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Secondary schools should meet WP:GNG or are they exempt?

Recently I started a discussion at Wikipedia:WikiProject Schools because I did not understand why articles on clearly non-notable schools are kept. Result was a animated discussion: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Schools#Notability of secondary schools (part 2). In general the useful replies could be bundled in two general groups: a) something has to be done on the notability guidelines and b) Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Common outcomes served us wel.

In the most recent discussion a few attempts were made to get somewhere. NickCT came with Wikipedia:WikiProject Schools/Draft RfC, TerriersFan with User:TerriersFan/Notability of schools and I came up with User:Night of the Big Wind/Notability of schools. To no avail.

In effect, the current "policy" is to keep all articles about secondary schools/highschools as soon as they can proof that they exist. To prove notability is not necessary.

So my question for this RfC is: Should secondary schools/highschools meet the standards of Wikipedia:Notability#General notability guideline or are they exempt from that? Night of the Big Wind _talk 01:18, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

My understanding of the current situation is that secondary schools are assumed to pass WP:GNG. If that's the case, then your RfC question doesn't help; the answer to it is "yes they should". It might be more fruitful for the RfC to question that assumption, or to require actual references to reliable sources? But even if it did the former, my unscientific understanding of the UK situation is that pretty much every secondary school would pass GNG since there is extensive press coverage of individual schools, not least as a result of OFSTED report and league tables. (For fun, I searched for news stories for a few schools I could bring to mind, up and down the country. None let me down in terms of GNG.) I don't know if the UK situation can be extended to other countries. As to the latter, I would be uninclined to see a secondary school article deleted merely for lack of sources. --Tagishsimon (talk) 01:40, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Maybe on paper, but the current policy is to keep everything, regardless of notability. People make a real fuss about AfD for schools, even finding deletion-campaigns in it: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Schools#AfD Campaign on schools. A very unhealthy situation. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Common outcomes#Schools is used as policy, overriding WP:GNG. Especially the sentence Most independently accredited degree-awarding institutions and high schools are being kept except when zero independent sources can be found to prove that the institution actually exists. is often used in a deletion discussion. Night of the Big Wind _talk 02:14, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

You're right, it is an unhealthy situation, but there is a campaign. There's a small group of editors who seem to nominate/!vote for deletion on as many articles as they can find from mid-December to the end of January there were over 200 school AfD's. 150-odd of which were nominated by the one user.

And it is because of these users that I actually support your moves here. I completely agree that there should be more concrete notability guidelines for schools. I think that schools have claims towards notability per WP:ORG, per this sentence:

When evaluating the notability of organizations or products, please consider whether they have had any significant or demonstrable effects on culture, society, entertainment, athletics, economies, history, literature, science, or education.

(emphasis added)

By definition, schools have educational value. But, further, schools, almost by default, have societal value and frequently have historical and athletic value.

At the moment, differing interpretations of what is and is not notable cause a great deal of stupid debate at AfD and leads to many schools being deleted that should probably be kept. For example, Middle Harbour PS was merged into it's locality despite achieving a consistently high rank in standardised testing, being (approximately?) a hundred years old, being one of the schools at which the primary school ethics program was piloted, and being the catalyst for a change in law regarding speed zones (none of this was enough). On the other hand, Kesser Torah (school) is A-OK because it's a K to 12 school (emphasis on the "to 12" bit), despite it's relatively low enrolment and no special claims towards notability (I'm told that it's a decent school, though, however second hand that is).

So a more concrete set of criteria would be good. Not sure which draft I like most at the moment, let me think about it for a bit longer. ˜danjel [ talk | contribs ] 10:04, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

While I take no position on the notability-of-every-high-school question, I believe that your reading of WP:ORG is a tad overbroad. There is an important distinction between having "significant or demonstrable effects on...education" and "being a building where education (in some form) takes place". (Similarly, a given textbook might be notable, but the warehouse from which it was distributed, or the presses on which it was printed, probably would not be.) High schools – as a collective phenomenon, and as a way to deliver education – certainly are notable and have without question shaped society's creation, consumption, and interpretation of culture, athletics, economics, history, literature, and science. It's less clear that we should make an a priori assumption that any randomly-selected high school will have had some particular part in shaping that phenomenon and therefore be inherently notable (absent reliable sources corroborating that claim).

To draw a loose analogy, The Catcher in the Rye is a notable work of literature about which we certainly should have an article; on the other hand, we don't want or need a separate article about each of the 65 million copies in print—but we do have a fair bit of commentary about the particular copy Mark David Chapman was carrying when he shot John Lennon. Our articles about high schools need to strive to identify the factors that make each one unique and culturally-relevant. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 17:10, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

In my eyes this has always been a point of friction, both because Wikipedia:Run-of-the-mill and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Common outcomes clash here and because (certainly in the early years of wikipedia, not sure about today) a disproportionate number of WP editors were/are young and their high school(s) loomed large and emotive in their minds. Stuartyeates (talk) 01:49, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

The past has suggested supporting these, but I strongly believe we can move on and require GNG notability to be met for schools. That means we need more than information from the school or its local community itself to have an article. Since we generally presume all towns and regions are notable as geographical features (as long as they are recognized by their respective governments, at minimum), information on a town's secondary schools can easily fit up into that one, barring the cases where GNG can actually be met. They can be searchable terms (leaving redirects behind and included in appropriate disamb. pages) but shouldn't have separate articles. --MASEM (t) 02:05, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

I have been involved in a fair number of worldwide school articles and school AfDs over the last few years. It is my experience that for almost all secondary schools in English-language-speaking countries reliable sources can easily be found to demonstrate notability. If such schools ever get nominated for deletion they are always kept. Articles that have been deleted in the past eventually get recreated. There is, therefore, an assumption that all secondary schools which can be verified are inherently notable. Problems do arise, however, for schools in countries where English is not the first language. The majority of such schools probably would be notable if we had editors who could read the articles in the native language but it is often difficult to find English-language sources. Consequently, we have literally thousands of articles about American high schools but only a handful of articles on secondary schools in China, a county which has a far larger population and in theory should also have thousands of notable schools. There is an argument that a certain leeway should be allowed to encourage creation of such articles to counter the systemic bias on Wikipedia. If an editor makes a valiant effort to create a school article and English is not their first language, I think we should be encouraging their efforts and not nominating their articles for deletion at the first opportunity. The unfortunate consequence of the prevailing view that all secondary schools are notable is that some editors now take the counter view that all primary/elementary schools are non-notable whereas this is not necessarily the case. In practice perhaps 90% or more of these schools are non-notable, but conversely 10% probably are. This view has resulted in the unfortunate mass deletion campaign over the Christmas holidays in which articles for some notable primary schools were deleted because editors did not have the time to vote, let alone investigate and source the articles, simply because of the timing and the sheer scale of the nominations. In England, for example, many historic schools which now serve as primary schools were once the only school in the locality. Children of all ages attended these schools until the then school leaving age so these schools were effectively the equivalent of the present-day secondary school. The current name is often not the same as the historic name which means care must be taken when looking for sources. However, the mass AfD nominators only ever seem to make cursory checks, if any, to see what sources are available and always fail to look for sources under alternate names. I would like to see a guideline in place which prevents a single editor from nominating more than a handful of articles per week. Nominators should also be asked to do more thorough searches before nomination, and especially where a school is over 100 years old. Dahliarose (talk) 10:49, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

It is a self fulfilling prophecy. Articles are kept because other articles are kept. And based on that, articles are kept...

It's not a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's simply a statement of fact. Secondary school articles are invariably kept at AfD because reliable sources are always found to prove their notability. The only exceptions are some schools in non-English-speaking countries where English-speaking editors can't access the sources in the appropriate language. Dahliarose (talk) 13:43, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

As admin mr. Kudpung wrote earlier: if you were to read everything I've ever posted on this topic over the years, including on my RfA, you will have noticed, as many have, that I don't personally mind which way consensus falls as a result of a correctly and neutrally proposed RfC, but that I will firmly uphold any existing conventions, precedents, and unwritten consensus that clearly exist until they are confirmed or changed. Note that WP:OUTCOMES, although an essay, neutrally documents historical facts and 'is intended to supplement Wikipedia:Deletion policy' Night of the Big Wind _talk 11:31, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Dahlia, I think that User:Night of the Big Wind/Notability of schools might be worth a look. It'd certainly create some guidance to prevent what you and I have seen at AfD today. ˜danjel [ talk | contribs ] 11:39, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

If we were serious about changing how this "inherent" notability of secondary schools was treated, requiring GNG instead of just saying the schools exist, I would imagine there would be a grandfathering process during 6 months - 1 year where all such articles would be "frozen" with respect to deletion, allowing time for sources to be added, and then after that period an organized process to redirect/merge those that weren't shown to be notable. As such, trying to do it piece-part as suggested that happened recent will likely lead to reversion since its not a consensus driven change. --MASEM (t) 13:33, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

That would just be wasting everyone's time. The sources invariably exist to prove notability. There must be a better way of improving and sourcing articles rather than going through AfD each time. Dahliarose (talk) 13:43, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

That's not true. Yes, there are sources for the schools, but spot checking a good number of schools shows that most of these are local papers or the like. The bulk of local papers are not independent when it comes to talking about the school, a necessary requirement for notability. --MASEM (t) 13:54, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

But local papers are independent sources. Schools have no control over what content is published in them. A newspaper or magazine by the school itself would, however, not be an independent source. Dahliarose (talk) 16:01, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

It is interesting to see that people have a great concern about deletions in a discussion about notability. Night of the Big Wind _talk 14:04, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Why? Deletion is the normal fate of the non-notable article. I seem to be missing your point. --Tagishsimon (talk) 14:14, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

In fact they acknowledge that there are loads of articles out there, that should not be there at all. Breaking the "common outcomes"-policy to keep everything, puts all those articles at risk to be challenged. (And even then, I assume that a big chunk of the nominated articles can be rescued and brought up to standard.) Night of the Big Wind _talk 15:11, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Your reading differs from mine. I still have the impression that they are notable in terms of GNG, but that in many cases they do not provide references to RS, a secondary problem. I do not believe that "common outcomes" is what forestalls deletion, so much as that deletion is forestalled by the recognition that they meet GNG, and this has led to "common outcomes" as a guide to prevent further waste of time. I don't think anyone disagrees about whether or not they should meet GNG to stay. But you seem unpursuaded that, on the whole, and evenin the absence of references to RS, that they do meet GNG. --Tagishsimon (talk) 16:08, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

It seems unlikely in the extreme that a random secondary school exists today in such a secretive town that there is nothing at all published about it in any RS. Perhaps a few such could exist somewhere in North Korea, but not as a general worldwide rule. Failure to cite sources does not equate to nonexistence of sources. That said, there might have been a few pre-Gutenberg schools for which there remains no extant source to cite. Schools almost all have budget battles, bussing issues, staff scandals, real estate, zoning impacts, traffic control effects, etc. Any of these things can show up on the public record, in the news, on concil minutes, and so forth. If someone looks hard enough, the sources are there to be used. The real question is how to motivate people to do that looking, but that in no way is a wp:N issue. LeadSongDog come howl! 16:40, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

"Schools almost all have budget battles, bussing issues, staff scandals, real estate, zoning impacts, traffic control effects, etc. Any of these things can show up on the public record, in the news, on concil minutes, and so forth." This is all information that would be of local impact, from local sources, and thus fails the independence aspect for WP:GNG (and possibly WP:V). Also, consider : is any of that information of encyclopedic value? If there is value, it is the impact on the town that the school is in, and thus, even a better drive to push that information into the town article (which I don't see going anywhere anytime soon). --MASEM (t) 16:52, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

• I see no reason why a group of articles should be exempt from GNG. Some people see GNG as a ceiling, i.e. "anything that meets GNG is notable". I see GNG as a floor, i.e. "anything that doesn't meet GNG is non-notable", and in addition some things that pass GNG but fail specific guidelines like WP:POLITICIAN are also non-notable. I think that schools of any stripe should have significant non-trivial coverage. I take that to mean coverage above and beyond the following five types of coverage that fail to establish notability:

1. Local coverage (Recall that before WWII, newspapers in small towns also mentioned when townsfolk had the flu or relatives from out-of-town over)
2. Routine coverage (The San Gabriel Valley Newspaper Group has a "School of the Week" feature where they have a half-page blurb in each of their papers about an area school. Since the feature is several years old, every school has been coveraged. That doesn't make all of them notable.)
3. Fleeting (a couple mentions of the school here and there, or a five-sentence writeup does not notability make)
4. Human interest stories that aren't really about the school (if there's a story about an 8-year-old who beat cancer and happens to goes to Spiro T. Agnew Elementary School, that article is attesting to the notability of the 8-year-old, not the school).
5. Random coverage (Many news stories pick a school, essentially at random, to illustrate some larger point about a district or state. They could've picked any number of schools to make the same point, therefore the article doesn't really establish the notability of the school they picked)

If, and only if, a school has coverage that isn't any of those five things should it be kept. In short, nothing should be exempt from WP:GNG. Not primary schools, not secondary schools, not anything. Purplebackpack89≈≈≈≈ 17:13, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Merely being able to prove that a school exists via RS doesn't mean that every school deserves a stand-alone article. The choice is not simply keep/delete; information about schools not meeting the GNG for a separate article can be merged into existing articles on their respective localities. A related issue seems to be a recent rash of deletion requests which has brought the schools issue to a head; while deleting is always easier than fixing, it's often not the best course and in the case of many (but not all) school articles would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The trouble with mass AFD nominations is that there's no time to separate wheat from chaff (let alone figure out what to do with the wheat). Miniapolis (talk) 17:53, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Again, I'll point out that if there's general agreement that secondary schools are immediately notable and need to meet the GNG, the steps to complete this would start with a 6-12 month grandfather blocking on any AFD of these schools giving editors time to find sources, followed by a rigorous evaluation to redirect/merge non-notable schools to the town article that they serve. This process would have to be broadly announced, likely given a workpage in WP space to explain what's happening and the like. None of these should hit AFD as the name of a school is a likely search term, and its always possible the school may become notable in the future. --MASEM (t) 18:25, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

This all points to the glaring problem of trying to apply a guideline written to limit "encyclopedic" entries to an article which exists to fulfill one of the other two-thirds of the WP mission (almanac and gazetteer). These are gazetteer articles, but the guideline still does not reflect that standards must be different for articles of this nature. A secondary school is like a navigable waterway in being notable enough by its existance without the additional burden of our definition in WP:N. It still, however, must meet WP:V - no sources, no article. Jim Miller ^{See me | Touch me} 18:55, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

A redirect/merge of the school name to its locality does not fail the gazetteer function. --MASEM (t) 19:00, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

I agree that a redirect could serve such a function, but this would result in an inconsistent and incoherent mix of results. There is no way to properly convey the information on every secondary school in New York City in the article on the city. And while schools in public school districts could be redirected to the article on the district, as is regularly done with primary and middle schools, private secondary schools would have no such redirect available. The end result would be that some schools would have articles, some would be redirects to localities, and some redirects to school districts. This seems to be more than an acceptable amount of difficulty for the reader. Jim Miller ^{See me | Touch me} 19:38, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

In the case of large metro areas with more than a handful of schools, I can see supporting the redirect to "Education in X", and further breakout if needed (see List of public elementary schools in New York City extending from Education in New York City). The same could be done for private/parochial schools if they are a sufficiently large number, though I'd suspect we need a specific metric for even inclusion in the list to avoid some person tutoring out of their home to be called out as a school. --MASEM (t) 20:22, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

And importantly, if all the reader is doing is using this work as a gazetteer to locate a school, this functionality still works. Redirects can take readers directly to a line on a table or a section of an article. --MASEM (t) 20:23, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

For what little it's worth, the original "policy" to blanket keep all secondary schools was based on VFD outcomes from about late 2003 to mid-2005 that were (much later) shown to have been tainted by the Radman1/GRider sockfarm. 74.74.150.139 (talk) 14:37, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

• The problem with redirecting to the locality/education district is that you would lose most if not all of the information in the article. The typical Secondary school is a large and busy institution, this proposal appears to be based on a misunderstanding of the concept of a local newspaper, in most places the local newspapers are independent of the school. ϢereSpielChequers 19:31, 3 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Local papers are not independent because their primary focus is that region of interest. This is why NSPORTS calls out against using local papers to try to demonstrate the notability of high school and amateur athletes, and why we require a strong reliable source than just a local restaurant guide for eateries or other businesses. They're ok as sources once notability is established, but not before then. As for losing information, most of the information that when I spot check through these schools is highly routine and news/timeline-like, and doesn't make for good encyclopedic information in an article by itself. As part of the larger coverage of education in that town or the like, sure, but not as a standalone article. That's why its'a "redirect/merge" suggestion, not just "redirect", some information can be brought over. --MASEM (t) 19:41, 3 February 2012 (UTC)
    • Their focus doesn't diminish their independence, or indeed their status as a reliable source. Independence is about whether the school has editorial influence on the paper, reliability about having adequate processes in place for fact checking. Notability is of course a very different subject, and at first glance you might think that NSPORTS doesn't follow the GNG. But, and this difference is crucial, NSPORTS is dealing with individual High School athletes as opposed to the actual school - the career of an individual High school athlete can be little more than a BLP1E. Schools are usually longer lived. As for the idea that much of the information in many school articles is routine and overly focussed on the present, yes that's true but also much isn't. More importantly such an approach verges on considering the article as is rather than the potential of the subject. The difficulty of identifying a secondary school that fails the GNG is that you'd need access to the local papers in that area. In theory there could be a secondary school that was ignored by the media throughout its life, but it isn't very likely. ϢereSpielChequers 00:58, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
      • Yes, it does actually. The more focused a source is on some field, such as a specific geographic location, the less likely they are independent of what exists within that field. Basically - it's tooting one's own horn even if the connection is not financial or personal. This is an idea spelled out at WP:ROUTINE and WP:DIVERSE. And every argument that you can apply to the local coverage of a school can typically apply to any business at the same local level. Yes, some businesses have shorter lifetimes than schools, some don't. And yet some will get the same type of coverage as a local school, but they would fail WP:ORG.
        • Again, I note I'm not talking about removal of information, as, at least with public schools, they are part of a government system. Searching for "Smalltown Elementary School" would still be a valid link, redirecting to the Education section of Smalltown, and where likely the most encyclopedic information can be put such as when it was built, what grades it serves, approximate student body size, etc. Some school may have more in-depth coverage and thus would require a longer discussion and a full article, but I doubt most really can when you work at it. --MASEM (t) 01:26, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
          • WP:ROUTINE is not related to the concept of independence, independence is a matter of editorial control and standards of journalism. It would be wrong to assume that journalistic standards are proportionate to circulation size. It is highly likely that most name checks of a school in Local Papers will be routine, but enough will not be routine that practically all conventionally sized secondary schools will be notable. WP:DIVERSE isn't about independence either; DIVERSE does have a requirement for national rather than local coverage, but that is a guideline for events not a policy, nor is it applicable to institutions. ϢereSpielChequers 10:59, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
            • It's absolutely applicable to institutions. The equivalent passage on WP:ORG currently has a shortcut at WP:CORPDEPTH; it's been on the page, essentially unchanged, since 11 September 2008. 74.74.150.139 (talk) 11:13, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
            • You have to remember that we're writing a world-wide encyclopedia. If we cannot explain the importance of a topic outside of its local field, we're probably in too much detail and need to resummarize to a higher level. If a topic is only covered in depth via local sources, it has very little impact to the whole of mankind, and thus should be discussed in less detail in a border topic. Again, this is not dismissing local sources as WP:V sources, but only as a the sole indicators for notability. On the flip side, the logic being used to justify why local papers give schools notability would be sufficient to give most businesses, local landmarks, and numerous residents of any town with its own paper notability for WP, and that's just not going to happen (WP:IINFO for one). --MASEM (t) 12:38, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
              • There is no business or institution that has the societal impact on a community that a school has. On the physical level, there are many towns in Australia where the school is one of the oldest and most permanent structures (alongside some combination of a pub, railway station, police station, war memorial and another pub). On a sheer numbers level, there are no places where there are so many people (including children as people) attend full time for so long. On a social level, a change in staffing or pedagogy at a school reverberates through the community; principal retires, Aboriginal education becomes integrated across the curriculum, whatever. On an organisational level, schools are often sites where governments seek to base other community services, such as welfare programs, nurses or children's dental programs. These things tend to be reported in the local news media. If a school (or even a teacher) does something right (or wrong) for their classes across their career, the effects are felt for generations. I'm speaking mostly based on my teaching and educational consultancy experience here in Australia, but I imagine the same is true for everywhere else on the planet.

The local butcher? Not so much. The content of the news article (whether it be local or national) is what makes the difference here. ˜danjel [ talk | contribs ] 12:57, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

• • • • • • • • • Is any of this impact documented, however? You may be able to document the changes, but if you can't document that impact (secondary information), then you're placing undue weight on what the importance of these changes have. And there are other institutions that may be more important than schools: a local business that the town was founded around, or in some cases, churches may be more valuable to the community than the school. The point is: schools have no special weight within WP, and are not intrinsically notable simply because there happens to be very local coverage of them. --MASEM (t) 14:12, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
                  • What are you asking is documented here? That more people attend schools full time than they do at the local barber shop (sources can usually be found for this, even in the local paper)? Or that school buildings tend to be the oldest documented structures (this is often easy enough to source)? The impact of teachers (the effect of good/bad teachers is receiving wide coverage at the moment in the general news media, as well as more academic publications)? That schools tend to be sites where other services get built in (easy enough to find sources for this too for schools where these services get offered)? You're too quick to insist that local newsmedia be considered unreliable when they most often report these issues quite reasonably.

As for "more important", I'm not arguing that there might be other places that are "more important", even though I think that this is often rarely the case. I am arguing that this is what makes schools notable. ˜danjel [ talk | contribs ] 15:15, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

No, we're looking for more than just mere existence or mention as a factual event in a local news story. Why should anyone else in the world care about the school? That's why we need non-local sources that provide significant coverage of the school to make an encyclopedic article about it - otherwise its datum with no context, useful as part of a larger article but not enough for an article by itself. --MASEM (t) 15:40, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

• The current thinking at WP:CORPDEPTH was introduced with minimal discussion and has been controversial since then. The Wikipedia:Run-of-the-mill page originally contained content which supported the "local sources don't count" idea, but it was removed due to opposition. WP:ITSLOCAL also remains in the heavily viewed WP:ATA essay, which argues against "local sources don't count", and this makes some sense since the WP:GNG, which gets a lot more scrutiny on its content than SNGs, says nothing about local sources being disallowed. Ultimately, the GNG states than an article should pass either the GNG or one or more SNGs, so if a school article passes the GNG, there is really no issue. This idea of local sources being bad opens a large can of worms. What is a "local source" and a "local area"? Where do you draw the line? One could argue that "most of the world doesn't care" about what goes into the national newspapers of a particular country, therefore we should demand international coverage of topic before covering it in an encyclopedia. Judging notability by depth of coverage and independence e.t.c. is far more objective. CT Cooper · talk 00:52, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

In considering WP:IINFO, we have to state, at some point, where coverage of a topic is so focused and localized enough that it no longer qualifies for a stand alone topic - otherwise, on the assumption that local papers are otherwise reliable sources, you run into the problem that numerous people, businesses, and the like are suddenly "notable" when, when thinking about the larger idea of WP being a summarizing work of human knowledge, is obviously just not going to work. The deciding point between what is strictly just local coverage, and the same for what is just strictly regional coverage, and how that applies to notability, is a discussion that likely has to be resolved at AFD or a similar consensus-based venue, because it is not a hard line. I do agree that summarizing that into "most of the world doesn't care" can be a loaded statement, but the way to look at it is that if you have a geographically-fixed object (the school), and its influence is only to those that live in its immediate location such that no one outside of that location has cared to write about it, it probably doesn't have a larger influence needed for a good encyclopedic article. Not all schools fall into this, but I'd say that at a worldwide level, the likelihood of a school having in-depth coverage from outside its immediate local area is very low. Ergo, it is improper to assume these schools should have stand-alone articles. Covered in the articles on the local area, yes, but not on their own. --MASEM (t) 14:45, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

The appropriateness of an article's existence should be judged by the ability to write a policy compliant article on it. If there are a large collection of local non-trivial independent sources on the topic, then an article might be appropriate, on the other hand if there are a small number of trivial sources on a topic from multiple countries, then such an article would not be appropriate. The idea of blanket excluding local sources is very arbitrary with little relation to article content, no matter how it is defined, as there is no reason why regional sources would be of interest to a worldwide audience, itself a vague idea, while local sources would not be. Excluding local sources would make sense if the aim was to cap the number of articles, but that is not part of the stated aims of notability guidelines, although I recognize some editors think it should be (e.g. to keep vandalism under control, a frequent complaint of school articles). CT Cooper · talk 15:08, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

We aren't capping the number of articles but we are avoiding indiscriminate information, that's a goal of notability. Taking the argument that several non-trivial local sources are appropriate for a school, it is very easy to make that same apply to people, groups, businesses, and the like all of a local nature. But we know as a work that would be far from appropriate for inclusion: WP:ORG, for example, requires wider coverage for this reason. It also further exaggerates an already weighted systematic bias on western cultures, where there are a lot of local papers that cover local events, compared to less better-off countries where the idea of local publication is non-existent. Now, note, I'm not saying its possible that consensus could decide that an article, solely resting on local sources but really well written local sources as to make a very strong encyclopedic article on a school that everyone agrees should be kept. But the challenge is : can that be done for every school in the world? Very very doubtful. --MASEM (t) 15:22, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

The mere application of notability guidelines, policies such as WP:NOT, and content guidance such as WP:WPSCH/AG#WNTI, mean that school articles are not indiscriminate collections of information, whether they be based on local sources or not. The rationale for excluding local sources remains far from clear. Arguing against local coverage to tackle systematic bias is not an argument I have heard previously, but while the systematic bias is an issue, dealing with it is not a goal of notability and is mainly caused by the English Wikipedia missing content from non-English speaking countries, not having too much content from the English speaking world. Trying to rebalance systematic bias by limiting content from the English speaking world, is in practice little different, to cap on articles. Ultimately, the issue about the lack of publications in certain places is not a bias, it is just a reality of the World as it is now, and one that will inevitably have knock on effects to an encyclopedia based on verifiability.

As for exemptions to the local sources requirement, almost everything has exemptions, but if a good article can be written based on local sources is undermines the case for a local sources rule significantly. I don't think anyone is arguing that all schools are notable; it has long been accepted that the vast majority of schools do not pass the WP:GNG, most of these being primary/elementary schools, which there are far more of than higher level institutions. If the GNG is applied properly then merging and re-directing to locality articles or school districts is the correct solution for most school articles (which can probably be extended to businesses and other such things as well), whether any rule against local sources is present or not. CT Cooper · talk 17:30, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

• Let me put on my thinking cap and try and remember the old discussions. At one point we were spending a lot of time at AfD for schools. Generally secondary schools were getting kept and the others merged or deleted. The guidelines were discussed and many suggestions were made. What came out of those discussions was a general guide that secondary schools should be able to meet WP:GNG. So as a rule these should be kept. I don't believe that the intention back then was to override the GNG. The focus was to reduce the number of school articles at AfD. Vegaswikian (talk) 20:29, 3 February 2012 (UTC)
• Schools, like other subjects, shouldn't be exempt from the WP:N/WP:ORG guidelines, but we aren't in a position to organize a witch hunt to rout out the nonnotable schools. If, after a dedicated search, a school doesn't meet the WP:N/WP:ORG guidelines, the article should be merged elsewhere or deleted. Most high schools meet our notability criteria, at least in high-coverage areas like the first world. Editors should be cautious about nominating these for deletion without doing a WP:BEFORE search. ThemFromSpace 02:06, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
• All chools need to meet WP:ORG and WP:GNG. The "all high schools are so important that they're automatically kept" argument is wrong and outdated: there are many high schools that have only one or two students, are really minor extensions of much larger entities (tiny religious schools attached to churches or mosques or run out of the home of a minister), or that exist in places where high schools aren't written about in published sources (most rural schools in developing countries). But the fact is that ~99% of government-run high schools—and middle schools, a fact overlooked by many pro-high school editors—in Canada and the US will easily meet both ORG and GNG, so the practical difference is minimal.
  Anyone with a daily newspaper subscription should think it through: how many papers do you see in a week that contain zero information about your local schools? Has any public school in your area, regardless of the age of the students, ever built a single school building or passed a single tax without information about that change being amply and repeatedly discussed in your newspaper? No? Well, then those schools definitely meet the basic source requirements for notability, don't they? And not "because they're high schools, and we keep all high schools", but because they easily meet the GNG. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:35, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
• In general we should be keeping secondary schools. As others have noted, WP:N is almost always trivial to meet for schools in the English-speaking parts of the world. The problem that arises is that some people will call that coverage routine, or local, or whatever, even if there are literally 100s of articles. I personally suspect that what will happen is we'll end up with some schools deleted because "all they have is the coverage you'd expect of any high school" (with a cite to WP:ROUTINE) which is effectively making the argument that high schools aren't notable for the normal coverage you'd expect of them. And for non-English speaking places, we generally suspect that the coverage exists, we just can't find it. Perhaps we should have a contest. Someone go through and pick 10 "real" high schools in English speaking locations (say at least 100 students that have been around for at least 4 years) they think notability can't be established for. And others seek at least 2 sources (routine or otherwise) that provide more than trivial coverage of the school (including its bands, sports teams, clubs and the like). I'm having a hard time imagining that the majority of the "worst" wouldn't be sourceable... Hobit (talk) 14:23, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

  An important difference will be that school will not be kept because they exist, but because they are notable. We will see quite a few discussion about the definitions of "notable", "reliable sources" and "routine coverage" related to this topic, but at least the article should proof why a school is notable and/or special. Night of the Big Wind _talk 15:18, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

  I think you misunderstand notability as it applies on Wikipedia. It is a term of art. In this case it can be thought of as "others have noticed". That is, we want sources that cover the topic, not that the topic is "special" in any way. I realize that others disagree with that notion, but I think WP:N speaks for itself. Hobit (talk) 01:26, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Sorry. I don't really see the problem. Secondary schools are generally large important institutions, individually and collectively, sometimes going back a century or more. Given the amount of money, legal status, and social/cultural issues they embody it seems like a waste of time to not have default inclusion, except for the most decrepit article. Some will have larger articles than others depending on weight but still they seem like they generally belong in the sum of all human knowledge. (If we were talking about primary schools, I would probabely suggest a different default) Alanscottwalker (talk) 22:10, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

There would be hundreds of thousands of secondary schools in the world. Rather than having a time wasting debate over notability hundreds of thousands of times, in (almost?) all cases ending with a Keep decision, I have no problem in keeping them all, and instead putting that editor effort into improving the quality of them all. Far too many school articles are way below Wikipedia standard. (I suspect that's the real reason in many cases why deletion is sought.) Don't delete. Fix. HiLo48 (talk) 23:01, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

wrong question. The problem is not the secondary schools. It's the primary schools. Too many. The vast majority have nothing notable about them. Fmph (talk) 23:05, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

I agree with HiLo48. The present policy may be slightly rough-and-ready at the margins but it is workable and is not causing any problems. This whole debate is a waste of time, trying to find a solution when there is no problem to fix. I also share CT Cooper's alarm at MASEM's attempt to redefine the concept of "independence" to exclude purely local media. As CT says, where are you going to draw the line? Viewed from the United States, say, it may be easy to see the distinction between local, regional (state) and national, but what are you going to do about, say, Singapore (pop. 5 million) where the city is also the nation? Please tell me this idea is going nowhere. -- Alarics (talk) 09:07, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

There are problems at the moment. As I've stated elsewhere, there have been 215 (give or take) schools nominated for deletion from Dec. 17 to now. 150 odd of these were made by one user in the space of 3 weeks over the Xmas and New Years period. While 90% of these AfDs were legitimate, the remaining 10% were problematic, for example:

• Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Li_Sing_Primary_School
• Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Lagos_Preparatory_School
• Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Huaian_Foreign_Language_School
• Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Middle_Harbour_Public_School_(2nd_nomination)

The delete !vote-ers and nominators in these are either voting on the basis of primary schools are not notable, period, or that there is nothing that can make a primary school notable (in fact, one of the editors involved in the campaign has said that primary schools are "inherently non-notable". This is a problem that needs solving.

