to "This proposal would take article assessment out of the hands of WikiProjects and puts it in the hands of the general community.". We should propose to "This proposal would create a back up system for article assessments that would no longer be solely dependent on WikiProjects, allowing articles to be rated on quality even if there is WikiProjects banner, or preserving such a rating if all WikiProjects associated with the article become inactive (currently such ratings are effectively retired). "
I agree with most of what is in that RfC, but this is too distracted from what we started this thread with: to restore lost assessments by removing/fixing inactive parameter & restoring categories. This change shouldn't be controversial in the first place. There isn't an existing community consensus to delete assessments and this thread at VPM is more or less unanimously supported. If an RfC has done, it should be done on just this one question. The quality assessment change is a separate question and can have an RfC at a later stage when we figure out how to technically manage it. Bundling multiple questions together also impact the participant's opinion on the other question. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X})17:21, 12 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@CX Zoom We don't need an RfC to restore deleted assessments since, as you note, there has never been consensus to do so, nor a policy to support it. As far as I can tell based on what Liz wrote (links at the very top in my OP), someone just started to delete this stuff for no identifiable reason and it became an action done by some other admins who assumed that it is policy/consensus supported. In other words, it's just a mistake that needs to be fixed.
Now, I do think an RfC for the proposal to reform the system/create backup is a good idea. Personally I support the backup idea (allowing hosting of assessments in a banner independent of any wikiproject), while I don't think the "take assessments away from WikiProject" idea will fly (milhist, med and others will crush it, and why shouldn't they). And yes, I am worried that badly designed RfC will focus attention on the "take assessments away" idea and end up failing, leaving the other, very good idea (backup), forgotten. Bundling all of this with the non-controversial assessment restoration would compound the problem, of course. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here05:57, 13 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
First can I dispel the myth that the action of deactivating these categories was against policy or consensus. There was quite a well attended discussion at WP:VPR that has been copied to Template talk:Inactive WikiProject banner#Discussion from Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) for posterity. Okay it was a while ago now, but you can see that several people supported much stronger actions including the complete removal of inactive project banners. So this was a compromise that was agreed on. Secondly, can we please separate the two different discussions going on here?? In this subsection I am trying to take forward the idea of a WikiProkect-independent quality scale, but you keep banging on about the inactive project banners. Can I suggest we continue that discussion in a different section as it has nothing to do with the proposed RfC. Thirdly, to the points at hand, I will reply shortly. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:10, 13 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for the link. I think there was lot of misunderstanding and generalities in the discussion, as well as general misunderstanding of how system works. That discussion was about decluttering the talk page spaces, but it ended up using effectively a nuclear option - and no, I don't see a consensus for that (only for minimizing the banners for inactive projects).
Looking at the few instances the term assessment was mentioned there, I see you were the OP there and you said "If the project is inactive then the assessment data is not being used either", which is clearly incorrect as the assessment data was used through being piped to the totality of the assessment system. One editor (User:John Carter) there already noticed the danger and opposed this: "I would very much regret seeing the removal of a banner if in so doing the possibly sole existing assessment of an article is also eliminated". User:Happy-melon, in my reading of their comment, likewise opposed "losing valuable data" by removing the banners (and only supported rewording them for inactive projects), noting that "It is actively damaging to WP to erase that data by removing project banners from talk pages... The more of the infrastructure of a wikiproject remains, the easier it is to restore and revitalise." Although Happy-melon specifically objected to the removal of the banners, not categories, I think the spirit of their sentiment is obvious and they'd not support destruction of the category infrastructure. The third editor who mentioned assessments, User:JimCubb, again supported adding inactive parameter but also wrote "should the project be revived, all of the assessments are there waiting to be viewed", likewise in my understanding implying they did not wish for the categories to be deleted, making viewing the assessments (in aggregation) difficult. That's for editors commenting on assessment. Regarding categories, likewise, I don't see any consensus for the deletion of the categories. Let's look at mentions: User:JimMillerJr expressed concern that " The deletion of thousands of now empty categories is a little more difficult. If a project is later revived, the recreation of previously deleted catagories could result in a mess at CfD." and later that "Conversion is preferable to outright deletion, especially regarding the categories on those talk pages." I understand conversion as merging or such; anyway, the editors I mentioned have been pinged and can clarify their thoughts (a decade+ later) if they are still active and interested. But, to repeat myself, I see zero consensus or support for the deletion of the category system in that discussion.
