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Hide TfD notices for non-autoconfirmed users

This proposal is unsuccessful. My reading of the general consensus is that it is a bit of a philosophical argument: support for the proposal centered around the view that it presents unnecessary clutter that only editors (not readers) would be interested in, but many participants in this discussion pointed out that theoretically everyone who reads Wikipedia can be considered an "editor", regardless of whether they have actually submitted edits, and that there do exist long-term editors who choose not to edit with an account. For these reasons, non-autoconfirmed users should be presented with the same invitations to contribute as autoconfirmed users. Keeping these notices also shows prospective editors that we are still a "work-in-progress" and that their added participation would be welcome. Mz7 (talk) 18:13, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

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

Following a discussion at WT:TFD I would like proposing hiding TfD notices (the default appearance shown above) from users who aren't autoconfirmed. This would hide content only of interest to editors from readers. It is very important that editors are aware of big TfD discussions since they can have wide ranging effects however and there are at times IPs or new accounts that make their first comments at TfD. I feel like the trade off here between IP input and unnecessary notices is acceptable, but I feel like this is something people who aren't TfD regulars should weigh in on as well. --Trialpears (talk) 19:29, 15 May 2021 (UTC)

Survey (TfD notices)

  • OPPOSE - While I sympathize with the intent, it ignores the fact that we have long-term editors who, for various reasons, continue to edit as IPs and do not log on with user names. They may wish to be participate in TfD discussions, and so should be informed of them. Blueboar (talk) 19:45, 15 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Support—I am sympathetic to the IP users who are actively editing, but (as I understand it) in the grand scheme of Wikipedia virtually none of our readers are registered users, and the number of IP editors who are regularly and actively editing is equally miniscule. As such, it makes no sense to shove these notices in their face and if we truly want to prioritize reader-facing pages—we should remember that. Aza24 (talk) 19:57, 15 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Support Most of the time this is a confusing waste of space. When a large template (such as a widely used infobox) gets nominated at TfD a notice is shown often across hundreds of thousands (sometimes millions) of pages, each with many readers. So basically we have millions of readers seeing a confusing ugly "templates for discussion" notice on the top of pages. As a TfD regular, I can say that IP participation there is not that high anyway. And unfortunately, if one makes the choice to keep using an IP, they need to accept the inconveniences that result, such as article creation limitations, captchas, being more subject to edit filter false positives, unable to edit pages due to semiprotection, etc. Compared to all those, this is a rather minor inconvenience. It's the same as the fact that users too paranoid to enable JavaScript have to accept that many websites will not work properly as a result. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 19:59, 15 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Support, as something that strikes a much better balance between reader and editor needs than the status quo, which (like many things) is too heavily weighted toward editor needs. Aza24 and ProcrastinatingReader successfully rebutted Blueboar's opposition argument. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 20:29, 15 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Support - largely per ProcrastinatingReader. This is just going to be an annoyance to most readers who aren't registered editors. The average non-registered reader doesn't care too much about the background processes, so we shouldn't be shoving background processes into their faces with notices. Hog Farm Talk 21:12, 15 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Support Honestly we could probably hide a lot of the other notifications as well. This is one of the worst in terms of spamming and use to readers (and many editors). Aircorn (talk) 21:51, 15 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose non-autoconfirmed users are human too. The last time I checked, making edits like this was not a crime. Unless it becomes policy to semi-protect all XfD pages, why should we deny them the right to see the TfD messages? If they don't see the messages, how will they know that a discussion is ongoing, let alone know that they are welcome to participate? TfD participation is low enough already without lowering it still further. Also, I'm certain that this has been proposed and rejected at least twice before. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:13, 15 May 2021 (UTC)
    Indeed, it has been. * Pppery * it has begun... 22:26, 15 May 2021 (UTC)
    re "why should we deny them the right to see the TfD messages"—because giving irrelevant notices to millions of readers every month overwhelmingly outweighs the needs of the few active IP editors. We are here first and foremost for our readers. Aza24 (talk) 22:58, 15 May 2021 (UTC)
    Not to mention very few to no IP editors participate at TfD. Consider this on 51k pages (with a combined readership of probably 100k-1M over the TfD period), this on every US SCOTUS case, this on 1,956,845 transclusions (later had to be disabled), this on 5k transclusions, this on all US legislation pages. None of them had any IP participation; this is the norm at TfD. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 23:10, 15 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose I fail to see what has meaningfully changed since the previous discussions I linked above. * Pppery * it has begun... 22:26, 15 May 2021 (UTC)
    Which is... not an oppose rationale? Because WP:CCC. And there are some IMO poor arguments in those discussions, for example that some Wikipedia editors read Wikipedia logged out, and hence we should show the notice to millions of readers(?). The idea that it encourages editor participation is also shaky. Templates are not an area where a complete newbie can go and can meaningfully contribute to a TfD. No, and what's more likely is far more people go "WTF is this thing? Why does the page look so messed up? What is a "template for deletion" and why am I being shown this?" ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 22:57, 15 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose per all opposes above.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  23:01, 15 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose, what is interesting or useful to anyone is not defined by their autoconfirmed status. We show millions of other maintenance messages to all of our users (and many of them are irrelevant to readers not wanting to edit, like {{orphan}} or {{Chinese script needed}}), and TfD is on for only a few days, not many years like some others. (And it is generally a good thing to remind people that Wikipedia is not a finished product and that there does not need to be a distinction between "readers" and "editors"). —Kusma (t·c) 23:14, 15 May 2021 (UTC)
    You just made a good argument for not displaying {{Orphan}} to readers (and indeed we don't show it to anyone when it's more than a month or so old), but that's a discussion for another time. Ultimately, it'd be nice to have a user preference for displaying editor-focused things like orphan tags or TfD notices, but until that functionality is implemented, autoconfirmed vs. not is the best proxy we have. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 06:47, 16 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Support per arguments presented by Aza24 and ProcrastinatingReader. ~ HAL333 23:55, 15 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose There are some IP editors out there. And sometimes participation in xfds is the first step towards more active participation in the project. We could just as easily suppress afd notices, and maintenance templates but we don't, why? Well sometimes they are useful in getting people involved or just getting an outside opinion, and these are far less intrusive than either of those two. Regards, 31.41.45.190 (talk) 01:30, 16 May 2021 (UTC)
    • Templates are one of the most complex areas of Wikipedia; TfD is not the best place for beginners. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 06:40, 16 May 2021 (UTC)
      • I have to respectfully disagree Sdkb, from the perspective of complexity in terms of policies/guidelines as well as unwritten norms afd is far more daunting. I don't dare to comment on those without reviewing at least some of the guidelines so I'm not spewing nonsense. OTOH I've dropped in on tfds without doing more than re-skimming the top of the page and I've yet to be accused of being a cir case or of making assessments based off out-of-date guidelines. Regards, 31.41.45.190 (talk) 14:11, 16 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Support solves more issues than it creates. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 03:16, 16 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose having these notifications for merge discussions with very common templates such as {{tl}}, {{talk header}}, and {{infobox person}} are annoying for all editors. For less common templates, I would want to see these notifications if I am not logged in and constructive IP editors probably would want to see them as well. There are certainly a few notifications that aren't helpful to readers, but I don't think that's a wide enough problem to justify this solution. User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 03:20, 16 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose the implication being that IPs aren't welcome to participate. SpartaN (talk) 07:12, 16 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose Displaying editor-related things to everyone is one of the ways that we are 'the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.' If you start hiding things because only editors should see them, you will end up with less editors over time. Mike Peel (talk) 07:47, 16 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose these notices do no harm to see. Should we also hide AfD notices? I think it's good to give readers the chance to know about any discussion impacting the content on the page they're reading. Elli (talk | contribs) 10:28, 16 May 2021 (UTC)
    Elli The comparison to AfD notices isn't particularly fair. An AfD notice is placed on one page where the outcome affects the article a ton while TfD notices can be present on tens or hundreds or thousand of pages with minuscule impact on that page. Here are some examples: Removing a feature that haven't worked for years with around 100k notices, change the internals of in language tags around 300k notices and infobox merge targets whose appearance or parameters won't be affected at all (30k for a currently open discussion over 500k when infobox settlement is involved). --Trialpears (talk) 10:51, 16 May 2021 (UTC)
    @Trialpears: I guess, the other reason for my reaction against this is for the same reason Kusma has said - In my personal fantasy world "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" means, among other things, that we consider every reader to be a potential editor.
    Is it a fantasy that a high percentage of our readers are interested in contributing? Yes. Should we hide the contribution-side of the site from them? Not at all. It's still in the site's vision to include these people.
    Additionally, I think a lot of TfDs do have an appreciable effect on their transclusions (for example, navigation templates). Elli (talk | contribs) 10:55, 16 May 2021 (UTC)
    Elli, we include AfD notices because they're of substantial use to non-editing readers. They tell readers that the page may have substantial issues, functioning as a kind of stronger version of {{Notability}} or other maintenance tags. They also help out readers who might otherwise try to re-read an article at a later date and be confused when they can't find it. These factors do not apply for TfDs of templates used on a page. The situation here is more akin to a major RfC on an article's talk page. There's no notice about it because it's not something readers need to know to be able to use the page effectively. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 22:01, 17 May 2021 (UTC)
    @Sdkb: we sometimes do have such a notice in articles, such as merge notices (which most readers probably don't care about), RMs (again, and these like to persist at the top of any controversial current event), and tags like {{disputed inline}}. Elli (talk | contribs) 01:21, 18 May 2021 (UTC)
    The point about RMs having limited relevance to readers is what motivated this whole proposal. I think merge notices and disputed inline both have relevance to readers: a merge notice signals a potential article change that might otherwise be confusing, and inline disputed warns the reader of potentially biased information. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 02:20, 18 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose. We should hide these TfD notices because, there are few IPs participating in TfD. So the solution is, to even decrease the already small amount of IPs participating in TfDs. Sorry, but this just sounds like something Mozilla would do. Don't repeat the same mistake Firefox did, which is to remove features because "nobody is using them".

    However, I would be open to any method that allows to hide these notices. I understand that not everyone is interested in such discussion, but this also applies to autoconfirmed users as well. So I think the best solution here would be to allow an option to hide these notices without discriminating against very new and IP editors. pandakekok9 (talk) 11:01, 16 May 2021 (UTC)

  • Oppose per Elli. We do not need to make it harder for readers to become editors. (I'm reminded that a certain former functionary's first edit was to a TfD he saw transcluded.) Vaticidalprophet 11:26, 16 May 2021 (UTC)
    I was told that former functionary was hounded for allegedly being a sockpuppet and is now vanished? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 12:06, 16 May 2021 (UTC)
    Indeed. The first-edit in question looks very 'convincingly' first-edit to me (it reminds me of my own early XfD !votes). Ironically, a lot of the criticism seemed to be disbelief a new user could possibly find the well-hidden realm of TfD... Vaticidalprophet 12:22, 16 May 2021 (UTC)
    So, just making sure I got this right, the opposition is arguing here that users should be encouraged to go to TfD because this is the encyclopaedia that anyone can edit. But when someone does that competently, we (with impunity) accuse them of being a sockpuppet. So basically the acceptable threshold is incompetent IP contributions to TfD? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 12:33, 16 May 2021 (UTC)
    The acceptable threshold is that the "guilty until proven innocent" way we treat new-through-newish editors as either CIR cases or socks is utterly bizarre and awful, and that we need to get over ourselves. I do not think hiding ever more of the backstage from readers is particularly useful for solving that problem, as it only makes the community even more closed-up. Vaticidalprophet 12:36, 16 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose because most of the opposed arguments make sense to me, and I am in favor of equal transparency for all Wikipedians including both readers/editors and registered/IP users. Huggums537 (talk) 17:41, 16 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Support, per Sdkb. The potential exclusion of a comparatively small number of IP editors from TfD discussions is far outweighed by the mild inconvenience to potentially millions of readers of having confusing clutter at the top of a page. Remember our WP:AIM: an accessible encyclopedia. Making thousands of articles slightly less accessible to readers for the benefit of a small subset of editors is contrary to this purpose. 129.49.100.55 (talk) 18:57, 17 May 2021 (UTC)
    I'm not sure why you are thinking that the TfD notices are making articles less accessible. It's annoying, sure, but makes the article less accessible? There are literally other notices worse than that and arguably makes the article less accessible. Inline {{cn}}s are one thing. There's the stub notice as well. Oh, and did I mention the {{more sources needed}} template? pandakekok9 (talk) 09:17, 18 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Support per ProcrastinatingReader. KevinL (alt of L235 · t · c) 07:02, 18 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose: While a grand idea there is a fundamental flaw. Since the "internet at large" uses registration, it is strange that Wikipedia fights against it so hard. I have to register on any place I go on the internet and cannot fathom how registering would place a stumbling block to "allowing anyone to edit". I would not have been hit with two unexplained range blocks (one global) if all registered. However, unless or until there is a change to mandatory registration we cannot tout being an encyclopedia anyone can edit and claim Any contributor to this encyclopedia, unregistered and registered alike, is called a "Wikipedian" and offer restrictions like this. Currently, an unregistered editor (IP editor) holds the same position as I do as a registered editor of over a dozen years. A few of us concerned with the politics of Wikipedia still have to consider the possibility that a reader might see a notice of interest and become an involved "editor" or that currently, although with some restrictions, an IP editor is still a member of the editing community and I am sure many do get involved in TfD discussions. Otr500 (talk) 12:40, 18 May 2021 (UTC)
    "Restriction" is quite a strong term to use here. We're not talking about semi-protecting WP:TfD to prevent IPs from !voting there; any IP that wants could still go there and contribute to the discussions. It'll be less likely they'll find out about a particular situation, yes, but see comments above and below about that being an easy tradeoff to make. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 23:50, 18 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose The notion that most readers aren't registered (or even unregistered) editors is hard to credit. Every other "for discussion" template is posted on its article or talk page to bring wider input to the discussion so it makes no sense to try and reduce that input for templates. TFD templates in no way shape or form reduce the access to articles. They are there for a relative short space of time and are much smaller than most FD messages. The fact that some find them aesthetically unappealing is hardly a reason to remove them. MarnetteD|Talk 14:36, 18 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose – I find the proposal confusingly worded. What does the last sentence mean (I feel like the trade off here between IP input and unnecessary notices is acceptable, but I feel like this is something people who aren't TfD regulars should weigh in on as well.? IP editors are often experienced editors who are signed out and who may gain earlier notification of templates they're interested in and qualified to comment on than if they were excluded from such notifications. Dhtwiki (talk) 22:53, 18 May 2021 (UTC)
    Dhtwiki If we only showed the notice to IP editors I would definitely agree with your analysis but we show them to all IPs. A vanishingly small proportion of views are from editors. We get about 250,000,000 views each day, assume the average person visit 5 pages and we have 50 million unique viewers each day. Perhaps there are 100 IP editors that may be interested in TfDs if they see a notice (I think that would be more than the number of IPs that contributed in the past year). That means with what I think are generous estimates we would get 0.0002% of readers that may be interested. That is several 100,000 readers who don't care about TFD seeing a notice about it for each person who may care. There are lots of things you could debate in this guesstimate, but I have a hard time seeing any somewhat reasonable method getting values other then tens of thousand of notices going out for each relevant one.
    My analogy here would be putting up thousands of posters everywhere in a big city in the hope that you will find one stranger who dropped their hat. Sure, it isn't a big deal at all seeing an irrelevant poster but would it be sensible to put up thousands of them? --Trialpears (talk) 00:30, 19 May 2021 (UTC)
    How many readers-who-are-not-editors access the talk page at all? How much does it cost to post the message in terms of I/O as opposed to *conditionally* posting the message with the added attendant processing (I know we're not supposed to worry about server-side performance, but still). Dhtwiki (talk) 02:56, 19 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Support. Can anyone think of a single example of a reader who we converted into a prolific editor as a result of a TfD notice? The inconvenience dealt to readers across millions of pages far outweighs any effect on editing. And who is to say that that effect is necessarily positive? It could be that seeing such a scary sign actually puts off potential editors, making them think that Wikipedia's processes are too esoteric for them to learn. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 03:51, 19 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose, solution looking for a problem. Stifle (talk) 09:15, 19 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose. With these reasons one could suppress the display of all maintenance templates for IP users. But they serve an important function even for readers: they make clear that Wikipedia is a work in progress, that it is based on community discussion is consensus, and that all are free to participate in it. Sandstein 13:19, 19 May 2021 (UTC)
    For the record, maintenance templates are applied on an article specific basis, usually give tasks that are not technically difficult or require extensive policy knowledge, and probably have better conversion rates. TfD notices tend to be over minor, often housekeeping, merges, often require knowledge of policy and templates, and are broadcasted at scale, and evidence shows do not invite participation. A more apt comparison would be WP:CENT and WT:MOS discussions, which are far more impactful at scale and not widely advertised to our readers. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 12:46, 20 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose A username should not be required for participation in any part of Wikipedia. IP editors should have the same expectation to be notified of relevant discussions that may interest them as do autoconfirmed users. --Jayron32 14:32, 19 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Support: Especially when the template is based entirely in text, lately Template:Rotten Tomatoes prose was nominated for deletion and as a result every single transclusion of this template, which is supposed to look like normal text, got tagged with a deletion notice. This is a big inconvenience to our readers who we should always put before our editors. versacespaceleave a message! 13:16, 20 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose O, ye of little faith in readers having the ability to ignore irrelevant TfD messages. Its an intentionally minimally-invasive template that takes almost no effort to mentally dismiss. I suspect strongly that this has almost nothing to do with paternalistically "protecting" users but that the real driver is a desire to not have to deal with input from the hoi polloi of unregistered users which are perceived as uninformed. If they are uninformed, inform them. If they post irrelevant input, give them the tools to make it relevant. This is pretty basic stuff. AfD deals with this on a daily basis and shutting out unregistered users there is an absolute last resort in cases of obvious disruption. This proposal would anomalously make TfD treat unregistered users as shut out by default. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 15:30, 21 May 2021 (UTC)
    I highly doubt your unsupported speculation. Speaking as someone who is both a regular at TfD and who regularly seeks out interacting with newcomers as a Teahouse host, the newcomer presence at TfD is so small that "disruption" from it is essentially a non-issue. Why is it so difficult to AGF believe that some editors care about usability and make related proposals? {{u|Sdkb}} talk 16:36, 23 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose per Jayron32's eloquent comment below: There are no such things as "noneditors". There are just "editors that haven't started editing yet". the wub "?!" 13:32, 23 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Strongest oppose per the insightful comments above, and especially the reader-foucused editing observation below. EpicPupper (talk) 16:56, 25 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose philosophically. IPs are human, too (was one at some point, can confirm). Unless one can present significant evidence of long-term abuse by non-ACs in TfDs, I fail to see what would be gained by the proposal, except the removal of some minor visual annoyance for some users. As for disruption, if one was really intent on doing that, they can just go directly to WP:TFD. I don't see what the proposal would even achieve, beyond giving credence to some editor's sentiments about IPs. AfD (and occasionally MfD) are far more prone to the expected kind of disruption, anyway, and when that does happen it's a simple matter. Hence, non-solution to a non-problem. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 19:26, 25 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Support any measure that would diminish the eyesore of TfD notices. For all of our readers and 99.9% of our editors, these notices are irrelevant noise. Ugly, confusing notices like these are more likely to dissuade new IP editors from getting involved in the first place. gobonobo + c 07:25, 30 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Wikipedia is a construction zone, and sometimes readers will see a little dust. That may even get a few curious as to how they can join in and participate. For the rest, the notices are neither common nor terribly intrusive. (If an extremely widely used template were up for discussion, an alternate means of notifying the community of the discussion may be reasonable.) Seraphimblade Talk to me 03:54, 31 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Many people choose to edit without registering, or have only just registered, or prefer not to remain logged into accounts, or would be galvanised to participate by a TfD. There are templates that I would've become active for before I joined - the proposer even mentions that this occurs. I also often look at WP when I'm not logged in (e.g. I could get fired for logging into my WP account on a work computer), and have in the past participated in a TfD later after seeing a notice. Why should we hide from readers that they can become involved? Why should they be ignorant that WP isn't in a perfected final form? We have no issues asking for donations or for people to join editing events, but a small line about a TfD is too much. Or are we just not interested in hearing readers' opinions? For people that support removing it because it's messy or noisy, I agree that it's aesthetically bad, but we can try to make it less upsetting first rather than slowing closing WP's doors. Oh, and remember that we have that pesky bias problem - this sure wouldn't make that better. --Xurizuri (talk) 08:09, 31 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose, i.e. keep the notifications. Modifying a template will potentially modify what the reader will read in the future. Therefore, even pure readers have a right to know what will happen next time. Pldx1 (talk) 07:59, 1 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Support TfD notices aren't relevant for almost all readers. This discussion seems poised to continue a disappointing trend where the desires of a tiny minority of elite editors are upheld, to the detriment of the vast but silent majority. – Teratix ₵ 05:45, 2 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose, the negative effect of normal readers seeing TfD templates is less than the positive effect of long-time IP editors being informed of TfD discussions. Devonian Wombat (talk) 23:06, 2 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose Every reader is a potential new editor. Plus, there are many long-term good IP contributors. Nguyentrongphu (talk) 12:59, 4 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose I think it's good to be transparent about how we do things. SportingFlyer T·C 23:03, 9 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose. IP editors and non-autoconfirmed editors are allowed to post comments at TfD. They're likely not always good ones but I don't see why the existing structure can't handle bad !votes and we gain a lot more by getting people into participating in Wikipedia. On the idea that it would be "better" for the UX from a reader's perspective, sure. You're getting more focus on the content by removing all project related tags or notices from the article. But part of our goal on Wikipedia is to blur the line between a reader and an editor so we get people to become editors. While I doubt there'll be much people getting into editing from TfD notices I also doubt that the even more minuscule inconvenience readers who don't care about TfD have to endure outweighs the potential new editors. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 07:09, 11 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Support IPs interested in such discussions should be systematically pressured into become editors, and this would work to that effect.  – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 12:37, 13 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Unlike many other websites, we're not in the business of dumbing down our interface to focus our "customers'" interest on the "product". We are very much about transparency and allowing both readers and editors to see what happens behind the scenes. If they don't care, they won't click on the link. If they do, they'll get to see Wikipedia as its best: an open community that anyone can be a part of that makes decisions collectively. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 15:45, 15 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose There's been a long history of VP pages serving as venues for those who believe there to be separate classes of people on Wikipedia. So what have those of "the first class" really accomplished, anyway? Sure, you can throw around that Jimbo quote about "the sum of all human knowledge" in self-promotional fashion all you want to. However, if you read this piece all the way through, you'll see that the sum of all human knowledge has been quantified and that this community has only accomplished slightly over five percent of that goal in twenty years. My decade-plus of reading a watchlist has revealed monstrous amounts of fucking around and picking low-hanging fruit, with little or no desire to seriously tackle the sum of all human knowledge. After all, that hard work is for "second-class editors", right? The "first-class editors" instead busy themselves trying to con people into believing that "we have all the content we need". What do you honestly think you intend to accomplish by discouraging people from becoming part of the process? If transparency is what we're about, that should extend to not showing contempt for those who look at what we're offering and either say "where's the beef?" or desire to rectify it. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 20:46, 19 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose I've been an IP editor on occasion, and as one I'd rather see these kinds of notifications even when I'm not logged in. Alex Martin (talk) 04:04, 23 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose This is a solution looking for a problem. --Khajidha (talk) 16:12, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