Night of the Big Wind, despite the fact that he is coming across this situation from a completely different angle, is doing the right thing. ˜danjel [ talk | contribs ] 10:24, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

It is never wise for an editor or group of editors to push AFD to try to implement policy change, even if its a result of a common outcome that has no exact backing from any guideline or policy. That issue is addressed more by an RFC/U if they know they're fighting policy and trying to fix it that way (WP:POINT), and if they continue to do that, I do recommend that solution. --MASEM (t) 14:45, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

This RfC will not lead to a policy change. It will lead to the closing off of an undesired stray off the policy, commonly know as "Common Outcomes". Night of the Big Wind _talk 13:09, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

It doesn't matter if it is explicitly policy or not, it's still extremely gamey and pointy to try to subvert a long-term community consensus in this manner. AFD is the worst place to start a battle. --MASEM (t) 13:28, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

This is a subject that has been annoying me for ages, and I start by thanking Night of the Big Wind for starting this. It's a hornet's nest, and I think you're a brave Wikipedian for poking at it with a big stick. I almost started this at WP:SCHOOL a while ago, but I chickened out. :)

So... if you consider a school an organization, which I don't think is a big stretch, then we can apply WP:CORPDEPTH which says (in part), "The source's audience must also be considered. Evidence of attention by international or national, or at least regional, media is a strong indication of notability. On the other hand, attention solely from local media, or media of limited interest and circulation, is not an indication of notability; at least one regional, national, or international source is necessary." (emphasis added.) What we have been doing for ages is short-circuiting the GNG and allowing a class of articles to exist under a special exemption. I say this stops now. If a school has coverage in reliable sources from outside its service area, then it's notable. If it's only covered in sources distributed in the same area as the school serves, then it's not notable. I'd really like to see the whole schools tree of articles refactored in the following way:

• Add a paragraph or so in the article about the city/county/whatever (or, in fact all of the above) that describes the school board that serves the area.
• Create school board articles with a list of each school governed by the board. Schools which do not meet the GNG can be covered in a paragraph in the school board article. Schools which do meet the GNG have their own articles and a hat in the school board article pointing to the article on the notable school.
• Create redirects for all non-notable schools in the region pointing back to the school board article, anchored to the paragraph on the specific school.

There, done, easy-peasie, lemon-squeezie. Livit⇑^Eh?/_What? 19:19, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Except that now we have these school board articles which have several problems: most would likely suffer the same CORPDEPTH problem of being only significant to local sources, and that the structure of a school board isn't replicated across the globe.

There's already a better article that every non-notable school article can be merged up into: the article about the community it serves. We already acknowledge any government recognized town or village as notable, so we can create sections on "Education" within those to discuss the schools (and school boards if they exist). When these are large as they would be for large cities, separate "Education in X" can be spun out. --MASEM (t) 19:23, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

You know, as soon as I hit 'save' I thought of the first problem you pointed out, I just hoped nobody else would be smart enough to think of it too. I hadn't thought of the second, but they're both valid points. My proposal sucks, but I agree 100% to merge them back in to the town/village/city/county/arrondissement/whatever. Livit⇑^Eh?/_What? 19:33, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

• Western world Schools will easily meet GNG as schools get numerous independent reports carried out and it would be hard in the western world not to find sources written about a school to meet GNG. I also think they meet guidelines in WP:ORG. Therefore the guildline of common consensus was that all Secondary Schools are notable has been in place for sometime. It allows people to work on content rather than fighting AFDs that will ultimately fail as will be worked on. As I've previously pointed out to Night the problem isn't Western schools if you go with all Secondary schools must meet GNG because it would be very hard for them to fail when worked on my problem is schools outside the west they are no less notable than my local school but would be far more difficult to source enough to meet GNG. I have a big issue there we cant include some and not others. My other concern is the clear campaign being run against schools shown by the huge number of recent AFDS that needs addressed its far too many in number to allow people to assess and look to work on. There really needs to be a limit how many one editor can nominate at any one time. I think everyone agrees the majority of Primary schools are non notable unless they have extensive sources to prove notability so why are they being taken to AFD when there is a clear consensus in those AFds to redirect its a waist of everyones time.Edinburgh Wanderer 00:14, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

  Great! Then you will be able to write an article about the "Plantage Mavo" in Beverwijk, the Netherlands. It is one of my former secondary schools, but I consider the school not notable. If you can proof otherwise, you are welcome to do that! Night of the Big Wind _talk 00:10, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

  • There is no consensus that primary schools are non-notable. There is currently a small band of editors who take this stance and are nominating primary schools for deletion purely because they are primary schools. While perhaps the majority of primary schools are non-notable there are some which are clearly notable that are located in historic buildings and which have served their local community for centuries. Some of these schools have got swept up in the school AfD campaign and have been inappropriately deleted or redirected. The people who would normally help to improve and source these articles haven't been able to do so because of the bad timing over the Christmas holidays and the sheer numbers involved. There have been about have been about 222 school related AfDs since 17th December and one user has been responsible for 157 of those AfDs. His editing history shows that he sometimes looks at the articles for just a few minutes before nominating them for AfD. I really think there should be a limit to the number of AfDs that a single user is allowed to make in any given period. The articles can of course be recreated but it doesn't help that one of the articles involved was being worked on by a new user who now unsurprisingly seems to have given up editing altogether. Dahliarose (talk) 21:33, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
    • More accurately, there is probably agreement that some primary and secondary schools are notable by the GNG, but the argument is that not all primary schools are necessary notable - particularly if the only coverage of the school is by local sources. We don't allow local sources to stand as sufficient GNG evidence for other topics, so it doesn't stand the same to allow schools to get away with it as well. --MASEM (t) 21:41, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

And how can you possibly tell from someone's contributions how long they have spent looking at an article before nominating it? Fmph (talk) 21:43, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Have you seen his list of contributions? Every few minutes a tag or deletion nomination. Unless he reads all the articles and put them in line for tagging/nominating first, it is impossible to give the articles a good look in such a short time. He is efficient enough to standardize his nomination-reasons Night of the Big Wind _talk 00:10, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

The focus of the RFC was are secondary schools notable so we should keep to that subject as much as possible as so far this isn't really going either way. However the consensus on primary schools is they are not automatically notable. Secondary schools are far more notable than primary schools mainly due to being far more coverage on them and and has been found in most of those AFDS there aren't good sources to make primary schools meet GNG and they don't pass previously held common consensus either. Anyone looking at a primary school should asses whether meets GNG and if not be bold and redirect there is no need for an AFD in those cases unless contested then they should go to AFD. In regards to sourcing we do allow local sources in some cases to go towards GNG depending on there nature and level of coverage plus inspectorate reports are clearly independent and reliable sourcing. It should be noted i am strongly against the mass nominating of AFDS by one user they aren't looking at them closely enough it also make it impossible for people to adequately asses them and have time to work on them. Also to address a point further up there are loads of projects who have clear consensus that things don't have to meet GNG the schools consensus was never laid out as such and that should of been formally done however the argument cant be everything on wiki has to meet GNG as that isn't the case it needs to be do Secondary schools have sufficient merit not to meet GNG. We also need to asses whether by using GNG as a standpoint on schools we are creating a situation where western schools pass but say Indian schools fail due to lacking substantial sources they are no less notable. Its time the RFC was brought back to the main issue so we can move forward one way or another. Edinburgh Wanderer 22:07, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Because of the strange layout, I answer Livitup here

I do not agree with your opinion and your attempt to turn the RfC away. This RfC was set up to check if secondary schools (and in fact also primary schools and universities) had to satify WP:GNG or that the Common Outcomes, as used in relating for schools, was allowed to override WP:GNG. The consensus on that point is clear: the Common Outcomes are not allowed to override WP:GNG. So articles about schools just have to satisfy WP:GNG. Night of the Big Wind _talk 00:10, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

• Unless I'm missing something the RFC opening statement says Should secondary schools/highschools meet the standards of Wikipedia:Notability#General notability guideline or are they exempt from that? that does not mention primary schools or UNI's. Edinburgh Wanderer 00:16, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

I was also thinking today that, absent further substantive debate, it was time to do something before this withers away into another failed attempt at documenting consensus. I think there are two key arguments here:

• Sources with local distribution are sufficient to prove notability. Since almost every school in the world is covered in at least local sources, schools are defacto notable.
• Sources with local distribution are not sufficient to prove notability; notability must be proven by coverage in sources of wider distribution, or sources outside the "home area" of the subject of the article. Some schools have such notability, some schools do not, so each article should be judged on the sources within that article.

Once we settle this basic argument, we can move on to determining a guideline for the creation and deletion of school articles. So without further ado, I present a:

Straw poll to test consensus

Proposed: Schools must be shown to have attention from regional, national, or international sources to show notability. Sources with limited or local distribution are not indications of notability for schools.

Support:

1. As straw poll author. Livit⇑^Eh?/_What? 22:32, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
2. Weak support: The "schools are automatically notable" idea is just favoritism shown by people with an overt interest in schools or (more often) people who think their school is Important, and want to bend the rules to favor their local editing interest without any care for the broader effect of doing so. Schools, as organizations, architectural structures, subcultures, or any other categorization are not magically special. I understand DGG's point in the "oppose" section, and it makes sense as observation, but doesn't seem to me to override the issue that there are an unbelievable number of "civic pride" and "local vanity" articles on Wikipedia that should upmerge into broader school district, local government or even town pages. My support is weak because the wording "have attention from ... sources" is not particularly helpful, and this may be too specific – schools are a common example of the problem, but "local crap" is the real problem, not schools per se. That said, some variant of this could deal with that more broadly, by not focusing on schools exactly, but "local civic institutions", and even if it didn't, just slowing the profusion of "my skool's kool!" wannabe-articles would be a net positive. User:Night of the Big Wind's more detailed draft, mentioned at the #Suggestions sub-topic below looks like a good place to start, if schools in particular were to remain the focus. Even that looks to me like it could be broadened to include civic institutions more broadly, from city councils to high school football teams to whatever "local crap" people are generating pointless vanity articles about. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 05:55, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
3. Weak support - This idea needs a rewriting, but I understand and support the motivation. The idea that by simple virtue of being a high school, a high school meets notability requirements, is a bad idea. Most high schools will meet the GNG, but many won't, and we need to separate out out the chaff and be rid of it. Sven Manguard Wha? 15:04, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
4. Support I can support this, although I would prefer more precise wording with regards to sources. I don't think this proposal requires all schools to provide evidence of notability from the get-go, but rather if no sources can be found after a diligent WP:BEFORE search, we should consider merging or deletion. Again its worthwhile to point out that I feel most high schools in the first world meet the WP:ORG/WP:N criteria, so this proposal would necessitate little action. ThemFromSpace 16:09, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
5. Sort of support. I don't think most schools have enough notable information to warrant a separate article. While notable by themselves with broadish GNG interpretation, I don't think every school should necessarily be a separate page. Surely, several paragraphs of info can be placed in the parent articles. I guess what I'm saying is that WP:MERGE can be the best editorial decision even if the school itself is notable. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 11:53, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Oppose:

1. The distinction doesn't make sense as a formal rule, for there will be too many exceptions; in practice for schools as for other local institutions we relatively downgrade the importance of merely local news accounts, but it depends to a good deal what is said in them. I'm more likely to be found arguing against local sources as showing the notability of local institutions than the other way around, but it depends on the article. RS is a matter of interpretation and shades of grey, and most contested AfD discussions tend to involve the nuances of such interpretation. DGG ( talk ) 05:29, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
2. Strong Oppose. Notability has always been about significant independent coverage. Schools where significant independent is met by local sources still meet GNG. The 'non-local' requirement is in the guidelines for wp:organizations, which is an alternate way to meet notability. This proposal would conflate guidelines, requiring schools to meet both instead of either one. This would be a deep change of the current community consensus that would affect all other organizations and even other subject-specific guidelines. While I can empathize with the motivation to avoid lots of half-backed articles about trivial items, fighting them through the local criteria is absolutely the wrong way to approach the situation. What should be questioned is the reliability and quality of sources available, not their geographic proximity; the existing WP:N, WP:V and WP:RS guidelines are good enough to avoid indiscriminate topic coverage (and have never required non-local sources to establish notability). It would make sense to require a stricter enforcement of GNG if in exchange all this nonsense about local and routine sources was dropped, or at least reduced to criteria to assess the quality of the sources found, not an absolute requirement. Diego (talk) 06:40, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
3. Oppose Not only because the distinction between "regional" and "local" is unworkable but because Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia. If someone wants to write an article on some incurious secondary school, is the resulting article any less worthy for inclusion that

   What happened here? Where is the other half of the opinion and the signature? Sven Manguard Wha? 15:05, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

   This was inserted together with the paragraph below by User:Rannpháirtí anaithnid [1]. A rewrite that they forgot to delete? —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 11:57, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

4. Oppose Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia. If someone wants to write an article on a some innocuous secondary school then is the resulting article any less worthy of inclusion than Teardrops on My Drum, Julius von Mohl or Doite? Those are the last three articles I got when I clicked Random article. No more than those articles, articles on secondary schools may not be notable to you, but they are notable to someone, they meet the general notablility guidelines, and just because they exist doesn't mean anyone ever has to read them. We are only collect the sum of human knowledge, we are not saying that any of it is interesting. --RA (talk) 14:09, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

   The logic you're using means that I should write an article on myself , since that's notable to me. (And I can find local sources for that). We can't be indiscriminate despite being paper (we are not the "sum" of human knowledge, we are a summary of human knowlege): at some point we have to recognize that detailed coverage fails our goal of summarizing information. --MASEM (t) 15:30, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

   That would almost certainly be excluded by trivial or routine coverage. Biographies can pass either WP:GNG or WP:BIO, and neither of them ban articles on individuals of local interest. In fact, WP:POLITICIAN opens the door to articles on local politicians. CT Cooper · talk 18:08, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

   (edit conflict) Notability is not a solipsistic notion of "notability". "Notability" is intrinsically about what other people believe is notable. To you and I, any topic may still be non-notable, but, if it is notable to others, unrelated to the topic of the article, that's notable enough for Wikipedia.

   So, "I think I am notable" doesn't cut it. What is required is for multiple, independent sources to write significantly on the topic. That is, "Other people think I am notable". Those other people may not be you or I, but it is they are someone. It doesn't matter if those people are "local", "regional", "national" or "international". All that matters is that the topic is notable to some group of people.

   By "sum of human knowledge" I was referring to the Jimbo quote: "Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That’s what we’re doing." Of course some summarising is needed ... so we summarise about a secondary school, we don't write about every door and hallway or list every past pupil. But we do summarise it. --RA (talk) 18:14, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

   This is why notability on WP is treated differently from the concept of "noted by others" or the standard English dictionary definition. It is meant as an objective metric by demonstrating that sources have found the topic to be of note, and not just the subjective argument "others find this notable". To that end that's why we also require significant coverage to assure that it is not isolated by a small group of people. When the coverage is just local, that's a problem towards our goal of summarizing human knowledge. --MASEM (t) 18:37, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

5. Oppose - The accusation is frequently levied that schools are getting lax treatment with regard to the GNG. If that is true, then the solution is to properly enforce the GNG, and demand a decent level of coverage with trivial references and routine coverage excluded. This proposal will instead raise the bar above the level which is required for the GNG, by excluding "local sources" in a blanket and arbitrary fashion, with absolute no regard to the reasons notability requirements exist in the first place. Reasons given for justifying local sources exclusions among editors have been inconsistent and unclear - with arguments varying from personal dislike of articles on localities (with them being described as "crap" e.t.c.), trying to reduce the number of articles in general, and even trying to tackle systematic bias. There is no evidence that there has ever been a clear consensus for such a rule, with this being demonstrated right here, at WP:ITSLOCAL and WP:ROTM, and by reviewing the "discussion" that led to WP:CORPDEPTH. There remain many unanswered questions on how this actually works, with a lack of any clear definition of what "local" is and how to determine a "local source" in all possible media being the tip of the iceberg. Given these unanswered questions, I think supporting this is analogous to signing a blank cheque. CT Cooper · talk 17:43, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
6. Oppose - The idea of limiting coverage to subjects that get more than local coverage is antithetical to my idea of what WP is. Even though it is not intended to include all human knowledge (I had Raisin Bran for breakfast, just in case you want to know), I believe that it should include what I would expect to find in, say, A History of Foo County, for all Foos in English-speaking nations and for any other Foos that any of our readers are interested in and that our editors are willing to work on. That means, for every city, county, and township in the U.S., coverage of the founders, the locally-noted institutions and personages, the local climate and development patterns, the local history, government, culture, education, sports, and so on. All of that is included in the suggested coverage for all settlements, and most of the sourcing wil be local. Once you start writing an article on a settlement and aim for GA quality, almost every major section will, eventually, require a sub-article, where almost all of the sources will be local. This policy would lead to endless warfare between the notability police and editors, with creative editors adding encyclopedic content to the project and deletionists taking it to AfD and proposing to merge and redirect it back to the locality. In reality, "merge and redirect" for schools and most similar institutions means "delete all of the content except their name and a self-referencing link to an empty redirect."--Hjal (talk) 18:16, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
7. Strong Oppose. This poll is flawed. There is no need for altherantive guidelines for schools if the majority feel the current common outcomes is wrong then schools should meet the same set of guidelines as anything else. They must meet GNG the above proposal is wrong and would mean changing GNG you can't have lower or higher rules for schools than anything else. The original poll should be reinstated immediately. Should schools meet GNG or are they inherently notable. Edinburgh Wanderer 18:24, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
8. Oppose - Wikipedia should cover all reasonably importent subjects, of course, but the reason there are notability guidelines is because nobody wants to read about some small grocery store or a kid's garage band. But schools are always a fairly major institution: in most countries they have to be inspected by the government, and they are generally very important to people that live near them or whose children attend them, unlike grocery stores. So deleting articles that are important to many people (and not just one owner of a grocery store) is unfair to those people. Liam987 16:17, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
9. Oppose THis will not help our mission to create an encyclopedia. More articles on suitable topics is better. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 08:25, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
10. Oppose Existing guidelines (GNG) are sufficient. Additionally, distinguishing "local" from "regional" is not plausible. (Is a New City school covered only in New York Times not notable? What about a Gillette, Wyoming school covered in the regional (but much less significant) newspaper Campbell County Observer?) --ThaddeusB (talk) 15:36, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
11. Oppose It's a trivial bar for a high school to reach, given that the wide majority will have such coverage over its bands or teams in a town or regional newspaper. Throw in a few stellar students or faculty members and it's going to be a long slog to find a few schools which don't pass GNG. Best, Markvs88 (talk) 20:20, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
12. Oppose - The current de facto consensus, that primary schools are presumed not notable unless they are made newsworthy by extraordinary circumstances and that secondary schools are presumed notable per se assuming their existence can be verified (a la populated villages, species of plants and animals, professional baseball players, etc.) works and saves a small crew of regular AfD participants from being swamped by a deluge of notability challenges, both from deletionists seeking to eliminate high school stubs and from inclusionists wanting to preserve pieces on ordinary elementary schools. It is a highly effective, very functional compromise between those favoring a narrow and those favoring a focused encyclopedia. Carrite (talk) 17:34, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
13. Oppose - I agree with User:Carrite; per se notability solves the inevitable time suck of deletion attempts which almost always fail. It's also a recognition that sources out there are likely, but their access on the web from afar may not be, and solves the First World bias by saying that high schools in the US because most have web pages and nearly every town has a newspaper and many have tv stations, radio stations, all with web presences pass GNG, but those in the Democratic Republic of Congo or Ethiopia or Burma aren't. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 20:07, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
14. Oppose Carrite has stated the situation exactly. Experience has shown that a diploma-granting secondary school or a degree-granting college will virtually ALWAYS be found to have significant coverage, and thus we "presume" they are notable to save everyone's time. Instead of nominating such schools for deletion, they should be improved by the addition of the sources that are virtually certain to exist, at least in Western countries (and as Carlossuarez points out, requiring lots of internet-accessible coverage for secondary schools could result in a de facto rule that high schools in developed countries have articles but high schools in developing countries do not). Primary and middle schools usually do NOT receive that kind of coverage, so they have to prove their notability via independent coverage in multiple reliable sources. What is so hard about that? --MelanieN (talk) 17:56, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

    To put it rude: You think is is ok to bluntly ignore WP:GNG and WP:V and don't ask for sources to proof notability is they are not provided, because it is too much work? Night of the Big Wind _talk 19:51, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

15. Oppose It is up to the author to proof notability and I don't care how (s)he does it, as long as it is convincing. Shooting down sources upfront is unfair.

Should schools have to meet GNG

Proposal Are Secondary schools inherently notable or should they meet the full guidelines laid out at WP:GNG the above poll is flawed as if schools are not inherently notable schools should meet the main guidlines as everything else not lesser or higher standards. Edinburgh Wanderer 18:24, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Support:

Oppose:

Straw poll discussion

Trouts and pitchforks welcome. Livit⇑^Eh?/_What? 22:32, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Again thats a side argument the GNG guidelines are already there as are the WP:ORG. A straw poll is needed but it should be the straight question do Secondary schools need to meet GNG or are the exempt the original question of the RFC.Edinburgh Wanderer 22:38, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

No, I think this is the right question to be asking. The justification in the above sections and past AFD is that any secondary school will have local source, ergo defacto notability by the GNG. It is not the case we allow secondary school articles never to have to show any type of notability. No topic is except from the GNG; the reason secondary schools are kept is the presumption of GNG -meeting. When framed in this manner the question is whether local sources satisfy the GNG for secondary schools. --MASEM (t) 22:41, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Well thats not true at all there are plenty of things that are exempt from meeting GNG such as professional sports players. That poll is for another RFC not this one thats a RFC on GNG and what is needed to pass it not are schools notable.Edinburgh Wanderer 22:44, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Masem, you're echoing exactly what I am trying to get at. If we can first decide whether local notability is enough for schools to meet the GNG, then we can decide what to do. If the consensus here is that yes, local sources are enough, then we can probably wrap up this RFC and move on with our lives. But if we decide local coverage does not make a school notable, then we can discuss what to do with schools that only have local coverage. Livit⇑^Eh?/_What? 22:48, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Edinburg, we're not talking about "lots of things". We're talking about schools. For years, secondary schools have been presumed notable based on coverage in sources of local or limited distribution. My straw poll just tries to determine if this is still consensus or not. Livit⇑^Eh?/_What? 22:50, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

No GNG is the same for everything it is no different whether for a person, school or football team therefore a debate on what is needed to pass as GNG for schools isn't appropriate its for another RFC altogether. You cant set a level of sources required for one thing and not another its taking this on another route and the end result will be this RFC getting nothing done. The original question needs answered first If you want to go on a sidetrack meaning the main issue does not get addressed then go ahead. The subject of what is required to meet GNG is a different story all together. It should also be pointed out the RFC isn't about all schools its about secondary ones which will be able to be sourced a lot better also WP:ORG does come into play at that level not just GNG. Edinburgh Wanderer 22:54, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Livitup it was already as said above by Masem taken on another route when he said No topic is except from the GNG. Thats shows this is going to be about GNG not schools. There are so many things on wiki where consensus was laid down properly that things don't have to meet GNG. All I'm saying is you risk this being about GNG not schools.Edinburgh Wanderer 22:58, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

No, pro sports players aren't exempt from notability guidelines. They have to meet the criteria of the sub-notability guideline NSPORT, which is to establish criteria that - given time and resources to locate sources - GNG sourcing can eventually be obtained. While I personally disagree with some of the points, the arguments at NSPORT given for each rational make sense as to why there will likely be non-local coverage of each pro player, for example.

Note that there is no subnotability guideline for schools. It has always been listed in OUTCOME on the justification that local sources are likely to exist to satisfy notability. The question is now raised: are local sources sufficient? They are disallowed via WP:ORG (another sub-notability guideline) and NSPORT rejects them as notability measures, so is there a different consensus for schools? That's the question to be asked. --MASEM (t) 22:59, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

No they are exempt from GNG if they meet those guidelines as at WP:Footy loads of players aren't well sourced but it they play in a fully pro league they stay. You said nothing is exempt from GNG which is wrong.Edinburgh Wanderer 23:07, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Go ahead but its a side argument that in no way need addressed there are no sub guidelines for schools as you say just common outcomes. Therefore they are either notable inherently or the must meet GNG. The original question is the best do they need to meet GNG or not. By going down local sourcing we aren't getting anywhere. What your saying is schools should have sub guidelines its no better than common outcomes. Edinburgh Wanderer 23:12, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Remember, the GNG is not the overarching guideline for inclusion, it is WP:N itself, which says that notability is determined by either meeting the GNG or by a subject-specific notability guideline. As there is no sub-notability guideline for schools (unless you want them under WP:ORG) we have to look to see if they meet the GNG. The argument until recently is "yes secondary schools meet the GNG because they have coverage by, at minimum, local papers". The arguing in question is can local papers be used to justify the GNG. It has never been the case that the GNG has never been applied for schools, simply that the default answer has been presumed yes due to the local sourcing. --MASEM (t) 23:18, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

The issue, also, is that sourcing should be appropriate for a claim of notability. People voted delete at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Middle Harbour Public School (2nd_nomination), despite coverage in national level news media on issues of (a) being the cause for a change to legislation in regards to speed zones near schools; (b) the principal being a go-to expect on school issues; and (b) being a highly ranked school as determined by standardised testing. Personally, I think that should be enough (and voted so), but the bar regarding what is and is not notable in terms of schools is set artificially high. ˜danjel [ talk | contribs ] 23:24, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Its fair to say it hasn't been applied. It has always been the common outcome that Secondary schools are likely to meet GNG therefore should stay. Thats been the case at so many AFDs over the years. It means that schools are very rarely fully assessed. There isn't a need for another subguideline. Eithier the common outcome is correct and should be put down properly or must fully meet GNG. Then you go down the route of what a local source is. Also independent National reports are published for all Secondary schools in the UK anyway that are widely reported in the national press so either way that is an independent national reliable source.Edinburgh Wanderer 23:25, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Annual school reports commisioned by the same government that pays for the schools? I don't think you can call those reports "independent sources". The old saying still works: Who pays the piper calls the tune. Night of the Big Wind _talk 00:30, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

It's not just "local" coverage. We need "significant coverage in secondary sources". I am absolutely sure in most Western countries and probably some Eastern ones that there's an annual document accessing all schools - number of students, teachers, graduating, average grade, etc. That's not significant coverage - that's data points. Now, if a report praised the top 5-10 schools and described how they got there; or critiqued the bottom schools for certain aspects, that's secondary and a start for the GNG. To take Danjel's example of a school where an incident lead to a national/state law, we have the concept that singular events aren't sufficient to lead to notability, unless there's a much larger and long-term impact (eg Columbine).

To put this another way: prior to recent discussion, the approach to secondary schools is "OUTCOME says will meet GNG, ergo no need to delete/!keep vote at AFD". Now people are saying "Ok, how exactly does Smalltown High meet the GNG?", exposing that most of these are built on local sources. The question is begged: are local sources sufficient for schools (where no other area allows for them) or not, and thus adjusting some policy/guideline somewhere to reflect that consensus. --MASEM (t) 23:37, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Its a common outcome and national reports are very likely when combined with other sources to meet the general notability guidelines. Im not saying schools shouldn't be subject to GNG I'm saying that going down the line of what is enough to meet GNG in a schools case isn't helpful its a sidetrack issue. The original question needs answered first should schools meet GNG. If the answer to that is yes then you could say what constitutes enough in a schools case to meet that but by not answering the original question its not going anywhere. Anyway if the consensus is we should go down that route first then fine but the risk is the original question will get missed. As is shown the longer the discussion goes on people drift away from it so if you don't answer the main question by the time you get to it you may no longer have a discussion its a risk but hey ill let everyone else pitch in.