As for the RfC, I expressed my thoughts, noting that I think it is flawed in the current version (and will almost certainly fail). Oh, and nobody cares much about inactive project banners here, they can stay they way they are as far as I and I think most participants are concerned. What I believe the consensus for exists, however, is to restore the deleted assessment infrastructure, so that assessments can be repiped back to the global assessment scheme, instead of being invalidated by the project's inactivity. This is the most important and pressing issue at hand (fixing pointless damage done). Reforming the assessment system is frankly off topic here, and I'd encourage you to start a new discussion at WP:VPIL about this. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here05:54, 14 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
English fundraising campaign ended
Dear all,
Yesterday (31st of December), the Wikimedia Foundation’s annual banner fundraising campaign on English Wikipedia in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States finished. We run this campaign on an annual basis but this year’s campaign was truly unique. We would like to thank all of you who participated in shaping the messages and working together to better tell our story to readers and donors. Without you, the message would not have evolved and improved to where it is today.
Following the fundraising campaign, we will be in touch early in the new year to share more information about the campaign as well as ideas to carry the collaboration forward in the new year.
I am out of the office until the 16th of January and will answer any questions or comments after this.
@JBrungs (WMF) Out of curiosity. I read that the fundraising banners were to some extent rewritten per suggestions from the community. Compared to say last year, was there a change in the amount of donations that you think was caused by the rewrite? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 18:53, 1 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It would be a fallacy to ascribe the entire difference to the wordings. There is currently a war in Europe impacting economies all over the world, governments are in debt because of the huge costs associated with the pandemic, interest rates have risen steeply, and mortgage rates, energy costs and living costs have increased far in excess of pay rises (in the UK, e.g., some people are having to choose between heating and eating; workers in multiple service sectors are currently on strike for higher pay).
Lots of people are struggling; even those who are better off have less money in their pockets, and moreover may feel there are other, more vital causes to give money to. AndreasJN46619:24, 1 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Gråbergs Gråa Sång, I don't have any specific information, but Julia's out, so until she gets back with the real answer, I've heard that if you compare the original banners, which were being tested in mid-November (when there was a war in Europe, governments were struggling, interest rates and living costs had risen, etc.) against the recommended banners being run just a couple of weeks later (when there was still the same war in Europe, governments were still struggling, interest rates and living costs had still risen, etc.), the recommended banners were performing much worse. There have always been people who thought that there were other, more vital causes to give money to. Presumably, though, that number didn't change very much in less than one month, so the wording on the banner can be assumed to be the primary cause. I believe that the fundraising folks routinely calculate the performance for every banner variation.
The banner your source quoted was Jimbo Wales' idea. I would not be surprised if it performed much better than any of the community-suggested ones run on GivingTuesday.