Reader-focused editing

I can already see the way this is going, and it's depressing. Systemic bias toward the needs of editors compared to readers is probably the most severe form of systemic bias on Wikipedia—it's snarled usability reforms on way too many past occasions, and it's rearing its head yet again in the main oppose argument here. Yes, this proposal involves a tradeoff between the preferences of readers and those of (a few) editors—it's a ridiculously easy trade to make, since IP participation at TfD is miniscule, whereas the prevalence of these notices is enormous. Plenty of IPs are fine editors, but a comment from one of them once a week or so is not worth disrupting literally millions of readers. Please, folks, when you weigh your !vote, keep in mind who we're actually writing Wikipedia for. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 06:34, 16 May 2021 (UTC)

  • In my personal fantasy world "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" means, among other things, that we consider every reader to be a potential editor. Non-editing readers do not need the "edit" button or the toolbox on the left. If they really don't want to engage with this, they can go to Wikiwand. —Kusma (t·c) 10:04, 16 May 2021 (UTC)
    • This. And the TfD notices remind the reader that Wikipedia is a work-in-progress, and always will be. Remember, perfect is the enemy of good.

      I also don't see how keeping those notices makes Wikipedia less usable. It can be annoying, sure, but unusable? That's a bit of a stretch. pandakekok9 (talk) 11:05, 16 May 2021 (UTC)

I'm a big fan of reader-focused editing. I don't think this is anything near reader-focused editing -- it's, like, one line. What I think of when I think of "reader-focused editing" is the fact literally every non-editor I've happened to discuss the matter with thinks I'm a rabid deletionist. Hate to think what they think of actual deletionism. (That is: reader priorities aren't only not our priorities, but they're often totally different to our priorities in ways that would give the average editor apoplexy.) Vaticidalprophet 11:29, 16 May 2021 (UTC)

I think it's completely fair to say that the bad of having an unnecessary and potentially confusing notice is many times smaller than the good of a notice reaching someone who is interested. The question is if it's somewhere around 100,000 more good, which is the order of magnitude of the ratio between pageviews of notices to number of non-autoconfirmed editors participating at TfD according to my back of the envelope calculations. I understand that there may be philosophical reasons for not hiding it but purely in practical terms I have a hard time believing it's justifiable to show these notice. --Trialpears (talk) 10:57, 16 May 2021 (UTC)

I find it unlikely the little bar that appears from this is what turns IPs off when simultaneously we have huge squares at the top of pages about citations and other issues in an article. In fact it's barely noticeable in comparison. I feel we are acting a little too certain maybe it's ugly and they won't like it that we're just assuming that's the case. SpartaN (talk) 12:03, 16 May 2021 (UTC)
That's how this entire interface is built - from assumptions and extending generally accepted principles to aspects of our interface. We can't commission a WMF research study for every proposal we make. It just seems like Wikipedians are more comfortable relying on assumptions when it means adding something than removing something. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 12:46, 16 May 2021 (UTC)
@Sdkb: if the support is about preference for readers, then where did the understanding of readers' preferences come from? Whether I support or oppose hinges on this: do readers actually care about these notices? I don't care if a million pages are loaded with a TfD notice on it if only 1,000 readers actually notice, 50 of them click through and the 49.9 of those who don't leave a comment either go "huh, I wonder how Wikipedia is actually written. Maybe I'll look behind the scenes in some other way" or "Boring, this isn't useful to me". I do care if 10,000 readers find it an eyesore and none learn anything from it. How do I know which is which? No-one seems to have any evidence either way. But if 10,000 found it an eyesore surely some would be clicking through and leaving test comments like "why did you put this notice on the Roman Empire page?" or "are you going to delete the page I was reading? I don't get it". — Bilorv (talk) 22:24, 16 May 2021 (UTC)
Some evidence: Every time a widely used template is sent to TFD/TFM, crowds show up to say "WHY IS THIS NOTICE HERE?!?!?!?! PLX REMOVE THE NOTICE IT IS DEFACING THE ARTICLEZ" (for some amount of capitals or another). Izno (talk) 01:02, 17 May 2021 (UTC)
Those crowds tend to be editors, not readers, though. Elli (talk | contribs) 12:53, 17 May 2021 (UTC)
Why do these kinds of discussions always get framed in a "think about the children" manner. Is their a scrap of empirical evidence that readers stop reading articles because of the TFD notice? Or any of the other discussion notices for that matter. Until well researched studies about people who are only readers react to these the only systemic bias I am seeing is toward the needs of editors who dislike the TFD notice. MarnetteD|Talk 23:25, 18 May 2021 (UTC)
  • There are no such things as "noneditors". There are just "editors that haven't started editing yet". There is no meaningful distinction to be made between "readers" and "editors". We invite all people who read Wikipedia articles to join in on editing them. There is no need to create such imaginary classes of people. The idea itself is antithetical to the very ethos of Wikipedia itself. It is not a finished product, it has no end point, and we don't think of users of Wikipedia as being either readers or editors. All users are invited and encouraged to help out as they see fit, and I find the notion that some people should be classified as "readers" and actively discouraged from helping out is just wrong. --Jayron32 14:32, 19 May 2021 (UTC)
    I'm very much on board with inviting readers to become editors, but the invitations will be much more likely to work if they're made for newcomer-appropriate tasks. Asking readers to try editing by finding a missing citation is good; asking them to make their first edit by wading into the infobox consolidation wars (probably the most frequent way someone would come across a TfD notice) is not. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 16:42, 23 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Sdkb hits the nail on the head as usual. In my view, the opposition to this proposal is the perfect example of Wikipedia's systemic bias towards editors over readers. – Teratix ₵ 05:53, 2 June 2021 (UTC)


Alternate solution to the underlying problem?

The underlying problem here is that TfD notices on popular templates (say, biographical or geographical infoboxes) appear on hundreds of thousands of articles. It is mildly annoying to see notices about some obscure merger proposal that doesn't affect the vast majority of readers (whether they edit or not) on every page you look at. Is it technically feasible to have "dismiss" links on TfD notices? I assume there are good reasons not to have them on every TfD (and on templates with only three transclusions, they aren't so annoying anyway) but could something like this be made to work for templates with more than 1000 transclusions? —Kusma (t·c) 14:00, 16 May 2021 (UTC)

Sure, if you insert JavaScript to load on every page to allow dismissing functionality. Something like with watchlists at MediaWiki:Gadget-watchlist-notice-core.js, but I imagine the intadmins might have performance concerns with that proposal. I don't think that's the underlying problem anyway; your suggestion is helpful for editors but doesn't fix the problem for readers. I mean yes a global change to templates can alter article pages. But so do CENT RfCs and MOS proposals and we (rightly) don't advertise those to our readers. A dismissible useless notice is still a nuisance. All in all, banner blindness of all forms is a mostly insoluble problem, one of the community's own making and thus no consensus process can fix it. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 14:22, 16 May 2021 (UTC)
Why does allowing everyone to dismiss notices not solve the problem that people don't want to see these notices repeatedly? My proposal is to treat editing and non-editing readers exactly the same. —Kusma (t·c) 14:43, 16 May 2021 (UTC)
I think the ability to dismiss these is an amazing idea. I understand the apprehension behind loading javascript on every page, but this strikes me as similar to the javascript we use to make navboxes collapsible: the implementation opens up a lot of options beyond TfD notices. Personally, I would like the ability to hide TfD notices because they can drag on and I'm not usually interested. But there are tons of notices that readers (and me) might want to dismiss like AfD or CSD notices. It's not even limited to deletion notices, we have templates like {{Current event}} that are informative but quickly become redundant---the reader probably knows it's a current event (since they're looking it up) and even if they didn't once they see the banner they probably don't need to keep seeing it if they don't want to. It also opens the door to new use-cases for existing templates like the padlock template {{pp}}. I've protected pages where there is a high level of public interest; readers may not understand why a page is protected and draw the wrong conclusions ("Wikipedia is siding with FooBar!"), so instead of using {{pp|small=yes}} which produces a padlock icon in the top right, I use it to display a banner which explains page protection and the reason behind it. This is rare (I think I've done it maybe twice) partly because it is incredibly intrusive, but if readers could easily dismiss the banner, the cost of placing it is lowered and we can be more up-front with our readers about when and why a page is protected (not always, but useful for things like BLPs of people in the news for example). So yeah, I think this is an amazing idea regardless of how this RfC goes. — Wug·a·po·des​ 22:52, 16 May 2021 (UTC)
information Administrator note Having to manage unique client-side data for each dismissable element can quickly get out of control, as every one would need a unique identifier, relisting would need a new unique identifier, etc. — xaosflux Talk 22:05, 17 May 2021 (UTC)
Xaosflux, that's why I would like to limit this to just a few discussions per month if it is done manually. Or hope for some of our amazing bot coders to work something out :) —Kusma (t·c) 10:39, 18 May 2021 (UTC)
Do you have an estimate for how many templates for discussion per month are for template with over 1,000 transclusions? If its about 1-10 this alternative sound good, but if its dozens or even hundreds, the burden on the developers/ intadmins might be too large for it to be feasible. Jackattack1597 (talk) 00:45, 20 May 2021 (UTC)

Time-limited display?

Another possible at least partial solution would be for an agreement that the TfD notice should be shown for a certain period, but then removed. For example, 24 or 48 hours of display would be enough to alert most people interested in such things and removing the notice after that would remove most of the ugliness. Johnuniq (talk) 23:11, 16 May 2021 (UTC)

This assumes that everyone who is interested in a given template reads a page on which it is transcluded at least once every 1-2 days. I don't think we can reliably make that assumption. While it's likely that someone who reads multiple Wikipedia articles every day will see a noticed that relates to all/most infoboxes within that timeframe, that same reader will be much less likely to see a notice that relates to say {{inflation}}, let alone someone who only looks at Wikipedia once a week. As a real-world example, I look at lots of Wikipedia articles (In the last ~3 months I've visited over 7400 pages on en.wikipedia.org in this browser alone), {{Use Commonwealth English}}/{{Commonwealth English}} have been at TfD since the 14th, yet I've seen a banner about the discussion exactly once (at Head of the Commonwealth). In the past theww days I'm unlikely to have seen a template relating to articles about linguistics, palaeontology, or flags, despite often reading about those subjects. Thryduulf (talk) 00:55, 17 May 2021 (UTC)
My editing runs in streaks according to my job. I may work 40 hours or 80 and I never sleep much so my editing time is all over the map. I was upset about being hit with a global IP ban (the second so far) so I took a break. When I finally get as trustworthy as an IP editor I am going to try again to get an IP block exemption. The point is that I can't keep up with all the things I would like to do so might miss something in a 48-hour window. I am sure this would be a problem for many. Otr500 (talk) 14:27, 18 May 2021 (UTC)
It already is a time limited display. It goes away when the TFD is closed. Editors lead lives in the real world that can keep them away from the 'pedia for days at a time. This proposal seems to say that if you haven't seen the TFD in the 48 hours after it is initiated you are out of luck in knowing about the discussion and your input isn't wanted. MarnetteD|Talk 23:13, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

Feasibility

Is there even a technical way to achieve this? CaptainEek Edits Ho Cap'n!⚓ 01:06, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

This is technically trivial: add the autoconfirmed-show class to the output of {{tfm/dated}} and {{template for discussion/dated}} * Pppery * it has begun... 01:09, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

Mobile users

It does.Gluons12 t|c 01:25, 24 May 2021 (UTC)
Yup, it does display on mobile.--Vulphere 08:55, 27 May 2021 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Consolidating help venues

Moved from Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)

AFAICS, we have a few primary help venues for questions of a general nature:

I don't know exactly what the difference between Teahouse and Help desk is (in this MP discussion other editors raised this point), possibly the former is considered useful for newbies and the latter for experienced editors? Though skimming the Teahouse and HD I don't really get the impression that these are really distinct in terms of questions asked. More importantly, my feeling is that Wikipedia:Editor assistance should probably be redirected somewhere, as that venue is completely inactive and mostly goes back to pre-2011, and WP:EAR should probably be redirected to either Teahouse or the help desk as it doesn't seem to have any distinguishing features from either. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 16:10, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