We don't have gun massacres at schools in Australia, but this is a similar sort of thing. Speed zones near schools is a major political issue in Australia at the moment, with positions by both major parties (Liberal and ALP). There is substantial and continuing coverage on this issue, and the school where the issue started is of note. ˜danjel [ talk | contribs ] 00:01, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Ok, there you go, that's an example of showing a school notable, which I'm satisfied with. But let's take the case of something like Emma E. Booker Elementary School - this is the school where President Bush was at when the 9/11 attacks started. Just because that happened to be where he was at on a historically critical moment doesn't create notability for the school - its a passing mention for all practical purposes.

To the preceeding question: every entry on OUTCOMES that suggests "keep" is one that has been justified (in the past) that sources will ultimately exist to meet the GNG. None of the entries in OUTCOME is a bypassing of GNG to allow an article. So it has always been about the GNG, not the non-existent free ride that schools got from the GNG. Whether local sources satisfy the GNG is the heart of this matter. --MASEM (t) 00:32, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Nice attempt to declare all schools notable. But I don't buy that! In general the line was that all school-articles have to meet WP:GNG. Now you are trying to lower the requirements to a level that is almost zero. With help of several other, I have compiled a draft for a set of rules to check if a school is notable. The draft only tries to give an upper limit (on or above this level = notable) and a lower limit (on or under this level = not notable). The grey area in between is for discussion. Life is too creative in inventing exceptions, that I don't even try to write a manual on notable/not-notable. That won't work. You can find the draft here: User:Night of the Big Wind/Notability of schools. Night of the Big Wind _talk 00:20, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

The question is flawed. I don't see why any additional guidelines should be needed for schools when WP:N already suffices. The key point in WP:N seems to me "We require "significant coverage" in reliable sources so that we can actually write a whole article, rather than half a paragraph or a definition of that topic. If only a few sentences could be written and supported by sources about the subject, that subject does not qualify for a separate page, but should instead be merged into an article about a larger article or relevant list." Virtually all secondary-level schools in English-speaking countries can easily meet WP:N. The problem with the current AfD campaign is that the editors are setting a higher bar for any school that has the word "middle", "primary" or "elementary" in its title, regardless of the history or importance of the school. This 300-year-old school for instance got redirected despite the fact that there are nationally available sources including a whole book written about the school and mentions in several other published books, though the delete/redirect voters weren't aware of this when they voted. I plan to recreate the article but it just wastes everyone's time and discourages new editors when certain types of articles are singled out for a witch hunt. Dahliarose (talk) 00:35, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Lack of independent reliable sources killed off that article. Night of the Big Wind _talk 03:09, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

That article got redirected because of block voting by people who hadn't read the article or checked for sources and were voting simply because the school had the word "middle" in its title despite the fact that it had only been a middle school for a short part of its history. The sources were found after they'd voted. Dahliarose (talk) 10:31, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

If you had sources available, why did you not add them? Night of the Big Wind _talk 13:52, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

That is an extremely bad faith accusation to lay on those editors. You should strike it now. You have no idea in the world whether they read the article or checked for sources. Fmph (talk) 11:08, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

I can't prove or disprove that people haven't checked for sources but the voters in this case clearly hadn't understood the article properly and the votes were cast *before* additional content had been added to the article. The school has only recently been called a "middle" school so it is not surprising that sources couldn't be found if searches were restricted to the present name. There was no such thing as a middle school in 1725. The school leaving age was 14 right up until the beginning of the twentieth century in England. 11:28, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

I've now struck through the comment. It is, however, clear that nominators and voters should take more time to investigate sources rather than voting on gut instinct which does seem to be the case with a lot of these school articles (high school = keep primary/middle = delete). For any school article one should always omit words like "primary" and "middle" from searches as schools, especially old ones, often undergo frequent name changes. Dahliarose (talk) 12:57, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Actually, at issue are secondary schools as well. Most that I spot check are only locally sourced, and suffer the same problems as elementary schools.

The question: Are local sources suitable for demonstrating notability of a topic? is the core of the matter here. If they are, then yes, likely all primary and secondary schools are notable. If not, then most are likely non-notable and should be merged to the town/community they serve.

Again, I would put a large cavaet on this discussion: if this consensus drives towards that local sources are not notable, hence making schools *not* inherently notable, I would strongly suggest a 6 -12 month moratorium on deletion of school articles , giving time for editors to find sources for notability. --MASEM (t) 00:47, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

I don't think it makes any difference whether the sources are local or not. All that matters is whether sufficient non-trivial sources can be found to produce an article of a reasonable length. National sources can be found for every single school in England, because every school is inspected either by OFSTED (state-run schools) or the Private Schools' Inspectorate (fee-paying schools). I don't think this should mean that every primary school in England is automatically notable simply because it is has a detailed OFSTED inspection every few years. The key points are that multiple reliable sources should be found and the article should be of a non-trivial nature. Dahliarose (talk) 01:14, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

It does make a significant difference. WP is not an indiscriminate collection of information. At some point, as the focus of a reliable source gets narrower and tighter, the relevance of the material within that source to goal of summarizing information as a tertiary sources becomes less and less. Eg: not only would all primary and secondary schools be notable, but all churches, most restaurants, many businesses, most student athletes, all streets and roads, would be notable by the same means. That's indiscriminate and would fail that part of our goals. We also have to worry about the systematic bias between nations with a large amount of free press and those without that for various reasons. By restricting local sources, we avoid that systematic bias and maintain a discrete summary of mankind's knowledge. This is why NSPORTS and ORG already put the foot down on local sources for evidence of notability. --MASEM (t) 01:21, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Masem, if the problem is that routine coverage would create an indiscriminate amount of non-notable articles, the point that has to be clarified is routine, not local. Of course sources shown to provide significant and independent coverage can be used even if they happen to be geographically close to the subject. They are both within the spirit and the letter of GNG, which is having something relevant to say about the topic, and compatible with WP:NOTPAPER. Most churches, restaurants et. al. still wouldn't be covered because they don't get significant coverage beyond routine, but we should keep the small percentage that do get it (NOTPAPER again, and WP:SNOWFLAKE). Diego (talk) 06:55, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

No, it's not routine coverage, it's "local" coverage. Local coverage, broadly taken, often includes routine elements (a local paper has a weekly restaurant review column, for example), but not all local coverage is routine; not all routine cover is local. And routine coverage is not necessarily bad - eg: we pretty much assume every film that reaches a movie theater screen is notable because, by routine, it will be reviewed, establishing secondary sources, though often there's more coverage than that. The point is to understand that to fairly apply the idea of "WP is not an indiscriminate collection of information" is to restrict articles on topics that can only be covered in depth by local sources, whether that coverage is routine or not. As soon as something outside that local area takes notice, it's a different ballgame, but not until then. --MASEM (t) 07:09, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

If people want to restrict the use of local sources to prove notability then it's WP:N that needs changing. You can't make one rule for schools that other articles aren't required to follow. Schools need to meet WP:N. We need to get away from the divisive and unhelpful AfD debates where one camp argues that a school must be kept simply because it is a "high school" and another camp argues that a school should be deleted simply because it is a primary/elementary middle school. Dahliarose (talk) 10:31, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

If that is the case, I fail to see how significant coverage by several independent local sources that provides enough context for the topic (and thus are non-routine) can make that coverage "indiscriminate". You're discriminating from all the other items that don't have significant coverage by several independent local sources. Diego (talk) 13:21, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

It's because if you allow "significant coverage in local sources only" to be allowed to use to show notability for one class of articles, you have to extend that to all classes of articles, which suddenly is going to drastically expand WP without reasonable bounds and consideration for discriminate coverage (churches, businesses, etc.) --MASEM (t) 13:50, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

"Significant coverage in local sources" is already allowed for all classes of articles, it's called the General Notability Guideline. What you suggest is to restrict the GNG for schools so that an additional requirement (non-local sources) would be required for that class. Again, that indiscriminate coverage that you fear is not happening because not all churchers or businesses are covered by significant reliable sources, not even local. Those which are covered should definitely have an article because Wikipedia is not paper. Diego (talk) 14:20, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

"Significant coverage in secondary sources" and "local coverage only" are contradictory statements - barring some exceptional cases, you cannot have "significant coverage" if the secondary source coverage is only coming from local sources. The same type of coverage that some in this discussion have said assures schools are notable - despite coming from local sources - also exists for many other local entities. While WP is not paper we are still a tertiary source meant to summarize information, not outline every possible tidbit. That's why restricting the creation of articles on topics that have only local source coverage helps to assure that if we are including a specific school, business, or other factor, it has wider reaching notability beyond just the community it serves. --MASEM (t) 14:42, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

"Significant coverage in secondary sources and local coverage only are contradictory statements" - only in your mind. There's nothing that by their nature would make a local source necessarily not significant, and you have failed to make a convincing case why this would be so. If the goal is to avoid lots of cruft, I can empathize with that sentiment; but that's logically unrelated to the physical position of the sources with respect to the covered item. We are not "outlining every possible tidbit", only those which have been noted by reliable third parties. Why should "local" be synonym with "not reliable"? Diego (talk) 22:41, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

WP:N as currently written makes no discrimination between local and non-local sources. The GNG guideline does exclude routine and trivial coverage, as it should, though that doesn't mean local sources are banned entirely. However, I am doubtful that if the guideline is applied as currently written, that all primary schools would survive. Secondary schools usually have a lot more coverage, and do overwhelming have the sources available to pass the GNG as currently written. What would happen with a local sources exclusion is more debatable, with the vagueness of the proposal with defining what local is e.t.c. being the primary cause of this. I have seen at least one supporter of the local sources exclusion claim that a decent majority of secondary schools would survive such an exclusion. CT Cooper · talk 01:12, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

I don't think that the suggestion that all primary schools are notable (as much as I think it) is an appropriate compromise, so no one's really saying it seriously. But I strongly agree with you that the guidelines as they are not being applied appropriately. But rather than worrying about survivability, I worry that the bar is being set inappropriately high for primary schools (with local, regional, national and international sources not being enough, for example, in the AfD I linked to above). ˜danjel [ talk | contribs ] 01:36, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

"Significant coverage" suggests that local-only coverage fails notability; there is also the aspect that a local paper reporting on local events is a partially dependent source since they have a vested interest in coverage in the news in that local area. Notability is meant to be demonstrated by a breadth of sources. --MASEM (t) 18:40, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

"Significant coverage means that sources address the subject directly in detail, so no original research is needed to extract the content. Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention but it need not be the main topic of the source material." I don't see anything here which can reasonably be interpreted to mean local sources are banned. There is also more to local sources than local newspapers, and while some local sources may have be closely connected to a school, it is rather sweeping to suggest they all are. CT Cooper · talk 22:23, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Just because it's not written down explicitly doesn't mean it's not taken that way. The idea of local sources not being sufficient for notability is a defacto standards for people, organizations, businesses, and the like, and schools cannot have special exemption from them. --MASEM (t) 22:40, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

The archives at Wikipedia talk:Notability (organizations and companies)] suggest otherwise. Once and again the warnings for local sources were as caveats to mind the possibility of non-significant or non-independent coverage, not to ban them outright; and that the notability for organizations and businesses guideline is not an additional requirement that articles should meet but an alternate way to reach notability. So not only schools don't have any special exemption but all organizations are treated the same way, and can find notability from local sources of enough quality. That is what Notability means, and that is the consensus that our wikipedian Founding Fathers left us. The interpretation that non-local sources are an absolute requirement has never reached community-wide consensus. Diego (talk) 23:20, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

• The idea that any organization less significant than, say, a national or (major sub-national, e.g. US state, UK county) government should not have to meet the WP:GNG is pure favoritism by people especially interested in such organizations. Of course schools of all kinds should have to meet the GNG. We've long merged pointless "my school is so cool" wannabe-articles into broader articles on school districts. If you ask me (and this is an RfC, so you did!), school district articles in turn should almost always actually merge into articles on the city government more generally, which for most cities (and virtually all smaller-than-city settlements) should in turn probably merge into the article on the city, unless and until WP:SUMMARY criteria are met that strongly suggest splitting. There are innumerable "local vanity" articles. I.e., if New York City gets an article about its bus system, editors in Peoria and Albuquerque want one too, as a matter of civic pride. Wikipedia is not a place for hanging pennants. The vast majority of articles on schools below the collegiate/university level are not particularly useful, and can be done away with as separate articles as long as searches like "Franklin High School, Dallas" will still find their subsections in the city government article. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 05:45, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Well, that "favoritism" is as outrageous as having one school who does meet the GNG deleted because all the significant coverage is from local independent sources. If school articles shouldn't require less than meeting the GNG, they also shouldn't require more. Diego (talk) 13:28, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Suggestions

The proposal needs a target policy (I suggest WP:ORG) and I'd really prefer for it to be more definite in order to provide a brighter line. ˜danjel [ talk | contribs ] 00:18, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Something like this draft: User:Night of the Big Wind/Notability of schools? Night of the Big Wind _talk 00:32, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

To avoid misunderstandings: this draft is not a set of rules hammered in stone, but a set of guidelines (unfortunately I have named them rules earlier) to help determine if a school is notable. Night of the Big Wind _talk 13:57, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Yes. :) ˜danjel [ talk | contribs ] 01:36, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Something like that would work. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 05:57, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

No, I can't see that guideline working. Fundamentally, any school is notable if it meets the GNG. So the various sections on "A school is not notable when ..." or "A school is only notable when ..." don't work, as the aim of the specialised notability guidelines is to show sufficient but not necessary criteria. Limiting it to necessary criteria is a problem. - Bilby (talk) 23:20, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Further to the above, generally the aim of the GNG is not to indicate importance, but to indicate the possibility of something having sufficient coverage so that it is possible to write a verifiable NPOV article on the subject. The difficulty with the draft schools criteria is that it seems tied to importance (or at least significance). Thus many of the criteria could be passed without having sufficient coverage to create (as opposed to warrant) an article. The assumption in the past has been that secondary schools will meet the GNG by dint of being secondary schools, and therefore they will have sufficient coverage. If this is incorrect, replacing it with more refined assumptions that also fail to indicate meeting the GNG won't progress things. The bar needs to be set in a different location. :) - Bilby (talk) 23:47, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Can you translate this in plain English, I do not understand what you mean by this. Night of the Big Wind _talk 14:04, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Your suggested guideline is going in the wrong direction. You can't spell out what isn't notable, because anything is potentially notable if it has sufficient non-trivial coverage in reliable sources. So the sections saying things like "No school is notable unless they satisfy one of the next conditions" are incorrect - schools can be notable, even if they fail to meet your criteria. Similarly, "Schools are not notable when ..." is also incorrect.

Secondly, much of the criteria you use is also going the wrong direction, looking at what makes a school important rather than what allows us to write about it. You are using things like the existence of historic school buildings or the enrollment numbers. Those sorts of things don't indicate the existence of reliable sources, so they don't really speak to notability (in the case of the buildings, for example, they only say that we can write an article on the building, not the school). - Bilby (talk) 14:18, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Sub-notability and wikiprojects can set out guides to restrict notability-equals-standalone-article even if the subject meets the GNG, but they usually should have a good reason to do so, and usually with allowances for things that clearly are notable beyond all doubt. For example, at the video games wikiproject, we generally encourage remakes of older games on newer systems to be covered in the original article about the game, since the story and gameplay remain the same for the work, even if the remake gains additional reviews on publication; but if the remake has its own development history or the like, then a separate page is fine. --MASEM (t) 14:24, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

True enough. But in this case, the proposal is fundamentally about excluding schools, when I've always felt that the notability criteria are more about recognising under what circumstances we can assume things to be notable. Rather than spelling out threshold conditions from the outset, the aim should be to identify conditions under which we can safely assume notability first (noting that necessary conditions aren't really necessary in practice if it passes the GNG). Which raises the second problem, in that the conditions listed are not generally connected to notability, so much as significance. The two shouldn't necessarily be separate, but they tend to be. Focusing on significance isn't going to fix the current concern.

Personally, rather than more guidelines, I'd prefer just to see more use of the GNG. :) - Bilby (talk) 14:38, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

You have a point on the buildings and school numbers. As you can see, they have already a less important role then other criteria. But I think you have missed an essential part of the draft: Grey area: * This set of guidelines gives a number of conditions on which a school is always considered to be noteworthy or notable. It also gives a set of conditions under which a school is never notable. Given the huge differences in schools and the circumstances they are operating in, the set of conditions will not cover all possibilities. Therefore, the author of an article is always free to plea for the notability of his/her article and to try to convince the community that the school is notable. Night of the Big Wind _talk 16:41, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Night, I commend your attempt at coming up with a set of criteria and guidelines for handling this question, but I think that setting arbitrary limits based on age of the school or its buildings, or the number of notable alumni or teachers, is just not a tenable solution. I'm specifically not criticizing your work, or the criteria or limits you set. I'm simply saying that there are no criteria or limits that will make sense as arbitrary barometers of notability. That said, there are several things in your draft that I agree with, for example being highly ranked, receiving awards or acknowledgement for quality of education, or being involved in a notable event. But all those things have one thing in common: they would, in all likelihood, result in the exact kind of non-trivial, non-regional coverage in independent sources that would make everyone go "yes, that school is notable." So, this might be a simple solution to a complex problem, but why can't we just call schools organizations, and make them subject to the criteria at WP:ORG? Can somebody tell me why Wikipedia:ORG#Primary_criteria isn't a perfect set of tests for school notability? Livit⇑^Eh?/_What? 21:57, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

The problem is that WP:ORG is very strangely considered when it comes to schools. While High Schools seem to be considered automagically (emphasis on the g) notable, primary schools have to pass an arbitrarily high bar to also be considered notable. This arises out of differing subjective interpretations of WP:ORG. For example, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Middle Harbour Public School (2nd nomination) was deleted despite coverage in national level news media as being the site of the catalysing event for a politically important issue for Australia (school speed zones) and being one of the highest ranked primary schools in NSW (55th out of ~2000). This should easily pass WP:ORG#Primary_criteria because the depth of the coverage is substantially beyond the not trivial/incidental and is given in independent reliable sources. The audience is substantial, because of the real public interest in education (at least in Australia, every major newspaper has an education section, every major TV news has education reporters, etc.).

NotBW's work provides a basis for a school to be considered notable. It's not exhaustive (he mentions this explicitly in regards to the "grey area", and is substantively based on WP:ORG itself. ˜danjel [ talk | contribs ] 00:22, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

To be honest, if a local organisation's main claim to notability is that it was just outside the top 50 organisations in that particular field in the state, then it would be very unlikely to pass WP:ORG. - Bilby (talk) 00:44, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Danjel, nobody debates that the notability of schools has been automagically determined in the past. But there is nothing in WP:ORG that codifies this magic treatment; indeed, schools are specifically called out as one of the things that are defined in the "Primary Criteria." What I am trying to say is that if we take out all the past history and eliminate the automagical "high schools are notable, primary/secondary schools are not" nonsense, and actually evaluate school articles based on WP:ORG, then we will have slain the beast. If you take out all the "it's automagic" !votes in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Middle Harbour Public School (2nd nomination), then what would be left is a very reasonable debate on if the sources for this particular organization support notability. I find nothing at all wrong with letting the majority of school articles stake their claim by references within the article, and the outliers going to AfD. The only thing we will be missing is a new CSD category for locally-notable schools! (I'm kidding) Livit⇑^Eh?/_What? 00:58, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

WP:ORG seems somewhat ambiguous and open to interpretation. I wonder how one would define a school’s ‘local area’. Would it be the town or village, the English county, the US state or the Canadian province? Schools by their very nature will receive most of their coverage from the local area. Many older schools have had entire books written about them, but they’re usually written by local historians or former pupils so would such books be disallowed as sources? Articles about schools often appear in local history society journals, and these articles can sometimes be quite substantial, but again would these sources be disallowed because they are local? In contrast, all English schools receive national attention on a regular basis from OFSTED who write very lengthy and very informative reports on the school. However, if I wanted to write an article about a school then it’s always the books and journals that are the most useful sources. WP:N seems to be far more applicable to schools. It’s the range, nature and quantity of sources that are available that is important not whether or not they are local. There are already articles on the vast majority of the 5,000 or so secondary schools in the UK and I’ve yet to find a UK secondary school that doesn’t have sufficient sources to write a reasonable article. In contrast there must be 20,000 or more articles on American high schools, quite a few of which would struggle to meet WP:ORG but I don’t think any rational person would suggest that we now go through all these articles and delete them. I think the problem is that editors are looking for a one-size-fits-all solution, but there is no easy fix. NightoftheBigWind is on the right track as editors with no familiarity with schools do want some easy-to-understand rule-of-thumb guidelines. I’ve found from my work on assessing school articles that the age of the school and the number of notable alumni are usually the best predictors of a school’s notability, and generally mean that sufficient sources exist though I would not like to see this set in stone. Schools are very similar to churches, which have often been the centre of their local community for hundreds of years. Are there any guidelines on churches? I would certainly like to see some sort of consensus develop so that we can move on from the current situation where non-notable high schools are routinely kept because they are “high schools” and, as has been happening in recent weeks, notable schools with long histories are deleted or redirected simply because they currently have the word "primary" in their name, even if they've only been a primary school for a short part of their total history. The other point to consider is that school articles are often the point of entry for new Wikipedia editors. I think we should be doing our best to encourage new editors. Dahliarose (talk) 01:57, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

It depends on interpretation, DahliaRose! I do not regard the Ofsted-reports (and similar in other countries) as independent sources. Those reports are ordered and payed for by the Government. Is it not more then likely, that they write what the Governments wants? Who pays the piper calls the tune! Night of the Big Wind _talk 03:40, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

OFSTED reports are independent of the school. The teaching is of course judged by the whims of the existing government at the time so schools get penalised for not providing enough "cultural diversity" for example. The facts contained in the reports can be relied on, such as the numbers of pupils, number of languages spoken, number of children with special needs, awards granted, specialisms, etc. Dahliarose (talk) 09:29, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

.... none of which establishes notability ... Fmph (talk) 10:11, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

In my humble opinion, something like the OFSTED report is routine coverage, not indicative of notability. We are a) making the argument that not every school is notable, yet b) every school is covered in a OSFTED report, so logic says that if some schools are not notable, then the OSFTED reports can not indicate notability. Similarly, 9 out of 10 American high schools receive coverage in local newspapers for their athletics. Stuff like "Anytown Animals pound Othertown Otters in annual football matchup". Again, this is routine coverage, and again in my opinion not indicative of notability. My small town's annual 4th of July parade is not notable, but it gets coverage in our local newspaper every year. The Rose parade is notable, it gets nationwide coverage. I recognize that the GNG doesn't really make such a distinction, which is why WP:ORG seems to me to be a great subject-specific guideline to follow. I agree that it is a little vague, but this is a good thing in my opinion. I don't think we want to set bright-line, absolute requirements for school notability. I think that there should be some school articles that make it to AfD. We should not attempt to create a guideline that is so absolute that we never question it. I don't think we need to set a specific mile/km radius around the school that denotes "local coverage," the WP:ORG people have been doing OK with their guideline and common sense for quite a while. As another example, the local Pizza Hut franchise in my town burned to the ground several years back, which got covered in several articles in the county newspaper, but nobody would suggest that this particular Pizza Hut is notable.

Finally, I do think that if some guideline gets created as a result of this, that existing articles should be brought into compliance with the new guideline. I don't think anyone is advocating for deletion of school articles; the most common scenario I have seen mentioned is that we redirect them all back to the town/village/county/municipality/whatever that the school serves. I for one would be happy to work on that effort. Livit⇑^Eh?/_What? 14:46, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

I would support a guideline stating that schools should meet WP:GNG to get their own article. The argument then would be what constitutes significant coverage. OFSTED reports shouldn't count towards notability since every school gets them as a matter of course, and having one doesn't tell us that the school is considered noteworthy by independent sources (which after all is at the heart of notability). I don't want to rule out local sources as an indication of notability altogether, but it is true that a lot of local coverage is routine. So perhaps, like WP:ORG to some extent does now, we should require at least one regional or national source amongst those offering significant coverage. Whatever guidelines we come up with should be applied equally to primary and secondary schools (insert equivalent terms from other countries here if you want). Alzarian16 (talk) 00:57, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Could we perhaps turn this discussion on its head? The difference between schools and other organisations is that they are a key part of their local community, and information about local schools is by its very nature encyclopaedic, unlike most local shops, companies restaurants, etc. English county histories, for example, will routinely include information about schools and churches in their chapters or sections on a town or village, even if they are only mentioned in a single sentence. Could we not, therefore, develop simple guidelines which are positive - ie telling people what they should do - rather than negative - telling people what they can't do. We could explain that schools should be mentioned in the appropriate locality article or, for US schools in the School District article if there is one. Large towns will often need a separate "Education in" page. Schools should only be expanded into a standalone article if sufficient sources exist to write a reasonable length article in compliance with WP:N. One of the biggest problems at the moment is the lack of a proper policy on what do with schools that don't merit a standalone article. Some get deleted, some get redirected and some get merged. It would be helpful to have an agreed consensus on what to do in such situations. I would personally favour a merge. If a school is at least mentioned in a locality article there is less chance of someone trying to create a new meaningless stub. Dahliarose (talk) 10:51, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Summary

If I read it correctly, the discussion can be summarized in the following points:

• Most people support the fact that schools must meet WP: GNG
• There is disagreement or local resources are sufficient to proof of notability
• There is disagreement over the use of reports ordered and paid by the government
• There is support, but certainly no consensus, for the guidelines developed by me. Some things, such as age of the school, buildings and pupil numbers are controversial.

Is this correct? Night of the Big Wind _talk 17:03, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

I think your summary is correct. I don't want this discussion to die off, so let's keep the momentum going. In your opinion, which is the more productive exercise: forming consensus on your second and third points, or further development of your guidelines? My preference would be to settle 2 and 3 one way or the other and use points 1-3 as a framework to develop a guideline, rather than trying to create guidelines based on numerical thresholds. Livit⇑^Eh?/_What? 14:30, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

I think whatever is decided the fairest thing would be to allow a month or two as a grace period possibly longer to allow editors to work on getting them up to scratch. Given this will be a substantial change that would be only fair. I actually think age could be reason depending on the school building it be listed or have historic significance as well. I also feel local sources if significantly substantial should be allowed along with other work to go towards GNG. Whatever the decision it has to be made clear that people must fully assess the articles before nominating as appears not to have been fully done by everyone recently because on the scale we are taking that could be a lot. I also agree the schools should be redirected to a parent article although at a few Afds they were redirected to articles that didn't actually have an appropriate section. Edinburgh Wanderer 14:56, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

As I've recommended, if there is a change towards school articles from OUTCOME, then a 6 to 12 month grandfathering should be used - articles created before a set date (eg say, March 1) are exempt from deletion processes (save for cases of copyvio or blatently false info) to allow editors time to improve, after which they are "Free game". This needs to have a site wide notice if this going to occur as well, and possible get a bot to point to a central page to describe this result (should it be implemented). --MASEM (t) 15:02, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Agreed, and for sure this can be fully advertised (WP:CENT, etc.). So now what's next? Livit⇑^Eh?/_What? 15:54, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

A change to the inclusion guideline for schools would really need an RfC. A discussion at the pump among a few folks really shouldn't be the basis to claim consensus for a change of this magnitude. I'll create the RfC if no one else will, but I think those of you favoring the change should be the one to write it rather than someone who prefers the status quo. Masem, you want to give it a shot? Hobit (talk) 13:56, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

The RFC approach is probably right. The question is whether this is just about schools, just about local sources, or a combination of both? My take on this discussion, in combination with a similar thread about restaurant reviews at WP:ORG, suggests that we can resolve this with an RFC on the clarification of the use of local sources for notability indicators, but that's my take. We could just focus an RFC on the draft notability guideline for schools that has been presented, with any discussion of local sources specific to that writing, which might be easier to manage. --MASEM (t) 14:03, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

I support this. If a consensus is found about local sources for schools, its implications will likely extend slowly to all guidelines that have something to say about local sources - so why don't ask about them from the beginning? Diego (talk) 14:12, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

As I see it, this RfC is just one step towards consensus about "when is a school notable". The use of local sources and Government-reports are two related, but seperate issues. Only when they are solved, we can look at my draft (if that is still necessary then). Night of the Big Wind _talk 16:47, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

• I somewhat disagree with this summary, but mostly with the premise that there is a problem. Could someone
  • provide examples where we are keeping real high schools in English-speaking countries that don't meet WP:N? If there are none, I'm not sure what problem we are fixing.
  • explain why local sources aren't acceptable for schools (or anything else for that matter). WP:N is the general bar, I'm not seeing a reason to narrow it, especially for a topic that has had such broad support for inclusion in the past.