On a more general note, I have been struck in conversations like these how much we revere reliable sources for article content, but for internal discussions, we ignore them, or even actively reject them. Volunteer-me has been hosting a million-plus-byte-long discussion in my userspace this last year about a hot-button issue. We have found many sources that recommend a different approach, and we seem to be no closer to accepting the recommended approach than when we started. On another subject, we seem to be willing to write in the mainspace, for example, that a dozen expert sources say that a phrase like committed suicide is stigmatizing (see Suicide terminology#Opposition to the term "commit" suicide), but when we're at the Village Pump, we insist that we must be allowed to use that in articles because in our own personal, unreliable opinions, the experts are all wrong. It does not appear that sources make any difference to editors outside the mainspace. In the fundraising discussions, I noticed that every editor who claimed to have professional experience with fundraising supported the old banners. Based on this experience, I suspect that even if we had a dozens expert reliable sources saying that the WMF's original fundraising banners were appropriate and ethical, and that the WMF's annual budget was appropriate and ethical, we'd still have a number of volunteers saying that they know more than the experts. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:59, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If you look at your colleagues' third-week updates you'll note that by then, most of the revenue difference between the November banners and the December ones had evaporated. I'd be happy to think that the remaining difference was due to people who were hard up themselves – the Thomases – not feeling they had to donate to keep Wikipedia alive. And I am pretty sure, come next December your colleagues will be able to use what they've learned to start the 2023 fundraiser with messages that perform decently without repeating the ethical lapses of the past. AndreasJN46621:23, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Isn't that the week that they switched away from the community-suggested banners to the one Jimbo Wales suggested? Also, that chart doesn't seem to contain a comparison to the original (mid-November) banners. Day 1 in that chart is GivingTuesday, when the first community-suggested banner was run. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 04:51, 4 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The chart shows the comparison to the 2021 banners, which were pretty similar to the November 2022 ones (2021 example, November 2022 example). As a matter of fact, the November banners already used slightly less urgent-sounding wordings (e.g. "support" rather than "defend" Wikipedia's independence).
I don't see anyone in the RfC saying the community should write and optimise the banners. (For that, the community would need to be given access to the daily A/B test results.) People were saying that they wouldn't stand for banners suggesting Wikipedia was in financial crisis at a time when the Foundation had more money than ever before, having more than quadrupled its assets (Endowment included) since that 2015 Washington Post report saying the WMF had "a ton" of money (it had $78 million then, in 2015, and reported over $350 million in 2022). AndreasJN46608:54, 4 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If you want to know how much changing the banner message affected, it makes more sense to look at when you changed the banner, instead of comparing it against slightly different wording in a significantly different situation (e.g., when there was no war in Europe, interest rates had not risen, living costs had not dramatically risen, etc.). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:05, 5 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Exactly, though by the same token it would be unrealistic to assume that the economic situation (or indeed prior reporting on Wikimedia finances) had no impact on donations at all. AndreasJN46609:02, 4 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oh look, a (WMF) account claiming that because people have experience with fund raising, they have a better grasp of what is ethical and what isn't than other people. No idea why we pay for such "community relations" drivel. Fram (talk) 09:26, 4 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
They know what's done in the fundraising business, just as nurses know what's done in nursing and burglars know what's done in burglary. Unfortunately, knowing the industry standard doesn't tell us much about ethics. Certes (talk) 10:16, 4 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It should tell us whether it's considered unethical by the industry standard, which I'd consider a better measuring stick than whether someone on the internet has an opinion, including me. Are you aware of there having been any ethicists in that discussion? There were none among the editors that I know. Personally, I'd love to wake up some morning and discover a scholarly review of the WMF's fundraising in Business Ethics Quarterly or Ethics (journal). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:15, 5 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
"Honesty: Fundraisers will always be honest and truthful, upholding public trust and never misleading supporters or the public."[3]. "Communications must be accurate and honest."[4]. Countless editors have explained what bits in the previous fundraising messages weren't honest or truthful. So yes, "it's considered unethical by the industry standard". Fram (talk) 09:10, 6 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I believe that those editors were working from mistaken beliefs. For example, some of them appear to believe that "hosting costs" are the same as "what it takes to keep Wikipedia online". Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:22, 6 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
And there go the goalposts... You asked about the erhical standards, and when these are presented you ignore this completely and start about factual claims instead, even those these had been discussed to death already. Bye, as it is still impossible to have a normal discussion with you when it involves WMF criticism apparently. Fram (talk) 18:56, 6 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Not really? A couple of people reasoned along these lines:
IF
keeping Wikipedia online costs only $2.6M per year, AND
many, many times that amount is in the bank, AND
the messages say that the donations will only 'keep Wikipedia online',
THEN
it could be unethical to request even more money under that set of circumstances.
This is perhaps more obvious with a simpler example:
IF
my next meal will cost $5 AND
I have many, many times that amount of my own money in my pocket, AND
I say to you "Please give me $5, or I won't have enough money to eat today. I promise I'll only spend it on eating today's meals",
THEN
it would be unethical for me to make such a request. In that scenario, I do have the money, and I am telling you that I don't.