  • The latter two are mostly or entirely historical AFAIK. The Teahouse is for the newest of the new. The help desk is generally for more complicated questions, but not unwelcoming for people who end up there as opposed to THQ. GMGtalk 16:13, 20 April 2021 (UTC)
  • Broadly speaking, the Teahouse is designed for new users, unfamiliar with Wikipedia, its culture, and its jargon, while the Help Desk is designed for people who are more familiar with Wikipedia in general. Which is not to say that it works out so 100% of the time, but in general that is how it is supposed to work. As a result, a person answering a question at the help desk would feel free using shortcuts, referring people to technical documents, and using wikijargon to answer questions there; however the Teahouse is supposed to presume that the OP would know none of that, and strives to treat users as though they need to have their hands held through the process, and responders should adopt a tone in their response that they are dealing with Wikipedia newbies who wouldn't know how to read a Wikipedia namespace document, what a diff is, or what any of the terms d'art that we use in daily conversation at Wikipedia mean at all. We need both of those two help desks to keep that distinction available. EAR has long been moribund, and I'm actually shocked to see it hasn't since been marked historical. --Jayron32 16:16, 20 April 2021 (UTC)
  • The editor assistance page isn't a venue in itself but a place to find a specific willing helper. I agree though that the help desks are as good a place to find a helpful editor and make a personal connection. isaacl (talk) 16:54, 20 April 2021 (UTC)
  • I agree the last two seem historical. As to the difference between the first two, it's something I also wondered when working on user:Levivich/Help, which is my prototype attempt at consolidating new user help pages. Levivich harass/hound 17:25, 20 April 2021 (UTC)
resolved venue discussion
  • Do we have a good mapping of the ingresses to each of these processes that may need adjusting? — xaosflux Talk 19:08, 20 April 2021 (UTC)
  • I think our helpers are more than capable of determining what level of help to provide to users. I think combining the help desk and the Teahouse could be a useful turn of events. Experienced users shouldn't mind, and new users will be less confused. We have so many possible pages for new users, consolidation is key to accessibility. We really need to be thinking hard on how to make it easier to onboard new users. On a side note, calling it the Teahouse feels confusing to me. I wish it was just called the "help desk", which is self explanatory, but it should retain the cultural norms of the Teahouse. AdmiralEek (talk) 23:29, 20 April 2021 (UTC)
    Also, advertised this at the TH and HD talk pages. AdmiralEek (talk) 23:33, 20 April 2021 (UTC)
  • Planning to add some more substantive comments later, but people might want to take a look at Morgan, Jonathan T.; Halfaker, Aaron (22 August 2018). "Evaluating the impact of the Wikipedia Teahouse on newcomer socialization and retention". Proceedings of the 14th International Symposium on Open Collaboration: 1–7. doi:10.1145/3233391.3233544.. It has some useful empirical evidence about what the Teahouse does, as well as an explanation of its goals as opposed to the Teahouse. Vahurzpu (talk) 05:54, 21 April 2021 (UTC)
  • I support keeping the Teahouse and the Help desk separate as I have the Help desk watchlisted and occasionally contribute, but I would find it onerous to follow Teahouse guidance and explain every Wikipedia process in my own words rather than linking to the process and answering any follow up questions. The Help desk has a prominent link to the Teahouse and the Teahouse page should probably have a similar link the Help desk. Both links should probably be followed by a request to post queries in one venue rather than both. TSventon (talk) 12:19, 21 April 2021 (UTC)
  • Per TSventon, the Teahouse and Help desk should definitely be kept separate, and are intended to meet the needs of different types of editors, even if there is often some overlap. At WP:TH we strive to communicate in plain English, and in a friendly tone, assuming little or no prior knowledge by the questioner. As has already been said, WP:HD is shorter, more succinct, and often more technical in the tone, both in terms of questions asked, but especially in the answers given. Welcoming new editors and answering their questions in a simple, friendly manner at the Teahouse does make engagement with newcomers much lengthier, but, as has been pointed out by Vahurzpu above, research by Jmorgan (WMF) and colleague showed that the Teahouse makes a significant contribution to new editor retention - and that's what we all want, isn't it? It also continues to provide a testbed for research on editor retention (see this post by Maximilianklein at WT:TH in January 2020).
    I note that ProcrastinatingReader's question linked to a partly agreed discussion that they closed on agreement to add a link to the Teahouse on the Main Page, and it's there that the distinction on target audiences really ought to be made, though the precise wording would need further attention. I would certainly be in favour of that link being added, and the different active venues made clear. Of course, if a question at WP:TH is too technical for the poor Teahouse Hosts to respond too, we do sometimes refer people on, though that would most often be to WP:VPT - or WP:REFDESK for the off-topic ones. (I do, however, wish WP:TH had a better archive naming system, more akin to that at WP:HD as it would make it much easier for a newcomer to find their old, archived post when they're in a dated format.) With regards to any suggestion to merge WP:TH/WP:HD, this comment from Maineartists sums it up: "if it ain't broke, why fix it?". But, as for WP:Editor Assistance - yes, this probably does need marking as historical, and I note that Kudpung suggested precisely that back in 2018. But as I've never been there (who has?), I can't comment further from any personal experience on where would be the best redirect. I'm guessing WP:TH might make the most sense. Nick Moyes (talk) 22:39, 21 April 2021 (UTC)
  • I agree with Procrastinating Reader that the help venues ought to be consolidated, and I'm fine with marking the editor assistance forum as historical. One of the things that newcomers most often say about Wikipedia is that the number of back-end pages is overwhelming, so it is not good that editors are encountering potential confusion over where to ask their question in the first place.
    Regarding the point made about the intended difference between the TH and the HD, that's all fine and dandy, but the key word is intended. There are currently lots of complete newcomers ending up at the HD, and relying on them to read the hatnote and switch to the Teahouse if they want a friendly response is not working. We need to do a better job of pointing to the TH rather than the HD in all newcomer-facing areas, and making the latter a much quieter venue that gets only non-obvious questions from established editors. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 01:41, 23 April 2021 (UTC)
  • I was the main user answering at WP:EAR for a few years. It was one of the principal help venues until the The Tea House opened. My original comment about closing EAR down was in fact in 2013. I'm surprised no one has taken the initiative to deprecate it and close down all the links to it. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:12, 23 April 2021 (UTC)
  • In a volunteer environment, I think groups interested in an initiative should be free to decide how to organize it, as long as it doesn't impose an undue burden on others. In this context, I think the following questions should be examined regarding any potential burden:
    1. Are questions being asked and answered effectively?
    2. Are responders able to deal with questions effectively?
  • Regarding the first question, different types of venues appeal to different editors, so it can be useful to have a metaphorical teahouse setting as well as a more terse question-and-answer format. Regarding the second question, as noted by others, different responders may be interested in answering at different levels of detail. Is having multiple venues effective at supporting this, versus the tradeoff of some responders having to monitor several places? Related to both questions, if someone asks a question in one place that, based on the level of detail needed by the questioner, is better suited for another place, is that question still handled effectively (by still answering at the desired level, by smoothly moving it to the other place, or by other means)?
  • In short, I'd like to hear from the people on the ground: does having two venues hinder your ability to get appropriate responses or to adequately respond to questions? Do we need to have a wider mix of people watching the help desk or teahouse in order to deal with different expectations on level of detail? Is eliminating one going to actually draw more watchers to the other? I'm not enthusiastic about telling volunteers to stop contributing to a productive initiative, even if I think they could equally help another productive initiative. isaacl (talk) 19:46, 24 April 2021 (UTC)
  • I occasionally stop by both the Teahouse and Help Desk, and even answer questions. I wouldn’t call myself highly experienced in either. I do see a lot of overlap (but also much difference). If someone asks a noob question at HD, it’s better to answer them in-place rather than tell them to go off and re-ask at Teahouse. Vice-versa, having some more-clueful questions at Teahouse helps break the monotony there. If we did want to maintain a strong separation, rather than an intent, then we could move discussions from one forum to another, just like this discussion has been moved from VPP to VPR. But moving threads on MediaWiki is a bit more cumbersome than on some other discussion platforms. I do think we're a bit curt with people asking a question in both places: having two fora is potentially confusing and asking for help in more than one place isn't in the same league as forum-shopping across DR–AN–ANI.
    Both HD and TH are limited by the high volume and rapid archiving, especially Teahouse. I recall one new editor who was quite miffed that the Teahouse is presented as a place to have a friendly chat, but is in practice mostly a rapid-fire Q&A feed. If we were a smaller community, we could have all chat at le Bistro or the Beerhall, rather than compartmentalising it into multiple silos (VP* is a good example). This brings us to a practical limitation. Merging the two would exacerbate the situation with high volume of questions. And there’s also the nature of the questions: the merged Help venue could be overwhelmed with so much repeated "how i make new article for non-notable thing?", "my thing's not showing up in Google", and "why AFC take so long?".
    Talking about practical as opposed to intended differences, a big difference between Teahouse and Help Desk is the entry points. New users often get a big welcome message directing them to the TH.

IIRC, even some of our level-one warning templates direct them there.
– Pelagic ( messages ) – (12:45 Sun 25, AEDT) 01:45, 25 April 2021 (UTC)

  • For those wondering what the differences are between EA/EAR and Teahouse/Help Desk; If you take a close look, you will notice that many EAR requests are dispute/content related, something I think Teahouse/Help Desk either do not deal with, or do not promote being that they are mainly promoted as Q and A forums. Other things that are promoted heavily on EA/EAR, but not on Teahouse are the ability to contact a list of helpful editors directly and make edit requests. While these features might be technically possible at the Teahouse, they are not promoted in any way that makes them functionally useful such as they are at EA/EAR. Huggums537 (talk) 16:03, 1 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Comment. I've been active answering requests at WP:EAR lately. I like it because it's low traffic, but not completely inactive. I can keep it on my watchlist without it bloating to 100+ revisions a day, and I have a decent chance of being able to answer (before someone else provides a good answer, making the need for me to answer unnecessary). –Novem Linguae (talk) 23:19, 1 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Comment. Putting myself in the mindset of a noob, I know what a helpdesk is, I have no idea what the teahouse is - some fancy facility for the experts in the know to have a chat, I suppose. I know which I would turn to for help. Yet we do it backwards; we are so used to doing it backwards we don't even realise we are. I can see your replies now; "@steelpillow, the Help:Contents explains which and why" - except noobs don't read smallprint, they just go "Great, a nice blue help desk link >click<". Just a word of advice from a long-serving technical author and UI designer in the IT business; whatever you guys decide, a prominent clickable Help Desk button is what noobs want and expect. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 15:40, 23 May 2021 (UTC)

Proposal: deprecate WP:EA/WP:EAR and close down all active templates or help pages linking to it

There is consensus to enact this proposal, to consolidate help venues, hence the less active one is closed down. It has been suggested to redirect these pages, but there is no consensus as to exactly where. starship.paint (exalt) 04:01, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

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

  • Support No point in newcomers being directed to an inactive venue. Pages also needs marking as 'historic'. Pinging ProcrastinatingReader as OP. Nick Moyes (talk) 23:10, 23 April 2021 (UTC)
    • Nick Moyes, where are you getting the idea it's an inactive venue? The oldest request was the 16th, and the newest on the 30th. Huggums537 (talk) 14:32, 1 May 2021 (UTC)
      @Huggums537: Here are the figures:
      Hope this helps, Nick Moyes (talk) 23:39, 1 May 2021 (UTC)
      Yes, this does help because I can see the "inactive" tag was improperly attributed to a forum that is actually just "less active", a misrepresentation I wouldn't have been so miffed about if it had been properly presented as "nearly" or "almost" inactive. Huggums537 (talk) 10:57, 2 May 2021 (UTC)
      Ok Nick Moyes, I owe you an apology for harping about the "inactive" tag bit. Upon further investigation, it seems the idea originated from the original post of ProcrastinatingReader who said the venue was, "completely inactive", leading others such as GreenMeansGo, Levivich, and Sdkb to conclude the venue was of a "historical" nature. ProcrastinatingReader could you explain why you described the venue as "completely inactive"? I'm assuming good faith that you were referencing the EA signup page not the EAR project page, and had no intention to misdirect anyone. I also agree that page is not very active. However, I think it is very similar to the signup page of many other projects, and that it is not intended to be be all that active since it's only real purpose is for people to sign on to the project. Many of these project signup pages are not really that active. This is hardly grounds for putting any project into a "historical" condition, or calling it completely inactive when an editor signed up for the project just a month and a half ago. Huggums537 (talk) 12:31, 2 May 2021 (UTC)
      The statement is quite clear: More importantly, my feeling is that Wikipedia:Editor assistance should probably be redirected somewhere, as that venue is completely inactive and mostly goes back to pre-2011, and WP:EAR should probably be redirected to either Teahouse or the help desk as it doesn't seem to have any distinguishing features from either. It does not say what you seem to think it says. The last 5 registrations go back to 2018, and the last 10 go back to 2012, almost a decade ago. That's "completely inactive". ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 13:16, 2 May 2021 (UTC)
      @Huggums537: While they may not be entirely dead, there is still probably some calculation to be done there about whether we're confusing new editors by having unnecessary duplication of forums that have very little variation in scope. As already covered, there is a non-overlapping region for TH and HD. That's largely due to efforts like HostBot, that specifically target new users.
      But we're not doing ourselves any favors if we have so much redundancy that "where do I ask my question" ends up being somebody's first question. Alternatively, if you have links to helping forums far and wide, and a new user that doesn't know hot to use their contribution history, and can't find the question once they've asked it. GMGtalk 16:05, 2 May 2021 (UTC)
      I agree more calculations would need to be done because I very seriously doubt we would be facing any "where do I ask my question" issues. This is an irrational fear-based argument that has no basis in reality since the status quo has not already produced any significant amount of such issues that I'm aware of. There is no reason to expect that leaving the EA/EAR and TH/HD intact would cause things to change in that way. However, removing EAR removes options available to a user that are not available in the other help forums such as the ability to make certain dispute/content/edit requests. This is entirely useful for those who have no interest in a venue so vile as the peanut gallery. I recently discovered the joy of Wikipedia:Dispute resolution requests and found it extremely helpful to have dispute options available so that I could find a more friendly and suitable way to resolve a dispute. More options are better. See my bathroom argument below. Huggums537 (talk) 16:47, 2 May 2021 (UTC)
      We have lots of issue-specific noticeboards and general question venues. Unnecessarily splitting up conversation reduces good outcomes, both in terms of answers to question asked and in confusion to the asker. There's a legitimate argument that merging HD+TH would cause the volume to be so high that the merge is counter-productive (hence it hasn't been proposed). Same is not true of EAR. We have {{edit request}} and WP:DR venues like WP:DRN and WP:3O. If EAR is duplicating the work of 4 different systems, and doing so in an inferior manner, then that's absolutely not a productive venue. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 17:11, 2 May 2021 (UTC)
      The key question as I mentioned previously is whether or not the requestors and responders feel the system works well for them. I don't like telling volunteers that they should stop working in a way they find productive just because I think they could be productive elsewhere. isaacl (talk) 17:20, 2 May 2021 (UTC)
      It's not just because they'll be productive elsewhere, it's because having too complex a system scares off new volunteers. There's a survivorship bias in who actually makes it to posting a question, and many editors get intimidated simply when faced with multiple places to ask a question. While we would like them to be bold and pick one, many people are afraid of choosing wrong and getting yelled at so they just don't post. Duplicating work can be harmful, and if volunteer workflows are harming efforts to bring in more volunteers then yes I think we should ask them to learn a new workflow. — Wug·a·po·des​ 06:54, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
      Wugapodes, where is your data or any evidence to suggest that any such harms have been occurring with the current processes? I grow weary of these fear-based arguments rampant on Wikipedia without any rational evidence to back them up. This proposal is essentially asking that we go intrude upon a group happily conducting business, and force them to pack up shop to do business in places they may not want to, and in ways that are not exactly the same as they are accustomed to all because we think we know better, or don't like what they are doing, and all in the name of less activity. That makes just about as much sense as boarding up the guest room so nobody can use it at all since it doesn't get used that much anyway. Huggums537 (talk) 11:27, 3 May 2021 (UTC) Also, your argument suggests we should put a sign over the boarded guestroom door that says, "Harmful! Do not enter!" It's kind of comical actually. All this talk about "duplicating" work as if we are somehow going to be multiplying things just by leaving them as they happily have been is really absurd. The Wikipedified logical mentality mystifies me. Huggums537 (talk) 11:48, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
      If there's a problem with the productivity of one or more of the help systems from the point of view of questioners or responders, then certainly we ought to examine means to improve matters. I've only seen theoretical examples here, though, which is why I think we should talk to the participants for the different initiatives, see what they think, and give them wide latitude to decide what modes of operation work well for them. Regarding being yelled at, I think the ideal solution is not to yell at anyone, and provide reassurance upfront that no matter where someone asks for help, the request will be directed towards responders who can help. Imperfect world that this is, that might mean moving the request to a more specialized venue (such as the technical village pump for questions tied to MediaWiki's implementation, the reliable sources noticeboard for questions on appropriate sources, and so forth), which I think is manageable. isaacl (talk) 20:13, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
      I agree. Relating this to my guest room analogy above, we have to consider that in this case the guest room is actually currently occupied. I think it would be far more proper to get the opinions of the guests themselves as to how harmful they think the guest room is as opposed to suddenly tossing them all out under the pretext that we *think* it might be harmful, then trying to justify it by saying it wasn't used that much anyway so board it up and we'll slap a "Danger" sign on it to make ourselves feel better about it. Huggums537 (talk) 07:08, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
      If requests for assistance are still being answered suitably, the venue is still active. isaacl (talk) 17:18, 2 May 2021 (UTC)
      Agree with points made by Isaacl. Huggums537 (talk) 17:41, 2 May 2021 (UTC)
      It would probably be impossible to know. I guess we could look on the user talk pages of the editors listed there for any questions asked, but it'd be impossible to know WP:EA is where they came from. With ~150 pageviews per month, I'm not optimistic. In any case, the format is IMO archaic and inferior to newer systems. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 17:43, 2 May 2021 (UTC)
      Well, there are the requests on the request page for which you can see the responses and response time. If you're thinking about direct contact with helpers, personally I wouldn't call it an inferior mechanism: one-on-one assistance can be effective. In any case, I don't think a shutdown should be imposed. Feel free to have a chat with the editors involved and reach a consensus that answering questions at the help desk would be essentially equivalent. isaacl (talk) 18:45, 2 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Support per comments in section above. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 23:29, 23 April 2021 (UTC)
  • Support - ditto Levivich harass/hound 00:46, 24 April 2021 (UTC)
  • Support – very sensible and solid proposal that hopefully begins to address our issues with help venues. Aza24 (talk) 01:37, 24 April 2021 (UTC)
  • Support per Aza24. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 07:46, 24 April 2021 (UTC)
  • Support per Nick Moyes. EpicPupper 23:21, 24 April 2021 (UTC)
  • Support Assuming we haven't missed anything, this seems like a no-brainer. ElKevbo (talk) 02:56, 25 April 2021 (UTC)
  • Makes sense. ~ HAL333 20:36, 28 April 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose because this seems like a useful venue to me, and I don't understand why anyone thinks the venue is inactive since there are currently 15 open requests. I also don't understand why notice was given about this discussion on the Teahouse and Help Desk talk pages, but not the other two, so I will do that now. Huggums537 (talk) 14:32, 1 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Support it may have been useful historically, but now it seems to be an unnecessary duplication of the Help Desk. – Teratix ₵ 14:38, 1 May 2021 (UTC)
    • Except the Help Desk does not offer dispute resolution or take edit requests like EAR does even though they might be able to do so if asked, but it isn't offered as a standard feature, so it's not really a duplicate. Huggums537 (talk) 10:57, 2 May 2021 (UTC)
      • There are many other forums that offer dispute resolution (both content- and conduct-related). I'm not sure what you mean by "take edit requests", since those are posted on articles' talk pages. If you're intending to convey the generic meaning of "helping implement a suggested edit" – these are already easily handled by the Help Desk (example from today). – Teratix ₵ 01:23, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
        • Teratix, that wasn't the point. You said EAR was a "duplication" of Help Desk, and it isn't because EAR does disputes and Help Desk does not. Neither does Teahouse. Therefore this idea about EAR being a "duplication" is an incorrect assessment. Huggums537 (talk) 05:58, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
          • EAR doesn't seem to "do disputes"; one of its first instructions to potential requestors is that discussions related to content disputes might better be addressed at the dispute resolution noticeboard. But even if EAR did resolve disputes, I would merely update my assessment from "EAR duplicates the functions of Help Desk" to something like "EAR duplicates the functions of the Help Desk and DRN". My core argument would be unaffected. – Teratix ₵ 09:38, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
            • Except we aren't discussing the merging of DRN, we are discussing the merging of help forums. So, I think it's an irrelevant part of your core argument. Also, just look at some of the request history and you can easily see that they DO handle disputes. Huggums537 (talk) 14:56, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
              • I don't mind having a discussion, but if you don't accurately represent my views, you won't make any progress towards changing my mind. We aren't discussing the merging of DRN. I never said DRN should be merged. You can easily see that they DO handle disputes. I've clearly explained that the question of whether EAR resolves disputes is irrelevant to my core argument – EAR duplicates the functions of other Wikipedia forums. None of your three replies have actually addressed this point. – Teratix ₵ 02:13, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
                • I've been trying to address the point, but you're not accepting it, or I'm not explaining it well enough. EAR offers services that the Teahouse and Help Desk do not, such as those also found at DRN, and other forums. Since we are comparing and discussing the merging of help forums it is an invalid, and false equivalence to compare the services of EAR to the other help forums, therefore it is also invalid saying EAR is a "duplicate" of the other help forums. It is not. It is unique. It borrows from several forums. Likewise, you would never claim EAR to be a "duplicate" of DRN since it offers other services DRN does not such as help requests. DRN is strictly dispute resolution so it would be an unfair comparison, not a "duplicate". Just because something has similar qualities does not make it "duplicate". I don't think people understand what a "duplicate" is, or they are just throwing the term around far too loosely. Either one of these things would be equally sub-optimal. In a nutshell, I think the "duplication" argument (of help or any other Wikipedia forums) about EAR is an invalid one. Huggums537 (talk) 03:46, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
                  Once again, you're not accurately representing my views. I'm not claiming EAR is an exact duplicate of a particular alternate forum, I'm claiming it duplicates the functions of other forums. It is also invalid saying EAR is a "duplicate" of the other help forums. It is not. It is unique. It borrows from several forums. Yes, that's my point; it has no functions that are not fulfilled elsewhere! At this point, you've argued your view in about 20 comments and replies to other editors, without making any headway. In my opinion that comes close to bludgeoning the process. It might be time to step back from discussion. – Teratix ₵ 09:15, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
                  I'm glad we could finally get down to the bottom of your actual point. If you had only said this at the beginning instead of claiming it was a duplicate of the Help Desk, it would have saved us a lot of discussion to get to your point. However, there is a big difference between having a long discussion to get to your point, and "bludgeoning the process". It's very poor form to accuse other editors for disruptive editing because of your own lack of being able to explain your point properly in the first place. Any other comments I've made elsewhere have only been in those specific places where I felt a response was needed to make a case for keeping EAR. At any rate, I still feel that your point is wrong anyway because [overlooking that] EAR does in fact perform a function that is not performed elsewhere by virtue of the fact that it is the only help forum that also does disputes and other requests. The very fact that it "duplicates the functions of other forums" is evidence that it is a forum that fulfills a function in a way that no other forum does. With that, I will stop commenting here before anyone else decides to make any wild bad faith accusations. Huggums537 (talk) 13:30, 5 May 2021 (UTC) In other words, EAR is the only forum I am aware of that fulfills the function of combining these other services. Huggums537 (talk) 15:41, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
                  I suggest we not get stuck on semantics and adopt a holistic view. It's not essential to label the editor assistance initiative as a help forum, nor is it necessary to only look at other venues labelled as help forums as potential replacements. (If everyone participating in the editor assistance project were happy to move activity to other areas, for instance, I don't think it matters if those other areas are all help forums.) isaacl (talk) 04:46, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
                  Isaacl, Well, yeah if they were happy to go to other forums then they would just choose to go to whatever they prefer, either DRN or Teahouse, but if they like both, then we would be splitting their interests across multiple venues and creating the very problem that IP user 192.76.8.91 said we would be solving. Huggums537 (talk) 05:22, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
                  Well, you've already argued for the benefits of having multiple venues in which editors can get assistance. Note there's no need to ping me to this discussion. isaacl (talk) 05:31, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
                  Yes, I do argue for more choices and options to be available. I think EAR offers that in a very unique way that others do not. It can do more than the help forums can, and it is not as awful as ANI. However, you seem to be implying that since I've argued for more choices, I shouldn't be making an argument about forcing contributors to go to more places. Well, they are really two different arguments, aren't they? I feel just fine making both of them. Sorry about the ping. The script puts it in, and I sometimes forget to remove it. Huggums537 (talk) 06:13, 5 May 2021 (UTC) BTW, thank you for attempting to point out the apparent paradox of my arguments, as the larger paradox of creating the very problem we are trying to solve by implementing the solution has been revealed... Huggums537 (talk) 07:58, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
                  No, I was just saying I don't need to discuss the advantages of being able to handle questions on one or more venues, as both sides see fit, since you've already done so. It's normal for processes to change over the years, which can mean creating new ones or eliminating old ones. If there is a shortage of volunteers to make one process work effectively, then we may need to consolidate efforts; as the size of the English Wikipedia community grows, it may be more effective to have more specialized initiatives. isaacl (talk) 16:02, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose The OP's claim is false. Page statistics indicate that activity has been quite constant and stable in recent years and is far from zero. Andrew🐉(talk) 15:00, 1 May 2021 (UTC)
    See comparison stats above. Nick Moyes (talk) 07:15, 2 May 2021 (UTC)
    That's also just half the point, the other is that it causes needless redundancy and unproductive decentralization. Aza24 (talk) 07:22, 2 May 2021 (UTC)
    The main thing I notice from the stats above is that the person who adds the most text to the Teahouse is one Nick Moyes. So, what we have here is a takeover bid in which smaller rivals are crushed and destroyed. The trouble is that you do not get economies of scale in Wikipedia. Bigger is not better because wiki pages become unusable when they get too large, becoming unreadable and having technical trouble with template overload. And, if you force people to do things in the one true way, then volunteers who don't care for this will tend to withdraw their labour. So then fewer volunteers are given a larger workload. This may work for a while but you then get burnout of a single point of failure. Notice how the Signpost is in crisis again because its centralised structure is burning out the chief editor once more. My !vote stands. Andrew🐉(talk) 08:56, 2 May 2021 (UTC)
    I kind of agree with Andrew Davidson. This logic that we already have a place being used for help so we don't need another is akin to the family who upgraded their home from a 1 bed/1 bath up to a five bedroom home and said to themselves; "we don't need another bathroom, we need a centralized place for everyone to pee to make things easier". It's completely senseless. Also, there is no redundancy in keeping EAR when you are comparing two forums that offer different kinds of services and EAR offers services the others do not. However, even if it were a "redundant" service, I think my "more bathrooms is better" argument still applies. Huggums537 (talk) 10:57, 2 May 2021 (UTC)
    This bathroom argument does not fit—I can't believe I'm saying this, but more bathrooms is of course helpful because only a single person can use it at a time, but that is not the case with these help venues. Having multiple locations for purposes with no significant difference is just not helpful, it's confusing, dividing up resources and repetitive. And why are we acting like there's some conspiracy here? " smaller rivals are crushed and destroyed" I mean what????? The page views data has shown that the activity at EAR is certainly lower, and at the rate it's descending I see no reason to believe diverted traffic could overwhelm the teahouse or help desk, both of which are extremely efficient. In fact, if anything, it will hardly have an effect at all in the average "workload" at these places. Centralization is not inherently negative, it's the a core practice of WP—the Sign Post is completely incomparable, and has a host of its own issues. Aza24 (talk) 17:05, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
    Splitting up noticeboards only works well in my experience when each of the sub-noticeboards has a specific purpose and takes a specific section of the traffic. Look at some of the successful splits, the village pump, for example, has separate sections has separate sections for policy, WMF relations, technical stuff etc. Can you imagine the mess if instead we'd split it by creating "Village pump 1", "Village pump 2", "Village pump 3" etc, and the rules were "Post on whatever board you feel like"? If we want to split the help boards into smaller sections it should be done by splitting the help desk into topics, e.g. "help with templates", "help with sourcing", "help with policy and guidelines". I don't think the bathroom analogy really fits either, I think the situation is more akin to buying a five bedroom home, then buying the identical home next door, trying to live in both at the same time and wondering why you're ending up with everyone congregating in the same house. 192.76.8.91 (talk) 17:29, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
    In my experience, I see plenty of processes on Wikipedia that work well without being centralized. One example I can think of right off the top of my head are these very help forums under discussion. What evidence has anyone offered that any of these forums have not worked well other than low traffic status? That's no indication whatsoever about whether the forums have or have not worked for the people who are using them. If anything, it's only an indication that the forums with more traffic were advertised more, and the ones with less did not get as much exposure. Huggums537 (talk) 06:19, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
    Having low traffic is inherently bad for a help board - to give people good and timely advice you need a large base of volunteer helpers with a range of experience answering questions. Yesterday someone on the board asked for help with an article dispute involving the sizing of an image in an infobox - it took 8 hours for them to get a response, which basically boiled down to "Usually we leave the image size at default". They asked a follow up question about how to prevent future edit wars, which as of writing this comment, has been unanswered for 14 hours. Looking through the talk page archives this is not an uncommon occurrence. People have laid out other issues with having multiple help boards above and below, not least of which is that it's extremely confusing for newcomers looking to ask a question to be faced with multiple pages with completely different names that do the same thing. 192.76.8.91 (talk) 09:41, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
    And so you think mass consolidating all three forums into one huge conglomerate is going to actually reduce response times as opposed to making them longer? I would seriously rethink that position if I were you. Huggums537 (talk) 14:56, 4 May 2021 (UTC) Also, your decry about response times is rather laughable. I invite you to look at some other consolidated and unified venues that are proving they don't work such as Articles for Creation where the backlog is over 5,000 and the response time is measured in months not hours or you could look at something like the unblock request system and see how you like those response times. Admins should be able to review a block just as easily as a dispute is reviewed at EAR, but they don't and that's what you get for your unified consolidation. Huggums537 (talk) 15:55, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
    The comparison with AfC seems sound. I just took a close look at the Teahouse and found that it's just an unfocussed Q&A board – there doesn't seem to be any of the gentile socialising which its name suggests. There, Nick Moyes explains that "Sadly, quite a lot of our work here is telling hopeful editors that they stand no chance of their pet article becoming a reality..." and so we see that it's mainly a hostile obstruction just like AfC. As an event coordinator who regularly deals with new editors at editathons, I make sure to steer new editors away from AfC and I will now be treating the Teahouse in the same way. And this also shows how careful you have to be with statistics. If the Teahouse is actually having an adverse effect by discouraging newcomers and driving them off rather than helping them, then making it busier may make matter worse. What we need are statistics on the effect of these various help desks. Which of them actually increase productivity and retention and which hurt it? Andrew🐉(talk) 08:38, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Support Make sense to me.Afernand74 (talk) 13:59, 2 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Comment- LOL, "takeover bid". What absolute nonsense. Reyk YO! 14:10, 2 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Support Per NickMoyes's data above. We should not be dividing our efforts because having too many venues confuses newbies. It's best to steer new editors to a single place to ask questions or make requests, and the Teahouse got 30x more traffic than WP:EAR in 2020 so I think we should go with that one. Editors active at EARS can still continue to fulfill requests, just watch the Teahouse for them instead. — Wug·a·po·des​ 06:47, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Support. I don't see the value in having multiple venues with overlapping focus, and I think it creates more issues than it solves:
    • It's confusing for newcomers, who are already confronted with a huge number of noticeboards, help pages and discussion forums. As an example, if you were looking to find out if a source is usable in a draft you're writing you could be directed to WP:TEA, WP:RSN, WP:HD, WP:AFCHELP or WP:EAR, all of which could be suitable places for asking your question.
    • It splits volunteer contributors across multiple pages, which means helpers who are experts in one aspect of editing may miss questions posted on a help forum they don't check often, resulting in lower quality answers.
    • People asking for help on the lower traffic noticeboards will have an unnessasarily longer waiting times for responses. Some of the questions on WP:EAR took 3 hours or more to get a response, which isn't ideal for a newcomer in the middle of writing their first page. 192.76.8.91 (talk) 16:45, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
      Since EAR offers multiple services such as dispute resolution and help services, you are still splitting volunteer contributors across multiple forums. For example, if a volunteer at EAR likes reviewing disputes and helping new editors at one centralized location, they will now have to split their efforts across multiple venues because they will now need to go to both Teahouse and DRN. Huggums537 (talk) 05:29, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Support EAR is a moribund page, and having too many options is detrimental to the efficient operation of any of them. We wouldn't have to if it were a well-used part of Wikipedia. Though it may have been in the past, it isn't now, and we're better served shutting it down. --Jayron32 16:06, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
    Nobody has provided any evidence whatsoever that this so called "moribund" page has been of any detriment to the operation of any of the others in any way at all. Huggums537 (talk) 05:00, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Support The slow proliferation of Wikipedia behind-the-scenes forums is inevitable, but a well-maintained garden needs pruning from time to time. This seems sensible. Ganesha811 (talk) 01:08, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Support - make the pages redirects. — Ched (talk) 03:58, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Support Rather a few large venues than many small ones. CaptainEek Edits Ho Cap'n!⚓ 21:23, 8 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Support, when I founded the Editor Assistance project, it was mainly as a reaction to the closure of the old "Association of Members' Advocates", so that people would have somewhere to go and ask for advice. Any more, it does seem rather duplicative of what the Teahouse does, and it makes sense to have a single place to direct people to get help and advice on editing rather than several. Seraphimblade Talk to me 13:39, 14 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose There is no harm in diversity as long as the different venues are clear about what they are for — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 15:34, 16 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Support. Sensible consolidation, as this page isn't so active and doesn't seem to have a distinct identity and purpose from the Help Desk / Teahouse / Dispute resolution. the wub "?!" 00:13, 19 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Support consolidation with the Help Desk.  – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 14:44, 23 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Support I think the case made for consolidation is convincing. --Trialpears (talk) 15:27, 23 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose. EAR and the Help Desk have different purposes. At the Help Desk, you ask "how can I do this?" At EAR, you say "I'm not able to do this, can someone please do it for me?" Admittedly, some users ask things at EAR which should have been asked at the Help Desk or Teahouse, but that's not a reason to get rid of it. Maproom (talk) 07:45, 29 May 2021 (UTC)
    So... it duplicates edit requests? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 09:11, 29 May 2021 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Proposal: Close down Help Desk and replace with Teahouse