I continue to believe that many of you misunderstand "notability" as it exists on Wikipidia. It means "has been noted" (thus WP:N requiring sources, not national sources or sources that say it's cool) not "something special". Hobit (talk) 13:53, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

The problem with "notability" is that it depends on significant attention, and thus not all notice is valid. Many people are interpreting "local coverage" as essentialy not significant in any case (I for one don't agree with that). In the talk page of the "Notability (organizations)" guideline I have expressed my opinion about local sources in this and this threads, I think you may find it interesting. Diego (talk) 14:17, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Some the reasons to consider against the use of "notability conferred only through local sources" includes:

• The fact that WP is not an indiscriminate collection of information, but a summary. We can't cover everything that is of interest to at least one person, but instead must look when that topic is of interest to a larger group of people, and ideally more geographically diverse. Where that cutoff is can be difficult to assert, but starting from the idea of local coverage does provide a clean albeit slightly fuzzy breakpoint for this. This is supported by the fact that we don't really question the existence of articles on every recognized town and village in the world, but anything more specific than that tends to require better evidence for inclusion. This also helps to deal with issues of "local" works with regional or national or international readerships (eg New York Times), because we can easily determine when the paper is covering something "locally" and when it is covering something for the broader readership.
• Systematic bias - Western/developed countries are clearly going to have local coverage from nearly every town and village; the same is just not true in undeveloped/third world countries. To at least counter some of that bias, it makes sense to limit coverage from local sources where these sources are aplenty, as opposed to expecting the undeveloped areas to eventually gain such sources (which is not necessary practical, possible, or foreseeable in the future).
• Reliability. I am not saying that all local sources are not reliable, but that as you move from national to regional to local sources, both the reliable and the ability to judge that reliability gets weaker. Again, important to stress: just being a local source doesn't make one reliable, it's just that it can be difficult to affirm.
• Independence. No, most local sources have no direct connection to the content they serve. But these sources, as they get more local, become more self-serving, viewing news through their local viewpoint. This is not necessary bad, but does put into question about the work's independence
• Routine verses significant coverage. Local coverage tends to be more primary to the work in question than secondary. News blotters, results of elections, local happenings. Perfectly fine to source with, but without any type of secondary sourcing that considers analysis or evaluation or the like, it becomes difficult to write an article to explain how the local topic is important to the rest of the world.

I believe that our guidance should be to avoid asserting notability based on local sources only, but emphasis that consensus can override this in an IAR manner. Say that an old building lands on a historic building register simply due to age, but that's the only non-local information there is on it, but a local source puts out a very detailed history of the building after this fact (say, part of the Underground Railroad). Strict by-the-rules against local sources would say non-notable, but if that local source is known to be reliable and an expert on the subject of this area, consensus may allow for it. --MASEM (t) 16:38, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

A discussion about what is regarded a "local source" could be useful. Night of the Big Wind _talk 17:00, 17 February 2012 (UTC)After a second reading, I can only support Masems stand with regard to local souces. In fact, it falls straight into the grey area of my draft. Some local sources can be reliable, some articles in national newspapers can be unreliable. Night of the Big Wind _talk 18:44, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

I was going to offer to draft a RfC, but I think that Masem's point-by-point analysis above is 100% right on target. I further support making the RfC be about local notability in general and not restricting the issue to schools. We could point out the long-standing guidance at WP:ORG that in that subtopic local notability is not sufficient notability to warrant article creation. Masem, if you want help drafting an RfC, start something in your userspace and I'll edit it with you. A copy/paste of your points above would be an excellent starting point. Livit⇑^Eh?/_What? 17:39, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

I clearly support further comment on the school issue however does no one else think the local sourcing is more relevant to a RFC on GNG than schools. The likelihood of changing two issues at once is unlikely in my mind and altering other guidelines with the local sourcing issue to me really could just bog down the primary issue meaning that really nothing gets achieved. I really think the should be done separately.Edinburgh Wanderer 18:27, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

• • I'm likely to be off-line for 8-48 hours, so I'll throw my quick 2 cents in. I think local sources are perfectly fine for most topics. I further think that the long-standing consensus that "high schools" are so commonly notable that they can be assumed to be notable (until proven otherwise) is unlikely to have changed. Further, I think the way we counter systematic bias is to be more inclusive, not less. If the sources exist in English, they likely exist (for "foreign" schools) in their own languages. Just figure out exactly what changes you want and develop an RfC. Hobit (talk) 18:40, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

  When this RfC is translated into policy, I think it will have the effect of assuming that school are not notable, unless proven otherwise. (You have to proof that a school satisfies WP:GNG). The current use is to assume that they are notable, unless you can not proof that it exists.

  To grandfather an article for a certain amount of time, seems the wrong way to me. I prefer a list of schools with notability problems, filled by everyone who desires so. The "project" will protect the articles against serial-nominators and the likes. Editors can claim an article to work on what prevents double work. Night of the Big Wind _talk 18:56, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

  I'd just urge you to start the RfC and propose exactly what you are looking for. I don't think you have the numbers (in terms of total folks or their agreement) to claim you have consensus for a change at this time (I can't tell if you are claiming there should be an RfC or there has been an RfC...) OK, finally out of here... Hobit (talk) 19:28, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

  Agreed, let's get the ball rolling. WT:N is probably the best place to post the actual RFC. If Masem doesn't want to draft it, I will, but I'd give him first whack at it, since any attempt I make will be heavily plagiarized from his comments in this thread. Livit⇑^Eh?/_What? 19:37, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

  I am interested in draft an RFC but this gets complicated rather quickly. Points to consider:

  • It's not just a WP:N issue. It affects all the other subject-specific guides for notability, as well as our sourcing policies in general.
  • It ties in with the current discussion on WP:ORG regarding restaurant reviews...
  • ...and because of that, it also ties in WP:ROUTINE that is over on WP:NEVENT.
  • It also needs to be clear that we are starting on the basis of secondary schools - until now a common OUTCOME - but that the change will affect those articles if its agreed, and possibly others, and thus we also need a process to discuss how to deal with such articles that may suddenly may be no longer notable (the grandfathering aspects I have alluded to).

  This is a potentially significant change , though it more comes to the idea of consistency verses consensus rather than introducing something totally new. As such while I know what to ask in an RFC I can't write one immediately just yet as I still feel that we've got the full picture of what's desired yet. --MASEM (t) 21:30, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

• I think we need to clarify first of all what exactly is meant by local sources. Local sources are effectively offline resources. I can only talk about my experience of working on articles on English schools. Schools, especially once they get to a certain age, will often be covered in books about the town or village where they are located. These books are usually not scanned and made available on Google Books, but will be freely available in the relevant local library and of course anyone with an interest in the subject, wherever they are in the world, can easily buy the book. Often when a school celebrates a particular milestone like a 50-year or 100-year anniversary then a book will be written by a local history society or perhaps volunteers from the Parent Teachers’ Association. While we shouldn’t rely on a single source, such a book would provide the basis for locating additional sources to cite. Schools can sometimes be very difficult to research online because the school name often changes over the years. Recent news stories are freely available online, and nineteenth-century local British newspapers are available online with a subscription. However, twentieth-century local papers are only available on microfilm in a local library or by visiting the British Library newspaper collection in North London. The problem, therefore, is not so much with the quality of the sources but the fact that they are not easily accessible online. Decisions about notability always seem to be based on the availability of internet sources, hence we have thousands of articles on trivial subjects which have multiple online sources. It is much more difficult to write articles about historical subjects, including schools, unless you have access to the offline resources. Take at look at three contrasting school articles which illustrate the problems quite well. The Hyde Park Junior School has now survived two AfDs. On the last occasion a local editor was able to access some books about the town to provide some additional information about the school, and has produced an interesting article. Compare this article with a typical American high school article such as Lockland High School which I selected at random. It has a fair few references but little in the way of interesting, noteworthy or encyclopaedic content. There must be thousands of similar such articles. On the other hand we have African schools such as the Arch-Bishop Okoth Ojolla Girls School which is potentially quite a noteworthy school but is supported by little in the way of reliable sources. Schools have always had to comply with WP:GNG. The problem has always been with how the guideline is applied. Some editors will insist that schools should have some notable (ie, out of the ordinary or “noteworthy”) aspects to merit an article, whereas other editors are happy to accept articles so long as they are properly sourced. The question of whether content is “run-of-the-mill” is always very subjective. The current way that the guidelines are interpreted seems to make it very difficult for articles like Hyde Park Junior School and African schools to exist while encouraging the creation of endless bog standard American high schools. Dahliarose (talk) 00:02, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Local sources and being online sources are two completely separate matters. We should not be confusing these when it comes to notability (as notability is completely ignorant by design whether sources are online or not). --MASEM (t) 01:18, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

  To my opinion, the bar must be raised quite high to sift out the “run-of-the-mill”. I do not think that that will give significant problems, our African friends will be creative enough to come up with proper sources. Maybe they need some guidance for that, but as you said, there will be written sources available to them. I does not matter in what language they are. It is better to have a chat about the sources, then learn them that sourcing is not necessary.

  And to me, a “run-of-the-mill” school is a school that just do it teaching. Proper and thorough, without special highlights. Schools are supposed to teach, so that alone does not make them notable. They need to have something extra to make them notable. And that can be everything, positive or negative. Night of the Big Wind _talk 01:34, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Hobit is right in his comment above - you're confounding importance with notability, which has nothing to do with "being special". Notability is designed to outsource the call for importance to third parties, so that we can have an objective criterion by which collect information. To show a topic notable we just have to find it being noted in a significant way - we only have to decide on the level of coverage, never directly on which highlights the topic may have. Run-of-the-mill has always been a somewhat misguided essay in this sense, because it centers around the topic more than the sources. Diego (talk) 10:49, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

No, I am not confusing them. A notable, not-"run of the mill" school will show that "special" or "important" bit. Unless ypou can show me a school dat is notable, not-"run of the mill" and not special or important. Night of the Big Wind _talk 16:58, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

I shouldn't have to show that thing to write an article, I should only have to show a school that somebody has written about. That's the whole point of notability, that we don't get to decide what is run of the mill, special nor important; we go by what others have found interesting, and we just decide whether to trust them. Diego (talk) 21:36, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Point is that we most proof that a school is notable and that is more then proofing that a school exists. If you can only proof that a certain school exists, there is a big chance that somebody will nominate that article for deletion due to being run-of-the-mill. It may not be in the rules or guidelines, but it is working that way... Night of the Big Wind _talk 23:31, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

We agree that notability is more than proof that a school exists. But it is less than being special or important; if you require that the school has something special you are placing a more strict requirement than the GNG. The point between "it exists" and "it's important" is what we call notability and it only requires that someone has noticed it, not that someone thinks the school is special. There's a reason why Run-of-the-mill is not a guideline - it can be successfully contested at AfD under strict notability criteria. Diego (talk) 13:28, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

LOL, this is becoming a discussing on the square millimeter. Isn't it that something extra, that something special or important, that makes a school stand out of the crowd and make it noteworthy? How can a school be noteworthy, if they do nothing to get the attention to be noted? (In fact, this discussion doesn't matter at all. Accidents get AfD-ed and get rescued till they are safe loud and clear. Or they get deleted/merged/redirected, when there are no extra sourced to back up the claim for notability. Just part of the process. Feel free to plea, and so.) Night of the Big Wind _talk 14:09, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

• • Local sources and being online sources are two completely separate matters. We should not be confusing these when it comes to notability (as notability is completely ignorant by design whether sources are online or not). --MASEM (t) 01:18, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

• • • But how do we judge notability if we cannot access the relevant offline sources? Do we simply permit stubs for certain types of article on the assumption that offline sources will exist? If not then we bias the whole of Wikipedia in favour of articles on topical subjects that are readily verifiable. Dahliarose (talk) 01:55, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
      • • • No, the author still has to give his/her sources. Online of offline makes no difference. In English, in Dutch or in a language I have never heard off, also makes no difference. The source has to be given. Sooner or later someone will have access to that source (while mastering the language) and check it. Unfortunately, we can only hope it is not a bogus source.Night of the Big Wind _talk 00:20, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

• • • • Yes.
      • And I'm not trying to be terse here, but this is a long-running question and one that WP:V addresses. As long as someone (not anyone) can access the source, we assume good faith that the editor has stated what they added that's attributed to that source (including the aspect of notability). If its a problem that the source is inaccessable within reasonable limits, that's the only time we disallow such sources. --MASEM (t) 02:15, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

But this is the whole crux of the problem. We're not talking about verifying individual facts but establishing whether or not sufficient sources exist to write an article. Some editors will argue that an article should remain because sufficient offline sources will exist. Other editors will argue that the article should be deleted because the only sources that can be found online do not establish notability. Neither viewpoint can be proven without checking the offline sources. Take the school I cited earlier Lockland High School. As it stands, it probably doesn't pass WP:N as the few sources that have been found do not support a proper article. I would argue that such an article should stand because there must be numerous local and offline sources available for a school which has been established for over 60 years but it is impossible to prove one way or another. Dahliarose (talk) 15:28, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Yes, that's an issue, but we cannot restrict local sources simply because they tend to be offline. In fact, putting any weight on favoring sources that are online over offline is completely against WP:V's policy. But remember, we're talking about people that have identified specific sources (and can provide basic fundamental citation information for anyone else to locate) that simply might be offline and take effort to locate, and those that simply claim there must be offline sources but never named it. We accept the former's claims on good faith, but the latter is not an argument with weight at AFD or other discussions. --MASEM (t) 15:43, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

The problem is that for articles about local subjects you can't identify the offline sources unless you live in the country in question. This results in recentism and systemic bias. We have thousands of articles about American high schools but only a handful of articles about African schools. I don't know how we get the balance right. Dahliarose (talk) 16:56, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

The first part - about being in the country that the works are published in - is something WP:V acknowledges and something we can't change. But we can change the systematic bias issue due to the fact that local sources are readily available in some parts of the world, and not at all in others. If we could reasonably expect that the rest of the world would ultimately have the same type of local coverage, then there's less a problem keeping articles based on local sources only. But this prospect is very unlikely to happen in our lifetimes due to a number of sociopolitical factors. Instead, we can counter the bias by stating that notability demonstrable only by local sources is not appropriate, which now puts all schools (and other topics) to have regional or better sourcing for notability. It's not perfectly even, but it certainly removes the bias and recentism issue. --MASEM (t) 17:02, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

This is again all gets back to the question of how you define local sources. Sources on schools in an African country are only likely to be available in that country. There might be significant coverage in the national newspapers in that country but unless you live in the country you are unable to access these sources. Dahliarose (talk) 17:08, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

The issue around local sources has nothing to do with access to local sources, it is the target coverage that local sources purportedly aim for and what makes them inappropriate as demonstration of notability. Per WP:V Verifiability in this context means that other people should be able to check that material in a Wikipedia article has been published by a reliable source. The principle of verifiability implies nothing about ease of access to sources: some online sources may require payment, while some print sources may be available only in university libraries. We cannot alter that. --MASEM (t) 17:44, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

I have never understood why "if the target coverage is local, that makes them inappropriate as demonstration of notability". Can you elaborate on what makes you think that way? I can understand that it might correlate to not being independent, or that sources aiming for exhaustive coverage may make them routine; but in that case the reasons for the inappropriate notability are those specific causes, not for being local. Diego (talk) 21:52, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

I also don't really understand this concern. For many topics a local source will be the most reliable source. As an example, if you want detailed accurate information about a tiny village, the best source would usually be the local history society who would probably have published a local journal for many years with numerous detailed articles. I don't see why a source like this shouldn't be preferred over a general book covering an entire county or country. National newspapers often get their facts wrong about local issues but local papers are more reliable for factual local content. Dahliarose (talk) 23:46, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Again, I have to go back to the 5 points I had above.

We are a tertiary source, meant to summarize information. To that extent, we have to recognize there is a bound to detailed information that is only of interest to a smaller group of people compared to all mankind - there is some line that is drawn. Clearly, things only local to literally a few people should not be included, while topics that reach interested people in the millions are clearly worth including. We have to have a line somewhere between there. The local level is immediately that line or just below it, in that going more narrower than local sources means that we likely no longer have reliable, unbiased sourcing, while sourcing at the higher levels are generally going to be easy to judge for reliability and independence. But we could draw that line higher than local sources, due to the fact that not every local area has a local source, thus creating systematic bias towards more developed countries. This is what is done in ORG and in NSPORT to prevent everyday business and local, non-pro athletes that may frequently be reported at the local to be excluded (in so far we don't have a stand-alone article for them.)

Remember: this does not prevent the use of local sources as reliable sources for general verified information, as has Dahliarose states, they sometimes are more accurate than any broader source. But accuracy is not the same as notability. If no one else in the world has shown interest in that one topic detailed at the local level, then that makes those details extraneous for ourselves as s tertiary work. --MASEM (t) 00:31, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Ah, here's the core tenet of disagreement. "Nothing human is alien to me"; Wikipedia is not supposed to leave topics outside because they are of interest to few people. We have drawn a line already and it says nothing about a number too small of people interested in a topic; but quite the contrary.

The essence of what can be included is the Neutral Point of View pillar; thus accuracy is more important than notability, since it's what guarantees neutrality. Unlike WP:NPOV, which is a pillar itself, Notability is about the "encyclopedia" pillar, but what's encyclopedic is defined in the negative. Thus WP:N is just an organization principle; it's used as a guideline on when an article will likely not meet the policies founded on the pillars (in the same way that WP:V and WP:OR are "just" guides to ensure WP:NPOV). The problem with the deletionism philosophy is that they want to establish Notability as the sixth pillar with a meaning of "importance", but this runs against the "all human knowledge" motto at the core of Wikipedia. Unless editors of your same opinion recognize that the current consensual guidelines are built around content quality and not importance, there's no chance to build a new consensus on local sources.

I think there's also a misunderstanding of what WP:INDISCRIMINATE means. As it's currently written in policy, it only warns against raw dumps of data. Anything meaningful has a place even if it's not important to the rest of the world, because being important to the world is not a requirement - obscure topics are fine; what's required is that enough context is provided to establish what the information means, what topics it relates to and where it's situated.

The five points you stated above are a good place to start building a guideline. But they should be seen as heuristics, to detect when sources are not providing enough quality to build a neutral and accurate article - not as the default position with which to exclude articles as you suggested at 16:38, 17 February. Diego (talk) 12:08, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Conclusion

All sources should be judged on a case-by-case basis due to the huge differences in quality and availability of the local sources. The bottom line is WP:GNG. Availability of many sources raises the threshold of quality of the sources. Lack of sources does not lower them below WP:GNG. No sources, no article. Night of the Big Wind _talk 00:06, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

I strongly disagree with the conclusion, which is in opposition to basic WP:Deletion policy. First, according to the Deletion Policy guideline, nothing has absolutely to meet WP:GNG--its merely the usual criterion. The guideline there states very specifically that it does not apply in all cases. Second, it's in opposition to consistent practice on hundreds of articles, as which is that secondary schools are almost always kept on AfD , generally with the explanation for those who insist on the GNG that they are presumed to meet the GNG. DGG ( talk ) 17:53, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

This discussion is revolving around some type of formalization of the acceptance of school articles for inclusion, so while OUTCOMES currently says that, this is anticipated to change. Whether the change is to create a NSCHOOLS subject-specific guideline, or whether to have schools be determined notable by the GNG, that's unclear yet. So we're looking at a "consensus can change" scenario. What exactly the change is is what this discussion is about, and how to approach a larger RFC to present to the community on these aspects. --MASEM (t) 18:06, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Full Stop

Can we go back to the discussion about the notability of schools please? The discussion about what are "proper sources" is turning ugly and out of scope of this RfC (if not, I, as starter of this RfC, declare it out of scope).

Back to the summary. Let us talk about the the use of reports ordered and paid by the government. Are reports, ordered and paid by the government, independent enough to proof notability? Night of the Big Wind _talk 00:06, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

There should be no doubt they are independent. They accurately display whether a school is up to standard or not. They aren't biased towards them its the government that look bad is schools are failing not Ofsted or similar organisations. As raised above do schools come under WP:ORG if they do which i feel they do then possibly. However i would say they dont meet it alone. Again though this is a different topic you need to establish whether schools need to meet GNG if they do then this conversation is valid if they don't then there really is no point to this. There is isn't enough of cosensus above to change from the staus quo at present mainly because its been muddied so much. Change and or firmer guidelines are needed but a firm consenus is required to overhaul it. I suggest once its clear what route were going down then look at other points.Edinburgh Wanderer 00:24, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

I severely doubt if the reports are independent. If someone places an order with you, you deliver what your client wants. And that is not necessary the best availble (or in this case: the full truth). Night of the Big Wind _talk 01:32, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

They are totally independent the government does not tell them what to wright. They can fail schools if they wish which happens frequently to say they print what the client wants is wrong they are a totally independent organisation as stated below [[ombudsman] like you need to look into it further. But as I've said above do schools come under WP:ORG or not because that has a baring on my answer. However you need more than a ofsted report to fill out an article but it certainly contributes as its coverage of the school in reliable secondary sources. It may not be enough in total but it cant be excluded alltogether Edinburgh Wanderer 16:49, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Night: you have to consider these reports (and similar reports in Australia, "Annual School Reports" and information published on www.myschool.edu.au) to be a little bit more than reports ordered for and paid by the government. An ombudsman-like independent authority assesses schools against a particular predetermined standard. The reports are effectively statutory like the publication of census data or some such. ˜danjel [ talk | contribs ] 07:04, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Wait a minute, is someone saying that Ofsted (etc.) reports are sources sufficient to pass WP:GNG? That's ludicrous. Notability is supposed to be a measure as to whether or not the rest of the world has taken notice of a subject. These are reports that are, as far as I know, either mandated or highly recommended by law. No one is taking notice of the school, other than the fact that it exists and therefore must be written about. That's like saying that the existence of a publicly available environmental impact report for a new building by Company X somehow indicates notability of that building (or company, for that matter). That's like saying that a legal decision imputes notability upon the person whom the court is passing judgment on. Note that I'm not disputing that Ofsted reports are in depth--I'm disputing that they are not run-of-the-mill. Danjel, your use of the word statutory, in fact, points to exactly why these reports do not in any way establish notability. The reports are definitely useful as reliable sources, they're just not in any way useful for establishing notability (if we decide that schools need to establish notability). Apologies if I've misunderstood--there's a lot to process here. Qwyrxian (talk) 08:12, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

I suppose you're right in regards to run of the mill Oftsed reports, but those aren't the ones I'm more interested in. Consistently good reports from Ofsted (or consistently good results in MySchool or whatever the local equivalent is) would strongly suggest that the school is doing something notably interesting in terms of its educational programs or that there is some other notable reason for its good results. Educational programs being the core business of schools, this would be something which would need to be investigated.

In any case, I'm mainly addressing the concern that Ofsted reports (and similar) are (or are not) WP:RS. ˜danjel [ talk | contribs ] 08:29, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

In regard to the consistently good reports, while you might wish to argue that they're necessary to justify an article, they aren't of any use in notability. The question is whether or not consistently good reports is an indicator of the existence of sufficient coverage in independent reliable sources to create the article. As they don't do that, they aren't an indicator that a school is notable.

This is my main concern with the proposed criteria. It isn't a school's importance that is the primary concern, but the extent and nature of the coverage of the school in reliable sources. Importance only comes into play if it is an indicator of the existence of such coverage, or if we wish to use it to exclude some schools that would otherwise pass the GNG. - Bilby (talk) 08:52, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Government reports on schools are reliable sources which can be used to reference school articles. The point about government reports, however, is that they do not on their own provide sufficient material to write an encyclopaedic article about a school. Government reports are not concerned with topics like the history of a school or the notable alumni who attended a school. OFSTED reports for English schools are often quite lengthy and can be a good source for the numbers of pupils at the school and the recent awards won by the school, but there's little else in the reports that can be used to construct an article. In practice any school that's been around for 50 or 100 years will have had masses of stuff written about it other than routine government reports. Dahliarose (talk) 15:15, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

In my opinion, these reports are reliable, but they do not give any indication towards notability. Reports such as these are done on every school in a state/county/nation/district/whatever. This fact alone indicates that being the subject of such a report is not notabile, it is routine. This is the same argument that I have with local coverage—my argument is that every high school with an (American) football program is going to have articles written about that program in the local newspaper. This is routine coverage. The notable football programs are the ones that are written up in newspapers of larger circulation, or that cover a larger area.

And with all due respect to Night, the two discussions are linked... "proper" sources denote notability. If we want to limit our scope to schools, then we can do so—the precedent to state "some sources prove notability more than others" is already in WP:CORPDEPTH. Let's just Again, with all respect, I think that setting up guidelines with numerical thresholds of criteria is the wrong way to go... In my opinion, defining what sources establish notability, and then letting the evaluation of those sources be done by intelligent editors is the correct approach. Even WP:SCHOOL states that school articles should meet WP:ORG, and WP:ORG contains the warning about local sources. And it seems like only high schools are, by tradition, presumed notable without needing to meet the notability criteria of ORG. So if we could just get consensus that high schools also have to meet SCHOOL/ORG/GNG, then we'd be done here. Livit⇑^Eh?/_What? 16:57, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

I think you took the wrong turn, Livitup! The next section seeks an answer on the question: do we need guidelines at all. So discussing the contents of a personal draft is out of place here. Night of the Big Wind _talk 21:20, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

I helped write the wording at WP:SCHOOLS, and while it does indicate that both guidelines can be applied to schools, the wording at WP:N is clear - an article has to pass the GNG or a SNG; one or the other, not both. There is nothing about local sources in the GNG, and given the outcome of the straw poll and previous discussions on the issue, at best, there is no consensus on the issue. The term "routine" isn't in the GNG either, though it is present on the WP:N page in relation to events or single topic coverage only. CT Cooper · talk 18:19, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Guidelines

As most of you know, I have been fooling around to make draft for guidelines: User:Night of the Big Wind/Notability of schools. At the present state of the discussion I have an important question regarding to them: Do we need still Guidelines? If so, anybody interested in working on them in a kind of working group to make them ready for an official presentation? Night of the Big Wind _talk 14:32, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure we are massively further forward from where we were when this started as there isnt a great deal of consnsus eithier way. Other than non notable scholls should be redirected to a partent article rather than deleted on every occasion. Im happy to help although dont have much time once I'm finished on the footy stuff but if others want to I will as much as I can.Edinburgh Wanderer 14:48, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

To my opinion, the big gain up until now is not so much seen in consensus. The disappearence of "we were used to do it this way", "Common Outcomes served us well" and "schools are automatically notable", all three without any questioning why, is the big gain. There is now discussion possible about what to do next. I agree, we have a long and difficult way to go, but instead of being in the trenches surrounded by minefield and barbed wire, we are now at the negotiating table. No matter what the results, that is a major progress! Night of the Big Wind _talk 15:35, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

If anyone is interested in taking this forward then they might like to refer to all the previous failed school guidelines which are linked from this page: Wikipedia:Schools. There is also further guidance at Wikipedia:WikiProject Schools/Article guidelines which does have consensus, though I've just noticed that it does contain contradictory statements on whether non-notable schools should be merged or redirected. Dahliarose (talk) 15:50, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

• Comment - Get in touch with me if you ever do launch these proposed guidelines for decision, I'd very much like to make the counter case that their adoption would make for a logistical catastrophe at AfD. An elementary school receives a "significant award" for the quality of its teaching and is in!?? What about if it got an ambiguously "significant" award in 1976 once? Can you not see how you are opening Pandora's box here? Common Outcomes have served us well, and I can explain how and why. Carrite (talk) 16:34, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Can you explain why high schools are exempt from GNG and the notability guidelines of WP:ORG, which WP:SCHOOLS states school articles should meet? Livit⇑^Eh?/_What? 16:59, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

A logistical nightmare can be avoided when we start a list where "troubled articles" are identified for rescue. Something like this: User:Night of the Big Wind/Schools with notability problems. Night of the Big Wind _talk 17:17, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

As I've been thinking about what an RFC might look like to publish to the wider community to get input on, I've realized that the larger question to ask first is: "Do we want WP to include coverage of all secondary schools?" - once we know the general answer to that, we can write the guidelines to meet that. This has to be answered in the light of at least four additional questions:

• "What makes the inclusion of secondary schools more important that primary schools?"
• "What makes the inclusion of secondary schools more important than commercial businesses, religious buildings, or government institutions?" * "What makes the inclusion of secondary schools more important than other educational facilities (religious, accredited or not, etc.)?"
• "Can it be possible to make an encyclopedic-quality article on every secondary school?"

(Please don't answer these now, this is food for thought). Presumably, if there's wide consensus that the main question is answered affirmatively, we will have hopefully gotten enough answers in the other four questions to make other establishing "rules" for school inclusion and the use of local sources.

What makes this a more difficult issue than it seems is that if we do allow local sources for notability, then absolutely all schools - including primary - are notable, but then this means many local businesses, etc. are also notable. What I believe the issue needs to be centered around is a willingness to recognize appropriate depth of coverage for Wikipedia, and can we have generalized guidelines (eg restricting the use of local sources as notability indicators) or do we need to carve out specific exceptions that override other guidelines. I don't personally have a good feel on which way consensus is on this, and hence the right RFC to flesh it out.

I'm still working out the shape of this RFC to get the most bang for the buck. But I would point out that the guidelines suggested may be a fallout from this RFC (eg why I'm asking about importance). --MASEM (t) 17:57, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

The answer on your question "Do we want WP to include coverage of all secondary schools?" is simpel: No, we only want those schools covered in Wikipedia that satisfy WP:GNG. Night of the Big Wind _talk 21:15, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

You did see the part that I said "don't answer this now", right? :) I think consensus thinks the answer is no, but I can't start there. Hence an RFC to get that ball rolling. --MASEM (t) 21:31, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

We don't want Wikipedia to cover all secondary schools by default because, with the best will in the world, not all secondary schools will ever be able meet WP:GNG. Any guideline would have to apply not just to a few countries but to all countries in the world. You'd end up with lots of single sentence stubs that would be prone to vandalism and would be a nightmare to maintain, especially if we don't have editors with sufficient knowledge of Chinese, Japanese, etc to check that the sources cited are valid. See this article as an example that's just come up at AfD: Arben Broci High School, Tirana. Given time it might be possible for any good editor to write a reasonably encyclopaedic well sourced article on this school but there aren't enough editors with the time and inclination to do this sort of work. A more pertinent question would be should every single secondary school be covered in the appropriate locality article if sufficient material is not available to produce a standalone article? Dahliarose (talk) 21:46, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

That's what you think, that's what I think, and that's probably what a few others thing. The point is that that doesn't necessarily reflect consensus. Hence the need for an RFC to establish that, because that's unclear. --MASEM (t) 22:52, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm not au fait with all the procedures but if you think that an RFC would establish a consensus once and for all so that we have a foundation to work on then it would be worthwhile. I know there are many editors who trot out the line "all high schools are notable" but I think they really mean all American high schools not all secondary schools worldwide. Dahliarose (talk) 23:00, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

em thats a bit short sighted All American. What about all British or all Spanish or all German for that matter remember wiki is world wide not just in the the US.Edinburgh Wanderer 23:04, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

I've only ever seen people claim that all "high schools" are notable. High school is a term mostly used in the US, and it seems to be mostly US editors who make that claim. This is actually one of the problems with any RFC as you would have to get the terminology right. Secondary school is the more widely used term in Europe. I'm not even sure what the overall term is in Germany for their various types of schools. See: Education in Germany.