But the editors are reasoning from a false IF: Keeping Wikipedia online costs much, much, much more than $2.6M per year. "Hosting costs" are not the same as the "costs of keeping Wikipedia online". "Hosting" provides space in empty server racks. You can't keep Wikipedia online if you don't also spend money on the hardware that screws into those racks, the people who install, maintain, and operate the hardware, etc. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:35, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Reply tool
I'm not sure where to say this, but kudos to whoever programmed the reply tool so that it adds my comments to the correct thread, even when I reply while viewing a diff. Serious thought obviously went into how stupid editors would be, and how to pre-empt them. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 21:59, 1 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Whatamidoing (WMF) I am still looking at conflict reduction (especially on user talkl, and I was looking at diff today for a revert. on the crucial issue of the [[Buttered cat paradox] :-). Do you think that diff encourages new editors after a revert to go to user talk, rather than article talk? My reasoning is that there is no clear call to action, and the eye goes to the Green column, and they then click undo, the editor name, or user talk.Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 11:30, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure that encouraging new editors to do anything is especially relevant, when the person being reverted has made more than a thousand edits. Also, they won't see the visual diff anyway, unless they've both enabled it in Beta Features and switched from the wikitext default. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:13, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The "new editor" was me :-) Thank-you for the advice. I turned off all Beta and cleared cache on chrome with CRTL + F5, but I still get the same when I hit the revert. Using Firefox, and not logged in I get this
Someone who's had an account for more than a dozen years and made nearly 2,000 edits shouldn't be considered "new". ;-)
The Beta Feature system is a bit buggy. For example, the numbers of people trying an item seem to only go up. I'd suggest turning on the things that you like. (at the moment, most of the things in the list are pretty good.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:33, 10 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Is it unusual to have a relatively new user complete a lot of edits?
Sorry if this is not the correct place to put this but I've noticed a lot of recent edits on a page I was also editing in my free time. The page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_S%26P_600_companies), and related pages, has had a lot of edits by a user that has only had an account 4 months. They seem to be making a lot of drastic changes in a short space of time. Is this something unusual for a new user? Pearsejward (talk) 15:02, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Possible explanations range from they're an evil sockpuppet to they've been editing anonymously for a long time and just recently decided to create an account, to it's a WP:CLEANSTART, to they're simply a quick learner. Is there some particular reason you suspect there's a problem? -- RoySmith(talk)15:14, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It's most likely nothing and I think some of your suggestions have alleviated my curiosities. I had just never seen so many edits done in such a short time. Thanks. Pearsejward (talk) 16:34, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It's often better to look at the edits rather than the editor. These seem to be useful sourced changes. I'd have done them in fewer, larger edits, but someone working through a set of documents one-by-one might reasonably do things differently. If someone was repeatedly adding and removing a space to game autoconfirmed, I'd feel differently about them. Certes (talk) 16:49, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
BTW, I'll add one more possibility, which is that it's a genuinely new user who is under the tutelage of somebody more experienced. Might be an edit-a-thon, or a school project, or even a new employee at an institution being trained in a WIR position. I agree with Certes; if the edits are legitimate and useful, that's probably more important than who the editor is. -- RoySmith(talk)17:23, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I've been editing Wikipedia for about the same time, and have certainly made drastic changes (most of them good, I hope!) Nothing suspicious about quick learners, or eager contributors; what's suspicious is people who start off immediately disruptive, despite showing great familiarity with Wikipedia, but that's not the case for this user, who seems to be doing a great job. DFlhb (talk) 08:58, 4 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
In addition to answers mentioned above, I am retired from my computer day-job and like to do updates (most days) to stay mentally sharp (oh, yes) & enjoy my Wikipedia time, so maybe the same for this person? Regards, JoeNMLC (talk) 04:33, 13 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
September-October Community Safety survey results now on meta
A few months ago, the 3rd Community Safety survey was conducted on your wiki. The results are now available on meta. We hope you will use this data to continue discussions about safety in your community.