I find a clear consensus against this proposal. Editors feel that the Help Desk and the Teahouse have differing purposes, cultures, and intended audiences. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 18:07, 25 May 2021 (UTC) (non-admin closure)

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

Before I start, I know that this is most definitely going to be very constroversial, and I just want to put it out there to get some feedback on it. The Teahouse looks like a great replacement to the Help Desk, the hosts system works well, there is a nice onboarding process for new questions, and it looks pretty welcoming in general. I think that consolidating the Help Desk and Teahouse would also help some of the confusion for where to ask questions as well. Thoughts? EpicPupper (talk) 04:44, 9 May 2021 (UTC)

  • I strongly oppose this. I help out at both places occasionally and they are intended for different situations (new vs experienced users). There is no need to merge them and doing so would only add frustration. Elli (talk | contribs) 21:16, 12 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose and no. Huggums537 (talk) 21:58, 12 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose if I want help I go to a help desk. If I want tea I go to a tea house. DuncanHill (talk) 22:03, 12 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose even now, if I need Help in a topic where I don't know anything about the field at all (3D images was an example) I go to the Teahouse, because helpers there know to start from first principles. But for most of my questions, I only need to know how to handle a specific edge case - running me through all of copyright as a primer would be undesired, so I ask that at the Helpdesk etc Nosebagbear (talk) 12:31, 13 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose. The cultures of these two help venues are distinct. Help Desk serves experienced editors and Teahouse newbies. When answering at these venues, I don't need to check the asking editors' credentials and tailor my response accordingly because it's assumed. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 12:48, 13 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppost per Nosebagbear and Finnusertop. MB 13:24, 13 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose. The Help Desk is inherently designed as and functions as a place for all editors to go, including the experienced ones. the Teahouse is specifically for new editors, needing basic help. ---Sm8900 (talk) 🌍 14:31, 13 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose per above, they have clearly defined and distinct domains, and they are both very active. No need to shut down either. --Jayron32 14:32, 13 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose The two venues are intended to be different in character — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 15:36, 16 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose. The Teahouse has a distinct culture and identity, which research has shown to be effective in retaining new editors. Merging in the Help Desk would dilute this, and reduce its effectiveness. the wub "?!" 00:14, 19 May 2021 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Proposal: Replace Main Page Help Desk link with Teahouse link

NO CONSENSUS
This discussion developed in such a way that multiple editors used "Support" and "Oppose" to mean similar things. This is because instead of the normal binary responses, the responses diverged into three possible outcomes: the status quo (Main Page links to the Help Desk), replacing the link (Main Page links to the Teahouse), or supplementing the link (Main Page links to both Teahouse and Help Desk). Almost no participants favored the status quo, that is, editors were nearly unanimous in opposing a single Help Desk link. Unfortunately, the numbers of editors supporting replacing the link and the number supporting supplementing the link are almost exactly equal. The arguments in favor of each possible outcome were also nearly equal in strength as editors considered policy & user access grounds. Considering that there is a clear consensus to do something, the lack of agreement on what to do prevents finding a consensus for the proposal(s). This means, ironically, that the status quo almost no participants want will continue. The suggestion from GreenMeansGo and nagualdesign to have user testing of the links could possibly resolve this disagreement but far too few participants commented on their proposal to determine if a consensus exists for such a test. (non-admin closure) Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 18:42, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

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

  • Support Whilst we're here: to follow up from this discussion which closed with consensus to add a Teahouse link but wasn't sure on which form it should take. It seems like there's probably a consensus to keep TH and HD separate for now. So I think replacing the Help Desk link on the Main Page with a link to the Teahouse would be better. Editors coming from there are probably newcomers, and it's too confusing/bloaty to have them both listed trying to explain the differences IMO. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 07:46, 24 April 2021 (UTC)
  • Commment Whilst happy to support this, I am slightly concerned about removing the Help Desk link entirely. Wouldn't the following work OK?:
    • Community portal – Bulletin board, projects, resources and activities covering a wide range of Wikipedia areas.
    • Help desk – Ask questions about using Wikipedia.
    • Teahouse - A help desk for novice editors. A friendly space to ask about editing Wikipedia.
    • Local embassy – For Wikipedia-related communication in languages other than English.
    • Reference desk – Serving as virtual librarians, Wikipedia volunteers tackle your questions on a wide range of subjects.
    • Site news – Announcements, updates, articles and press releases on Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation.
    • Village pump – For discussions about Wikipedia itself, including areas for technical issues and policies.
    I wouldn't want to undermine any attempt at gaining a consensus by offering a formal counter-proposal at this early stage, but do add one if it helps. Nick Moyes (talk) 09:12, 24 April 2021 (UTC)
    This works for me, although I'd say put the Teahouse above HD in order, and replace the Help desk description with something like "For more experienced editors to ask questions about editing Wikipedia." I still think I prefer replacing the link altogether, as I think the Teahouse does a better job at helping newbies and that giving unnecessary choices is bad UX and adds a slight bit of friction. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 09:44, 24 April 2021 (UTC)
  • Support one link. Oppose two links. We don't need and shouldn't have two forums for asking questions (so help desk and teahouse ought to be merged). If we do have two forums, TH should be linked on the main page (so support this proposal). Under no circumstances should both be linked; that will just confuse people. Levivich harass/hound 13:24, 24 April 2021 (UTC)
  • Support Teahouse link on Main Page and, if we have both links, putting it above the Help Desk. If we retain both, the Helpdesk blurb line should include something that it is for non-novice editors. I am neutral to removing the Helpdesk from main page and just having Teahouse there. Nosebagbear (talk) 14:02, 24 April 2021 (UTC)
  • I do not support this good-faith, well-intentioned suggestion. I support adding an additional link to the tea house and I have no objections whatsoever to placing that link above the help desk link. But as long as the help desk is open and we want editors to use it then we need to link to it. I strongly recommend a separate discussion focused solely on whether we can and should consolidate these two efforts; I would strongly support such a motion but it seems to be a much larger proposal than what has been put forth here that warrants a separate, dedicated discussion with a clear header so other editors can see what is being proposed. ElKevbo (talk) 02:59, 25 April 2021 (UTC)
    We do have links to the help desk, from internal pages like WP:Questions, Template:Wikipedia help pages, Template:Noticeboard links, etc. The proposal isn't to scrap all those links. It's just to replace it on the Main Page specifically, from where it's more likely we'll be getting newcomer clicks rather than anything else. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 15:32, 25 April 2021 (UTC)
  • Link to both but put the Teahouse above the Help Desk. Adding another line won't damage the layout, but it will allow more people to get the assistance they need. —Naddruf (talk ~ contribs) 17:11, 25 April 2021 (UTC)
  • Further comment on Main page wording I'm uncertain what words are best if the Teahouse goes above the Help desk on the Main page links. I've racked my brain, and this is the best I can come up with:
    • Teahouse - A help desk for novice editors. A friendly space to ask about editing Wikipedia.
    • Help desk – Ask questions about using Wikipedia. Aimed mostly at those with some editing experience already.
    (or perhaps...*Help desk – Ask questions about using Wikipedia. Less friendly, more curt and tons of abbreviations!) Nick Moyes (talk) 00:19, 26 April 2021 (UTC)
    Can the wording for the Teahouse just be "A friendly space for new editors to ask about editing Wikipedia"? —Naddruf (talk ~ contribs) 16:21, 28 April 2021 (UTC)
  • Support removing the Help Desk link and replacing it with a link to the Teahouse. The Main Page is likely where new editors will go for information. Experienced editors can still manually go to the Help Desk.EpicPupper 20:26, 27 April 2021 (UTC)
  • Support Per Epicpupper. Two links is just confusing, and the better of the two links for the main page is the teahouse. Calliopejen1 (talk) 04:21, 30 April 2021 (UTC)
  • Support Link to both as proposed by Nick Moyes here. My logic is that we need two different places to get either advanced or novice answers. As a newer user, I'm glad to now be aware the help desk exists. I've been going to the Teahouse for answers, and while I appreciate the friendly, and helpful manner, it kinda sucks getting treated like a day one IP user getting spoon-fed answers. Now I know I have a place I can go to get answers I can handle. I think other users will like to know this too. Huggums537 (talk) 14:48, 1 May 2021 (UTC)
    • But you didn't learn this information from a link on the Main Page, and other established editors won't either. — Bilorv (talk) 23:18, 1 May 2021 (UTC)
      • But still, I learned about Teahouse from my talk page, and if there had been a descriptive Teahouse link on the main page with a contrasting descriptive Help Desk link right below, I most likely would have picked up on it much sooner. Huggums537 (talk) 12:31, 2 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Support: just a link to the Teahouse is preferable (don't make people confused before they've even clicked on a help forum, because they don't know which one is right for them) but a link to both Teahouse and Help Desk would be an improvement, as the Teahouse is friendlier. — Bilorv (talk) 23:18, 1 May 2021 (UTC)
  • I would support replacing with something like Need help? Try our Help forum for new users or our Help forum for more experienced users. GMGtalk 22:39, 2 May 2021 (UTC)
    I think GreenMeansGo offers an interesting solution. Huggums537 (talk) 00:01, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
Support replacement of link....only need one and the teahouse is better at recruitment for new editors. This past year has seen a good increase in the amount of individual edits but a decrease in registration.....perhaps the Teahouse can help us fix this problem.Moxy- 23:08, 2 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Support. The teahouse is pretty much the clearing house now. Guy (help! - typo?) 20:18, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Support, I'd be surprised if experienced editors didn't know about the help desk, and more so if they were accessing it from the front page. Accessing help venues from the front page seems like something more aimed towards newer users, hence the use of a teahouse link. Aza24 (talk) 22:21, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Support two links, with the Teahouse link above, and the help desk link reading something like "for more advanced questions." Ganesha811 (talk) 01:09, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose The Teahouse has a misleading name as there doesn't seem be any socialising or group activity and there's certainly no tea. When I attend physical editathons, the tea/coffee breaks are the best bit as sharing refreshments is a good way to bond and engage with other editors. The Teahouse actually seems to be just an unfocussed Q&A board. We already have plenty of those with more accurate names like the Help Desk and Reference Desk. Andrew🐉(talk) 08:54, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
    The lack of tea is indeed distressing. Maybe it should be renamed to Coffeehouse so that we can instead be distressed about the lack of coffee? — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 18:01, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose Add a link to the Teahouse to the 6 links already in Other areas of Wikipedia section on the Main page — as proposed by Nick Moyes right at the start — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 18:07, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose removing the Help Desk link. Support adding an extra link to the Teahouse. --Jayron32 14:33, 13 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose linking to both, weak support for switching to Teahouse. Folks, we've been through this before, where we can't agree on the best help link to use, so we end up including two very similar help links, and pretty soon newcomers are overwhelmed with redundant options and succumb to choice paralysis. Whatever happens here, don't let that be the outcome—a single link to either the TH or the HD is vastly superior to linking to both. As for which venue to link, I don't think we've differentiated them clearly enough to be able to say for certain which is most appropriate. De jure, it's probably the Help Desk, as theoretically anyone could be seeking help from the main page, but de facto, it's probably the Teahouse, as in reality it's basically just newcomers using that link. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 05:13, 14 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose Add the Teahouse link and update the Helpdesk and Teahouse link descriptions to clarify the distinction — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 15:44, 16 May 2021 (UTC) (strike duplicate vote)
  • Support using Teahouse link. Users coming from the Main Page are more likely to be newbies, so it makes sense to direct them to the forum designed for them. The Help Desk isn't going away for more experienced users. the wub "?!" 00:15, 19 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Comment - There seem to be a roughly equal number of editors here second-guessing what links other people use, or are likely to use, and drawing diametrically opposite conclusions. Proof, if proof were needed, that none of us really know which idea is best. From a website design perspective, it might be a good idea to trial both links and include some kind of referer data. To borrow GreenMeansGo's suggestion, that might look something like this: Need help? Try our [[WP:THQ#RefMain|Help forum for new users]] or our [[WP:HD#RefMain|Help forum for more experienced users]] nagualdesign 19:47, 25 May 2021 (UTC)
nagualdesign The easiest way of tracking what links people actually click on would be to pipe the links through some statistical redirects, like we did when we wanted to see if anyone was using the COVID-19 banner. 192.76.8.73 (talk) 23:18, 25 May 2021 (UTC)
Great idea! nagualdesign 23:23, 25 May 2021 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