I live in Scotland part of the uk and I went to a High School Firrhill High School also Boroughmuir High School and many more. Edinburgh Wanderer 10:30, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

I believe the term was invented in Scotland, or at least according to our Wiki article on High school! The varying uses of the terminology in the UK is confusing to say the least! Dahliarose (talk) 11:17, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

To make it worse: "Technische Hogeschool Twente" is the former name of the University of Twente. Just as we had the "Technische Hoogeschool van Delft", now the Delft University of Technology. They, and several other, were promoted to universities to make room for more practical "hogescholen" (contrary to the more theoratical universities). I attended the "Hanzehogeschool Groningen" (in English: Hanze University of Applied Sciences, Groningen. So in my opinion, the use of the word "highschool" is dangerous and can lead to misunderstandings. Night of the Big Wind _talk 14:30, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

That's very interesting. Perhaps "dangerous" is not the best choice of words but it is certainly confusing to say the least. You've also got the problem of former communist countries which have middle schools providing the final stage of secondary education. I try and use the phrase "institutions providing the final stage of secondary education" to avoid ambiguity. Another problem is that these schools aren't all equivalent in different countries. American high schools only cover the last four years of secondary education. Most European schools cover the last seven years of secondary education from age 11 to 18. In England we have some large sixth form colleges which are for students doing A levels (the last two years of education). There are private schools that might provide education from 3 to 18, but some are very small and I doubt sufficient sources would exist to write articles about all of them. I would imagine there are many schools in Africa that probably only educate children up to the age of about fourteen, but I see no reason why such a school should be considered less notable than a bog-standard four-year American high school simply because of the age of the children it educates. Phrasing an RFC to cover all these complexities is possibly quite challenging. Dahliarose (talk) 15:43, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Aha, more trouble on the radar As far as I know, primary schools in the Netherlands and Ireland cater for the age bracket 4-12. Secondary schools cater for the age bracket 12-17/18. Night of the Big Wind _talk 15:54, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Back to ther original question, but now better worded: Do we need Guidelines to clarify WP:GNG? Night of the Big Wind _talk 21:23, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

No GNG is pretty clear. Do we need proper school guidelines yes.Edinburgh Wanderer 22:40, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Edinburgh, the PWP:Deletion Policy is in fact pretty clear that while the GNG is the usual guideline, it is not the only one. We can make whatever exceptions have consensus. Personally, I don't particularly care whether the default is to include all high schools or not--I am not a fan of local notability, What I do care about is reducing the burden on AfD. Back when we were debating notability of schools we had dozens of school AfDs a week, and great time and ingenuity was spent on them--all of which is really unnecessary, for it doesn't make a difference whether of not borderline high school are included. The usual critical issue was both the use of local sources, and whether the sources gave substantial coverage. That last point is normally interpreted however the participants in a given AfD choose, as an examination of any day;s AfDs will demonstrate. I ask those who wish to disturb one of the few balances we have, whether there are not much more important problems hereto be worked on, uch as the unreferenced articles, and the large amount on new and old promotional content? Compared to those, what difference does it make what we do with high schools?

Night, we need first of all a question of whether the GNG should in fact be applicable, because the standard outcome has been to ignore it. Then, if we decide it is applicable, the guidelines being talked about are actually the ones for LOCAL, and well affect a great many articles of various types. This is going to end as a very wide ranging discusssion, and I ask you, as I asked Edinborough, whether we shouldn't leave well enough alone and concentrate on promotionalism and other genuine problems. DGG ( talk ) 18:04, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

It is Edinburgh the capital city of Scotland. But yes I'm fully aware that there are other guideline that apply. I don't think GNG should be changed there isn't anything wrong with it. And we do need proper school guidelines yes even if its just the current common outcomes properly put down. There is not enough consensus for anything here its very mixed. I would much rather focus on content but as long as these issues come up they do need discussed.Edinburgh Wanderer 20:09, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Did you read this discussion? It is pretty clear that most people think that articles on schools, regardless of level, should satisfy WP:GNG. The point is now how to determine notability. What can we use and what can't we use, guidelines on top of WP:GNG or guidelines just to explain and clarify WP:GNG and so on. Do you want a strawpoll or an offical vote on this, DGG? Night of the Big Wind _talk 19:19, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

I don't thinks thats the case actually night. The consensus isn't totally clear above its fairly mixed and not enough to develop consensus. Yes that guidelines need to be properly laid out and determined but not exactly where the bar should be set. And if you want to change GNG you'll need to start a full RFC on that as you will need a lot more input than you have here as that is a far more wider reaching issue than schools.Edinburgh Wanderer 20:09, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

I think I don't understand you. This RfC is about the question Should secondary schools/highschools meet the standards of Wikipedia:Notability#General notability guideline or are they exempt from that? Unless I have read it hopelessly wrong, in general the answer is: "yes, they should meet the standards of WP:GNG."

A related question, but not directly part of it, is the question: "And how do we determine the notability of schools?" To put it mildly: we have not yet an answer on that. Night of the Big Wind _talk 21:49, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

The question of inclusion of schools is very very closely tied with the concept of local sources; the questions can't be separated, or at least at first blush. I am narrowing the idea of a larger RFC that asks the question: "Should we have stand-alone articles on every secondary school?" that will have 6 possible answers:

• "Yes, we should, irregardless of all other policy/guideline" (result: OUTCOMES remains unchanged)
• "Yes, we should as they will meet the GNG with allowance for local sources" (result: some guidance on local sources at WP:N, possibly approve the SNG propsed for schools)
• "Yes, we should by specialized notability criteria" (result: we seek to approve the school SNG that has been proposed here)
• "No, unless they meet the GNG with allowance for local sources (result: some guidance on local sources at WP:N)
• "No, unless they meet the GNG without allownance for local sources (result: some guideance on local sources at WP:N)
• "No, unless they meet specific criteria" (result: approach the school SNG )

There may be other answers, but these are the 6 that I see as giving reasonably clear guidance as to what the next step is. That's why this is a complicated question. We could just ask if OUTCOMES for secondary schools hold true, but that doesn't get to the point of the matter about local sourcing and the like. --MASEM (t) 14:36, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

The first option is in fact nothing else then a friendly wording of "yes, and we don't gave a s**t that we override other policies. We are right anyway."

And there is a fourth no-option: "No, they just have to meet WP:GNG. It up to the author to proof the notability." Night of the Big Wind _talk 16:03, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

The first one is an opinion that has been expressed and while it may seem a blatant insult to notability, it is a possible option to consider. That is, effectively what we have now.

And the fourth one is important to understand that it removes the immediate allowance for secondary schools just because they are secondary sources, and yes, requires GNG meeting. Again also a valid option from this discussion. --MASEM (t) 16:11, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

The next step

To me, this RfC looks ready to be closed. Not that we have a strict consensus on the full issue, but we have made a big progress. In my opinion, the RfC can be closed as an "in general opinion that all school-articles should meet WP:GNG". Not enough for a policy change right now, but good enough for further discussion. Essential is that we start need seperate RfCs on the use of locals sources and on the need and type of Guidelines (on top of WP:GNG, a help page related to schools & notability or something in between). The contents of the Guidelines is a separate discussion. Night of the Big Wind _talk 16:03, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Clearly this is not a valid conclusion of the discussion, but is your opinion only. A better summary is that secondary school articles are expected to pass GNG without actual proof, and are therefore kept. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 11:36, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Interesting personal opinion. But with a discussion going on about the use of local sources, clearly not the truth. I am aware that we can't draw real conclusions and real decisions, but at least the car is moving again and not stuck anymore. Night of the Big Wind _talk 13:44, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Night, even though I think your proposal is likely good, your claim of a consensus isn't even slightly close to accurate. I don't even know if you have a majority. I see many of the same arguments against changing as before: sources are almost certainly available even if we can't immediately find them, thus deletions discussions are a waste of time, and the lesser used but also valid argument that school's play a critical role in the life of a community. I disagree with both of these arguments, but I don't think there's a consensus to reject them. Qwyrxian (talk) 14:09, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Maybe I have worded it badly, but what I mean is that "my" RfC has run its course, that it can be closed, and that several other RfC can be started to discuss a few items in more detail, without clogging up this RfC. As far as I know, a RfC is for discussion and not a vote. I am aware of the two camps involved here, roughly described as: Camp 1, who thinks that the threshold for school-articles should be raised to WP:GNG, and Camp 2, who thinks that WP:GNG is just a nuisance and should be ignored for articles about school. I am also aware that camp 2 is increasinly active in this discussion, roughly from the point that it looked that something could be changed fundamentally. Night of the Big Wind _talk 18:39, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Night, I completely disagree with your conclusion and with your proposed closure. Graeme Bartlett's summary is correct; yours is not. If you look at the "straw poll" above, there is an almost 3-to-1 opinion (14 to 5) in favor of keeping the current system (secondary schools are presumed notable, primary schools have to prove their notability). There is no consensus to change this, and your well-meant efforts to write a new policy are not supported by the discussion here. And BTW your summary of the "Camp 2" position ("WP:GNG is just a nuisance and should be ignored for articles about school.") is a distortion or parody, not even close to what people are actually saying --MelanieN (talk) 18:11, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, but that is a strawpoll about the use of sources, not about the question if school articles should meet WP:GNG. Night of the Big Wind _talk 18:47, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Melanie, I could have described it another way: Camp 2, who thinks that WP:GNG and WP:V can be ignored because it is safe to gamble that sources will exist for every school. You think something like this acceptable: User:Night of the Big Wind/Workpage11? Night of the Big Wind _talk 20:08, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Since you are continuing to frame the other side's opinion via distortion and parody, is it safe to say that you are not really interested in listening to or respecting their viewpoint? The actual opposing viewpoint is "WP:V applies to schools as it does to everything, i.e. the actual existence and grade level of a secondary school must be verified in some way; that is not in dispute. WP:GNG applies to schools as it does to everything, but for diploma-granting secondary schools and degree-granting colleges it can be assumed that WP:GNG will be met with appropriate research." Your strawpoll below is based on your distorted/parodied view of the issues, and should be ignored as not a real question in dispute. --MelanieN (talk) 20:20, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Then why did you not show up earlier and take part in the discussions? it can be assumed is something else then it can be proofed. And personally I don't care what kind of sources you use (as long as they are convincing) but I want proof, not assumptions. Night of the Big Wind _talk 22:34, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Yes, your position is clear; it does not gain force by restating it over and over. You want proof of notability. However, that is not the current consensus for high schools, as demonstrated at hundreds of AfD discussions. A discussion here involving a few dozen editors is not going to change that. --MelanieN (talk) 23:22, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

If there was really consensus about it, it would not be the subject of endless discussions and RfC's, don't you think? Night of the Big Wind _talk 01:08, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

It only takes one person to start, restart, and continue to flog "endless discussions and RfC's." You, for instance. --MelanieN (talk) 17:31, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Why don't you be brave and come with a proposal for a RfC if you think I did it wrong. Night of the Big Wind _talk 03:09, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Strawpoll 2

Question: Should secondary schools/highschools meet the standards of Wikipedia:Notability#General notability guideline or are they exempt from that? Note: How to determine notability is not part of this poll. Night of the Big Wind _talk 18:55, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Support meet the standards of Wikipedia:Notability#General notability guideline:

1. as author of this RfC and strawpoll Night of the Big Wind _talk 19:55, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
2. ...

Oppose meet the standards of Wikipedia:Notability#General notability guideline:

1. They should meet specific categorical guidelines (perhaps by nation), as I think the discussion above keeps saying over and over again, but it seems to be be becoming a case of I did not hear that. If, in the particular case of an article, there is no specific categorical guideline in which the article fits, it would default to the General guideline (which is why it is called "General"), unless it is determined a new specific categorical guideline for that type of institution makes sense in the future - part of the problem is it appears that people are using different terms for the same thing or they are using the same term for different things.Alanscottwalker (talk) 22:16, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Choose not to respond to this strawpoll about an issue that is not in dispute

1. See my comments immediately above this strawpoll. Nobody has claimed that secondary schools are "exempt" from notability guidelines. The existing policy consensus (correction in response to Masem below) is that it can be assumed that secondary schools and colleges DO meet notability guidelines, even if the evidence for notability has not been presented. As pointed out above, this is similar to existing guidelines about professional players of major sports. --MelanieN (talk) 20:28, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

   WP:NSPORTS documents how sports players can be shown notable outside of the GNG. With no equivalent for just schools themselves (OUTCOME is not a notability guideline), this means they fall under WP:ORG and for that purpose, some may not be notable due to the requirement on the type of sources. The point of this entire exercise is to figure out what consensus is (we have no idea what the reasoning is, only they are generally kept AFD) so that we can codify schools properly into guidelines. --MASEM (t) 20:34, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

   You are free not to vote in this strawpoll. Unfortunately for you, the question brought up here is the same as the original question from the RfC. So I think it is well in the scope of this RfC. Night of the Big Wind _talk 22:39, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

2. The question is incorrectly worded. The issue is not whether or not high schools need to meet the GNG, but, per MelanieN, whether or not they need to demonstrate that they meet the GNG. The secondary issue, if the second stance is the current view, is how they are to demonstrate that they meet the GNG, which is what Masem raises - do they demonstrate this by proving that they are a high school, or are more refined criteria required? - Bilby (talk) 22:57, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Exactly. The only issue in dispute at Wikipedia is whether/how notability is to be demonstrated for secondary schools, but Night of the Big Wind has specifically ruled out discussion of that point in this strawpoll - therefore it has no point. (I see he has now even taken to informing editors that they are "not free to vote" in this strawpoll!) (My apologies, I misread your comment. You said "free not to vote"; I misread it as "not free to vote." SelfTroutSlap!) --MelanieN (talk) 23:29, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Yes Melanie, it is up to you to vote or to abstain. You are free to make your own choice. Nothing mandatory. Night of the Big Wind _talk 01:03, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Dear Melanie.

You give me serious the idea that you did not read the whole discussion. As you can see above, there was already a big discussion about sourcing and what sources where usefull. You would make me very happy to come with a suggestion for a seperate RfC about sourcing and sources, so we can close this RfC. That prevents clogging up of the present one, that, to my opinion, has done its duty by bringing people on speaking terms and in serious discussion. So again, you would make me happy with a proposal. Night of the Big Wind _talk 01:23, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

sigh It is a bit confusing, Bilby. According to WP:GNG you need sources to proof notability. As is stated there: If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to satisfy the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article or stand-alone list.. So, in my opinion clean and clear: a notable subject has its notability proven by sources. Or do I see that wrong?

What I try to move to a seperate RfC is the question How do we proof notability of schools. Reason: this RfC is becoming too long and too many sideroads had to be explored. Yes, we have made progress (mainly be getting the real issues at the table, in my opinion). And no, we have not reached any consensus for change. But it is clear that the present consensus has shaky foundations. The follow-up RfC should get that more clear, and I hope that Masem will initiate that one. Night of the Big Wind _talk 03:33, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Clarification needed on article tagging policy

A recent incident of article tagging by Kumi-Taskbot, which is my bot, has prompted me to request clarification of Wikipedias policy on tagging articles. As far as I know and have been told, any WikiProject can tag an article they feel is in their scope. Recently however I have been told that several articles my bot tagged, some that fell into WikiProject Connecticut, some where redirects, some were other things, etc. do not fall under the scope of WikiProject United States. As I informed the users, as far as I know, Connecticut is part of the US. First let me clarify that I wasn't tagging every article in that project but a few that started with United States, US, U.S. and American and after I cleaned out a few thousand that did not apply to the US. Then I had an Administrator send me threatening messages indicating that I would be blocked if I didn't drop the issue.

In coming here I'm not asking for action against the admin or the editors. What I am looking for is some clarification on some issues:

1. What project may tag an article? - As far as I know any project can
2. Is it appropriate for a project to tell another project that it cannot tag articles in that projects scope? No
3. Is it appropriate for editors not members of a project to tell a project what its scope is or should be? No

I beleive I know the answers to these questions and my answers follow the questions above but I would like to discuss this with other editors in case I misunderstand. --Kumioko (talk) 18:16, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Where you are getting complaints I am guessing is that most people consider for example a state project to be a sub project of the country project and in most cases both projects are usually not tagged, only the more specific one to avoid redundancy and talk page clutter. However I am not commenting on the actions of the people you are alluding to. To use another example of articles I edit in, we tag ice hockey articles with the ice hockey tag and not the sports project tag because the ice hockey project is a related sub project of sports. It is just like categories in a way, you don't put the article in the sub category and the parent category. -DJSasso (talk) 18:33, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

The question you should have asked would be "why would you want not to tag an article", which Dj answers and which is probably the reason you were asked not to tag those articles. (On an aside, I disagree with Kumioko's 'bot' edits but don't care enough to ask him to stop, nor do I feel involved enough to do so.) --Izno (talk) 19:55, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Reply to Djsasso - Several of the projects have stated that one project or another should not tag there article for X reason. My tagging was the recent one but I have seen this numorous times. ::Reply to Izno - Could you clarify which type of edit. The bot does quite a few different things.

There are differing opinions but as I see it the Connecticut project and WPUS are seperate and as such oth tags should be allowed. Just as the ACW or US task forces of WPMILHIST are on the same pages as United States, the individual states, WikiProject US History, etc. One project or editor should not be telling another project or editor that they cannot place their projects tag on an article. It completely violates Wikipedia's rules against article ownership. I agree also that there is no reason to fight over who tags an article or not. The more coverage an article has the better. --Kumioko (talk) 20:28, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Whether or not you run separately the Connecticut project would be a defacto sub project given its topic area. We also try to avoid overlapping of scopes to avoid duplication of work and clutter. Tagging say an article with both the US history wikiproject and US wikiproject is highly inefficient and is a mess. If people are interested in both they just join both projects. There is no need for two separate tags in cases where every article that would be in one project will also end up in the other project. In fact its highly discouraged to have two wikiprojects that cover the exact same scope. So you would not tag articles as being in the US wikiproject since its already in the US History wikiproject which is a defacto sub project if not an official one. I believe people told you all of this waaaay back when you first began to reignite that project and started to tag articles for the US project. -DJSasso (talk) 01:21, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

I think that your argument is Utopian and not very realistic in the realm of Wikipedia. Frankly you logic makes no sense. By your logic, WikiProject Illinois shouldn't tag articles in WikiProject Chicago, Chicago shouldn't tag articles in the Chicago Bulls task force. Using another example, Indiana shouldn't tag articles in WikiProject Indianapolis and Indianapolis shouldn't tag articles in the Indianapolis Childrens Museum project under GLAM. --Kumioko (talk) 01:31, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Not at all. Yes WikiProject Illinois shouldn't tag articles that are in WikiProject Chicago (again what they should do is a joint banner). And the Chicago Bull task force is a task force not a wikiproject so they have the NBA project banner and the Chicago banner which is completely fine since one is from the sports tree and one is geography based. And as for Indianapolis and GLAM the two are separate project trees. One is museums based and one is geography based. Your situation is two tags both based on geography. -DJSasso (talk) 15:47, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

• The section header and original post were misleading in that this is not about article tagging, but article talk page tagging.
• Lots of banners at the top of the talk page are annoying. I wish that WikiProject banners were collapsed by default. Also, multiple overlapping projects tagging in parallel looks, and probably is, disorganised and inefficient. I would hope that everyong involved would expect some effort at co-ordination between WikiProject Connecticut and WikiProject United States. "I wasn't tagging every article ... and after I cleaned out a few thousand that did not apply" makes it sound like you are tagging without enough care. Does the WikiProject have a clear policy on what gets tagged, and are you folloiwng it? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:17, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

You would be incorrect in assuming coordination between projects. Several projects are not very willing to work with other projects and in fact tend to run off anyone who isn't a regular. Another problem is who gets the right to tag an article and who has the authority to tell the others they can't? Take for example Barrack Obama and the pile of banners on that page. I would argue its better to have one US banner with the others in it than to have 20 different US related banners all trying to get their piece. But we are die-gressing from MY point in this discussion. Does a project have the right to tell another project they can't tag an article or do they not? --Kumioko (talk) 02:14, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Wouldn't it be better to focus this discussion on what most profits the project, i.e. Wikipedia, instead of trying to debate which 'right' projects have? JHS_nl (talk) 10:25, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

The problem is that some projects (I am trying hard not to name names) will remove or run off anyone not in their group who tries to edit an article in their scope. If for example they have an article like Barrack Obama tagged and another related project tags it they say they are out of scope, start harrassing them and in most cases the editor simply gives up (and frequently leaves Wikipedia) in frustration. I have been here for several years and seen it many times. Frankly I am getting a bit tired of these project being allowed to do it. So I raise the issue here. --Kumioko (talk) 21:01, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Wikiprojects don't have rights, wiki projects are just a group of editors who like to edit a common topic. As JHS mentions, it would be much more beneficial to the project to discuss how you can help to streamline your process with those that already happen on the wiki instead of going on about the rights of one project vs another. As I mentioned above, there has been for a long time general consensus that you don't tag an article of a wikiproject with your project if that project could be seen as being a sub-topic of the project you are tagging. Which is why you don't tend to see the Sports project tags on every basketball article or hockey article to use the example I used above. Only the project that is most specifically applicable tends to get tagged. Tagging very generally which is what you seem to be doing actually makes things worse in that all you are doing is creating one big mess of articles with one minor thing in common which makes it harder for people to actually help the articles than being in more specific projects. -DJSasso (talk) 15:16, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Well, they may not have rights but they seem to exert a lot of influence and no one wants to stop them from doing it. Which is why I bring the issue here. Regardless of personal opinions about scope, if WPUS wants to tag every article relating to them, such as WikiProject Biography tagging every bio, they should be allowed to do so. That doesn't mean they remove other projects banners, force them to merge, or whatever other meritless arguments exist. The bottom line is any project can tag the articles they feel are in their scope and shouldn't be forced to redefine their scope because other projects bully them into doing so. --Kumioko (talk) 21:01, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Well one of the reasons we have the WikiProject Council is to try and make sure that different projects don't have a scope that overlaps another project. So that we don't have these sorts of issues. Because it really makes little sense to have tags for two projects that cover the exact same scope which is what the case is above with the state vs country situation. WPBiography is a very different type of project so not really relevant. And remember just like everything else on the wiki a WikiProject doesn't own their scope. If community members whether they declare to be a part of the project or not come to a consensus that a projects scope is too large then the scope can be changed. -DJSasso (talk) 21:28, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

As much respect I have for the Council they have little power and I don't think I have ever seen them step in to resolve a problem of this sort. Its a good place to ask questions about a project, clarify some policy and ask general questions but not so good at enforcing the policy. --Kumioko (talk) 01:31, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

In regards to the overlapping scope issue. First let me again clarify that I don't agree for several reasons but assuming that its correct for a moment, which project overlaps the others scope and who tells the other project they can't tag it. For example, Should WikiProject United Stats take control and tell Connecticut they cant tag an article or the other way around. This point is made even more clear in things like WikiProject Aviation & the Military History Aviation task force, WikiProject US Presidents & WikiProject Presidential elections, City and State WikiProjects and the list goes on. So, it really boils down to whether a project can or cannot tag an article and who has the authority to say that a project cannot tag an article. --Kumioko (talk) 01:31, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

I have already told you how that is handled. If the topic is a sub-topic of the other then the one that is the sub-topic gets tagged. That is a very commonplace general practice and quite entrenched through the wiki already which means there is consensus by silence that that is how it works. So in your example Connecticut would be tagged and the US would not be. Yes there are cases where those such as yourself try to push both tags onto articles, one good example I can think of is the Chicago project and Illinois project a couple years ago. And just like your situation that is a bit ridiculous to have both tagged. A combined tag again would be the best option but if the two sides aren't willing to do that then generally its the more specific tag that gets put on the article. Task forces are a separate issue because they are still the same wikiproject and are usually just a parameter in the parent projects banner. -DJSasso (talk) 12:52, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Well I guess this is something we are just going to haev to agree to disagree on. I personally don't think its bad to have more than one projects banner. Different projects have different members. Different project concentrate on different issues. I also think that by forcing WikiProject United States to "ignore" any project in the scope of another subproject completely destroys the project. Every single article will fall under at least one other project, in some cases multiples. As I stated before though this is really off topic but it does highlight one important point. Knowone wants to be willing (other than me it seems) to tell a project they don't have the right to tell another project they can't add their banner to a project. I see a lot of symantic arguments but no clear yes or no. Eithe they can or they can't. It seems though based on what I am seeing, projects do have that power and can indeed tell another project they cannot tag an article. This is truly disappointing and a real shame. --Kumioko (talk) 15:12, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

I think the problem you are really having is that you seem to think that WikiProjects own their project and they don't. Just like anything else on the wiki you require consensus of the community at large. So yes people outside your project if there are enough of them to form consensus can tell you that your scope is too large. This is why projects like the Canadian one only cover the topics that don't fit in any of its sub projects (generally just federal topics) and why each province is run as its own WikiProject. An overly large scope is a bad thing. -DJSasso (talk) 15:42, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Again thats an opinion. WikiProject Biography has upwrds of a million articles, MILHIST has nearly the same as WPUS, I don't see anyone screaming at them about scope. Nor do I see anyone beating WikiProject History into the ground about theirs. I am not trying to say that WPUS should overrule the other projects, only that they should be allowed to add their banner too. If I followed the opinion you have theres no reason for the project to exist because all the articles fall into a subproject, many of which are inactive. Even for federal projects there are at least 8 that would cover those, MILHIST US, ACW, ARW, USGOV, USPresidents, US Governors, US presidential elections, US State Legislatures, US politicians (defunct), Superfunds, WikiProject Washington DC and several others. And what happens when US presidents and presidential elections tries to add both banners? Which one takes precedance. This is why I think that you idea of the subserviant banner system doesn't work. Projects need the ability of tagging the articles in their scope. --Kumioko (talk) 16:01, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

You are confusing scope with number of articles. The two are different things. WPBiography's scope is exactly one set of articles. Biographies. Whereas what you are suggesting is the scope of WPUS is every article that has remotely ever thought of being related to the US even though they don't have any relevance to the nation as a whole. That is a big difference between those two projects. While biography has a large number of articles it has a small scope. WPUS on the other hand based on what you suggest has both a large number of articles and a large scope. -DJSasso (talk) 16:28, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Arbitrary break

As an editor who participated in the WikiProject United States/WikiProject Texas collaberation discussion I gave my viewpoint (that more projects looking at an article is a good thing, but to let the individual projects retain their individuality). As an editor who was representing Wikiproject Dallas-Ft. Worth, we came to an agreement that WPUS could add their banner to the most important/highest graded articles, but that we did not want to have our banner removed in favor of the WPUS banner. Kumioko gave plenty of time for discussion and comment, by approaching the affected Wikiprojects. The upper limit (IMO) for Wikiproject banners is about 5 collapsed. any more than that and the header for the talk gets too long. Hasteur (talk) 20:13, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

This is the right mindset. Of course it's OK in some cases to have an article in both the large and the specific wikiprojects, but that's not the general case. See for example Obama - it's correctly classified under Wikipedia:WikiProject United States and Wikipedia:WikiProject United States presidential elections because it's of direct relevance to both at the highest level. On the other hand Iowa Basketball Exposure League doesn't need to be under both WikiProject Iowa and WikiProject United States, because it's not of direct relevance to the country as a whole. But that call is not one that can be made by a bot. Diego (talk) 16:17, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Well just so that you know, there are more than 100 US related projects and not only do I not agree but it would be impossibly difficult to filter out 100+ projects when tagging articles from categories or other things. Additionally, even then there are so many projects that nearly every articles falls into the scope of one or more of these. This essentially ensures that WPUS won't be able to tag anything. --Kumioko (talk) 16:30, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Come on, don't indulge in victimism; you have at least 22 articles that can be directly tagged by the WPUS wikiproject. Every other article with less than Top importance for the U.S. should likely be classified under the most relevant subproject instead. Diego (talk) 17:49, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Back on topic

Again we are veering off topic. The question is simple. Either a project can tag an article or it cannot. Most of the comments here are not on topic so I broke out this new section. Does a project or editor have the right to tell a project it cannot tag an article? If neither, then who has the authority to tell that project that they cannot? The questions are simple, the answers should be as well. --Kumioko (talk) 01:31, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

The answer is that you're in the wrong mindset if you need to ask that question. WikiProject Computer science and Wikipedia:WikiProject Computing faced a similar situation. The solution? They created a combined template that tags the article as of interest to both WikiProjects; a single parameter in either template will also flag the article including it in any of the related task forces.