The quarterly survey will be conducted again this month.
Your feedback and questions are welcome on our talk page.
It is now 2023 and the pageant Miss World 2022 has yet to be scheduled as far as anyone can tell.
The article Miss World 2022 is kind of in a weird state, because there have been a number of announcements of contestants, but no announcements of the date nor location of the pageant itself. It comes across as a bit WP:CRYSTAL to me. For the sake of good encyclopedic content, I think one of these options could be explored:
Remove the "TBDs" from the infobox
Draftify the article entirely and wait for an event to be scheduled
I would agree with the Draftify option as no detail on the actual event can be found besides the actual contestants have qualified and that was through other events. Paulpat99 (talk) 21:11, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Upcoming vote on the revised Enforcement Guidelines for the Universal Code of Conduct
Hello all,
In mid-January 2023, the Enforcement Guidelines for the Universal Code of Conduct will undergo a second community-wide ratification vote. This follows the March 2022 vote, which resulted in a majority of voters supporting the Enforcement Guidelines. During the vote, participants helped highlight important community concerns. The Board’s Community Affairs Committee requested that these areas of concern be reviewed.
The volunteer-led Revisions Committee worked hard reviewing community input and making changes. They updated areas of concern, such as training and affirmation requirements, privacy and transparency in the process, and readability and translatability of the document itself.
The revised Enforcement Guidelines can be viewed here, and a comparison of changes can be found here.
How to vote?
Beginning January 17, 2023, voting will be open. This page on Meta-wiki outlines information on how to vote using SecurePoll.
Who can vote?
The eligibility requirements for this vote are the same as for the Wikimedia Board of Trustees elections. See the voter information page for more details about voter eligibility. If you are an eligible voter, you can use your Wikimedia account to access the voting server.
What happens after the vote?
Votes will be scrutinized by an independent group of volunteers, and the results will be published on Wikimedia-l, the Movement Strategy Forum, Diff and on Meta-wiki. Voters will again be able to vote and share concerns they have about the guidelines. The Board of Trustees will look at the levels of support and concerns raised as they look at how the Enforcement Guidelines should be ratified or developed further.
As a reminder, the WMF refused to allow Community approval over the Code itself.
The Code itself is botched.
You don't have a valid enforceable Code until it has been approved.
No possible revision of Enforcement-Guidelines can fix either of those issues. You can't achieve enforcement unless the WMF has to go back to Step 1 and allows the Community to produce a better Code, then seeks consensus for that Code. Alsee (talk) 02:57, 13 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Hello! This is just a general notice that thanks to some fine work (tracked at Phabricator T321740), the Internet Archive Bot is now functional again and can be accessed here. It had been broken/working highly inconsistently since at least October. However, it may still have some performance issues, so be aware. —Ganesha811 (talk) 11:02, 10 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Census data in articles
I wasn't sure where to post this, sorry in advance if this is the wrong place to post. Is there a policy on the age of census data that should be in an article. I ask because Echols County, Georgia has a section with information from the 2000 Census. Mjrmtg (talk) 01:03, 13 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Mjrmtg: The article has census information from 2020 to 1860. If you think the lede is out of date, be bold and update it. Otherwise, please clarify your question. RudolfRed (talk) 01:29, 13 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@RudolfRed To clarify, there is a Demographic section and in that section is 2000 Census and 2005 Estimates subsections which has information that is 22 and 17 years old respectively. Is it ok to remove information 17 years old from articles? Didn't want to step on anyone's toes. Mjrmtg (talk) 02:31, 13 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Mjrmtg, census data over time shows trends, and that is encyclopedic content. This is supposed to be an encylopedia article that includes the entire history of the county, not a 2023 snapshot. Cullen328 (talk) 06:06, 13 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Mjrmtg policy, nope. If statistics are verifiable and referenced they may generally be included. You can make editorial decisions such as removing outdated information, adding "as of" dating declarations, or updating articles with new information. — xaosfluxTalk13:40, 13 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Obviously we should aim to include the most up to date information available. Older information, clearly stated as such, can also be included, especially where it shows significant movements, such as a growing or falling population. Johnbod (talk) 14:08, 13 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Meh… NOCONFED is an Essay, not Policy or guidance. Essays reflect the opinion of a segment of the WP community, but not necessarily consensus of the broader community. The only weight they have is that of persuasion.