WP:Mentorship tools gives new users a much easier path to get help. Might want to let those stabilize in production before making major changes. –xenotalk 13:47, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

👍 Like EpicPupper (he/him | talk, FAQ, contribs) 21:35, 9 June 2021 (UTC)
The proposed changes are pretty minor and IMO uncontroversial. We may need to do some thinking about pathways to help once those tools go into production fully, but I don't think these (mostly housekeeping) updates are that. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 18:14, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

RFC on moves being marked as minor

There are many autoconfirmed editors who have no idea that their article is not ready for mainspace. The tag #new user moving page out of userspace is quite a good example of this. If you surf through the list of articles at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:RecentChanges?hidebots=1&hidecategorization=1&hideWikibase=1&tagfilter=de-userfying&limit=50&days=7&urlversion=2 you will see many articles that could definitely be speedy deleted and others that just need to be improved more. And of course, there is some legitimate minor page moves like this move per WP:ENDASH. So here are the options I came up with:

  1. Status quo. Automatically mark moves as minor.
  2. Optional. Leave the option to mark moves as minor or major.
  3. Required. All page moves are marked as major.

Yes, this is not a major issue, but I had to bring it up anyways for the editors that do hide minor edits. Sungodtemple (talk) 14:40, 22 May 2021 (UTC)

  • No article title changes are never minor. The suggestion that articles being moved to draftspace should be considered a "minor" edit is too wrong to even engage with. User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 16:20, 22 May 2021 (UTC)
    • Hmm ... apparently there are minor edits being made along with the log entries. I assumed this was suggesting something about the log entries being considered "minor" edits. This looks like "software weirdness" that nobody noticed. User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 18:24, 22 May 2021 (UTC)
  • I must agree with the above comment. I can't understand the rationale behind marking any move, especially one between namespaces, as minor. Can anyone explain why that is done automatically? I can't believe that that is done without a good reason, but, for the life of me, I can't see what possible reason there might be. Phil Bridger (talk) 16:48, 22 May 2021 (UTC)
  • @Sungodtemple: Note, this isn't really something we have a choice on unless this becomes a software option - so a local RfC is going to be advisory at best. See phab:T176053 and linked tasks. — xaosflux Talk 19:54, 22 May 2021 (UTC)
  • A page move should NEVER be marked as “minor”. I suspect that the intent was to indicate that the moves are “routine” and probably “not controversial”... but “routine” and “not controversial” are not the same as “minor”. Blueboar (talk) 22:22, 22 May 2021 (UTC)
    Per WP:Minor, a minor edit is one that the editor believes requires no review and could never be the subject of a dispute. So "routine" and "not controversial" are actually a pretty good way to describe them. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 20:30, 23 May 2021 (UTC)
    Note, moves are not "edits" at all; that a null-edit is placed in the history is purely for convenience - moves are recorded in the move log which doesn't have a "minor" indicator. — xaosflux Talk 01:28, 24 May 2021 (UTC)
  • No, unfortunately or otherwise, changes of article title can be controversial or just plain vandalism. They're not minor, though in some circumstances they may be easily agreed. Chiswick Chap (talk) 10:39, 24 May 2021 (UTC)
  • The feature of marking edits as minor isn't particularly useful as a whole, so it doesn't matter very much. But given that a move from draft or user space into main space suddenly makes a lot of content appear, so isn't "minor" even from the point of view that edits not changing content are minor: if we do continue to make the distinction between major and minor edits, moves should not be marked as minor. —Kusma (t·c) 10:54, 24 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Two issues are being conflated here. Moving new articles out of draft/sandbox and existing article rename/moves. The latter is almost never going to be a minor edit. The former is almost always going to be minor by the definition we use (with the exception being articles which have been moved back from article space already). Completely new articles by their nature do not *require* review prior to being made live. Our policies and guidelines are clear on this. And until the article is live, realistically there is not going to be much dispute unless its an editor with a history of problematic article creations. The move log already adequately records them, so whats the purpose in having the article history have the minor tag not attached to moves from draft/sandbox? The only real current use of minor flag is to stop cluttering up watchlists. And if you have a new article that is not in article space watchlisted you are either the primary author or someone involved in writing it, in which case you will be aware anyway. This seems like process-wonkery for the sake of it. For existing articles being renamed/moved, what is the practical purpose in preventing the move being listed as minor? What problem does that solve? Only in death does duty end (talk) 11:56, 24 May 2021 (UTC)
  • I'm actually going to disagree with the majority here. I think it's reasonable for the moves to be marked as minor because they are not a content change to the page itself - there is no reason to ever check the diff, as it contains no changes. Elli (talk | contribs) 20:41, 14 June 2021 (UTC)
    Elli, the problem is that many editors turn off notifications of minor edits, which means something as large as a bad page move could go unnoticed for longer than necessary. Kamala Harris was moved to C**tala Harris after Biden announced her as his running mate. It fortunately lasted only a couple minutes before someone saw it and fixed it, but even that short a time made it show up that way in google searches. If that mover had been able to mark that change as minor, it could have taken longer. —valereee (talk) 19:26, 22 June 2021 (UTC)
    Filtering by minor is a very bad idea -- so if I'm a vandal or about to knowingly be disruptive, all I need to do to attract less scrutiny to my action is mark it as 'minor'? I'm of the opinion that nobody who wants to catch problematic edits on their watchlist should be filtering out edits marked (by their author) as "minor". ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 22:48, 22 June 2021 (UTC)
    @Valereee: you'll still see moves even if you filter out minor edits. Elli (talk | contribs) 23:49, 22 June 2021 (UTC)
    Elli, I didn't know that -- so a page move doesn't get filtered out of a watchlist by the mover marking it minor? (I actually think the Harris move maybe was a redirect, but that's probably moot.) —valereee (talk) 23:57, 22 June 2021 (UTC)
    @Valereee: no - the move log is included in watchlists separate from the null edit (just like the delete log, block log, protect log, etc etc). Unless you filter out the move log, you'll see it (and, well, if you're filtering out the move log than you probably wouldn't expect to see moves). Elli (talk | contribs) 00:00, 23 June 2021 (UTC)
    I would have no idea how to filter out the move log. Or to filter it in. :D —valereee (talk) 00:16, 23 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Always major. Whether between namespaces or within the same one, a move is not "minor". Seraphimblade Talk to me 00:14, 23 June 2021 (UTC)
  • The term "minor" means the content is not significantly altered. A move does not alter any content and technically is minor. Perhaps people want moves flagged more prominently in their watchlist but anyone hiding minor edits should not be surprised when stuff is not shown (e.g. vandalism marked as minor). Johnuniq (talk) 02:18, 24 June 2021 (UTC)
    I think the question is, for what reason? Isn't the title being altered as significant as a content alteration? Tamwin (talk) 00:03, 27 June 2021 (UTC)
  • A page move/rename is a major event in the history of an article - flag them always as such. -- Netoholic @ 00:10, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

Getting people to the correct talk page

Template:Wikipedia information pages talk page editnotice is displayed on how-to/instructional pages that get a lot of "irrelevant" posts by newcomers (NB: not guidelines, not policies, not articles, not user pages, etc.).

If you've been around long enough, you've probably seen this: A newcomer will somehow end up on the talk page for a guideline or help page, and they'll post the contents of the article they'd like to create, or they'll ask a question that belongs on an article talk page. If you haven't seen this before, look at Wikipedia:Citation needed and Wikipedia talk:Citation needed and its archives (Wikipedia talk:Citation needed/Archive 5 is the most recent). Almost none of the discussions on that talk page are about that page.

This was the old version of that notice:

I found this ineffective, so three months ago, I changed it to this:

I think this is more effective. Instead of inviting people to read a paragraph, it grabs people's attention (good-faith newcomers are often worried that they're doing things wrong, so if you tell them they're about to screw up, they'll read it), and it highlights the key action that most newcomers need to take (go to a different talk page).

As evidence of it likely being more effective, I made a similar change to the top of Wikipedia talk:Citation needed. In the three months before that change, there were four misplaced requests. In the three months since then, there was only one.

Amakuru, an admin with about 70,000 edits (i.e., not a newcomer who doesn't understand what these pages are for), recently reverted this change because "I found I wasn't in the wrong place at all" (exactly as the end of the new instructions indicates is possible...) and suggested a discussion, so that's why we're here. What do you think we can with this message to help newcomers stop posting on the wrong pages? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:59, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

The problem is that Wikipedia talk:Citing sources shouldn't have that editnotice at all, it's one of the information pages whose talk page is, in fact, being used (by experienced editors) to discuss things other than issues specific to this information or how-to page. It has nothing to do with the wording of the editnotice, and I think that your change is fine on the cases where the editnotice in fact applies. * Pppery * it has begun... 20:08, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
I've nominated the specific editnotice for Wikipedia talk:Citing sources for deletion at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2021 June 28#Template:Editnotices/Page/Wikipedia talk:Citing sources * Pppery * it has begun... 20:50, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
This feels a bit WP:SLAPpy, but I support putting notices on all project talks, including policies and guidelines. Newcomers will be directed away, experienced users will know they are right themselves. WP:CREEP really needs to be addressed here. Sungodtemple (talk) 20:27, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
Yes, sorry for not discussing this as well as reverting, but the page I was editing doesn't even have a talk page and it was unclear if there had been any discussion leading to the change. It's obviously a good idea to put messages up for newcomers when they're editing project pages, asking them the question of whether they're really in the right place. I have no objection to that. But if I see a big bold message saying "you're probably in the wrong place" then I tend to believe it, even if I am "an admin with about 70,000 edits". And, as Pppery notes, the majority of people who ever see that message will indeed be in exactly the right place, so the message was just a bit misleading that's all and led me to briefly think I wasn't where I'd intended to be. Cheers  — Amakuru (talk) 20:32, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
You gave an actual explanation in your edit summary, and as far as I'm concerned, that counts as "discussing". :-D WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:35, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
Looks like a more careful thought process about which pages this editnotice should be on and then this change to a more attention-grabbing notice is what's needed. Maybe we only want the dramatic editnotice (or an editnotice at all) on talk pages that correspond to very highly-linked/transcluded things, like Wikipedia talk:Citation needed. — Bilorv (talk) 07:07, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

RfC to elevate NMEDIA to guideline status

FYI
 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

There's an open RfC proposing to make WP:Notability (media) into a {{Guideline}} instead of a {{Supplement}} essay: Wikipedia talk:Notability (media)/Archive 2#Status. The discussion really belongs here, but this page should at very least have been notfied.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:16, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

Per the WP:PROPOSAL policy, the discussion about whether to promote a page to guideline status rightly belongs exactly where that discussion is: on that talk page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:28, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

Put banners on pages signifying momentous view counts?

Moved to WP:Idea lab § Put banners on pages signifying momentous view counts?
 – {{u|Sdkb}} talk 03:03, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

Restricting GFDL-licensed uploads

There is a consensus to carry the proposal. Editors generally agreed that the GFDL is not a good fit for images. Some editors also felt that content distributed solely under the GFDL does not meet the definition of a "free cultural work" as required by the Licensing policy. Editors opposing were concerned that this restriction may shut the door to importing works that are solely licensed under the GFDL. MGA73 provided data suggesting that it was mainly Wikipedians' own work that was being released as GFDL-only. Some other supporting editors also believed such cases would be infrequent, and argued that usage would still be permissible under the non-free content policy. Rule creep concerns were also common among opposers.

Overall, however, there was a consensus to enact the proposal. One editor raised a concern that the wording of Wikipedia:Licensing update may not permit deprecating a free license; I'm not sure that page holds any official status, and it appears the foundation:Terms of Use says When you contribute non-text media, you agree to ... comply with the requirements of the specific Project edition or feature to which you are contributing.

The proposal envisioned 1 July 2021 as the start date of this proposal. That may need to be brought forward, especially if GFDL-only media has been uploaded between that date and the implementation of this close, and to ensure editors have time to adjust to the change. I would imagine that 1 August 2021 would be a reasonable start date. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 12:16, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

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

Why GFDL is impractical for visual media

This is a proposal to make some restrictions on uploading new files licensed {{GFDL}}-only.[1]

GFDL was originally designed for software manuals and it is not good for media because it makes it difficult to re-use the material (see comic to the right). Motivated by the the wish of making it easier to re-use files in compliance with the world-wide wiki-vision the Wikimedia Foundation Board decided in 2009 to stop using GFDL as a sole license while allowing importation of text without the GFDL license. The Wikimedia Foundation Board did not forbid GFDL for media files but encourages people to use licenses other than GFDL, for example CC licenses.

The Wikimedia Foundation Board explicitly mentioned that each wiki could restrict the use of GFDL. The English Wikipedia has removed GFDL from MediaWiki:Licenses and MediaWiki:Licenses/en-ownwork but it is still possible for users to add it manually.

In September 2018 is was suggested to deprecate the GFDL license but at the time no consensus could be formed to limit GFDL on the English Wikipedia.

Some of the arguments against the restrictions were:

  1. We have a lot of non-free files so why should we not allow GFDL?
  2. If we find media that is licensed GFDL we won't be able to copy it to Wikipedia.

Re 1) The idea of a wiki is to share knowledge freely. That is the reason we have Wikipedia! Non-free content is an exception per the licensing policy. It is something a community may decide to have (not must) but the use must be minimal. So while we have non-free files that is not a reason to allow anyone to license their uploads with a license that isn't quite in the spirit of sharing free knowledge. We also don't allow CC BY-NC or CC BY-ND.

Re 2) Technically true, but the use of GFDL for media files is virtually (if not completely) nonexistent outside Wikimedia. When files are uploaded as GFDL in 2021 it is either because it is a copy or a derivative of another file from another wiki-project or because the uploader has specifically chosen to use GFDL.

Several projects already have restricted the use of GFDL, for example Japanese Wikipedia, Commons and Wikivoyage. Other projects are likely waiting to see what English Wikipedia does.

The suggestion is this:

GFDL is not permitted as the only acceptable license where all of the following are true:

  • The content was licensed on or after 1 July 2021. The licensing date is considered, not the creation or upload date.
  • The content is primarily a photograph, painting, drawing, audio or video.
  • The content is not a software logo, diagram or screenshot that is extracted from GFDL software or[2] a GFDL software manual.

The above does not restrict non-free usage of content. If a work that is not a derivative work with a GFDL license is used under a non-free rationale, it doesn't have to be scaled down but other non-free limitations will still apply.

The theoretical possibility of future GFDL-licensed content that would be eligible for non-free inclusion has been brought up as an argument in the past and this is a compromise that will hopefully mitigate that.