See, the solution was simple and in your face, but you needed to approach it by trying to find a compromise. Always remember that Wikipedians are mandated to colaborate and must participate in a community; asking questions in a confrontational way should be avoided. Diego (talk) 07:25, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

You're misreading the problem here a bit. The problem is not my compromise, but the failure of other projects to compromise. Some will flat out refuse to use this idea, and some will not even allow other states or projects to tag the articles and say that they are out of scope. The template switch thing is an interesting idea. I'm not sure if all the projects will go for it and it's not needed in all cases but it's definately interesting. There are several reasons why it may not work for all such as several of the parameters aren't recognized by some of the templates so the templates would need to be modified. Some templates don't use the bannershell template. Some projects just flat out refuse any sort of ideas of collaboration and revert or run off any attempts to do so, frequently in less than friendly ways. It would also require double work in many cases, requiring 2 templates to be updated instead of one. I do like the idea though and I am probably going to look at doing that with several of them. Particularly some of the state and national projects.

So again, I am left asking the original question, who has the right to tell another project they can't tag an article. Everyone seems quick to point at me and say this isn't a problem but the fact is this is a huge problem for certain projects (I's still trying hard not to name one but there are 2 that immediately come to mind). --Kumioko (talk) 12:34, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

"Some projects just flat out refuse any sorta ideas of collaboration"... and that's what shows that you're in a battleground mindset. Projects don't revert articles, editors do. If you find opposition from some particular editors to a proposal and it is creating disruption or hurting your project's operation, that's a reason to call them out on their refusal to collaborate, in the worse case by reporting them to mediation or user conduct. Of course this would imply that the tagging is really needed to help your operation; in the case you explained I fail to see how a bot creating automatic tags for articles already categorized is helping the project. But that's something to debate with the people affected by the changes.

I can hardly believe that in a whole project nobody is willing to work out a compromise, except for maybe a really small project. Even in that case forbidding someone to edit one way or the other should be a last resource, and an outright ban affecting all Wikiprojects if this was a systemic and community-wide problem. The template I explained above shows that this is not the case since other projects have reached a working compromise, as expected of us all. Thus, the solution you want to this problem is not appropriate and would only help to create open wounds and resentment.

Maybe a compromise doesn't even require a complex technical solution; the WikiProjectBannerShell template can be used to group and collapse several Wikiprojects together in a talk page. Maybe that could be enough to satisfy the other project's concerns; but how would you know if the only solution you accept is to win the dispute? In any case, I don't think that one incident between two wikiprojects should be solved with a solution that affects all of them. Diego (talk) 13:17, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

The problem isn't necessarily with the entire project but with 3 or 4 very active members of them. Typically its the same 4 people that always reply and the other members just go with it cause they don't want the hassle of geetting involved in the mess. I have received emails from some in the past stating that they simply don't have time to argue about who does or doesn't have the right to tag. Again though you are assuming that a compromise is desired. They don't want to compromise they want things their way and will not compromise unless its something they want. We even have projects now telling users they can't add infoboxes or other templates to articles in their scope.

In the end it seems as though my original fears were correct. The project schema has developed to a point where the projects themselves determine what should and shouldn't happen. The comments I haev seen on this discussion just prove that no one (besides me it seems) believes that projects don't have the right to tell another project they cannot tag an article. It's truly a shame, and I believe that this is why a lot of users are choosing to leave Wikipedia. Just my opinion there though. --Kumioko (talk) 14:42, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

If your problem is with "the same four people" then it's not a problem with the structure of WikiProjects. What you really need is mediation to resolve that particular dispute. A community-wide discussion at the village pump is premature if that problem is not seen throughout Wikipedia. Diego (talk) 16:07, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Well this looks like the end for WikiProject United States and more than 2 years worth of hard work. What a shame. --Kumioko (talk) 16:22, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

It doesn't have to be. It just means you should shift your focus to other aspects of helping those articles and your project. That being said you were warned back two years ago that a project that tried to incorporate every article that even remotely related to the US would be unworkable and that you shouldn't try to do that. I believe it was suggested that you just make the project a noticeboard setup so that people from all the various US projects could come to a central place to discuss issues. Instead of being a project that tags articles. -DJSasso (talk) 16:34, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

And here we are 2 years later, thriving, continuing to grow and continuing to do good things. Seems sorta silly to stop that train now isn't it? --Kumioko (talk) 17:00, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Not really, I see the exact opposite. I see a project of essentially one user that is growing by getting other inactive projects merged into one project which is really just as inactive except for the tagging you are doing. Your project as far as I can see hasn't done anything worthwhile yet. All you have done is create a massive list of articles related to the US. Looking at your talk page there has been no group improvement of any articles or anything. So no I don't think you are currently doing anything worth while that wasn't already happening prior to your arrival on the scene. -DJSasso (talk) 17:04, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

• I am a member of WikiProject United States and several other WikiProjects. I have tagged articles for all the WikiProjects I am in at one time or another. In general, I despise WikiProjects (despite the fact I am in them); I think almost every WikiProject POV pushes too much in favor of their project. However, I don't see any reason why WikiProject United States can't tag as many articles as it wants. If WPUS is improving articles and other projects aren't, those projects should yet WPUS tag and improve articles. Purplebackpack89≈≈≈≈ 16:56, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

• Well I think that is part of what people are upset about. I can't remember who said it. But someone asked if WPUS actually does do any article improvement as a project. All that person had seen was tagging and I have to agree the only thing I ever see WPUS (and by that I mean Kumioko since really he is the only active user in the project) doing is tagging articles. -DJSasso (talk) 17:00, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Well I can't speak for everyone in the project but I personally have over 1000 edits in every namespace except Template (about 750) book and book talk. I have about 120, 000 just in article space alone. These are not including my bot. For proof here are a couple links to my contribs. In this you'll see fixes to persondata description, Cleanup of talk page templates, fixes to templates, portals, files, coordinates and a variety of other things.

• Example 1
• Example 2
• If you keep scolling you'll find more.
• Tomwsulcer did a massive expansion and rewrite to Lobbying in the United States, Wall Street and several others.
• There are a lot more, these are just a couple examples along with the edits done by Purpleback to show the absurdity of the statement.

Just because a couple of jaded editors say that something is true doesn't make it so. --Kumioko (talk) 17:28, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

So assuming what you say is true...some individuals have done some improvement to articles. What has the WikiProject done other than tag articles. The point of WikiProjects is to collaborate together on stuff. I don't see where anything like that is done, except collaboration on how to merge more projects into yours. -DJSasso (talk) 17:32, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Djsasso, wide-scope projects are useful as a way to notify people interested in the topic. Watching the talk page of those wikiprojects is a good way to be updated for articles where feedback is requested. Of course for that purpose there's nothing that requires articles being tagged into the project; tagging should be done only to collect articles that will require direct action by the project; people interested in a particular sub-scope will follow the subproject instead, and articles in the topic are already included in the category system so including them in the Wikiproject is redundant. What the U.S. Wikiproject should be doing is providing a prominent link to Category:United_States, not tagging all articles included in that category or its subcategories. Diego (talk) 18:01, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Completely agree which is why I mentioned the best way for a project like this to function is as a Noticeboard format so that people can watch the talk page to see what is happening and what needs feedback. -DJSasso (talk) 18:03, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

And of course maintaining and classifying the list of all U.S.-related WikiProjects is a really good thing, and something that adds value to the U.S. project and all the linked sub-projects. Maybe the projects efforts should be dedicated to improve and expand this list? I can see this high-level view being useful in a way that an all-inclusive list of articles could never be. Diego (talk) 18:10, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

In regards to tagging and WikiProject Texas, I recently involved Kumioko in helping beef up the Texas project, and plenty of notice and request for feedback was given on the Talk page.

• If a project is a coordinated team effort, the Texas project has been ding-dong dead about as long as I've been actively editing on Wikipedia. It's a sad joke to call it a project at all. There is no teamwork going on. Nobody is monitoring, and nobody knows who is doing what. Being part of WPUS could only be a plus. Editors are out there free editing and creating articles on Texas, with no involvement with the project. There is no head of the project, certainly not me. But Texas has been long abandoned.
• The decision was made (primarily by me) to have the Texas project as a whole join WPUS, and Kumioko started tagging this weekend. Coincidentally, he had to abort the bot before it was finished. You can read on that project's talk page how things progressed before the bot ran. Very few people had any comments beforehand.
• Hasteur had some comments re DFW project , and did some follow up by individual tagging at DFW - so the bot would skip that project.
• The only complaint that came after Kumioko's bot started running was one editor associated with the Houston projects. Kumioko had agreed not to bring the Houston under the WPUS umbrella, and the bot - as far as I can tell - left the Houston banner and WPUS banner separate. The editor who complained was not specific enough for anyone to know what, if any, articles were involved. In a random check of Houston articles, I only found the Houston banner separate and unto itself. Maile66 (talk) 19:52, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Note Kumioko is currently blocked, and will not be able to respond until the block expires. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 23:15, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

We have to remember a wikiproject is a group of editors: not a group of articles. Also note that one of the main purposes of banners is advertising. They help recruit new members. From that perspective it is in the best interest of a project to tag a number of articles. Why don't we consult the guide and its subpage for answers:

WikiProjects have sole and absolute authority to define their scopes

(emph. mine) Technically, per the guideline, the wider community cannot change a wikiproject's scope. Changes to a wikiproject scope should be debated on the wikiproject talkpage.

A group of editors cannot be forced to support any article that they do not wish to support, or prohibited from supporting any article that they wish to support

WPUS may tag any article it wants. If an article's inclusion is considered problematic, it should be brought to the attention of the members on the wikiproject talk page. Article inclusion/exclusion is determined by consensus on the wikiproject talkpage. If WPUS, by consensus, agrees to exclude articles tagged by state or city wikiprojects, then it is their prerogative.

No project can control another project or other editor: No project can demand that another project support an article, change its scope, quit working on an article.

No other project, state or city, can remove a WPUS banner if WPUS determines by consensus that the article is within their scope. Essentially the desires and opinions of editors outside of the wikiproject regarding article tagging are irrelevant. The wikiproject determines its own scope, and no editor or project can tell them what they can or cannot tag. – Lionel ^(talk) 01:41, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

That may be likely true in a moral sense. But, since anyone can join any wikiproject, the distinction is moot. What matters is if interested editors have found a consensus on which class of pages should be tagged for the project. Whether the discussion happens inside the WPUS talk page or anywhere else makes little difference. Diego (talk) 10:05, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Please place a link to the policy supporting your position on the talk page.– Lionel ^(talk) 10:41, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

WP:LOCALCONSENSUS might be a good starting point. Wikiproject US can decide whatever it wishes, as can any other project. The problem comes in when projects disagree, and that's where you need to be talking to those other projects to make sure that what your project is doing does not disrupt what their project is doing. There are examples in this very discussion about how different projects can properly coordinate, either through shared templates, hidden categories, or whatever. I'm unclear as to why that coordination is a problem here - it feels very much like WP:US is attempting to force itself on other editors, and that seems problematic. But maybe I'm reading it wrong. UltraExactZZ ^Said ~ Did 13:14, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

@Lionelt:Note that while "WikiProjects have sole and absolute authority to define their scopes", this authority doesn't extend to tagging articles; on the contrary, the guide has a warning against overtagging.

Though I was assuming that any member can in principle join any project they wish, this doesn't seem to be encoded in policy; the closest guideline I've found is Inappropriate exclusivity stating that the definition of a "real" member of a project is usually innacurate. Other guidelines that I've found directly relevant to this issue:

• Wikipedia:WikiProject_Council/Guide/WikiProject#Violating_policies: "Policies, guidelines, and articles belong to the whole community, not to WikiProjects or individual editors. WikiProjects may not demand that editors abide by the project's "local consensus" when that conflicts with the community-wide consensus."
• Wikipedia:CONLIMITED#Level_of_consensus: "Consensus among a limited group of editors, at one place and time, cannot override community consensus on a wider scale."
• Wikipedia:WikiProject_Council/Guide/WikiProject#Getting_into_fights: "Disputes may arise between projects or outside editors over formatting, such as the preferred system for organizing an article or the contents of a template.", "In disputes with another project or with editors outside your project, your only effective tool is negotiation. If you need the cooperation of another project, approach them in a spirit of cooperation and look for appropriate compromises."
• Wikipedia:WikiProject_Council/Guide#Article_tagging: "Overtagging is disruptive - WikiProject banners should not be used to duplicate the category system or portals."
• Wikipedia:WikiProject_Council/Guide/WikiProject#Over-tagging: "Tagging articles can distract new projects from more important tasks. (...) 2.Project banners on the talk page should not be substitute for, or simply duplicate, Wikipedia's categorization system. To correctly identify an article as being related to a topic, place the correct category in the article itself. 3.The presence of a project banner indicates to readers that the article has been, or will be, developed by members of the project, and that questions about the article can be directed to members of the project. When the project does not expect to support an article's improvement, it should not add the project's banner to that page."
• Wikipedia:WikiProject_Council/Guide#Identify_the_best_structure: "WikiProject - This format is best for topics with thousands, or at least several hundred, of pages in the proposed scope. You'll still want to investigate any related projects, because they may already have a task force covering the same topic."
• Wikipedia:WikiProject_Council/Guide#Inter-project_collaboration : "There may also arise situations in which it is beneficial for an article to be actively collaborated upon by multiple projects."

Diego (talk) 13:26, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Exactly WP:LOCALCONSENSUS clearly indicates that WikiProjects cannot override the wider community. Once you have issues with the rest of the community you do have to begin to discuss the situation and come to an consensus that involves all parties. At the moment as Ultraexactzz mentions it does seem very much like WPUS is trying to swamp smaller projects and force itself onto everyone. As I have said since WPUS was reactivated a couple years ago I would 100% support a merging of state and country tags since that would stop a lot of the problems. I think this should be a discussion held in a neutral wide open forum so people from all involved projects can speak for a broader viewpoint. It would also still allow each project to remain separate. However the methods that have been used up to this point do appear that Kumioko has been sneaking in the back door gobbling up projects one at a time with little community discussion when things would probably go a lot smoother if he did it in a more open manner. -DJSasso (talk) 13:28, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Since this topic has been open for a few days now and parties have had a chance to comment, wether I agree with it or not, I think that the consensus is that the community can now determine the scope of a project, that members of a project can be overruled by the broader community and that WikiProjects can no longer, if they ever had the authority too, set their own scopes and tag the articles in them without first soliciting opinions from the community on whether that scope is appropriate from editors or projects outside that project. As an indirect result this seems to give some teeth to WikiProjects being allowed some ownership over articles and will have the effect of preventing "too many banners" from being on an article, will prevent unknown users from vandalizing or innapropriately expanding articles, and will ensure that there are a limited number of places where questions about a topic can be addressed which will simplify users ability to get answers and the consistency of those answers. Of course there are also some significant drawbacks to this new policy enhancement as well but those were discussed in the discussion. I am going to leave a note at the WikiProject Council page abou tthis new change so that somone can update the guidlines as appropriate.--Kumioko (talk) 15:16, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

If you had read the links above you will see that the guideline does already state all of this so no change is required. The guideline is just that. A guideline. Guidelines are never set in stone, they are just best practices in most but not all situations. This doesn't cause ownership, it prevents it....in that it stops WikiProjects from running roughshod around the wiki saying you aren't part of our project we can do what we want. The guideline already states wikiprojects don't own their scope in that it says anyone who edits the articles that fall into a wikiproject are already members of the wikiproject and thus have a say on its scope. -DJSasso (talk) 15:24, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

My responses to the comments and accusations on this page

Due to my block, and the requirement for me to force fragment the discussion I have responded to all comments left in the last day on my talk page. I doubt anyone wants to continue this discussion or solve the actual underlying problem of inappropriate article ownership that caused me to come here in the first place but if you do please do so there. --Kumioko (talk) 11:40, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

The detagging has begun

Apparently seeing the discussions here and in other locations I haev recently seen several busily removing banners from "Overtagged" articles. Some with the heading of things like "Remove WPMILHIST tag per WP:WikiProject_Council/Guide/WikiProject#Over-tagging "When the project does not expect to support an article's improvement, it should not add the project's banner to that page". Irregardless of the fact that there was only one other banner (for WikiProject Biography) on several of them. This was just 1 example of 15 that I counted so far. I'm sure glad that we are clarifying these policies so we can start "cleaning" up these overtagged pages (emphasis on the sarcasm there). --Kumioko (talk) 20:07, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

And you have a link to such an example? -DJSasso (talk) 20:16, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Sure plenty. I saw about 5 or 6 more (This time a couple of the removals were BIography)But everytime I try and submit something I get blocked so maybe I'll just forget I said anything. --Kumioko (talk) 20:29, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

So really you are crying wolf then since you won't provide any diffs showing people doing this. -DJSasso (talk) 20:40, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Hey the last time I turned somebody in I got blocked. No body really cares what I have to say anyway I'm just the a-hole that tried to force everybody to join WikiProject US. --Kumioko (talk) 22:38, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

You know what, fine, for the sake of not being called a lier and having everybody think I just went cookoo heres 1, there are at least 5 editors and 25 articles so far but here is 1. Talk:Amos Humiston. As far as I am concerned these are all directly caused by these stupid discussions and this BS. --Kumioko (talk) 22:41, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

I think its funny, you try and call me out. Make me look like a lyer because I didn't give you an example that I didn't think you would do anything with anyway. Sure enough. 3 hours later, still nothing and Ive seen another 20 articles with the same issue. Someone deleting WikiProject banners for different reasons like the one above. BTW if your wondering why I see so many I have 22, 000 articles on my watchlist so I see a lot of changes to a lot of things. --Kumioko (talk) 02:12, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Of course nobody should remove a WikiProject's banner just because he personally doesn't want it to be there. The choice to tag or not tag is 100% up to the members of the WikiProject. But it appears that the user in this particular instance is actually a participant of the relevant WikiProject. If that group doesn't want to support the article and/or consider it to be within their scope, then they have a right to remove their own banner. (It might, of course, be worth pointing this activity out to the MILHIST folks to make sure that it represents their overall desires/isn't just a mistake by a single individual.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:47, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

There were a lot more by several editors I just gave this one as an example. I saw tags for the following project being removed at minimum. WPUnted States, several state projects for different reasons (some because WPUS was there or vice versa), MILHIST, a few cities because the state was there or vice versa and some even removed the Biography banner. The reason I see so many, frankly is because I have about 22000 articles on my watchlist. I sometimes see banners being removed but not the volume of the last few days and not in such proximity to a discussion like this one. It doesn't matter a huge amount to me at this point but just saying what I saw fro anyone who might be watching. --Kumioko (talk) 02:07, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

If a WikiProject doesn't consider the articles within its scope; it's their choice. Most WikiProjects are clamoring for more editors to tag articles created within their (apparent) scopes, but hey some others go the other way. If the article is being deleted or promoted, WikiProjects not tagged will likely never receive notice, but heck they didn't care anyway, right? Carlossuarez46 (talk) 19:44, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

I likewise don't see a problem with people from a particular WP detagging for that project, but having others presume to do it for them is an issue. Mangoe (talk) 19:56, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Although I agree that a project can choose to detag just as they can choose to tag. It seemed as though there was a sudden explosion in tags being removed for a rew days but now it seems to be tapering off. --Kumioko (talk) 20:06, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

My bigger concern, of course, are the voices at WT:COUNCIL that are asserting that certain projects should not be permitted to tag articles in the first place, because (to use an example given there) anyone who wants to keep track of articles related to the United States should be happy enough looking through individual lists for 50 states plus however many city-based and non-geographical projects exist. Even assuming that WPUS's scope is exactly identical to the sum of these ~100 projects (which I frankly doubt), it's a silly burden to be imposing on those volunteers, especially for no bigger benefit than making the talk page look prettier. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:35, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

I agree, and I have tried to make that point several times myself. Unfortunately it seems more and more that the general community favors article ownership over Projects being able to set their own scope and tag the articles in it. Not trying to be snarkey, but that does seem to be the current trend. I fear that unless we start to set the tone and actually start enforcing the policy against article ownership and doing something about that, then there is no point in having a project if any other project (and frequently multiple projects) can simply tell them that they can't tag whatever articles are in their scope. --Kumioko (talk) 15:33, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Use of non-genericized trademarks

There was a recent discussion about trademarks with no real resolution. Certainly there should be some sort of guideline/policy page, so that we can operate consistently, and so the WMF has a page to point people to when they come complaining. Masem started User:Masem/Trademarks, but there was not much support. Several people in the previous discussion were of the mindset that we should make no attempt to protect trademarks in any case. I find this in stark contrast with existing policies on copyrighted material. We could conceivably get away with filling every page on Wikipedia with non-free images, and it would greatly increase the educational value of those pages. Wikia does this to the extreme, and many companies actually pay Wikia for the privilege. We don't do this because we err on the side of caution; not for fear of legal action, but of causing damage to the copyright holder. I don't see why trademarks are any different.

For a specific example I came across: Tofurky is branded product with an active registered trademark. Tofurkey seems to be "what some people call that type of thing", with no references, and links to competitor's websites. Clearly this is damaging to the trademarked product; shouldn't we at least have a page to point to in a AfD/rename discussion? Most uses of trademarks in a generic fashion are simply OR, and can be easily avoided. Allowing our articles to actively damage trademarks because we have no obligation not to do that is a terrible way to operate, and in most cases there is little-to-nothing gained in the process. ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 21:04, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

That's a false analogy. Unlike copyright, the statutes creating trademarks impose a positive obligation on the part of the trademark user to actively maintain the trademark in use, to monitor its use to prevent use by others or in a generic manner, and to pursue trademark violations (thus the "cease-and-desist letters" so dreaded by fan fiction writers and others). The burden is on them; whereas no such burden falls on the copyright holder. --Orange Mike | Talk 21:14, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

There is not a problem to be solved here. The Tofurky article says it is a brand. Says it is a trademark. Where, there, is there an issue.

As noted, we are under an obligation not to misuse other people copyright. We are not under an obligation not to use genericised trademarks. So per DO, your analogy is false. And you are, I think, flogging a dead horse. --Tagishsimon (talk) 21:20, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

I will point out that the original trademark discussion came from a request of the Wikimedia Foundation for us to set some advice on trademarks due to letters it has gotten from trademark holders. Yes, it's not the same type of thing as the non-free media resolution that set NFC policy, but this isn't an issue to sweep under the rug. --MASEM (t) 21:27, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Last I checked, the reason we avoid using non-free content isn't because of fear of "damaging" the copyright holder. It's because we want an encyclopedia that people are free to reuse, even for commercial purposes and purposes for which "fair use" doesn't apply. Anomie⚔ 21:37, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Where did you check that, Anomie? If we were calling the enctclopedia the Ford Wikipedia, then sure, we'd have a problem. Writing an article about Tofurky is not a problem, at all, fullstop. Using a genericised word is not, either, a barrier to any sort of reuse of our content. Again. where is the problem? --Tagishsimon (talk) 21:42, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

The Tofurky (TM) /Tofurkey (not TM) is not what the trademark discussion was covering. Competitors jumped on the "Tofurkey" word (which doesn't appear to have been trademarked) and thus as sources give it, that's a legit term for calling their products. As long as we are not calling any tofu-based turkey product "Tofurky" (TM), we don't have an issue. Even if the Tofurky brand holders are fighting to "reclaim" the spelling variant, we have no other way to reference the off-brand variations. So this isn't an example where trademarks are a problem.

The problem is when people are using genericized trademarks (which still have apparent legal standing) to mislabel competitors or used in a generic fashion (calling all bandages "band-aids", calling the act of digital photo manipulation "photoshopping". These are cases we can elect to chose to avoid to avoid that trademark issue, and what the WMF appears to be encouraging us to do. --MASEM (t) 21:57, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

And per the last discussion, we would avoid those two terms because there are better terms. Band-aid is not a good term for a bandage or a sticking plaster. Photoshopping is a colloquial term for digital image manipulation. I would hope we do not use those terms because they are poor terms, not because they are someone's trademark. What are we hoping to achieve from this second discussion that we did not achieve in the first? --Tagishsimon (talk) 22:02, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

wmf:Mission statement is a good place to start: it's all about free content, nothing about protecting copyright holders from "damage'. Not sure if the rest of your comment was directed at me, as I expressed no position on the use-of-trademarked-terms issue so it wouldn't make much sense if it were directed at me. Anomie⚔ 01:46, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Although Wikipedia has absolutely no legal obligation to respect trademarks, I still think we should have a page very clearly specifying the community consensus on this issue, so that beleaguered OTRS workers can point them to it. I've drafted a new proposal at Wikipedia:Use of trademarks and would like to get feedback on it. Dcoetzee 23:14, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

The line Using trademarks as ordinary words is acceptable where such use is already widespread in reliable sources and/or in common parlance. is what's going to be the trigger point here I think. At least, to me, I disagree with that. We are trying to write something professional here, not a blog or a mass-market book. As a professional work, if we can replace the trademark work with a non-trademarked one without affecting the meaning or intent of the sentence, we should (not must) do so. Eg, we should never use "googling" or "photoshopping" ever, except when quoted or discussing these as the neologism. It's the type of thing that we shouldn't aggressively enforce but should be the type of thing checked when reviewing prose. --MASEM (t) 23:31, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

I revised it to read as follows:

"Using trademarks as ordinary words is acceptable where such use is already widespread in reliable sources and/or in common parlance, but depending on the situation may be poor style, either because the trademark is too informal, or because it is misleading (e.g. "photoshopped" may imply an image was created in Adobe Photoshop, when in fact it was created using a competing product). Good editorial judgement should be exercised. The use of trademarks as words which are not already used as such is coining a neologism, which is generally considered poor style; Wikipedia should not be leveraged as a mechanism to attempt to genericize specific trademarks."

Thoughts? Dcoetzee 23:34, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Much better, satisfies my concern. "Good editorial judgement" is exactly what I would call for this. --MASEM (t) 23:37, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

If it's for the beleaguered OTRS people, then I'm all in favour of a page they can point at, and I think yours is a very good start but not the final word, Dcoetzee.

I don't think the image is a good idea. It either conflates or overlooks the copyright question on images of logos ... which is to say there are other considerations w.r.t. logo images which we don't deal with on the trademark page. Using an image as a worked example of a trademark issue is a poor choice when we have available options which are solely concerned with trademark and have no copyright dimensions. I'd suggest replace it with some sort of quote box, with a (manufactured for the purpose) quote which includes the use of a trademarked term; with a caption explaining that it's fine for us to use the term from a trademark perspective, but it is more than likely to be a matter of poor style to use the word.

I'm not sure I'm convinced by the admonitions to content re-users. I'm having some difficulty imaging a scenario where a re-user would find itself in legal hazard w.r.t. trademarks. I'd prefer any warnings to reusers to be posted on a re-users page.

There are a fair amount of wording changes I'd like to see, but which I don't have time to go through now. I'll look in again early next week and if this is still live then, will provide more comment. --Tagishsimon (talk) 00:24, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Fair enough, I removed the logo image for now (I just placed it because it was easy). Another example can be constructed if necessary. The warning to content reusers is largely copied from commons:Template:Trademark, but I agree that it's not very plausible that a content reuser would misuse a trademark in such a manner and the current warning is too strong. Dcoetzee 02:05, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Instruction creep, and a poor example. The existing language is , properly, much more inclusiv eand permits flexibility. And "photoshopped" is now the common english term for the process and I think is the one I would prefer in the context of news and publicity pictures. DGG ( talk ) 02:27, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

No, it is a common slang english term in casual speech, but Adobe still had the trademark on the term, actively fights against it, and we can be more professional in our prose by a simple, more-descriptive replacement without endorsing the product. --MASEM (t) 02:31, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

What the company considers the trademark is not decisive. They can be expected in cases like this to fight it long after it is a lost cause. What people use is decisive. — Preceding unsigned comment added by DGG (talk • contribs) 05:02, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Best way to handle young users who may not understand this is an encyclopedia?

We have what I suspect to be an young editor whose only mainspace edits are to insert his name, and the rest has been to do interesting things with his talk page. I'm unsure of how to proceed, since I don't really want to outright block him, but I also don't know how to talk to kids. Any advice? --Golbez (talk) 20:24, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

I'd just use the uw-socialnetwork template. After a while, he should get bored and leave, or head into article space. If he causes problems with article space again, standard vandalism warnings until he earns a block. Ian.thomson (talk) 20:28, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

I would never use just a template in a case like this--in fact, i would never use a template at all, but write a personal explanation to the same effect. It's much more likely to be taken seriously than our boilerplate. DGG ( talk ) 02:59, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

If they're old enough to edit a user page they're not as difficult to talk to as you think. Just explain the situation carefully and with patience, and they should get it. Talking to kids is much like talking to adults. Dcoetzee 17:55, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

I would think Nikkimaria's removal of his contact info was quite effective in stopping him. :) Nageh (talk) 19:46, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

reference desks

To make it easier for people posting questions, why not make it easier for them by having two columns. The left hand column can be reserved for those that have the knowledge to answer the question being asked, whilst the right hand column can be left free for those that just want to speculate on subjects on which they know nothing. As things are at present it must be very confusing, difficult and frustrating for the Original Poster to read through all the good and the gibberish and so separate the wheat from the chaff. --Aspro (talk) 23:30, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

The problem I see with is that it is the people who know something about what they are talking about who are most aware of how much they don't know.. Dmcq (talk) 23:35, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Indeed: the Dunning–Kruger effect. --Tagishsimon (talk) 23:43, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Renaming of category:Wikipedia policy

Resolved

 – Relevant links were updated. Armbrust, B.Ed. ^{Let's talk}_{about my edits?} 19:12, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Well now that Category:Wikipedia policy has been renamed Category:Wikipedia policies is there some robot going around changing all te references? I've just reverted and fixed a change to WP:POLICY to just remove the reference the old one because ' Role: how can these policies be found on a red-linked page?' Dmcq (talk) 09:04, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

I've asked User:Armbrust, who instigated these 8 (pointless) moves, to fix the redlinks. Fences&Windows 00:34, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Should editors be blocked for legitimate postings on other wikis?