Well, as it turns out, some essays are more equal than others. WP:NONAZIS seems to enjoy widespread endorsement by admins and non-admins, so you will often see it frequently used as block rationales or during deletion discussions. It's difficult in history to come up with a parallel to Nazism that is just as stark in its industrial-scale inhumanity and cruelty, even taking the history of the Deep South into consideration. As Hob Gadling said on the WP:NONAZIS talk page: Suggestions about pages applying the same exclusion principle to other groups such as communists or confederates have been roundly rejected on this very page, so this [so-called slippery slope] is not slippery at all.🌈WaltCip-(talk)15:53, 14 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
All of the mentioned essays are dealing with very serious issues, and I don't see any of them as being "more equal than others". Also, WP:NONAZIS was created in 2018, while WP:NOCONFED exists for barely six months now. Having that in mind, its not strange that WP:NONAZIS enjoy such endorsement by users, which was steadily gathered over the last five years. On the other hand, despite its short existence, WP:NOCONFED is already endorsed by seven users, as of now. That is much bigger endorsement than for WP:NORACISTS, which is currently endorsed by three users. Can that number be seen as an indicator that WP:NORACISTS isn't relevant? Of course not – over time, the endorsement for that essay will only grow bigger. Along that line, I can say that I am looking forward to see WP:NOCONFED gathering much bigger endorsement in the future, and to see it applied here with the same zeal and strictness as WP:NONAZIS. As for the (completely legitimate) opinion of Hob Gadling, and some other users as well, I can only say that we should agree to disagree on the matter. — Sundostundmppria(talk / contribs)07:07, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Cannot find interlanguage for links for Categories
Progress is recorded at the monthly stats page. Through 2022, with 4,526 very old (from the 2004–2009 period) and old (2010–2015) FAs initially needing review:
222 FAs were kept at FAR or deemed "satisfactory" by three URFA reviewers, with hundreds more being marked as "satisfactory", but awaiting three reviews.
FAs needing review were reduced from 77% of total FAs at the end of 2020 to 64% at the end of 2022.
Of the FAs kept, deemed satisfactory by three reviewers, or delisted, about 60% had prior review between 2004 and 2007; another 20% dated to the period from 2008–2009; and another 20% to 2010–2015. Roughly two-thirds of the old FAs reviewed have retained FA status or been marked "satisfactory", while two-thirds of the very old FAs have been defeatured.
Entering its third year, URFA is working to help maintain FA standards; FAs are being restored not only via FAR, but also via improvements initiated after articles are reviewed and talk pages are noticed. Since the Featured Article Save Award (FASA) was added to the FAR process a year ago, 38 FAs were restored to FA status by editors other than the original FAC nominator. Ten FAs restored to status have been listed at WP:MILLION, recognizing articles with annual readership over a million pageviews, and many have been rerun as Today's featured article, helping increase mainpage diversity.
Examples of 2022 "FAR saves" of very old featured articles
But there remain almost 4,000 old and very old FAs to be reviewed. Some topic areas and WikiProjects have been more proactive than others in restoring or maintaining their old FAs. As seen in the chart below, the following have very high ratios of FAs kept to those delisted (ordered from highest ratio):
Biology
Physics and astronomy
Warfare
Video gaming
and others have a good ratio of kept to delisted FAs:
Literature and theatre
Engineering and technology
Religion, mysticism and mythology
Media
Geology and geophysics
... so kudos to those editors who pitched in to help maintain older FAs !
FAs reviewed at URFA/2020 through 2022 by content area
FAs reviewed at URFA/2020 from November 21, 2020 to December 31, 2022 (VO, O)
A URFA/2020 archives show 357, which does not include those delisted which were featured after 2015; FAR archives show 358, so tally is off by at least one, not worth looking for.