I'm not a native English speaker so if there are typos or bad wording you are welcome to fix. Thank you! --MGA73 (talk) 16:37, 10 May 2021 (UTC)

^ The term "GFDL software" was based on a misunderstanding. GFDL was created two decades ago to accompany free software licenses because using free software licenses for manuals was considered odd. GFDL was adopted by some software projects for their manuals, but never for the software itself. Since GFDL-licensed software doesn't exist, it is not possible to extract anything from it. Software logos, diagrams or screenshots can only be extracted from GFDL-licensed software manuals, which do exist. This note was added by Alexis Jazz, coauthor of this proposal. Apologies for any confusion that may have arisen from this error. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 15:17, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

^ Some voters expressed a desire to restrict GFDL for Wikimedians but not for external sources. Since many Wikimedians are active on other self-published sources like photo sharing sites, social media or blogs, this would be very difficult to enforce. However, we'd like you to know that if a source for fresh GFDL-content is found in the future outside Wikimedia (this is purely theoretical, we know of no such source today), it is always possible to have a new vote to create an exception for that specific source. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 16:42, 14 May 2021 (UTC)

  • Oppose. We are the free encyclopedia. That means, as far as files are concerned, that any license that is free enough will do. What constitutes a free enough license is defined by the foundation:Resolution:Licensing policy, referring to the Definition of Free Cultural Works (1.0), and GFDL fully meets these these requirements. That Commons no longer allows GFDL-only files is an excellent reason to allow them to be uploaded locally here. The "free" in the free culture movement includes the freedom to choose between equally free licenses. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 17:03, 10 May 2021 (UTC)
    Thank you for your comment. I would like to point out that it was the Wikimedia Foundation Board that decided in 2009, that GFDL should not be used on wiki projects. If anyone know what "we" are it must be the Wikimedia Foundation Board? Commons continued to allow GFDL for 9 years before they fully implemented the resolution. Do not blame Commons for the resolution if you disagree with it. --MGA73 (talk) 17:59, 10 May 2021 (UTC)
    It decided it would stop allowing it on uploads as the sole license. At no point did it decide that it 'should not be used on wiki projects'. You would make your point better if you did not state outright falsehoods. Only in death does duty end (talk) 18:15, 10 May 2021 (UTC)
    Sorry it is was not clear. I'm only talking about future uploads. Files allready uploaded can of course stay. Thank you for letting me know. --MGA73 (talk) 19:29, 10 May 2021 (UTC)
    @MGA73: The 2009 resolution implemented meta:Licensing update, which switched licensing of text contributions from GFDL-only to GFDL + CC BY-SA. It continued to allow files under any free license but encouraged to dual license existing GFDL-only files under CC BY-SA where possible. It neither ruled that already uploaded GFDL-only files "should not be used on wiki projects" nor that future uploads under that sole license should not be allowed. The way English Wikipedia implemented it is that "All media licenses existing before the transition remain valid and acceptable to the Foundation. However, the community may choose to modify or restrict the licenses it encourages people to use. For example, emphasizing CC licenses in the upload form and de-emphasizing GFDL licenses." I am not sure if it even allows us to completely deprecate a free license (that's more than just "de-emphasizing" one). Even if it does, I'm of the opinion that we should allow free licenses of files to the maximum extent possible. It's not about which licenses are better/more ideal, but which licenses are free, and that has already been settled since the 2007 resolution which the 2009 one in no way overruled. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 13:38, 14 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Support. The link Finnusertop provides links to [3] from where you end up at [4] which also notes the problem with GFDL. Finnusertop speaks of allowing "GFDL-only files" to be uploaded here so they won't be homeless. The reality is that without Wikimedia, GFDL-only licensed photos wouldn't exist to begin with. Not all free licenses are equal. One could even make up a completely ridiculous but technically free homebrew license, and I can only hope we'd reject it if that happened. GFDL is a relic of the past. It served a purpose, once. It no longer does, it has been superseded by better licenses. GFDL is not a practical license for visual media (like photos) and there is literally no reason for a photographer to license their photos as GFDL other than to pester re-users. We shouldn't allow photographers to pester re-users. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 18:01, 10 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Support. The GFDL is free, and I don't think anyone here is questioning that. The GNU FDL is perfect for free software documentation, as well as any other text where the list of contributors is not as large as Wikipedia's. But this is not the case for media (especially photographs), where it's very impractical to use. We are supposed to make knowledge easier to disseminate. The GFDL doesn't allow that for media. Even the FSF has acknowledged the impracticality of the FDL on those media, which is why they released FDL 1.3 in the first place.

    I'm okay with the compromise that has been put here. I don't see any reason to restrict the resolution of a solely GFDL-licensed medium. But we certainly should discourage solely using the GFDL for non-text, non-software media. pandakekok9 (talk) 05:24, 11 May 2021 (UTC)

  • I'm somewhat meh on this. On the one hand, we shouldn't be afraid of trying to clean up relics of the past to simplify the maintenance burden, and GFDL is clearly a relic of the past. However, because of past media uploaded with it, we'll never be able to get rid of it completely. It appears that we've already done what we can to discourage its use by making it super far from the default. Given that, the number of files being uploaded via GFDL is likely tiny. If someone really wants to use it for some reason and won't contribute their work otherwise, then sure, I hope we'll decide to take the work. But hopefully pretty much everyone will just go and put it on Commons under CC. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 05:41, 11 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Support. I see no drawbacks and even WMF itself is saying it's not ideal for image media. SpartaN (talk) 05:52, 11 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Too early to just prohibit GFDL, instead deprecated and discourage it for a year, especially with an edit filter warning. After a year we can evaluate whether it is still needed at all and prohibit if it really is useless. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:14, 11 May 2021 (UTC)
    @Graeme Bartlett: Thank you. The license was removed as a suggested license in 2009: Special:Diff/294994426. So it has been discouraged for almost 12 years now. --MGA73 (talk) 13:40, 11 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Support This is years overdue, how are GFDL-only licenses still allowed here? GFDL really isn't suitable for images, and GFDL-only uploads haven't been allowed on Commons since 2018! Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 10:50, 11 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Meh leaning support, how many GFDL only uploads have we had in the past 12 years? —Kusma (t·c) 14:23, 11 May 2021 (UTC)
    @Kusma: Thank you. My guess is around 1380 files. --MGA73 (talk) 19:34, 11 May 2021 (UTC)
    MGA73, thanks. The vast majority of these seem rather old, with very few exceptions such as File:RitwikSanyal1.JPG (which is a new upload overwriting an older one GFDL licensed in 2010). Incidentally, the "Upload a new version of this file" dialog doesn't do a good job at checking that the license of the new and old files are identical. —Kusma (t·c) 20:44, 11 May 2021 (UTC)
    MGA73, actually far less. Kusma asked about the last 12 years. (so since 2009) Files older than that which weren't eligible for relicensing would also be included in your query. Who hopper.png was actually PD-self (maybe the uploader was confused?), File:Poktori-2.jpg is PD-self, File:Chuck Close 1.jpg is nonfree, File:Paullusmagnus-logo.JPG comes from m:File:Paullusmagnus-logo (small) reloaded.png and is GFDL-presumed and would be eligible for relicensing as CC BY-SA 3.0 if we accept the GFDL-presumed, this isn't own work?, File:Shared interest lending diagram.PNG was incorrectly tagged as not being eligible for relicensing, File:Tenka Qing.png is identical to w:ja:ファイル:Tenka Qing.png so also incorrectly tagged as not being eligible for relicensing, File:Pb0.9.2 (r86)Win7.PNG is GPL I guess, File:Fence Lake Monument.jpg is also PD-self. And so on. Excluding false positives, overwrites where the original upload is eligible for relicensing but the overwrite isn't and uploads from 2009 and 2010 when some uploaders just weren't aware yet of the license migration, only a small fraction would be left. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 21:54, 11 May 2021 (UTC)
    @Kusma and Alexis Jazz: I know the number can be discussed. There are also files that are moved to Commons, deleted or where the uploader have later agreed to relicense. I hope everyone will accept if GFDL is no longer accepted for new uploads and therefore use a cc-license. --MGA73 (talk) 07:30, 12 May 2021 (UTC)
  • So, I'm supportive of not allowing new original works in GFDL only; but not so supportive of relegating uploads of existing GFDL works found elsewhere to non-free/fair-use only status. — xaosflux Talk 14:41, 11 May 2021 (UTC)
    @Xaosflux: Thank you. If existing works are licensed GFDL today they can still be uploaded as GFDL. Also in 2 months or 2 years from now. --MGA73 (talk) 19:21, 11 May 2021 (UTC)
    Xaosflux, if it was licensed before 1 July 2021 you could still upload it, even after 1 July 2021. If it was licensed after 1 July 2021.. Just try to find something that was recently licensed as GFDL outside Wikimedia. I'll be surprised if you find anything. IIRC, some years ago a Wikipedian convinced an organization that didn't want to release their work with a free license to release some work under the GFDL because the terms would complicate/inhibit re-use anyway, so they wouldn't have to worry much about those pesky re-users. Errr, yeah. notafish advocated for this all the way back in 2005: Why the Wikimedia projects should not use GFDL as a stand alone license for images. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 19:40, 11 May 2021 (UTC)
    @Alexis Jazz: so if we are not going to purge the ones we have or consider them non-free, and they would be a rarity -- why would we need to prohibit them? What problem is that solving? I'm fully supportive that any editor-created images should be CCBYA (and really, they should be uploaded to commons not enwiki unless there is some esoteric non-article related reason). — xaosflux Talk 19:57, 11 May 2021 (UTC)
    Xaosflux, we don't want to name and shame, but there are photographers who either multi-license their work with GFDL+CC BY-NC knowing full well the GFDL is largely useless for commercial use of a single image in a printed publication or who will hang on to GFDL until it is no longer allowed to either make a point about GFDL being a bad license (some will know who I'm talking about) or out of some sort of misplaced nostalgia. Not being able to completely dry the room doesn't mean we shouldn't stop people from using the faucet above the broken sink. Use of GFDL-only images in articles can only decline after we've sealed the faucet. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 20:34, 11 May 2021 (UTC)
    I'm not convinced this is a problem in need of solving, if that photog is an editor - then sure, lets say they can only upload their own work under CCBYSA; If you find one of their pics and think it is useful to include then I don't think we should stop you from uploading it though. — xaosflux Talk 20:57, 11 May 2021 (UTC)
    Xaosflux, I guess I was unclear. All the photographers I'm talking about are Wikimedians. One does not find GFDL-licensed photos outside Wikimedia. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 21:59, 11 May 2021 (UTC)
    @Alexis Jazz: well - you could, but in any case I'd be fine with the next step being that we disallow anyone to upload their own work here with only a GFDL license. — xaosflux Talk 23:10, 11 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Support GFDL was always a poor fit for images. It is designed for manuals, textbooks, other reference and instructional materials, and documentation which often accompanies GNU software... it can be used for any text-based work, regardless of subject matter. (bold mine). It was used for images in Wikipedia's early days because the Creative Commons licenses didn't exist yet. Once CC became fully developed and it was clear that CC was a better license for use on images, the WMF wisely began the process of migrating image licensing policy to favor CC licensing. Basically, the GFDL was a poor tool to fit the purpose, but was all that we had in 2001 when Wikipedia was founded. When better tools came along, it was no longer needed as a tool. Other than legacy images which have been licensed with only GFDL before we change the policy, we should deprecate any future uses of the license. --Jayron32 14:47, 11 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Support. Flickr does not offer GFDL licensing on uploaded images. Google does not show GFDL licensed images in their "free images only" tools on Google Images. GFDL itself is intended for "manual, textbook or other document"s. For these reasons, we shouldn't allow images solely licensed under GFDL - because not only are they limiting the reuse on Wikipedia, it prevents other image hosting sites from reusing our images as part of their repositories. However, I do not think it should be deprecated as a whole - as long as someone chooses to license their image under another acceptable free license (or to the public domain/CC0), they should be permitted to also select GFDL and license it that way. Furthermore, images licensed only under GFDL should continue to be uploadable, and I do not believe that they should be considered fully "non-free content". If a GFDL image is the only one that is able to be found for a purpose, even if a freer image could be created, I think that the non-free content criteria should accommodate using a GFDL licensed image as opposed to relegating it to the strictness of those criteria - but not a full relaxation thereof. Part of the Wikimedia movement is to encourage free access to information - and we are not accomplishing that by considering the GFDL, with its onerous and strict terms for abiding with attribution, the same as a CC license. The GFDL is great for its purpose - especially when considering digital documentation/media that can easily contain a plethora of required attribution/copying elements without it becoming unusable - but that is not what we consider "free". -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 22:06, 11 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Support, mainly per Alexis Jazz. GFDL-only is a bad license for images, and it's now obsolete. No reason to continue to allow it, especially since the only people who use GFDL-only for images are Wikimedia editors. In effect we continue to perpetuate a bad copyright practice that doesn't exist anywhere else. Regarding fair use concerns, I think they are mostly theoretical, again since the only people who might ever want (and ever do) upload a GFDL-only image to Wikipedia are Wikipedia users themselves and they upload their own work. The likelihood that we are going to find an image somewhere on the web licensed as GFDL-only that we may want to upload here (as fair use or as a free image) is quite small. But for formal purposes I'd be perfectly fine explicitly specifying that if someone wants to upload a GFDL-only licensed image as a fair use image, that's allowed and that in this situation GFDL-only will be treated the same as a non-free license. Nsk92 (talk) 23:57, 11 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose per Finnusertop, and concerns raised by Xaosflux even though I actually agree Creative Commons is a better license for photos, I have to stick to my beliefs in the freedom to choose. I might otherwise need that far less practical option some day, so I'm against anyone removing it. Also, the idea of adding this WP:CREEPy instruction set about if you uploaded before or after this date is just adding adding more needless confusion to the process that we say we want to remove by getting rid of "3 pages" of licensing. Except, the 3 pages have already been determined to be "free enough" so there is no confusion, but the new policy would bring plenty of confusion while people attempt to make "determinations" about already existing media. I can see all the disputes happening already... Huggums537 (talk) 01:47, 12 May 2021 (UTC)
    @Huggums537: Thank you for your comment. I agree that we should make things as simple as possible. But I think that the only way to make it more simple is to reduce it to "GFDL is not allowed!". I know you oppose but if you had to chose between those 2 alternatives which one do you think is the best (or the least crappy)? --MGA73 (talk) 07:43, 12 May 2021 (UTC)
    Forgive me, but exactly which 2 crappy alternatives are you asking me to choose from? Huggums537 (talk) 10:10, 12 May 2021 (UTC)
    @Huggums537: First alternative is my original (the one you call CREEPy) and the second alternative is "GFDL is not allowed.". --MGA73 (talk) 10:22, 12 May 2021 (UTC)
    Ok. Got it. I vote for a third alternative, just leave things as they are because you can't very easily add free software with a Creative Commons, but you can with a GFDL. This proposal overlooks that fact. Huggums537 (talk) 10:28, 12 May 2021 (UTC)
    @Huggums537: Thank you. But the proposal is that software licensed GFDL can still be uploaded to Wikipedia as GFDL. --MGA73 (talk) 12:02, 12 May 2021 (UTC)
    Yes, I understand your point, but I read your proposal differently because educational and/or instructional software as well can oftentimes also be primarily categorized as video or audio, so the proposal as it is written could cause those softwares to be excluded. These are the kinds of softwares I was thinking of that might get overlooked, but there very well may be other factors that have not been taken into consideration. Huggums537 (talk) 14:29, 12 May 2021 (UTC)
    Huggums537, I might otherwise need that far less practical option some day Actually, you won't. If somehow in the future you find a problem with Creative Commons, you might switch to the basic {{Attribution}} or {{PD-self}} templates, perhaps {{FAL}} or another free license or write a better license from scratch. But not GFDL. instruction set about if you uploaded before or after this date That's actually not in there. There is a standard grandfather clause based in the licensing date. So if you find a GFDL-only licensed file on, say, dewiki or itwiki, you may upload it here if it was tagged GFDL before 1 July 2021. make "determinations" about already existing media Already existing media is simply not affected by this proposal, so there is no need to worry about dispute over that. Except, the 3 pages have already been determined to be "free enough" The real-world example from notafish and the comic explain why GFDL just isn't a practical license for visual media. There appears to be some confusion about "GFDL software", but this appears to be an error in the proposal that I overlooked (I coauthored the proposal): GFDL was created two decades ago to accompany existing free software licenses like the GPL. Before that, the manual that came with free software was typically licensed under the free software license, which was odd because reasons. Software itself does not get licensed as GFDL. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 14:56, 12 May 2021 (UTC)
    Okay, that addresses a lot of my concerns, and I still do think the Creative Commons is a better license for photos. I'm just not convinced it's better for audio or video or even drawings since they can be comprised of illustration such as flow charts and blueprints etc. You can find a good example of the confusion I'm talking about if you do a Google search for Harry Potter wizarding world DVD game, then try to make a determination whether it should be classified as a DVD video, a software video game or perhaps either or both. Huggums537 (talk) 15:38, 12 May 2021 (UTC) An even better general example that I can think of is a document called an electrical schematic which could be interpreted as both a drawing and/or a manual. Huggums537 (talk) 16:30, 12 May 2021 (UTC)
    The distinctive aspects of the GFDL is the requirement to maintain some of the identity of the original—the specified cover text, any specified invariant sections, and the acknowledgment or dedication sections—while also requiring the modified version to distinguish itself from the original with a different title. For audio or video recordings, frankly I think it would be preferable for someone to craft a new free licence that appropriately takes into account the attributes of those media. For a schematic, sure, issue it within a document that already complies with the GFDL. isaacl (talk) 19:58, 12 May 2021 (UTC)
    I guess that makes sense. Another good example is blueprints because they are architectural drawings, but also construction manuals. Huggums537 (talk) 20:14, 12 May 2021 (UTC)
  • GFDL only makes sense for printed works that can contain within themselves the sections required to be preserved by modified versions, as the licence assumes this context. At a minimum, this means a title page, copyright and licensing page, and history section. I think it is reasonable to restrict its use to files that already contain within themselves a title page, a copyright and licensing page, and if the file is a modification of an earlier one, a history section. Thus even for an image extracted from a GFDL book, I think the uploaded work should contain within itself a title, copyright and licensing, and history pages, either within the image or with everything bundled together in a document file format. This would make it easier for re-users to comply with the licensing terms. isaacl (talk) 02:17, 12 May 2021 (UTC)
    That is a very reasonable argument. However, the argument could also be made that the title of a photo technically constitutes a "title page", and the revision history of the photo a "history page" while licensing does not need to be within the photo itself, unlike other media such as film or software. On the flip side of this argument, we could allow media such as film and free software under a GFDL license because they have titles, revision histories (maybe not so much in film), and licensing within them. Huggums537 (talk) 10:05, 12 May 2021 (UTC)
    @Huggums537: yes we could. But the question is why should we? WMF conluded in 2009 that GFDl is not good for Wikipedia so they decided not to use it as the sole license. There are better alternatives so why not use them? --MGA73 (talk) 10:32, 12 May 2021 (UTC)
    Because in the case of drawings, audio, and video this could be instructional or educational in nature such as a type of course work that is more suitable to a GFDL license than Creative Commons for the authors. While we are a "free knowledge" site even CC acknowledges authorship [through attribution]. Huggums537 (talk) 10:49, 12 May 2021 (UTC)
    If you squint just right, and turn your head just so, you can sort of invent ways for other forms of media to have equivalents to the sections described by the GFDL. (For a photo distributed as its own individual work, separate web pages is not one of them, as the license refers to sections and pages of the document itself. Also reproducing the license in full within the document is mandatory.) But the fact remains that the licence was written assuming the context of a printed work with specific sections contained within the document, and thus it makes most sense to limit the use of the license to works within this context. isaacl (talk) 14:42, 12 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Support GFDL is impractical for new content, and if people practically can't reuse our content, then it's not really free (as in freedom). It is important that we have an exception for legacy content though like Commons has, as there is a lot of legacy early 2000s content out there that was licensed as GFDL just because it was the popular license at the time (I uploaded some to Commons a few months ago). Legoktm (talk) 15:29, 12 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Support. Ruslik_Zero 20:47, 12 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose. "Is it helpful? Is it necessary? Is it kind?" Does this solve an actual problem Wikipedia has? Or only an imagined one, that will make uploading (and RE-uploading) relevant media more difficult? Does this improve the encyclopedia or its usability or its RE-usability? If not, vote NO. 71.62.227.79 (talk) 02:52, 13 May 2021 (UTC)
    Does this solve an actual problem Wikipedia has? Didn't want to name and shame, but I guess there's no avoiding it eventually. Here's an example. that will make uploading (and RE-uploading) relevant media more difficult? GFDL hasn't been a default option for years. Licensing date counts, not the upload date. Is it necessary? Is it kind? If you simply don't care, why require a license at all? Even easier. Yes, it's necessary. or its RE-usability? Yes, that one. See this real-world example from notafish and the comic above. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 04:27, 13 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Strongly oppose. I use the GFDL because I have frequently seen images I uploaded under Creative Commons used outside Wikipedia without attribution because it is widely assumed to be equivalent to public domain. I no longer upload my photos to Commons because they adopted a proposal like this. Jonathunder (talk) 16:41, 13 May 2021 (UTC)
    Lots of people erroneously assume that Wikipedia's text is PD and violate the license. Doesn't mean we should go back to GFDL only for the text. —Kusma (t·c) 16:51, 13 May 2021 (UTC)
    Thank you for your comment. Sadly there are always someone that do not care about copyright. I do not think that it makes much difference to them if you add CC or GFDL. May I ask if there is always attribution for the files you have licensed GFDL? --MGA73 (talk) 17:20, 13 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Strongly oppose per Finnusertop, 71, and Jonathunder. We should not be restricting the use of free licenses because a sister project does (and quite a few people have complicated relationships with that sister project); banning GFDL uploads because Commons does makes about as much sense as switching to CC-BY because Wikinews uses it. As an active editor at Wikivoyage, that comparison is in turn totally inappropriate, because Wikivoyage has completely different goals to Wikipedia and GFDL text licensing genuinely does serve it poorly; Wikivoyage articles are intended to be used in print more often than Wikipedia ones (see our goals and non-goals and our guide for Wikipedians working cross-project), where printing out the GFDL license is a much bigger concern. However, files uploaded locally to the English Wikipedia are implicitly intended for use on the English Wikipedia, a project with very little focus on print; they may be used in many places, including as print images, as their free license encourages, but the situation depicted by that comment or described by Wikivoyage is downplayed because it simply isn't the original use case. GFDL is a free license, and while we perhaps don't encourage it as strongly as our preferred ones, we can use it just as any other. Banning GFDL uploads because they're 'outdated', as some have encouraged here, makes as much sense as banning CC-BY/CC-BY-SA 1.0 or 2.0 ones for the same reason, and I can tell you there are many useful files with those licenses. Vaticidalprophet 09:32, 14 May 2021 (UTC)
    @Vaticidalprophet: Thank you for your comment. You should not restricting GFDL because Commons did. You should restrict it because the Wikimedia Foundation Board and many other agree that GFDL is not a good license and it does not match the vision of Wiki. Also I think you are wrong about photos uploaded to English Wikipedia. They are very often copied to other projects and used there. There is no such thing as "for Wikipedia". The purpose of Wikipedia is to share with everyone!
    I think that if the only reason to keep GFDL is because "Commons is stupid" then it is not a good reason at all! --MGA73 (talk) 11:34, 14 May 2021 (UTC)
    There is no such thing as "for Wikipedia". The purpose of Wikipedia is to share with everyone! Then it's a good thing I said exactly that, then, isn't it? Wikipedia content is intended to be shared under a free license, not "a free license except this one because it might be awkward". Wikivoyage has a completely different purpose to Wikipedia as regards GFDL compliance, i.e. it's intended to be used in print form, and so "GFDL might be awkward in print" is an actual strong argument. Commons is an intended dedicated image repository, and images hosted on it are being used for that purpose, while Wikipedia is not an image host, and images hosted on it are targeted at Wikipedia articles; that's not to say they can't/shouldn't/won't be shared elsewhere, because they're free images under free licenses, but it does mean "this might be awkward to use in a certain form it's far less likely to be used in than these other random things" is a singularly unconvincing argument. Banning GFDL for new uploads can only hurt Wikipedia's free mission, it cannot help it, because it would only serve to prevent the uploads of files licensed under a free license. There is absolutely no circumstance where banning a free license for reasons of "it might be awkward to use in a specific way" is helpful towards a free mission, ever. Also, there is no need to respond to, let alone ping, every opposer. Vaticidalprophet 11:42, 14 May 2021 (UTC)
    Sorry you see it that way and noted your point. I try not to repeat myself. When I comment or ask it is because I would like to hear the arguments. I do not claim always to be right and if someone make the right arguments I might even withdraw my suggestion. As you can see it has been modified a bit because it was unclear. --MGA73 (talk) 12:27, 14 May 2021 (UTC)
    makes as much sense as banning CC-BY/CC-BY-SA 1.0 or 2.0 ones for the same reason There is a compatibility mechanism for CC 2.0 with newer versions. There is no compatibility for the 1.0 license, but: CC-BY 1.0 includes "credit reasonable to the medium", so unlike GFDL it is feasible to comply with the license terms. Also I have never seen any not-ancient content with a CC 1.0 license. (unlike 2.0 which is still commonplace because of Flickr) — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 17:16, 14 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose I would support a limitation on GFDL for Wikipedian-created content, but if we are reusing a third-party's work that happens to be licensed GFDL and it otherwise meets all other appropriate factors, I do not see any reason to limit that use. We should not be cutting off a potential source simply because of all the free licenses they could have used they used one that's not the best option for images, but otherwise still compat with "free license" otherwise. --Masem (t) 13:26, 14 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Weak oppose per above, modulo the fact that I believe the GFDL is not a "free" license. If someone uses GFDL-only, just ask them to dual license and give them the reasons why it is helpful; we don't need to create more convoluted rules that no one will read. If something is suitably licensed and improves the encyclopedia, we should be able to use it. — Wug·a·po·des​ 23:42, 14 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Support, very well thought out proposal that's worth enacting. It's also better late than never to follow the WMF's guidance. Setting the restriction based on license date, not upload date, is a reasonable way to allow older material while cleaning things up for the future. I agree with Alexis Jazz that this restriction can always be revisited if a significant amount of fresh GDFL content appears in the future. -M.Nelson (talk) 14:12, 15 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Weak Oppose the GFDL is clearly suboptimal for images to put it mildly, and it's nice to be able to copy things to commons so other projects can take advantage of them. That said I don't like the idea of rule creep here; we can always request dual-licensing, and if someone really only wants to contribute images under the GFDL that's not ideal but it's still improving the encyclopedia and I see no reason to stop them. Regards, 31.41.45.190 (talk) 01:56, 16 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Note that most of the concerns raised by the opposers here have already been solved by the compromise put up here. Let me highlight that part:

    The above [proposal] does not restrict non-free usage of content. If a work that is not a derivative work with a GFDL license is used under a non-free rationale, it doesn't have to be scaled down but other non-free limitations will still apply.

    The theoretical possibility of future GFDL-licensed content that would be eligible for non-free inclusion has been brought up as an argument in the past and this is a compromise that will hopefully mitigate that.

    Material that is solely GFDL-licensed after the cut-off date of 1 July 2021 can still be used in the English Wikipedia, just under a non-free rationale. And they are exempted from the resolution limit. So before opposing this proposal, please check first if your concern has already been resolved by the said compromise. pandakekok9 (talk) 05:52, 16 May 2021 (UTC)

Your solution is to use a non-free rationale for freely licensed media. Thats ridiculous. Only in death does duty end (talk) 13:45, 16 May 2021 (UTC)
@Pandakekok9: Exactly what OID said, I saw your proposal it just didn't make any sense, sorry. Regards, 31.41.45.190 (talk) 14:21, 16 May 2021 (UTC)
It makes no sense to require a non-free rationale for content that shares the same license as our text. Beyond that, we have enough trouble getting people to properly use non-free rationales for stuff that is completely non-free so I'm suspicious expanding its use to copyleft media will do anything more than confuse people further. It's a clever idea, and I'd prefer it over forbidding them entirely, but it doesn't resolve my concerns. — Wug·a·po·des​ 22:06, 16 May 2021 (UTC)
This is a misunderstanding of our licensing. The only contributions which are actually dual-licensed are those which came before the date we switched to CC BY SA 3.0. The contributions made after are solely CC by SA 3.0. (Generally anyway, a few people dual license CC and some others after that date.) See our reuse page. Going by the counts at Wikipedia:Size_of_Wikipedia, that means there are some 3.5 million articles which are CC BY SA 3.0 alone. Izno (talk) 00:43, 17 May 2021 (UTC)
@Izno: I was going off the text at the bottom of my editing box which says By publishing changes, you agree to the Terms of Use, and you irrevocably agree to release your contribution under the CC BY-SA 3.0 License and the GFDL (emphasis added). This text seems based on our (legally binding) terms of use, specifically foundation:Terms of Use/en#7. Licensing of Content which by my reading says that all our content is available under the GFDL and Re-users may comply with either license or both. I haven't gone through the history of our ToS, but unless that was recently changed the entire (text of the) encyclopedia is available under the GFDL. — Wug·a·po·des​ 01:34, 17 May 2021 (UTC)
Oh gosh, the inconsistency. The Meta FAQ on the point is interesting, as is the introduction to the update itself. Maybe I'm the one reading it wrong. Izno (talk) 02:12, 17 May 2021 (UTC)
See meta:Licensing update/Questions and Answers#Replacing GFDL with CC-BY-SA?. As per GFDL, modifications of older GFDL content has to continue to be available by GFDL. For completely new content, say a new article, individual editor contributions are made on the basis of dual licensing. But with the licensing update, there is the option to import a purely CC-BY-SA-licensed work from an external source. The resulting content would only be licensed CC-BY-SA, since it would be incorporating non-GFDL content. isaacl (talk) 02:31, 17 May 2021 (UTC)
Isaacl, As per GFDL, modifications of older GFDL content has to continue to be available by GFDL. Technically what you say is correct, but it doesn't apply here. Talking about the wikitext, it has been relicensed as CC BY-SA 3.0. So modifications of that content can be published with a BY-SA and/or GFDL license. We could simply abandon GFDL for wikitext completely without repercussions. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 03:09, 19 May 2021 (UTC)
I stand corrected: it's true the Wikimedia Foundation could set a cutover date where the snapshot of Wikipedia at that time is made into a derivative work following the terms of the CC-BY-SA licence, and so going forward, all text content would be relicensed soley as CC-BY-SA. isaacl (talk) 05:11, 19 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Support The restrictions of the GFDL, when applied to most files, are sufficiently restrictive for the license to be less free than what we would otherwise expect. --AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 01:49, 18 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Strong support. Visual media that are licensed solely under the GFDL do not meet the definition of a free cultural work. In particular, the freedom to copy and redistribute the work must be "practical" and "without any risk". This change is long overdue. Kaldari (talk) 20:08, 20 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Strong support - doesn't meet free standard and can't be used on Commons and thus other wikiprojects. This decisively makes the work non-free for all intents and purposes. This shouldn't even be a tough call. Magog the Ogre (t • c) 23:20, 24 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Support. GFDL is waaayyy too easy to abuse. For example, let's say I have this picture of a fetal pig I took in Forensics class one day. It's my work, and I want to use it on our article on fetal pigs except I want to punish re-users just because I can. Besides forcing people to provide a copy of the license (just for using my singular picture of a fetal pig), here's what else I can do:
    1. Use {{GFDL-self-with-disclaimers}} to require re-users provide a copy of all our disclaimers. See Wikipedia:GFDL standardization.
    2. Mark my userpage as a "Cover text" which means it is also required to be included.
    3. Add a bunch of invariant sections. These are basically appendices which have to be included in every re-use in order to remain compliant with the license. I am not aware of any restrictions regarding the use of invariant sections.
    I don't think anyone should be allowed to do this. –MJL ‐Talk‐☖ 01:16, 25 May 2021 (UTC)
    I can see the disclaimers thing, but I'm not sure whether you're allowed to use the latter two on Wikipedia. Wouldn't that already make the work undisputably nonfree? If such things are allowed on Wikipedia all this time, we are facing an even larger problem than before. pandakekok9 (talk) 10:37, 30 May 2021 (UTC)
  • There have been questions about the number of files and also some said that we should not say no to freely licensed files from external sources. So I checked a bit to find out more about the files. Sadly there is no easy way to find information about deleted files so the numbers below does not include deleted files (copyvios, orphan files no longer usable and files moved to Commons).
As of today there are 1,343 files in Category:Wikipedia license migration not eligible that have no creative commons license. It is fewer than the 1380 I mentioned earlier but some have been deleted as copyvios, some was licensed wrong and a few users relicensed.
999 files are own work (have the templates GFDL-self, GFDL-user or self) and 344 files are not marked clearly as own work.
After the change of license in 2009 there were still many uploads with GFDL by many different users. Today there are 331 files from 2010 and they are uploaded by 198 different users. The number dropped over time and there are only 11 files from 2017 uploaded by 9 different users.
When Commons restricted use of GFDL in 15 October 2018 the number increased. 394 files are uploaded after that date (some are an edited version of an older upload).
  • But of the 394 files 365 is uploaded by 1 user and all uploads in 2021 is made by that user.
  • And of the 394 files only 2 are not marked as own work. The 2 files that are derivated from files on Commons licensed both GFDL and cc-by-sa-3.0 so they should be relicensed.
So the numbers conform that it is only Wikipedians that still use GFDL (primary one user). --MGA73 (talk) 19:16, 25 May 2021 (UTC)
For all of 2020, there is only one image left (that isn't from Jona) that maybe isn't copyvio: File:MV Alta, Co. Cork, February 2020.jpg. And here is the rationale for using GFDL: "Yo, thanks for your query. Fundamentally I'm wary of relicensing this photo as CC as neither I nor the original photographer wanted it being used willynilly outside of Wikipedia, and GFDL seemed the best bet for that." That is what GFDL is used for. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 03:18, 26 May 2021 (UTC)
  • Support per User:MGA73, but the second bullet point, "* The content is primarily a photograph, painting, drawing, audio or video" is too narrow and should include all types of media and image files including both still and animated computer graphics, as well as files representing 3D objects. Better would be "* The content is a media file representing still or moving images, 3D objects, or audio". MichaelMaggs (talk) 11:43, 1 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Support per above. On a side note, I can't tell you how many times I have accidentally clicked on GDFL when trying to publish an edit. ~ HAL333 04:41, 8 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Support per nomination & others, although isn't this really an issue for Commons? Most free media will be uploaded there, not on English Wikipedia. There's essentially no good reason to use GDFL for images any more, so this will exclude the "clueless user selects a license at random" case and the mostly-hypothetical but still bad malicious "trolly GDFL" case where a user just wants to lock down their image in a non-standard way. SnowFire (talk) 17:10, 11 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Support per nomination. It's high time we should move ahead rather using the GFDL. --C1K98V (💬 ✒️ 📂) 13:10, 14 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Support We should stop supporting the usage of an outdated license.Jackattack1597 (talk) 00:40, 19 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Support Way past time. The only reason this is purposely used on Wikipedia is by uploaders who don't really want their images to be freely usable. Wikipedia is a free culture project. If you don't want your images to be freely reused, post them on Flickr or elsewhere. Calliopejen1 (talk) 17:07, 22 June 2021 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Classes of articles shown on pages.

Clear consensus against displaying additional classes on article pages.

Most article class assessments, particularly A/B/C/Start and Non-standard grades, were created for casual internal Wikiproject use. They are considered too unreliable, inconsistent, and out-of-date to present them to readers. Several editors note that it would require substantial changes and editor-labor to bring these ratings up to a sufficient standard. Alsee (talk) 00:33, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

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

Plain and simple. Just showing the classes of articles. I know that it says "this article is a stub" on the bottom, and Good articles and featured articles are shown on the top, but I think it would be a good quality of life change. This would be good because people could see what articles need work without skimming through it or going through the list page of all the class lists. Also, this will give a incentive to class articles because it will show up on the main page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Thisisaverygoodusername (talk • contribs) 22:45, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

Oppose: Classes are already displayed on the talk page of articles. Articles are supposed to be reader-facing and their talk pages are supposed to be editor-facing. The reason why good and featured articles have a topicon is because they are the 'best content', and tell the reader that the article is more professional. Sungodtemple (talk) 21:30, 16 June 2021 (UTC)
@Thisisaverygoodusername: You can enable this for yourself - go to preferences, then gadgets, and under "Appearence" click the box for "Display an assessment of an article's quality in its page header". DuncanHill (talk) 21:33, 16 June 2021 (UTC)
I think we'd need to massively encourage editors to do this and to fix ratings they encounter before we consider showing the ratings to readers. Non-GA/FA ratings are often several years out of date. —Kusma (talk) 13:39, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

Basically what the last two just said. We identify the lowest quality articles so we can ask for help in expanding them, and we identify the cream of the crop to form a basis for what we strive for. Anything in between either isn't ready yet or hasn't been assessed to be top tier yet. There's no need for the average joe schmoe reader to be told anything in between. They can work out for themselves whether an article is all it can be based on whether it has the green plus or bronze star up top. Zeke, the Mad Horrorist (Speak quickly) (Follow my trail) 21:33, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

  • I'm not opposed in theory to displaying more classes to readers, but currently, start/C/B are just too subjective and too unreliable to be of much use. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 02:03, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
    I think we would need to be more transparent to the casual reader as to the scale we're using. Stub, Good, and Featured are all they really see — and that's if we go to the trouble to physically put such on the page — but the average joe reader is more accustomed to a scale like Poor, Fair, Good, Very Good, and Great. Something along those lines. And again, the rating is not something the software itself can assess; editors have to take time out of their day to not only rate the articles but then post those ratings there. I don't really find it would be constructive to do that for anything between the article ratings we already go to the trouble to outwardly show. We already post these ratings to the relevant talk pages; I think anyone looking through there would already be a prospective Wikipedian who probably just hasn't registered yet. I don't think anyone else, among the unregistered crowd, would be interested. Zeke, the Mad Horrorist (Speak quickly) (Follow my trail) 02:36, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
    I think this is a good idea. I like having it enabling while reading articles, it gives me a rough sense of article quality. Even though it's not a perfect metric by any means, an unobtrusive icon does no harm (and getting people thinking about how Wikipedia works is a slight positive). Zoozaz1 talk 02:41, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose. I don't think this is a good idea with the rating system in it's current form. I think if we were to start displaying ratings on articles the system would need a fundamental reorganisation to make it more understandable/useful to readers and to make it easier to enforce consistency in ratings across wikiprojects - as it stands the system is very much intended for internal use and is mostly written in Wikipedia jargon. Ask someone who doesn't know about editing Wikipedia to identify which is best - a featured article, a good article or an A-class article - it isn't obvious from the names. Likewise ask them what the difference is between a start-class article, a C-class article and a stub: all three names are Wikipedia jargon with specific meaning on the site. It's easy to find articles with multiple conflicting ratings, the 3rd article I checked (New York City) is rated as both C-class and B-class by varying wikiprojects. There's other oddities that make the system unintuitive too, why do lists have their own scale but with only 3(?) ratings? Why do some wikiprojects use classifications that don't exist in other projects (like future-class, merge-class, current-class etc)? I just don't feel that the system was designed to be a reader facing part of the site. 192.76.8.91 (talk) 21:20, 21 June 2021 (UTC)
    It's not even clear that "featured article" is a measure of quality. The most obvious reading of the term is that this article is one that we have selected to feature. And the reason for that selection could easily be something other than quality (such as an association with today's date). --Khajidha (talk) 16:06, 23 June 2021 (UTC)
  • I would support showing the A class topicon and what not on said article's page but I am not quite sure about the others yet.  Spy-cicle💥  Talk? 13:46, 23 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose other than FA/GA. Featured and good articles' evaluations are based on a standard set of criteria, while all other levels are based on criteria which differ depending on which WikiProject is handling the review, and are usually one editor's drive-by opinion of the article in a very early state, and then never updated nor maintained. For users who want to view this information anyway, they can enable the "Display an assessment of an article's quality in its page header" gadget in preferences (more info here). Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 16:52, 26 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose Ratings, other than GA and FA, aren't really informative enough to go splashing around. They can lag behind the actual state of a page for a long time, etc. XOR'easter (talk) 19:33, 26 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose The project ratings are typically just one reader's opinion and are not reliable. It would be more useful to enable all the readers to rate the article more easily so we'd then get thousands of assessments. Andrew🐉(talk) 21:32, 26 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose The letter ratings tend to be subjective and inconsistent. ~ HAL333 04:25, 27 June 2021 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

"cite book" ISBN database?

(This doesn't appear to be in either Perennial proposals or FAQ, so I float the idea here.)

Frequently in editing one article and having to enter all the details for a "cite book", one finds that related articles already have a "cite book" for the same book . Not only does this seem unnecessary duplication of detail, but it introduces the possibility of errors, either new or cloned.

Has any thought been given to something like a database of books, so that the extended book information can be in a single place, referenced by multiple articles?

Instead of a user interface of:

  • "{{cite book |isbn=<ISBN> |lots... |of... |these}}" with lots of long details of authors (potentially many), authorlinks, title, publisher, year, place, etc.

one would imagine using:

  • "{{cite isbn |isbn=<ISBN> |...}}", supplemented only with this-instance details

as a higher-level version that fills in most of the details from that database-like entity.