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

Closed, in light of overwhelming opposition. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 01:07, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

---

There has been a brouhaha between the English Wikipedia and Meta about a an RfC/U started by m:User:Mbz1 . Mbz1 was blocked for "continued harassment... across other WMF projects"^[2] which appeared to focus on the Meta RfC as discussed at User talk:Jimbo Wales/Archive 96#Meta RfC. The RfC there was later closed, after "no consensus" from m:Meta:Requests for deletion#Requests for comment/Gwen Gale; but so far the Meta consensus is merely that it was unproductive rather than abusive. A discussion m:Requests for comment/Meta-wiki requests for comment on users is ongoing, with approximately 2/3 support, which would preclude Meta RfC/Us on editors from other wikis. Some ugliness continues in places like WP:ignore Meta.

I support that proposal to end Meta RfC/U evaluations on English Wikipedia users, but by the same token, I don't think that the English Wikipedia should be evaluating users, let alone blocking or banning them, for actions taken on Meta. A possible exception to this is if the user is actually banned on Meta for what he does there; it seems like Wikipedia projects have leeway to copy such bans, or even declare global bans, on this basis. So as a matter of policy, I think that we should reject action against users like Mbz1 in this situation. (It is still possible that Mbz1 would remain blocked for other reasons; this isn't about him per se). Therefore:

In the interest of maintaining harmony between Wikimedia projects, no individual editor should be subjected to sanctions or other unsolicited, authoritative evaluations regarding behavior on a different WMF project where (s)he remains in good standing.

I think this should be added to a relevant policy, most likely WP:BLOCK. Wnt (talk) 17:59, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

If the use of the other Wikis by the user is to abusively disparage users from another Wiki, we should 100% take that into account. There is no reason for us to ignore such actions just because it is on another Wiki. Silverseren^C 18:09, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

I've added "authoritative" above to address your concern (I think...). I'm not saying we should ignore such evidence entirely when it sheds light on the motivations of a Wikipedia dispute, but as fair play for what we're proposing for Meta RfC/Us, we should not hold English Wikipedia RfC/Us on a Meta user either. If I weren't trying to include that one thing I'd have stopped at "subjected to sanctions". Wnt (talk) 18:24, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Sorry if I'm being thick, but I'm not sure I'm following that sentence. If someone is in good standing on another project why would we be sanctioning them on English Wikipedia? Does it mean that from English Wikipedia's viewpoint they are not in good standing while from the local project's viewpoint they are in good standing? —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 18:16, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Exactly. Compare m:User:Mbz1 with User:Mbz1 noting this diff and the block log. Mbz1 was actually under a self-requested block when he was blocked for activity on other projects. Wnt (talk) 18:20, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Are you discussing a policy matter here or are you WP:FORUMSHOPping for Mbz1's unblock? ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 20:12, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm emphatically not "forumshopping" for the unblock. I'm trying to follow through with the wall of separation of the two projects I proposed here. "Good fences make good neighbors"; if you want to play a harmonious chord on a guitar you need the strings to be able to vibrate independently of one another. If we can agree to keep each Wiki focused on its own business, we can improve relations between them. Wnt (talk) 22:50, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for clarification, although pardon if I don't really go into the actual case. I'll have to oppose on that explanation though. Every project is subjective and editor actions can be viewed subjectively differently by other projects. And, yes, if one project's standards are higher or lower, then that project may issue an appropriate response. Accounting for other projects merely makes the sample pool larger. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 20:46, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose for now. I'll reconsider this when and if the proposal to limit meta-wiki's RfC scope passes. (Given how "uninvolved" admins tend to close discussions over there, I'm not holding my breath on the outcome of that.) In the mean time, they feel free to discuss enwiki actions over there, so I think it's simply absurd to forbid referring to them here as proposed by the "unsolicited, authoritative evaluations" wording. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 20:33, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Hmmm, apparently I still could use to improve the wording. My feeling is that an RfC/U here about Mbz1's Meta postings, or an RfC/U there about Gwen Gale's En adminship, is outside the scope of either project. Now by "outside the scope of", I mean, it's like funny comments and chatter we see people make as asides on the Refdesk - not a capital crime, but the point is, if you start accumulating reams of the stuff you can toss it out as worthless. The last thing I want to do is create another "charge" that can be levied against editors for what they say; I just want to define it as outside the purview of what matters. Wnt (talk) 23:01, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose if behavior off-wiki is intended to have an on-wiki effect, the location of the behavior should not matter. Otherwise, you're providing effective cover for every user who wants to harass, out or cause trouble for another user by claiming "I didn't do it ON Wikipedia". SirFozzie (talk) 21:11, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
• Comment. Some background reading for the proximate events leading to this proposal [3] [4]. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 21:21, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

I stand by this notification - it would hardly be right for me to bring up a thread about Mbz1 here without letting him know. I assume he's going to continue posting about his dispute on Meta for the foreseeable future - I don't see how it's going to stop now. But if he could focus on the actual policy issues, one by one, then it would not be useless for him to do so. Wnt (talk) 22:56, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

• Comment. The article on Torsten Carleman featured comments about "Jewish chatter", etc., from an editor who made similar comments on Swedish Wikipedia. I was told that our policy was that we don't block for behavior on other on other language Wikipedias, which may be a good policy (saving time especially when the languages are rare in the US, UK, etc.).  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 21:56, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

I think that will usually make sense, but I don't think we should say never. If, for example, a user is harassing another user and it spills over into another language site, then there's no reason en.wp should not see that as part of their pattern of behaviour (I'm not convinced, BTW, that Mbz1 is guilty of harassment). Meta is not a Wikipedia in any case, though. --FormerIP (talk) 22:03, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

• Speaking in general, I think it depends on why an editor here is over at Meta (or Commons, or another language). Each project is independent, but that does not mean that we should necessarily get caught up in a silo mentality. Something like this should be situational. If an editor chooses to take a conflict at en and continue to hound those they are in conflict with at another project, then yes, that should be fair game for subsequent discussion and action here. But if the issue is unrelated to en, then we should leave action to whatever local wiki is most affected. Resolute 00:07, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
• Comment  If admins want to bring in material from other websites and post it, or remove comments and !votes on en.wikipedia.org because of information from other websites, then the material is (or has been removed) on en.wikipedia.org.  If it is not on en.wikipedia.org, it is a simple rule that it should not be a consideration here.  This relates to a specific but non-wiki case in which some editors insisted that I read some off-wiki material.  My refusal has led to one of them tracking my edits for a year.  Unscintillating (talk) 00:59, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

• All this is is forum-shopping to try to justify Mbz1's campaign of harassment. This user's complaints were universally rejected here so she went to Meta where the the rules and the scrutiny (until now) were virtually non-existent. Its like closing up your business in the States and reincorporating in the Cayman Islands for the tax breaks. That sort of behavior shouldn't be condoned or covered for. Tarc (talk) 02:16, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
• This would be fine if it included deference to en.wiki's own policies, such as harassment. For what it's worth, this would not have substantially changed anything for Mbz1, because the harassing behavior which led to her sanctions was not limited to posting on meta, but involved extensive email campaigns to various functionaries. Jclemens (talk) 03:01, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose - we should be paying more attention to what users do on our sister projects, not less. I'm not saying that a ban on a sister project should automatically result in a ban here, but misconduct on other Wikis should definitely be taken into account. If another user has demonstrated serious misconduct on Meta or Commons or elsewhere, that should be considered a factor in deciding whether to block or otherwise sanction them here. Robofish (talk) 12:52, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

• Comment: I've addressed aspects of this issue in arbitration decisions I've drafted. The formulation I've used most often is something like the following:

A user's conduct outside of Wikipedia, including participation in websites or forums critical of Wikipedia or its contributors, is generally not subject to Wikipedia policies or sanctions, except in extraordinary circumstances such as those involving grave acts of overt and persistent harassment or threats.

I perceive little reason to modify the project's approach to this issue. Newyorkbrad (talk) 16:32, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose - there is no absolute free right to harass, make legal threats, out editors' real identities, etc. everywhere but here and remain an editor in good standing here. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 19:38, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose and move for a speedy close The community spoke very clearly about this ban, it enjoyed strong support. Therefore there is already a de facto consensus that we can do this if it is warranted. This proposal would seek to do an end-run around a community decision the same way Mbz is trying to an end-run around Arbcom by acting like a crybaby/troll at Meta. This is just food for a troll and we shouldn't be serving it. Beeblebrox (talk)

I have to concede that this idea is not likely to catch on at this point. I'll agree to a speedy close provided that we agree that it is on the basis of "feeding a troll" and this does not set any precedent for rejecting the separation of Wikis where users besides Mbz1 are concerned. Wnt (talk) 23:24, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

It's better to let an uninvolved admin close it then. That way we don't have to agree to your preconditions for you to accept the rather obvious consensus on this. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 13:29, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose Anything we can do to prevent probelmatic users from mucking up other Foundation Projects, and causing inter-Project friction we should do, including take their untoward behavior there into account. Not because they are mucking up those projects, those projects must take of themselves, but because it causes disruption here and to our working relationships with others see, Wikipedia talk:Ignore Meta for just the tip of the problem. Alanscottwalker (talk) 20:17, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

What Brad said And: If off-en-wiki behavior is in scope for discussion/sanctions, the question becomes how do we know contributor "X" on another forum (meta, WR, facebook, whatever) is contributor "Y" here? We should not be writing Mbz1 policy, we should be writing Wikipedia policy. Hard cases make bad law Nobody Ent 23:18, 24 February 2012 (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.

Peer comments requested with respect to ACC toolserver interface administrators

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.

---

The ACC tool is used to assist in account creation on the English Wikipedia in response to new user requests. The ACC tool has Interface Administrators, who are not the same as Wikipedia administrators, but are trusted within the tool's environment to grant Wikipedia editors (who wish to assist in new user account creation process) the access to use the ACC tool. Currently, while some ACC tool administrators are also English Wikipedia administrators, some others are not. Those ACC administrators who are not Wikipedia administrators are not currently authorized to grant the account creator flag when any user posts a request for this flag at Wikipedia:Requests for permissions/Account creator. But in reality, they might be quite competent to assess such requests. With respect to this, I wish to request peer comments on whether we should allow ACC tool administrators (who are not English Wikipedia administrators) to accept or reject requests for the account creator flag at Requests for permissions/Account creator. It'll reduce a bureaucratic hassle... Wifione ^Message 21:59, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

• Ok, viewing no objections, I plan to include the following addition in relevant policy pages:

"ACC interface administrators (whether they concurrently are administrators on the English Wikipedia or not) are authorized to accept or reject requests for the account creator flag at Wikipedia:Requests for permissions/Account creator. They also have the right to remove the flag in case the right is misused. Their decisions in these regards will be accorded the status of decisions made by Wikipedia administrators. Those interface administrators who are not Wikipedia administrators may request a Wikipedia administrator to implement their decisions." Please do suggest improvements to the same. Kind regards. Wifione ^Message 05:45, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Procedural note: Placing the said material in policy. Kind regards. Wifione ^Message 04:35, 24 February 2012 (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.

I cannot actually see any discussion or consensus there Wifione. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 11:41, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

I agree with Graeme Bartlett here. There was less 48 hours for people to comment on such change. I did not have a chance to role around my watchlist in time to comment on this within that time.

The community has entrusted enwiki administrators with the trust to use the correct judgement when closing requests for permissions. People who are not currently active administrators do not have the trust of the community to do so. While I do trust User:Mlpearc, have not had much interaction with User:FastLizard4, and User:Deliriousandlost who I trust to close RfPs correctly, who are currently the only three non-admins on the project admins list, the community has the decision whether these people should be allowed to close such RfCs. Also tool administrators are only (now) elected by identified to the WMF tool users, not by the general community. I also would be hesitant to give this 'ability' out as i'm not sure every tool administrator would (as in i'm not pointing any fingers as to who) close such decisions correctly. So we need a bigger comment time, and scope of this to be broadcasted before we make such a change. Reverted the change in policy. -- DQ (ʞlɐʇ) 19:30, 25 February 2012 (UTC) Amended 20:17, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

I too disagree with the closure, and don't see the value in adding users who would anyway have to thru an administrator to implement their decisions. This is a solution in search of a problem, I don't see a substantial backlog in requests that needs this measure. Granting users based on their unelected role in an indipendently project the power to grant on-wiki rights (even if thru others, given there is no proposal here to have a special grant-account-creator userright implemented) is something I'm not necessarily against in principle, but that surely would need much wider input. Seems to me a complicate solution for a problem that just isn't there. Snowolf ^{How can I help?} 19:48, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Thank you for your confidence DQ. In my opinion, (even more now considering the new requirements) who better to judge the need for, or the competence of users asking for the ACC bit than ACC Administrators ? Mlpearc (powwow) 19:58, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Mlpearc, for that is (Non-administrator comment) great! I would more propose that tool administrators can deny the acc flag (and enwp admins will hear such comments and should follow them of Tool admins), but not granting (limitation of the mw atm)... In my eyes it is exactly as snowolf described: no problem, nothing to solve! mabdul 20:18, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

I don't see the point to this. It seems to assume there is an urgent need to remove rights from someone and none of the 18 other admins are around to remove the rights of someone. If it were related to ACC any of us 21 could just suspend the account of the hypothetical person who is being bad. If someone is being bad, creating 40 accounts for themselves outside of ACC, then that is a quick note to any admin and it can be promptly dealt with. The last time anything like this happened was before Alcatraz was a prison and certainly not in the time it has been a tv show.
Now if it is a matter of ensuring someone who shouldn't have the account creator right prior to need and demonstrated competency doesn't get it via an admin who is unfamiliar with things or of being able to grant it to someone in a more timely manor this is still excessive for 3 people.
This all would be more practically served by requiring approval in the RfP from an ACC admin before granting right or not. All that would mean is a change to the template. For the currently 18 who are admins in both places they could just do it all at once as has been the normal. delirious & lost ☯ ^~hugs~ 20:36, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

• Oh my I have no issues with the consensus here. Good to see that discussions at least took place. It wasn't an RfC typically that I'd opened; but like I said, thankfully the comments came in. DQ has already reverted the updation. So unless there are other opposing comments, we could consider this discussion closed with a decision 'back to long-standing standard procedure'? Wifione ^Message 03:29, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Changing our approach to polling; discussion started

Hi, all. I've started a discussion here as to that subject. dci | TALK 14:51, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Reminder-- Delete votes hurt writers' feelings

When you consider an abstract subject like "Notability Policy", do you ever think about the completely different problem of "Editor Retention"? The two seem distant, but they're actually closely connected, as I learned this week.

I wanted to learn about a subject, so I did what I always do-- I looked in Wikipedia. But we didn't have an article on it. After I was done learning, I decided to add that information to Wikipedia, so that the next reader in my place won't have to through the same work I did.

Now I'll be the first to admit-- it wasn't a fascinating article-- most of history isn't that exciting. I wasn't passionate about the article, but I never imagined that it would become the subject of a deletion.

I sincerely believed it was a good-faith topic that would non-controversially improve Wikipedia. So when others disagreed and felt my time did not improve Wikipedia, it was a surprising emotional experience.

You see, my time is surprisingly valuable to me. I have family duties, I have work duties, I balance them all. I gave Wikipedia a gift of my time. I gave it a little piece of my life.

If Wikipeda keeps my gift and improves it, I will be vastly more inclined to donate even more of my time in the future. But if you take my hand-made gift and visibly throw it in the trash, I will have a different reaction.

I probably won't feel very welcome here. I may feel "Wikipedia" doesn't like me or want me. I may not feel very open to giving Wikipedia any more time, thinking "Why waste my time on things that just get deleted?!"

(I'm not the point. I'm just one person, not an important one, and I'll probably keep contributing anyway.)

We need to be aware-- delete !votes have a very real, lasting emotional consequence that cripples editor morale. Make sure you realize that. Make sure you remember that "Delete !votes" carry a cost to our mission.

We must have deletions-- bad-faith contributions, illegal contributions, vanity article, etc. But when good-faith people are trying to do good-faith things, deletion is a very insensitive tool.

Please try to remember this in the future. You're not just deciding on whether to keep a single article-- you're deciding on whether to keep authors. HectorMoffet (talk) 03:40, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for posting here Hector. I think the situation that you have run in to sums up a lot of the problems that we face with new editor retention. Honestly, I was already planning to use you as an example of this problem. For others: take a look at HM's past contributions. As a new editor he added a solid number of articles and general editing, including some stuff that we had been missing for an astounding period of time (like, the Oakland Police Department article had no controversy section before he started editing.) Some of the articles he put up fail our notability standards, but absolutely none of them had any neutrality or verifiability problems. His talk page was spammed with repeated templated CSD/prod/AfD notices, with very very little actual human interaction at any point in the process, and some people taking very unnecessarily aggressive positions in discussions with him. (I'd view the recent post by someone on his talk page in response to his comment on an AfD about the effect of deletion as a good example of this.)

If we treat new editors like this, it's no wonder they go away. Kevin (talk) 05:46, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Unless somebody called you an ass or a moron at AfD, you seriously need to grow a thicker skin and stop whining. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 06:26, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure calling a good-faith commentary "whining" is a productive way to respond to this discussion, Seb az86556. It would be better if more diplomatic words were chosen. If you disagree with the premise of the post, there are ways to indicate your disagreement which are less insulting. --Jayron32 06:32, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

And I disagree with your post. This is the same attitude that won't allow us to fail kids in school because it "hurts their feelings". The only reason for complaints is personal attacks. If someone votes delete, tough shit, you need to be able to suck it up.

Why is this on the page to discuss policy, anyways? Is this supposed to lead to a policy that makes it a blockable offense to vote delete anywhere just 'cause it might hurt someone's feelings? Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 06:40, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Ignoring the Sithian comments, I think it's my job to answer why here at VPP-- because I was commenting on the Notability and Deletion Policies. --HectorMoffet (talk) 07:00, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Jayron's right. You've been around; you should know better than to be so obnoxious when you disagree with someone. You can make your point without being disrespectful. --JaGa^talk 06:48, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Seb, You're apparently not receiving the message I am sending, so let me restate it. It isn't what you are trying to say that is objectionable. It is how you are trying to say it. You can give a child a failing grade without belittling, berating, or telling the kid "You fail, tough shit, now stop whining". It isn't that you disagree with the premise of the post. You are quite right in doing so. It is the manner in which you express disagreement that is problematic. Please choose different words the next time you disagree. The English Language has a vibrant and large vocabulary, it is quite possible to express disagreement, even vehement disagreement, without being insulting or belittling to the person you are disagreeing with. --Jayron32 06:51, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

We owe politeness to the people who try to work with us in good faith, whether or not what they do is finally accepted. We owe more than politeness: we owe an effort to understand. Our typical way of dealing with unsatisfactory articles is very abrupt, with notices worded as if they were written by the lower levels of a particularly burocrat-ridden country. We've all encountered institutions which try to avoid being questioned--in the RW, they tend to do it with a bland imperviousness, but we use a crude bluster; it's certainly more forthright, but it probably gets most people even angrier, or at least more willing to express the ir anger. The first step is to delete every template notice we use for deletion,and require people to write personal directed explanations that show they have made an effort to understand. True , some of our people cannot adequately do this--they should leave communicating with new editors to the ones who can, or can learn. We may be a collection of anti-social nerds, and satisfied with our own primitive ways of dealing with each other, but the rest of the world isn't, and it's the rest of the world we have to deal with. (I make no claim to being much better than the average here; I think I do try harder, but there is so much promotionalism and utter trivia to deal with that I keep desperately trying to catch up with it, usually resorting to semiautomatic tools and prebuilt notices.)

A policy page is exactly where to discuss it. (anyway, all complaints should be heard, telling people to make them elsewhere is the classic way of rejecting outsiders.) The goal of policy is to make an encyclopedia , and the key requisite for making an encyclopedia is to keep attracting new editors. We're not acting like teachers, we're acting like bullies--like children who get to be teacher for a day and can be as arbitrary as they please within our confines. They're usually much more arbitrary than the actual teachers. Our principle is , after all, that everyone can edit; some have limitations, and the goal is then to teach them. What they can't do well enough today they can perhaps do tomorrow. DGG ( talk ) 06:53, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

I am all for manual notification, but the OP was complaining about delete-votes as such. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 06:57, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

I know it sounds like mere complaining-- but really, we're trying to trying to help solve an equation. Editor retention is plummeting, we must know why. I posit, based on recent personal experience, that our Deletion Policy/Notability is major contributing factor. --HectorMoffet (talk) 07:11, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

That — sounds a whole lot different from your original post, and is certainly something worth talking about (Lemme translate your original post to my ears: "no matter how polite you are, no matter how reasonable you are, from now on, whenever you vote delete, please be ashamed and feel horrible for hurting someone's feelings". That's the essence of your original post.)

Now — what do you propose could be done? (I'm seriously listening now) DGG's idea of forced manual notifications is great. Any other ideas? Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 07:15, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm sorry you heard a call to be ashamed-- voting delete is a regrettable but sometimes necessary duty, and I tried to acknowledge that in my first post, but am happy to do it in more detail here.

I don't know that I am the right person to generate the "solution". I feel more like my job was to pull the fire alarm and point out that there's a problem. Wikipedia has respected leaders who will probably be the ones to fix this trend.

But since you ask:

I think "full deletion" should only be for bad-faith content, illegal or libelous material, BLP concerns, etc. I believe good faith article fragments should be preserved in "half deletion"-- a namespace visible only to logged in members.

Pages would have disclaimers, perhaps remove Wikipedia logo from the page, etc. There, wikipedia authors could collaboratively work at their own pace, without their work being considered "Formally Part of Wikipedia". --HectorMoffet (talk) 07:38, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Well, there aren't really any leaders, or if there are, then you've just become one by starting this discussion. In any case, there is the WP:INCUBATOR, but it seems there is some weird criteria which says material must go through AfD before it can be put there. Doesn't make sense to me. Maybe that can be changed. There should be some place (other than your own userspace) where nobody can pounce on stuff for a while. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 07:47, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

What's about moving the information to a larger-scale article (like Oakland City Council or smth) rather than deleting it? And, indeed, what about the initiave to encourage manual notification?--Ymblanter (talk) 08:18, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

We're talking about the situation in general. Sometimes you just can't move it anywhere else. So then what? It might actually be good to have something like WP:Fragments or whatever, where people can "park" their stuff for a limited amount of time (has to have a limit otherwise this becomes a webhosting service and junkyard). Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 08:22, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

This is why we need Articles for Discussion. Many AfDs currently lead to redirections or merges, and many more are closed because editors saw the serious problem and found sources or added content, fixing the problem. "Discussing" an article will help editors learn better than "Deleting". They will feel less like they have to defend their article, because the name of the venue alone will make them feel less attacked. I don't think AfD is an attack, but for the uninitiated it can sure seem that way. To go back to the school analogy used above, even the dumbest kids get parent teacher conferences before they get held back. ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 08:01, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm very excited about Seb's suggestion for wider Incubator use. Votes to merge, rename, or incubate all feel positive. True Deletion feels unnecessarily harsh when applied to good-faith contribution that doesn't present legal/moral problems. --HectorMoffet (talk) 08:24, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

I like the idea of "articles for discussion". I've seen far too many articles tagged for deletion where the tagger clearly didn't understand the topic, nor took much time trying to determine notability before slapping on the tag. Pfly (talk) 08:32, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

It still wouldn't solve the problem; maybe it wasn't that way when wikipedia started, but in 2012, placing something into article space means "This is ready. It's not perfect, but it's sourced, proofread, spellchecked — have at it." So there are only two options: either you mess around it on your own (userspace) or you throw it to the wolves (mainspace). What's needed is something in between. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 08:39, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Nobody is proposing to solve all the problems at once. It would be great of course if we could keep 100% of new users, who from the very beginning would know how to write notable neutral articles, and if we could continue grow exponentially. However, this is not the case and never will be the case, and we should concentrate on what we can do in little steps to increase the retention. Start manual notification and explaining the policies to newbies is one such step. It will not solve 100% of the problems but if it solves 1%, we should be happy. Less tagging and more correcting the articles would be another step. Having the name "articles for discussion" and expanding the merging/transfer practice is another one. And so on.--Ymblanter (talk) 08:47, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

"Articles for Discussion" seems great to me. A "Manual Tagging" campaign would be nice. But it really is about the actual deletions. It doesn't matter how nicely or politely you tell me you're going to actually DELETE my work-- you aren't going to improve it or move it or incubate it, you're going to put in it a black hole and wipe it from the face of the project. That is the issue, and only Seb's solution address that bigger problem. --HectorMoffet (talk) 08:54, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

• What nonsense Sorry, this entire section seems completely wrong-headed. This is classic 'a prize for everyone' thinking, typical left-wing 'we're all winners' nonsense that gets banded about every so often. The AfD process is clear. If your article is not good enough, it gets amended. If your article is of a non-notable subject, it gets deleted. "It hurts an editors feeling" is precious and pathetic. doktorb _words^deeds 08:50, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
  • That was my point, too, but we've moved beyond that. thanks. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 08:57, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Please, Doktorb, can you do me a favor? Intentionally avoid ever talking to a new editor. If you ever have something that just has to be said to a new editor, drop me an email and I will do it for you in a constructive manner. The English Wikipedia has significant problems; our new editor retention rate is shit, and our old editor retention rate is hardly stellar either. We do not currently properly understand why we are having the editor retention problems that we are having. We need new editors, and we need to retain people who are currently editing. This thread was started by a new editor - whose contributions were all NPOV and verifiable - explaining why his experience so far has been negative. He went out of his way to type up his thoughts and find a place to post them - and thoughts like these are important, because they can cast light on our major editor retention problems. (And make no mistake, this is exactly the type of editor we need to retain.) It beggars belief that you would respond to a post like this calling it precious and pathetic. Please - seriously - if you cannot respond in a more constructive way to posts like this, then never respond to one again. Kevin (talk) 10:07, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Oh, I think we perfectly understand much of our current retention problems; every new editor that cares to comment is saying the same thing, that we're wp:BITEing them into oblivion. The problem is that many editors simply don't care about that one policy and treat the Wikipedia:Civility pillar in a pure "didn't hear it" way. We can't prevent that attitude from some people, but we can build mechanisms around it so that it doesn't hurt that much. Diego (talk) 10:18, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

(ec) There's an editor retention mini-epidemic, there's an openness initiative. This is the kind of thing we are supposed to be thinking about.

It's not about "We're all Winners"-- not in the slightest. It's about welcoming Special Ed kids into their own program or expelling them from your school as morons who can't learn.

No one is calling for an abolition of quality standards, but complete and total deletion should be like expulsion-- rarely accidental. --HectorMoffet (talk) 09:02, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Doktorbuk, please refrain from making a political interpretation in this discussion. I don't know why Americans always connotate completely unrelated things with attributes they associate with the other side of political parties, but left-wing nowhere implies a 'we're all winners' attitude, at least not on a global scale. Typical American black-and-white thinking. Nageh (talk) 10:57, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Does anyone else see the irony inherent in this remark? Your assumption about his nationality is wrong anyway, if you bothered to check his userpage you will see that he is British anyway so take your nationalist insults elsewhere. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:15, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

FYI, I was criticizing the completely unwarranted connotation of an unrelated attribute with one having a political meaning, something which is overly widespread in the U.S., just as is this black-and-white thinking ("you are either with the U.S. or you are against them" -- G.W. Bush). My assumption on the previous poster's nationality was wrong, but please do not make any false interpretations and falsely accuse me of nationalist insults. Thank you. Nageh (talk) 23:58, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

There's no need to look under the surface of that highly offensive remark for nationalist insults, they are right on the surface for anyone to see and if you were not intending to steryotype and insult Americans then you should strike out those portions of your remarks. We're not all G.W. Bush worshipping robots. Perhaps you've heard of some of these other people, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, John F. Kennedy, and oh yeah, I almost forgot the new guy, Barak Obama.. That you would choose to hurl such an insult in the middle of a discussion about hurting other people's feelings is puzzling. Perhaps you were not aware that people who create Wikipedia articles about subjects of marginal notability are not the only people who have feelings. Beeblebrox (talk) 02:18, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

I deserve the right to criticize the unwarranted connotation above, and I will continue to do so. Even my American friends who have this black-and-white thinking will be criticized by me, and they are still my friends. And I will criticize any other person for such thinking. But just to make it plain clear: This is an international project, I contribute to this international project, and I respect every individual here no matter what nationality, but I do not respect and unwarranted connotation like the one above. If you prefer to interpret my reply as nothing but a national insult and then go on with another snide response so have it. Thank your for your contribution to this discussion. Nageh (talk) 10:07, 25 February 2012 (UTC) PS: Saying that it was typical American thinking was inappropriate, indeed. As you feel strongly about it I have struck it. Nageh (talk) 10:25, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

• Comment - User Seb wrote above that in 2012, placing something into article space means "This is ready. It's not perfect, but it's sourced, proofread, spellchecked — have at it." That's true, but means that Wikipedia is no longer a wiki; not in a way that matters and that makes it a good tool to retain knowledge (and editors). (Seb's analysis is incomplete, though; a new article also means that the topic is notable, and notability is a big culprit of this throwing away piles of new verifiable and well-written content together with all the spam).

Problem is, many editors have very good reasons to wish to delete new content, and the guidelines supporting it have huge consensus achieved together with the editors wishing to retain content. All that is irrelevant to the fact that the wiki approach of "quick draft first, cleanup later", which made Wikipedia a huge success, is gone. This means that the encyclopedia is now, broadly speaking, a finished work; there will be some small growth and lots of ongoing tweaking and refinement, but no filling in the gaps - since the gaps are systematically cut out because of their initial low quality (that can't be fixed with time, because they are cut out).

I don't think this can be fixed by changes in policies and guidelines, since current consensus is strong. I still have hope that the Wikimedia Board of Trustees will create new tools to overcome it, such an incubator environment that works (the current one doesn't), since this is one of their priorities. The system won't change from within; a systemic change is needed so that this dynamic is turned around.