B FAR archives show 63 kept at FAR since URFA started at end of Nov 2020. URFA/2020 shows 61 Kept at FAR, meaning two kept were outside of scope of URFA/2020. Total URFA/2020 Keeps (Kept at FAR plus those with three Satisfactory marks) is 150 + 72 = 222.
But looking only at the oldest FAs (from the 2004–2007 period), there are 12 content areas with more than 20 FAs still needing review: Biology, Music, Royalty and nobility, Media, Sport and recreation, History, Warfare, Meteorology, Physics and astronomy, Literature and theatre, Video gaming, and Geography and places. In the coming weeks, URFA/2020 editors will be posting lists to individual WikiProjects with the goal of getting these oldest-of-the-old FAs reviewed during 2023.
Ideas for how you can help are listed below and at the Signpost article.
Review "your" articles: Did you nominate a featured article between 2004 and 2015 that you have continuously maintained? Check these articles, update as needed, and mark them as 'Satisfactory' at URFA/2020. A continuously maintained FA is a good predictor that standards are still met, and with two more "Satisfactory" marks, "your" articles can be listed as "FAR not needed". If they no longer meet the FA standards, please begin the FAR process by posting your concerns on the article's talk page.
Review articles that already have one "Satisfactory" mark: more FAs can be indicated as "FAR not needed" if other reviewers will have a look at those already indicated as maintained by the original nominator. If you find issues, you can enter them at the talk page.
Fix an existing featured article: Choose an article at URFA/2020 or FAR and bring it back to FA standards. Enlist the help of the original nominator, frequent FA reviewers, WikiProjects listed on the talk page, or editors that have written similar topics. When the article returns to FA standards, please mark it as 'Satisfactory' at URFA/2020 or note your progress in the article's FAR.
Review and nominate an article to FAR that has been 'noticed' of a FAR needed but issues raised on talk have not been addressed. Sometimes nominating at FAR draws additional editors to help improve the article that would otherwise not look at it.
WP:WikiProject Years is plagued with infighting to the point where meaningful contributions to year articles are no longer possible. Virtually all aspects of year articles are heavily disputed in one form or another, and most changes in any direction are challenged by WikiProject members. Significant community input appears to be necessary, and any thoughts on the matter would be appreciated. Relevant discourse can be found at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Years as well as recent archives (Archive 14 and Archive 15). Thebiguglyalien (talk) 22:02, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Should Biographies include audio excerpts of an individual's voice?
I'm in favor of audio and video files on biographies. If we're excluding video and audio files, then we might as well exclude images; they essentially serve the same purpose. The only difference is that they have an audio aspect instead of just a visual one. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 00:05, 17 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
There was a project on WikiCommons to get people to pronounce their own names so they could be added to articles. I think we should support other speech as well. Rmhermen (talk) 00:31, 17 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Note the referenced discussion is specifically on including audio links in the biography's infobox. There is no disagreement with the standard method of linking to related media at Wikimedia Commons. isaacl (talk) 00:45, 17 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia:Voice intro project includes the line "Embed that in an infobox if possible". And Stephen Fry, one of the earliest[5], has it in the infobox. Now speech that does not include the person saying their own name is something else again. I would suggest that be included in the article but not the infobox. Rmhermen (talk) 01:05, 17 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
As long as these are free media clips, this seems reasonable, and given our disallowance for non-free images of living persons, the same would be true of voice clips (we'd not allow non-free voice clips on the basis that a free clip is possible). There's a few more gotchas to this, but zero problems as long as we are talking free content clips. --Masem (t) 01:19, 17 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Well the guidelines are within legal parameters governing sample usage and length. It is a good idea I think to make such application universal (i.e. covering both free and non-free sources). There is a possibility that over time 30-second samples of spoken/video materials may proliferate in any single article (there may also be technical aspects to this). I would also strongly suggest that there is clear guidance for media content be properly referenced with citations for attribution and verification just like text content. 172.254.222.178 (talk) 01:42, 17 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
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