It would, of course, still need some flexibility for details such as page numbers in this usage-instance.

Feline Hymnic (talk) 18:18, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

This is intriguing. The fact that book citations can autofill by providing the ISBN and clicking the autofill button indicates that there's already a database of some sort being referenced. Does anyone know what specifically that is and how it works? It might make more sense to focus on refining or tweaking that database than trying to create a new one from scratch. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 18:47, 5 July 2021 (UTC)
See mw:citoid for how citations are automatically filled. Zoozaz1 talk 18:50, 5 July 2021 (UTC)
@Sdkb: Yes, this is why I emphasised the focus on the user-interface and error-minimisation; that is, on the principle of doing something along these lines. Any actual implementation detail is, in one sense, a different matter. Feline Hymnic (talk) 19:29, 5 July 2021 (UTC)
We once had such a database, and got rid of it in 2015 * Pppery * it has begun... 19:16, 5 July 2021 (UTC)
I immediately thought of Template:Cite doi. I would assume that the consensus there would also apply here. If there's a desire to shorten citations by getting them from a database, there's Template:Cite Q, which pulls data from Wikidata. Tol | talk | contribs 04:23, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

ISBNs seem like a simple book identifier solution. In theory ISBNs will identify an edition which is typically a combination of the author, year of publication, publisher, location, media-type. All of these need to be an exact match, otherwise your page numbers might not work. It's not unusual for editors to fill in missing ISBN fields with an ISBN they find on Amazon or wherever, thinking it sufficient to identify the work - but not the edition. Even determining the correct ISBN can be hard, as books will list every ISBN the book was published under in the copyright page without identifying which one is for this edition. Often books in databases have dozens of ISBNs associated with it, creating a problem where you can't identify which ISBN goes to which edition to open to the correct page number. So you can imagine a system where editors only need to enter an ISBN to generate a citation, how often they will get the wrong edition of the book, either due to entering the wrong ISBN edition, or the database matching the wrong edition. -- GreenC 20:29, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

Some books have impossible ISBNs (they fail the checksum), some publishers improperly re-use ISBNs, and even professional library catalogues contain errors, either inherited from publishers, or introduced by the librarians. And of course many books don't have an ISBN at all. DuncanHill (talk) 20:55, 5 July 2021 (UTC)
Every cite template will have some problems of usage somewhere, somehow. But the advantage of "cite book" etc. massively outweighs such inevitable niggles, doesn't it? We don't promite deletion of "cite book", do we? Otherwise such templates wouldn't be so widely and enthusiastically used. The existence of possible issues in this proposal is no different in principle from those that already exist for the existing templates, is it? For a majority (probably vast majority) of instances, a book-citing person will have a book in front of them, and can give a consistent "isbn/page#" pair. That overarching, consistent ease and reliability of use is what the proposal is about. Feline Hymnic (talk) 21:08, 5 July 2021 (UTC)
I find this idea intriguing, but as said above there are issues with ISBNs, Google Books is notorious for getting them wrong (as in not even close) and many online "publishers" just make them up, presumably to lend legitimacy to the work. Cavalryman (talk) 03:46, 12 July 2021 (UTC).
Apart from the difficulty in ensuring correct ISBNs, one of the objections will be that we shouldn't be storing data here, but should use Wikidata. However, as with {{Cite Q}}, this will cause problems, since the raw data must be stored in such a way that any of the many accepted citation styles in use here can be generated from it (e.g. separated last and first names vs. vauthor lists, cs1 vs. cs2, generated vs. manual links for short footnotes). Wikidata editors have their own views on how data should be stored, and even if their structures catered for our needs, there's no way of ensuring that editors over there would always create and keep data in the form we require. (Of course if we had a single accepted citation style, things would be easier, but that's not going to happen!) Peter coxhead (talk) 05:54, 12 July 2021 (UTC)
Not entirely correct. The data at wikidata should be data in its plainest form. It shouldn't care about the presentation of the data. Here, we can create multiple cite style templates that take the data from wikidata and make it fit whatever style. Gonnym (talk) 17:40, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

I think this is a good idea. Right now, one can put an ISBN into something like citoid or zotero and it will output a {{cite book}} template filled-in with the details. It would remove a step if we could just write {{cite book|[ISBN]}} and skip citoid/zotero/whatever. While there are issues with ISBN, those issues don't stop us from using citoid or zotero or whatever... any tool that auto-fills will still need human review for accuracy. Levivich 17:28, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

Any actions that should be taken around concerns for Hong Kong based editors?

See this article https://hongkongfp.com/2021/07/14/hong-kong-wikipedia-editors-take-precautions-amid-fears-mainland-peers-may-report-users-to-national-security-police/ --occono (talk) 20:55, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

That source seems to be mixing up the different language Wikipedias which are entirely different projects. eg: One member of the Wikimedians of Mainland China (WMC) user group who was involved in the chat about reporting Hong Kong users has top-level editor positions on Wikipedia, including Administrator, Bureaucrat and Oversight status. (I don't think we have a Chinese or HKer crat+OS, so presumably that's a zhwiki user). Their screenshot is from zhwiki too. Later in the article they discuss enwiki's policy on personal attacks. eg Editorial activities on Wikipedia rely heavily on a set of complex guiding principles and policies. Violations or repeat offences may lead to users being warned or even banned by administrators, who are users elected from the community. ... One of the policies is the prohibition of the use of legal threats. They're either unintentionally muddling them up or switching between them confusingly.
Anyway, on the substantive point, I see nothing we can do except re-emphasise (if asked) the advice that your username, user page content, and whatever you give away in edits can all be used to trace you. I don't think the WMF would give away IPs or emails to Chinese authorities, and that article seems to just suggest individuals doxing each other. Since all content is public there's nothing we, as a community, could do about that anyway. The users should probably also take steps to prevent snooping by their ISP. Courtesy ping Deryck Chan, since he's mentioned in the article. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 22:34, 14 July 2021 (UTC)
Thanks for the courtesy ping.
  • The article is unintentionally vague about the boundaries between different Wikipedias. One can only say so much in a news article. But I don't think that is particularly confusing because the policies mentioned (e.g. OS, 3RR, no legal threats) are all either global or applicable across most WMF projects. I am not privy to the investigative journalism into the off-wiki threats so I can also only presume those "top-level" positions refer to zh.wp rights.
  • In terms of things the global / English Wikipedia communities can do:
    • Pursue global bans along the lines of WP:No legal threats against editors who chimed in to suggest reporting one another to PRC/HK national security police (NSP). The HKFP article did say the editors involved had flatly denied hinting at reporting HK editors to NSP, and the case may be thin if the threats were made in an off-wiki discussion channel about Wikimedia, but could possibly be backed up if multiple editors can corroborate.
    • Continue our WP:RSN vigilance regarding media owned by states that censor Wikipedia access. The discussions last year that banned Global Times, Wen Wei / Ta Kung, and CGTN are in the right direction and we need to keep up the vigilance.
    • Moving forward, Wikimedia will need to take on a stronger role in the creation of reliable sources, not just a consumer of reliable sources published by others.
--Deryck C. 10:35, 15 July 2021 (UTC)
The meta:Global bans criteria does seem quite strict, in that it requires 2 local blocks, and I'm not sure NLT is a global policy. Potentially Foundation action via meta:Trust and Safety would also work, and might even be the more appropriate route since the threats seem more material than the usual legal threat, doubly so if the issues involve functionaries (who can see user IPs). ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 10:53, 15 July 2021 (UTC)
There is currently no protection against legal threat on Chinese Wikipedia. The NLT is only a guideline, not a policy as it was imported from English Wikipedia. The page says while there's precedent for blocking an editor on Chinese Wikipedia for issuing legal threat, there is no consensus on the implementation of this rule as a policy. It won't hold much "teeth" if it's just a guideline and no enforcement from Trust and Safety team. OhanaUnitedTalk page 01:20, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

CentralNotice banner for Indic Wikisource Proofreadthon August 2021

Dear colleagues, please comment on CentralNotice banner proposal for Indic Wikisource Proofreadthon August 2021 for the Indic Wikisource contest. (15 August 2021 - 31 August 2021, all IPs from India, WPs,only). Thank you.- Jayanta Nath (Talk|Contrb) 17:10, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

Optional AIV backlog notice for administrators

As the title suggests, I propose that we create an optional notice for administrators. When there is a backlog at AIV, HBC AIV helpberbot5 sends out a notice to administrators about the backlog. This is not in the form of a talk page message, but instead is similar to the one that appears when a user is thanked for an edit. It will be delivered once to all opted-in administrators that make an edit after the backlog is confirmed until the backlog is resolved. The benefit of this feature is that AIV reports will be dealt with quicker. I’ve seen that backlog go as high as 20 (user) reports before someone responded. If we create an opt-in Bat Signal, we can significantly lower the odds of that happening. Thank you for hearing out my proposal, and I hope you will join me in supporting it. Helen(💬📖) 20:52, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

A low-tech way to do that would be like the "attack pages" bat-signal (a piece of code written by @HighInBC IIRC; I use Barkeep49's version at User:Barkeep49/Attack.js), by adding an "AIV is backlogged" message to all pages whenever AIV is in the backlogged category. An alternative approach within the current technology would be an opt-in list of admins that just get an ordinary ping if AIV is backlogged. Neither of these approaches is perfect, though. (Whether AIV is "backlogged" has only little relation to whether any blocks need to be made urgently, which is the more important issue). —Kusma (talk) 18:15, 20 July 2021 (UTC)
Pinged the wrong user, meant Barkeep49. Sorry, Barkeep-not-49. —Kusma (talk) 18:17, 20 July 2021 (UTC)
I have found that script quite useful (which HighInBC did write) in responding quickly to attack pages. To me I think a broader tool, which would probably have to be a wishlist item, of letting users select desired noticeboards to highlight when backlogged could be helpful rather than just focusing on AIV. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 18:24, 20 July 2021 (UTC)
That sounds like a great idea. I would opt in. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 18:53, 20 July 2021 (UTC)
That does sound like a great tool. My current script simply checks if a category has any population and creates a button[5]. It would not take too much work to have it check a category for backlogs and then create a button for each backlog that the user has opt-ed into. I don't have the time to do this myself but I would certainly use it if it existed.
BTW I love the idea of calling my tool the bat signal.HighInBC Need help? Just ask. 22:08, 20 July 2021 (UTC)
@HighInBC if you get around to doing more development could you do it on a separate page so those of us who want to use it don't need to import your whole JS page? This is why I had to create a fork. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 02:52, 21 July 2021 (UTC)
Sure. It is something I just threw together one day, though it seems to be adopted by more than a couple of people. Right now I have two nearly identical copies for attack pages and vandalism pages. I should try to make a single script that can be configured, if I do this I will be sure to make a subpage. It is hard for me to focus on coding these days as I have a house full of distractions. HighInBC Need help? Just ask. 03:04, 21 July 2021 (UTC)
Echoing others that it's a great idea, especially Barkeep's suggestion of a more general tool. Also, this may be controversial, but I think it should be opt-out - so, MediaWiki:Group-sysop.js - because I think that would be a net positive, and the whole point is getting attention to one of the easiest backlogs. Enterprisey (talk!) 06:57, 21 July 2021 (UTC)
Don't think we should force that script in there - but perhaps an opt-in gadget to make it easy for admins that want to enable it (even the dreaded "single user supported gadget" type) - can announce in the adminnews. — xaosflux Talk 10:37, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

Change language in a template

There is a discussion at Template talk:Nutshell regarding a potential change to the wording/language of the template text. Your input is requested. Primefac (talk) 15:14, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

Proposal: Remove the link to the local embassy from the main page

CONSENSUS FOR REMOVAL
This was listed on WP:CENT earlier today, but it's already been present here in a centralized venue for ten days, and so far among !voters there is unanimous support and no signs that'll change much, so it'd be pointless WP:BURO to keep it open longer. The page is very clearly dead, among other concerns, which editors see as valid reason for removal of the main page link. The only remaining question is whether to formally deprecate it as well, something about which views are more split. That question can be considered on its own if anyone wishes to raise it. (non-admin closure) {{u|Sdkb}} talk 23:56, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

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

At the moment the other areas of Wikipedia template includes a link to the Local Embassy. I don't think this link is particularly useful to most visitors to the main page and should be removed. My reasoning for this proposal has 3 main parts

  • The page is dead, and has been for years. In the last year there were 5 requests for help posted on the talk page, 4 of those have received no response, and one (a question about how the listed ambassadors were no longer active on the project) received a 3 month late response telling the user to ask for help somewhere else. Of the 9 questions asked in the 2018-2019 archive 2 received a response, one asking for a revert on the Chinese Wikipedia, and one asking for technical help with the content translation tool. Since 2004 the talk page has received a total of 1052 edits (note the edits are split across Wikipedia talk:Local Embassy and Wikipedia talk:Local Embassy/Archive 1), and a look through the page history will show that many of those edits are random vandalism, confused questions about actual embassy problems or random chit-chat, with relatively few edits using the page for language related issues.
  • The page doesn't seem to have a well defined purpose. The main page link states the page is for "For Wikipedia-related communication in languages other than English", the notice on the page states it is for "discussing Wikipedia-related multilingual coordination.", and the linked page on meta describes the meta embassy as being a place for "resources to help with cross-language issues — site-wide policy and software decisions that affect all of us and interlanguage linking". The pages functionality also seems to overlap quite confusingly with Wikipedia:Embassy, which is equally as dead.
  • Even if the page wasn't abandoned I don't think the functionality it is supposed to provide is of use to enough people to justify a main page link - this seems like the kind of page that should be linked from the community portal or help desk. The other links in that section lead to essential resources for users - the community portal which acts as a central hub for all Wikipedia related community stuff, the help desk for asking questions about editing, the reference desk for asking questions related to content etc. In comparison to those asking questions about Wikipedia related stuff in languages other than English seems to be a rather niche use case. The lack of usefulness to users is demonstrated by the aforementioned deadness of the place.

I think that while this page may have made sense in 2004 in the days before google translate and the like the need for it to be a main page link has long passed. I don't see the sense in sending readers of the main page to a confusing, abandoned page where their questions will languish unanswered for years. 192.76.8.91 (talk) 22:39, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

  • Support Agree the page is clearly useless as it stands. For what it's worth, I did some cleanup of the page a few months ago, but that made it only a tiny bit less useless and still not worthy of being linked from the main page. * Pppery * it has begun... 23:43, 13 July 2021 (UTC)
  • information Administrator note this would just be a simple update to Template:Other areas of Wikipedia. — xaosflux Talk 15:20, 14 July 2021 (UTC)
  • Support I was thinking how pointless this was. In my opinion the whole {{Other areas of Wikipedia}} needs to be rearranged and cleaned up, I think a link to the Teahouse would also be useful, but perhaps for another discussion :) — Berrely • Talk∕Contribs 18:09, 14 July 2021 (UTC)
  • Support Unnecessary and unhelpful. ~ HAL333 19:42, 14 July 2021 (UTC)
  • Support. It's useless. No use linking it anymore. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 06:40, 15 July 2021 (UTC)
  • Support, probably makes more sense for those using other languages to ask at other language wikis, which are already linked from the main page. CMD (talk) 06:59, 15 July 2021 (UTC)
  • Comment - if the page is unused, shouldn't it be deleted altogether, or at least marked with the old "historical interest only" hatnote. As an aside, I notice my name has been on the list since 2014 as someone who can help with Kinyarwanda issues. I guess if you need to talk about your friends and relatives or order carrots at the market, I could help out with that, but my deeper understanding of that language is very limited! To the best of my knowledge nobody has contacted me since I've been on that list though, anyway.  — Amakuru (talk) 09:27, 15 July 2021 (UTC)
    • Amakuru It would probably be worth sending it to MFD again if the decision here is to unlink it, but I don't think it's possible to send pages for a deletion discussion while they're linked from the main page, they fall under the 6th criterion for speedy keeping. 192.76.8.91 (talk) 12:50, 15 July 2021 (UTC)
      As long as other Wikipedia sites have their own local embassies, it would probably better to mark the page as historical rather than delete it. To preserve history, I think that is a good idea for the long term, anyway. isaacl (talk) 16:36, 15 July 2021 (UTC)
      isaacl I think the page that other wikis have equivalents of is WP:Embassy, this seems to be a rather confusingly named English wiki only variant of that page?? It's really rather confusing why we have two of them. Marking it historical or archiving it would also be fine by me, but I think it really needs to be removed from the main page first (if that's what the outcome of this discussion is) because we shouldn't be sending readers to closed help pages. 192.76.8.91 (talk) 16:48, 15 July 2021 (UTC)
      I didn't check all of the links to other language versions of the local embassy page, but the handful I looked at seemed to serve the same purpose. isaacl (talk) 17:38, 15 July 2021 (UTC)
  • Support. Seems of little use, let's remove it and mark it as historical. — Goszei (talk) 22:26, 15 July 2021 (UTC)
  • Comment - It does get a consistent couple hundred hits a day, after all. The main purpose of the page, to my eyes, is to provide a directory of people who are willing to help in particular languages. Thus most of the requests for help would be directed to those people and not visible on the embassy talk page, right? So let's ping some of the people who have added their name here (just some names I recognize as active): @OhanaUnited, Deryck Chan, Sky Harbor, Trialpears, Amakuru, Deisenbe, M-Mustapha, CptViraj, Finnusertop, Mhhossein, King of Hearts, Buidhe, SoWhy, Sandstein, Kippelboy, Titodutta, and Deborahjay: when was the last time, if ever, you received a message which may have come via the Embassy? Certainly if nobody is leaving messages at the Embassy and nobody is getting messages through the Embassy, it seems hard to justify keeping on the main page. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 21:03, 16 July 2021 (UTC)
    Added myself very recently while checking out the page from the discussion and fixing the awfully awkward Swedish. I feel like there wouldn't be any harm in removal, but would like some data. --Trialpears (talk) 21:15, 16 July 2021 (UTC)
    I've never received a user talk page or any other kind of message that indicated or gave me the impression that it was through the Embassy. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 21:20, 16 July 2021 (UTC)
    I don't recall having ever received messages from people who were directed my way via the Embassy. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 15:09, 17 July 2021 (UTC)
    I don't recall anyone ever mentioning they came through the Embassy but then again, why would they? Regards SoWhy 18:35, 17 July 2021 (UTC)
    None whatsoever on the English Wikipedia, but I have received messages through the Local Embassy pages of other Wikipedia editions. From a cross-wiki point of view this is an important landing page for newcomers who are not fluent in the project language and for cross-wiki editors. With that in mind I think it's important to keep maintaining the Local Embassy as a landing page with links to relevant resources for multilingual visitors, and I mildly oppose removal from Main Page due to the English Wikipedia Main Page's normative effect on new Wikipedia language editions. Deryck C. 01:07, 19 July 2021 (UTC)
    Rhododendrites I hope it's not too late, but I can recall some negligible instances of receiving requests from the users who were directed to me vit the Embassy. You can see the instances here and here. --Mhhossein talk 11:41, 20 July 2021 (UTC)
  • Support removal I use the embassies of other language Wikipedias. While I support removing the English Wikipedia embassy from high prominence due to low usage, I certainly want it to remain accessible. Part of the usefulness of the embassy system is that they exist on so many language versions of Wikipedias, and there is value to that interconnectedness and their availability. Also, the lack of posting to the English Wikipedia embassy is not a reflection of the absence of non-English language questions that people would like to post here. Many users would post somewhere, but instead do things like write to OTRS instead. If possible, lowering barriers to access for posting at the embassy would be helpful, because public questions are better than private ones when there is no need for privacy. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:15, 17 July 2021 (UTC)
  • Support per nom. Net negative; main page is too highly viewed for even a somewhat abandoned page. Aza24 (talk) 15:42, 17 July 2021 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
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