That said, the proposal of renaming AfD to "Articles for Discussion" would be an improvement. I wouldn't remove automatic tags, at least not on the first level, because many editors are using them through bots and other automated tools; and the tag wording is still much better than what such individual editors could come on their own. And I'd help with getting the incubator into shape to serve its purpose better than now. Diego (talk) 09:42, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

So what is the rationale for having only stuff in incubator that has gone through an AfD? Do you know? Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 10:28, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

I believe -- though am not sure and need to crash for the night -- that the idea is that articles that need incubation that haven't been afded should go through the afc process. Kevin (talk) 10:30, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

I don't know why being AfD'd is a requirement for incubation; but I don't think that this is an obstacle. The problem is that being incubated should be the default result for most of the deleted articles (i.e. anything without copyvio or BLP problems), but now it is a rare event instead. Having articles created and patrolled in the mainspace first is a good thing. Diego (talk) 10:38, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

I would support increased use of the incubator if the software prevented inbound links. ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 10:45, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

• Comment. With all respect, and while I appreciate the original poster being outspoken on the issue, but going at full length how valuable the contributor's time is and that we do not appreciate his gift hurts me as a long-standing contributor who is putting considerable time and efforts into making contributions that are worthwhile and of quality. It implies that the time of regular editors is less worth than his, and we should just keep his contribution because it hurts his feelings otherwise. Everyone here has had the experience of getting something deleted or reverted, and any dispute triggers emotions of some sort. Being criticized is a normal part of life, and should help you to learn from your past mistakes. If you don't feel that you can take any argument that doesn't flatter you I'm sure you wouldn't be able to interact with people at all. What exactly are you criticizing in the deletion process? Any AfD is having a discussion, and people do need to come up with relevant arguments for deletion if they don't want an article to be kept. Adhering to our policies and guidelines is our basis for creating an encyclopedia of quality that readers enjoy to read. Think about it. Nageh (talk) 10:49, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

He's created probably half a dozen articles to-date, all of which were verifiable and npov, but some of which fail the GNG. His talk page has thirteen templated deletion notifications of various sorts, and he had almost no positive interaction with any established Wikipedian. He handled himself quite reasonably in the articles/category that actually went all the way to AfD, I don't think this is at all him being unable to take criticism. I would encourage you to look over his contributions and his interactions with other Wikipedians and think how you would feel in his place. I think 95% of brand new contributors in his shoes would leave and never look back - and the fact that this is a very common experience for new ENWP contributors is something we need to figure out a way to better address. Kevin (talk) 10:55, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

@ Nageh: With all due respect, I think you're missing the essence of the matter out of your own need to feel special. Nobody is saying that experienced editors' time is worth less than newcomers; but you are not entitled to feel that it has more value either only because you have more experience.

The point is that the current AfD guideline is not the best way to deal with newly created articles, because it has two deeply negative side effects with its positive cleanup: first, that newcomers won't stay the needed time to learn how to make polished edits, because they are being systematically approached in an unfairly and unhelpful way; and second and even more important, that good faith edits are helpful and productive even if they don't comply with the current guidelines, because a bad initial state can work as the seed by which other editors improve an invalid article into good shape. Wikipedia has never been about perfection; the AfD process has its place, but its extreme result of full deletion should be reshaped in a way that doesn't conflict with these other two main concerns. Diego (talk) 11:43, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

My own need to feel special? Feel that [my own contributions] have more value? This is probably the worst misinterpretation of my edits I have seen in quite some time. Just how did you read this between the lines? I was trying to explain how the OP's post came across. Note that the personal response by the OP on my talk page was much more rationale than yours. And no, in this sense your post was not respectful, and just because I am so special and my feelings are more worthy, would you please apologize?

Regarding the negative side effects of the deletion process you mention, please note that lack of polish and need for cleanup are not valid arguments for deletion of an article in the deletion process. If an article is deleted on that basis the closing admin is to blame. What are good faith edits? Edits on your favorite startup band in the town? Obviously, this seems to be an issue about the notability guideline. See my post further below, where I reply to the OP's post on my talk page. Nageh (talk) 14:19, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Nothing seems to have actually been deleted yet, so it may be time to warn all those people that tag things for speedy delete that are declined. Once they hit say 10% bad nominations then we block them or ban them from speedy delete nominations. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 11:55, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Nope. We only block people who are being disruptive, and 10% is nowhere near that. It's about what you'd expect from the occasional forgivable error and honest differences of opinion with other editors. How would you feel if we applied your idea to PROD declines? Start blocking or topic banning people once they hit 10% of declined PRODs that are later deleted at AfD? You'd oppose that idea loudly, and rightly so. Reyk _YO! 12:09, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

10% is a huge error rate for speedies. Speedy noms should be beyond-a-doubt, and they should be checked by the deleting admin. Errors in prodding are more acceptable, since there's time for errors to be fixed. And errors in AfD are relatively harmless - or should be. Rich Farmbrough, 13:29, 24 February 2012 (UTC).

There is a balance that has to be made between the nature of a wiki that allows for instant gratification (an aspect of the web ever since the start of the Endless September) verses the fact that there's a body of 10 years worth of discussions and the like summarized into policy and guidelines that guide the direction of the work (including, at which point is a topic appropriate for a stand-alone article)

A new editor cannot make a new article without jumping through several pages that point to these discussions, but there is zero requirement for them to read them, and in the case of an editor aboard for instant gratification (seeing their work immediately published), they're not going to stop to read them.

Yes, it can be argued that's a problem to wipe contributions of new editors, but we have to be realistic. Just as we have the standard disclaims about profanity, nudity, and the like for the general reader (thus pushing aside any complaints about those aspects when a reader is shocked by them), we have to recognize that new editors that contribute without spending the time to understand how things work are going to be "hurt" when their contributions are removed. But that said, we can always improve the communication when we do remove that. As pointed out by the OP, its very easy to fall into the trap of just using automated messages to communicate when an article is at PROD/AFD, and thus makes the process seem inhuman. Particularly for new users, it would be better if when we use such nomination tools to make sure to craft a useful message, or even avoid the automated tools as long as the message is delivered in a non-mechanical way. There's improvements that can be made. --MASEM (t) 13:11, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Well, that's the nature of the beast. We are expecting newcomers to assimilate "how things work" by reading lots of disorganized walls of text, instead of actually working and making honest and harmless mistakes. The way to improve communication is not to place more user-friendly messages (though that would help, and is required by policy) but to create a user-friendly process from the beginning. AfC is a good atempt, but we have nothing similar for the process after article creation. What we need is a newbie training boot camp; instead we have a newbie firing squad. Diego (talk) 13:38, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

P.S. Newbies should be required a period of supervised menial, hard-work tasks such as patrolling new pages and speedy deletions, and having them classify them as "compliant" or "non-compliant" with policy; and scoring them on how well they performed. Diego (talk) 13:47, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

At one point, I though there was a vastly different edit-page header when an editor created a new page, but now at least what I'm getting is a 5 line, black-on-white box that looks like regular wikitext above the edit box. Oh, it points to the right places, but it is so easy to overlook. I wonder if it is possible to create a new class of user "newly-autoconfirmed" which has all the same privledges as "autoconfirmed", but displays a different, bigger edit page header that is short but very explicit on what your first new page should have. This would be similar to "hot tips" in many applications, displaying useful tips until the feature is dismissed by the user. "newly-autoconfirmed" would automagically transform to "autoconfirmed" after, say, four weeks or if the user hit something in their preferences (with the acknowledgement that they can find more information on policies and guidelines). It's basically the same idea behind what our "upload file" tool is meant to do, though in that case allowing an advanced user to bypass the entry form.

As to the PS, if this was before the Endless September, we'd be enforcing a lurk-and-learn period with a much longer period before auto-confirmation. Unfortunately, the expectation that "anyone can edit" sorta requires us to ditch that. --MASEM (t) 13:54, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

You mean something like the article wizard? It already exists, the problem is that it's the alternate creation tool; it should be the default, with a big call-to-action button, so that only knowledgeable editors look for the current simple creation page. Wikipedia's usability is deadly bad. Diego (talk) 14:20, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Hm, well you could lurk and learn on WP for ever. I think there's a few points, though, to problems for new editors - and the fact that they are new (and need to learn) is only one of them. There is an assumption that if someone edits and goes away the community has failed, and some strong counter arguments to that. The important things are, firstly to do the common sense (and easy) things to improve editor retention - don't bite, simplify markup, have good help systems, have mentors, nurture and cooperate. The second is to actually make some less naive measurements about editor actions and understand the type of people who become "Wikipedians" or at least "occasional editors" instead of going away, and who we want. We have, for example, used a "be nice to vandals" philosophy for years (three nicely AGFing worded templates, then a short block, etc...) with, as far as I know, no research into the cost/benefit of doing this rather than, say, an un-templated indef block, freeing people up to help constructive new users. I prefer the gentle approach - but I have no empirical grounds for doing so. Rich Farmbrough, 14:24, 24 February 2012 (UTC).

• The general gist of the proposal is misguided, IMO. New editors come here without much familiarity for what the threshold is for our notability and sourcing guidelines and tend to try creating articles on neat things they heard about or local games they like, i.e. the epic cluster-fuck that surrounded the article on "circball". Instead of coddling and incubating and all that, new editors should be steered away from the "I Can Make an Article!" mindset and towards "I Can Contribute to Existing Content!". Work up stubs into full articles. Find sources for unsourced articles. Locate free or fair-use images for articles that lack them. Once they get a handle on things, the the "but everyone in my town had heard of this band they're awesome!!!" mentality may subside. Tarc (talk) 13:51, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

  Yes, this is a good point, maybe this is something that can be tweaked in {{Welcome}}. Having said that, of course, if someone comes here to document lesser-known Seattle record labels, they aren't necessarily going to want to spend their time working on nineteenth century postage stamps. Rich Farmbrough, 14:07, 24 February 2012 (UTC).
  

  Though, in your example, there are plenty of other record labels and bands to work on, and by working on those they would become familiar with the specific policies and guidelines that influence that area (eg such as the notability guidelines for music). And what we need to be careful about there is scaring contributors there when they add something well-meaning but, say, without a citation. --MASEM (t) 14:11, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Based on a post by the OP on my talk page, it seems it is all about the notability guideline and deleting articles based on this ground. Let me say that WP:N is probably the most contentious editing rule when it comes to good-faith article creations by newcomers. Indeed, this is a far bigger issue on the German Wikipedia than here, and does result in discontent among new contributors. Nonetheless, it is obvious that we need to draw a line between what content is notable and what is so non-notable that it needs to be deleted outright, though that line is already more on the inclusionist side here (for good, IMO) than on the German Wikipedia. The problematic article is that which falls just below the notability threshold (as perceived by the tagging/deleting person). The important questions here seem to be: What is the best way to deal with the article? Should we speedy-delete or PROD it? (Obviously not.) Tag it for AfD? I think that is a fair outcome when you feel that an article might not be notable though the OP seems to be complaining about this. So should it be moved to the article incubator? Would that help in improving an article such that the notability of its subject can be asserted? How would we determine whether an article should go to AfD or to the incubator? And if no one can come up with a conclusive decision on that question, why is AfD is not the appropriate process for this? Maybe I still don't understand what the OP is trying to achieve? Nageh (talk) 14:17, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

• I agree completely with the OP; having your contributions be subject to an AfD can be an emotionally charged experience, and we therefore need to be more dynamic in our thinking with respect to verifiable NPOV articles that merely fail to meet some notability threshold. We have other options beyond keep/delete, and even beyond the incubator. We have WP:Userfication. If there is good information that fits into a wider explanation of a topic, we can merge content into an appropriate page. At worst, if there is no place for material in Wikipedia, we can suggest other wikis or other websites where the kind of work at issue can be preserved. At the same time, if an editor has written an article on a non-notable local rock band for instance, we could make a point of asking if they'd be interested in helping to improve an article on a notable band from the same region. bd2412 T 14:28, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

  There are lots of ways to be nicer to newcomers, and they should be implemented. Still, this doesn't solve the problem that somehow a decision needs to be carried out whether an article is indeed notable enough for inclusion or not. Simply moving the article to the incubator or the user page doesn't solve this problem, as far as I see it. Nageh (talk) 14:40, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

  (edit conflict) True, but it won't happen as long as the 'D' in AfD stands for 'Deletion'. That mindset to suggest alternate outcomes (merge, userfy, incubate, transwiki) should be encouraged. Anyone else feels that it's time for a new AfD name-change proposal to "Articles for Discussion"? I have seen the idea being debated at several policy and project talk pages recently. Diego (talk) 14:43, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

  A possible idea on this is to have some means of showing to logged in editors that an article has been created by a new user (say, less than 1000 edits) and is less than 3 months old. This doesn't prevent them from being deleted but maybe will help those that are questioning its notability (even after doing a BEFORE search and coming up empty to help out) to go "huh, maybe not a good idea to rush them but instead drop {{welcome}} and other guides on the user's page and this talk page". As long as the article doesn't immediately qualify for the CSD and otherwise not a copyvio or immediately against policy, there's no need to rush to AFD for these newer ones. Of course, for experienced editors, or after enough time has passed, that's different. It's just at this starting point that we should avoid the mad rush to AFD. --MASEM (t) 14:47, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

  That would be great, but how do we get from idea to practice? Proposing changes to a policy is already hard enough; something like this that would require code development is nigh impossible. Diego (talk) 15:01, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

  Most of this could be done with bots that run to tag such articles and then remove tags when the time's up. No backend coding required. Its then a matter of making sure established editors know not to bite newbies that have this tag. --MASEM (t) 16:10, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

  It's not just a matter of changing the name. "X for discussion" means "this is a fully merged, one-stop-shopping, zero-alternatives forum for deletion, renaming, and merge discussions". In short, rather than "let's change the name", your proposal is "let's get rid of WP:Proposed merges and WP:Requested moves and do everything in one absolutely ginormous forum."
  A more sensible solution IMO would be for people like you to show up at AFDs and trout editors who have nommed something for deletion when it ought to have been boldly merged. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:11, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

I've long believed that the real solution to this problem of non-notable personalities in any profession is to set up more dedicated side projects which would have much lower notability criteria than on the main wikipedia. A classic example of this at the moment would be Wookieepedia, a dedicated Star Wars wiki. We'd have for example, a dedicated one for actors and others in the film industry (a kind of IMDB plus), one for politicians, which would include lesser local officials and so on. The advantage would then be that articles judged not good enough for here could be transferred to the relevant side project where their creators could work on them happily, while here on the main wiki we would still retain higher standards. Valenciano (talk) 14:38, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

We have Wikia as the closest match to that (not a true sister project, but close enough, where any manner of topic can have a dedicted, drill-down wiki) The probably is visibility. Wikipedia is huge. That's why people want to add articles to it. --MASEM (t) 14:43, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

The problem is that Wikia is a for-profit entity, while WMF is non-profit and governed by consensus and democracy. Some writers are vastly more comfortable writing in the WMF model rather than the Wikia model. Neither may be morally superior, but one inspires me, the other does not. --HectorMoffet (talk) 12:12, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

• Valenciano is right that this should be the preferred approach to articles clearly lacking notability but otherwise verifiable. I don't know why this isn't done more often; maybe a wikiproject or task force should be created to identify recurring topics at AfDs (restaurants, garage bands...); they would commit to move failed articles to the most appropriate commons or non-commons wikiproject. Diego (talk) 14:52, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Stuff often(?) does get moved to Wikia, but the problem with a lot of deletion as failing GNG is that it is generally good material that could be merged. Sure "my cousin's new band" is WP:NOTYET, to say the least, but NN council members should be merged to the council. NN artists might have a place on a record label page - just as artist's "own label" articles which are often deleted should be merged to the artist. This is all part of respecting other's GF contributions. Rich Farmbrough, 14:58, 24 February 2012 (UTC).

One factor in all this is the general attitude that many on WP (old and new) have is that "redirects and merges are bad" and/or "every topic should have its own article". We're maturing, and we should recognize when information is better structured by putting minor topic that might even pass notability guidelines into an established larger article where the information, together, is more comprehensive. "Redirect and merging" should not be equated with "Deletion", and the idea of building out information in an existing article before creating a new one is good advice to give to newer editors - less likely they will see their work deleted that way. But everyone has to be aboard the idea of using redirects and merges wisely to make this effective and osmosis that idea to newer editors. --MASEM (t) 16:14, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Time to remember everyone about my brand-new essay WP:SNOWFLAKE :-) </shamelessPromotion> Diego (talk) 16:30, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

• I agree with the original poster. Deletionists are a plague on Wikipedia, and the reason for its decline since 2007. Provided that an article has one valid reference and one valid fact we should keep it - yes, sometimes by merging, and maybe we could slap a notice in it about its incompleteness, but keep it nonetheless. Exaggerated deference for "living persons" should be rolled back to pre-Badlydrawnjeff standards. If there's anyone who should be getting templated with automated nasty messages, it should be the people who seem to take an unhealthy pleasure in trashing sourced content and newbie editors alike. The problem we have is that as more and more good editors have been driven off, the deletionists become bolder, more numerous, and have less need to hide objectives such as to oppose "left-wing nonsense". The problem we have here, ultimately, is one which has faced many communist systems (in a broad sense, e.g. administration of public lands and Indian reservations in the U.S.) - once a central pool of valuable assets is set up, there is more and more incentive for people to set themselves in control of it in order to bend it to their individual will. If we cannot find a way to restore and uphold the rights of individual editors much more clearly than we have, Wikipedia must ultimately degenerate into a series of Leninistic purges. Actions we've seen recently against administrators like Cirt, Fae, and Will Beback - accompanied at times by off-wiki harassment campaigns meant to break their resolve altogether - are the beginning but certainly not the end of this. The time left for Wikipedia to recover is growing short. Wnt (talk) 15:22, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Yet another ho-hum "deletionists are Nazis" sentiment, why am I not surprised? No, we should not rollback to 2007-era standards for BLPs or thresholds for notability, that'd be like telling a police station that it'd be ok to go back to a Wild West style of law enforcement. Weeding out bad articles and preventing cruft from taking their place makes the project better. Tarc (talk) 15:27, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
    • THe point missed here is that since 2007, wikipedia has graduated from "that internet encyclopedia that you can't trust" to a third party resource of research papers, personal histories, etc. Quantity has been replaced by quality. This was inevitable as the number of topics lacking articles dwindles. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 16:02, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
      • Who sais the number of topics lacking articles dwindles? There are people born every day, inventions created every week and scientific investigation published every month. There is no lack of new topics, but our threshold is much more strict than it was for the first batch. Those could be enhanced with time, the new ones often don't have a chance. Diego (talk) 16:43, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
        • Honestly, I am surprised you are even asking, because this should be self-evident. I'll give you an example: NHL hockey players. When I first joined this project in late 2005, I would say that no more than 25-33% of current and former players had articles. The rate of newly notable NHL players remains roughly steady from season to season, but we cleared that backlog of notable players without articles a couple years ago. The creation of new articles has become a secondary goal to improving the existing articles. That was not the case a wiki-age ago. Resolute 16:50, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
          • Tarc makes a good point that notabilty standards need to be maintained, but Wnt is also correct: speedy delete is often used in a quasi-fascist manner. I've seen new articles (created by newbies) tagged in 1 minute and deleted in under 5. That's crazy. On a few I had even found valid sources but the article was deleted in the interim.

IDEA - Why not slow down speedy delete to 6 hours (or, hey! ONE HOUR) so that experienced editors have at least a chance to work on it? Best, Markvs88 (talk) 12:33, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

• Several comments 1) Please remember, all, about not biting the newcomers. Some people seem to treat Wikipedia discussion pages like this as just another online forum where you get points for being nasty to others, and several people have posted here in that vein. If that is how you feel, please go to some other non-Wikipedia forum with your sneers and put-downs. WP:BITE is a "Wikipedia behavioral guideline" and a "generally accepted standard," and as established editors we are expected to follow it. 2) I really, really hate the way some people pounce on brand new articles, tagging them for speedy deletion just minutes after their creation. I would like to see a guideline that an hour has to pass before an article can be tagged - except in cases of attack articles, blatant nonsense, and other hopeless material. 3) In many cases it is possible to work with the person so as to get their work into a form that will be acceptable to Wikipedia. For example, if the subject is not suitable for a stand-alone article, they could be pointed to an existing article where the material could appropriately be added. In the current case, the user created a lot of very careful and neutral articles about city council members in a large city. It looks like almost all of them have now been prodded or AFD'ed (btw I am appalled at the level of discussion at that AfD; most people simply said "city council members are not notable" rather than evaluating the individual member for notability as required). I have suggested to him at his talk page that he salvage the information and combine it into the existing article Oakland City Council. --MelanieN (talk) 16:07, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Actually that at-least-one-hour guideline would make sense inside WP:BITE. Diego (talk) 16:33, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

• Anyone else remember when we suggested that new users have to build up a few mainspace edits before they create an article? I still think that's a good idea. New users want to feel like they get it. It's like a game. If you lose the game on the first level, you'll probably never play again. We can't coddle them and let them create bad articles just because we feel sorry for them. But we can direct them to the first level of Wikipedia, which is to expand an existing topic. That leads to greater likelihood their contributions will "stick", greater likelihood they feel good about themselves, greater likelihood they stick around, and greater likelihood they actually WILL get it when they finally create an article. Shooterwalker (talk) 16:28, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

I have always liked that idea. I suspect that most of us here (established editors) began our Wikipedia careers by tweaking existing articles. A few such edits would make you much more likely to understand what Wikipedia is about and what a Wiki article looks like. When a person's very FIRST Wikipedia edit is a brand new article, we are all just asking for problems IMO. --MelanieN (talk) 17:21, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Maybe you can convince the WMF... Salvio ^{Let's talk about it!} 17:51, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

• It's never ever a bad idea to be reminded that we shouldn't bite the noobs. That said: I am generally regarded (included by me) as a deletionist; but part of the reason for this is the simple fact that Wikipedia has become the go-to website for spammers: for every goddamned shameless corporate publicist (pardon me, "public relations professional"), self-published author, "social media director", manager of unsigned rappers, unscrupulous campaign consultant for obscure local politicians, hoaxster, Search Engine "Optimization" mercenary, and egotistical 11-year-old who wants to publicize his YouTube video so it will go viral and he'll get on Tosh 2.0. Hector, it has become clear, acted in good faith; but we can't let that fact blind us to the fact that sometimes doing New Page Patrol is (as I wrote to Jimbo one time) "drinking from the Magic Firehose of Sewage"! How do we separate the scum from the Hectors? --Orange Mike | Talk 17:25, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

I have a question ... if I understand the premiss of the thread correctly, we are concerned about loosing lots of new editors because they have had their work deleted. The AfD process has been in place for years now, and during most of that time it did not result in a mass exodus of new users. Sure, there were always a few disgruntled users who got upset when we decided that their pet topic was not really notable enough for inclusion... but that was always a fairly small percentage of new users. Has something changed? Are we really finding that lots and lots of new users are quitting after an article they worked on is nominated for deletion? If so, I have to ask why this change has occurred, and (perhaps more importantly) why it has changed now? Are our new users more sensitive than they used to be? Are we being harsher in how we nominate articles than we used to be? Are more articles being nominated? Blueboar (talk) 18:09, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Well, with 3.8 million articles in here, it's harder to find a subject that's genuinely notable and that appeals to new editors. Few new editors want to write about 1930s state senators and other dead people; too often, they want to write about obscure new bands they like, internet memes that have gotten 30,000 views today, and other stuff that adds to our recentist bias if left unchecked. --Orange Mike | Talk 18:56, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Frankly its reasons like this I stopped uploading images. I have a lot of free media available to me that are from Government sources but when they started getting deleted for one reason or another I found that it was no longer worth my time to do anymore and moved onto other things. I recently had a similar experience with working on WikiProject United States but thats another matter. So although I never had the experience of having an article deleted I have seen this first hand. It doesn't just apply to Article creation either, it applies to multiple facets of Wikipedia. Personally the notability rule has always been a bit of a dubious one to me personally because the whole reality of notability is how does it affect me and do I have enough standing in the community and understanding of the rules to justify it being retained. For example, I personally think all Medal of Honor/Victoria Cross receipients are notable others may not. I could personally care less if we deleted every Soccer/International Football player article but to others this is a big deal. I personally think that we should be paying less attention to notable and more attention to Verifiability and references. There are plenty of topics that are "notable" but we can't find 2 references to prove it. On the opposite there are a lot of what we would consider non notable topics you could easily get to FA status with the amount of available content. --Kumioko (talk) 19:48, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Politely correct me if I am wrong, but WP:GNG should cover notability via multiple verifiable mentions in reliable sources by the phrase:

The number and nature of reliable sources needed varies depending on the depth of coverage and quality of the sources. Multiple sources are generally expected.

Although there is the first part "Significant coverage", I have often seen that a multitude of non-significant mentions themselves denotes a level of notability. That being said, I have also seen that standard be opposed via arguments like WP:GOOGLEHITS and emphasis on significant coverage requirements while not taking into account semi-significant mentions in hundreds (sometimes thousands) of sources. I guess on that case it's a case by case and how well defenders of the subject argue in favor of the subject's notability. --RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 22:12, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

While it's clear that the encyclopedia cannot change its standards for the sake of making users happy, I do agree that people in deletion discussions can do a lot more to be nice. If the article is well-written, but happens to be on a non-notable topic, tell the author their article is well-written, and suggest a good alternative outlet, like one of the Wikia wikis, or (for an essay) a personal blog, or (for a story) deviantART or a fanfiction website. If the subject might become notable in the foreseeable future, invite them to request undeletion or recreate at the appropriate time (I would like to see Delete for now become a popularly-used opinion). These are ways we can send a positive message while still deleting things. Dcoetzee 19:54, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

While I do agree that often times things are deleted for a reason and the deletion is justly deserved I have, in my time here, seen several very well written articles get deleted on the sole grounds they were "non notible". I recall one being mentiond recently on the MILHIST board that was being considered fro deletion submission when someone submitted it to GA and another editor questioned its notability. I think that, this is one of those few areas in Wikipedia where we should give some credit to the "fuzzy grey area" of life and perhaps not view it in terms of black and white, yes or no. It seems to me that if the article is fairly well written (I would say at least B class at least for articles with dubious notability) that we should consider keeping it. If there is enough information and creditable references to write a decent article then it seems to me that the subject must be at least minimally notable to someone. Otherwise no one would have bothered to write about it here or in the references used to write it here. --Kumioko (talk) 20:38, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

One should not get credit for writing extensively about a non-notable subject, no. This is the sort of "gold star just for trying" mindset noted earlier in this discussion that we honestly should not be promoting. Tarc (talk) 20:43, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

That's not what this is about. Nobody wants us to stop our essential quality controls in favor of qualitative anarchy. But surely there should be a middle ground between "gold star" and "Damnatio memoriae". I think Incubator may be it. --HectorMoffet (talk) 07:46, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

• Comment. AfD with notability claims is a common ground for snowball claims, like the Protests against SOPA and PIPA article which was nominated a day before the event. A AfD process can be huge distraction and a major BITEing of newbees even in cases where the AfD ends in a keep. Compared to how protect procedures are done, an AfD process a few hours after article creation is like doing a indef full protection of a article after a single vandalism edit. For protection policy we have different levels and a normal procedure with increasing steps of actions if previous levels do not fix the problem. With AfD it is black and white, because either the article is considered at that time notable or it is not. Belorn (talk) 22:28, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

• Opinions on this matter are split. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 13:48, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Editor participation or article quality

I wouldn't characterize this as a question of "hurt feelings" but a deep difference of opinion among experienced contributors over what a better future for the Wikipedia would be: (a) More editors with policies that encourage new articles and new or revised material for existing articles. Or (b) Increasing the overall quality of the Wikipedia by deleting old articles which are determined by consensus to be "bad" (by the application of policies updated in 2012 to articles substantially written in 2006, for example) and by imposing stricter quality standards for new articles and revisions to existing articles. With 50 archives of talk pages, Wikipedia talk:Notability has been a proxy battleground for this. This is confirmed by vast number of WP:Articles for deletion which have a two-sided debate on notability.

A popular position for (b) is based on the Closing of the Frontier. This is the idea that every past or current person, place, or thing already has an article in the Wikipedia, and the emphasis of editors, Afd voters, and admins is to improve quality by adding, moving, or removing content and finally by deleting articles. I think this emphasis is currently out of balance and discouraging to the new editor class of 2012 of whom some have arrived and some we await.

It isn't so much a deletionist position, but a elitist position that wants fewer articles about the interests of editors and readers in popular culture and can only shape the Wikipedia by using the Afd process to greenlight the articles that conform to the highbrow standard: more articles on writers, fewer articles on wrestlers. patsw (talk) 21:40, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

• Actually, it's a repetition of the Wikipedia:Concept limit foolishness, which is just sheer unadulterated rubbish. I've been very quietly collecting some of the more extraordinary sets of redlinks for subjects that we not only don't have, but don't even know (via lists such as Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles or redlinks in article space) that we don't have. Uncle G (talk) 00:48, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

• I agree in the assessment with Uncle G that we're far from running out of appropriate article topics (expansion), but at the same time, with WP's maturing, there is also contraction, not because we're elitist against specific topics, but that overall we're becoming wiser at how to hierarchically structure information so that topics, which may be just notable but only have a paragraph or so that can be said about them, are discussed in context of a broader, larger topics, giving better clarity to both main and sub-topic. We can document everything and make them search terms (redirects are cheap), but that doesn't require an article for everything we document, and this sometimes produces a more comprehensive result. There are still plenty of new topics that need articles, but again, encouraging all editors (and thus new editors via way of osmosis) to consider top-down information organization and placing a new, small topic in the context of a larger one is what helps here. --MASEM (t) 13:21, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

I think that another consideration is realizing why people are using Wikipedia. People don't use Wikipedia because its content is always 100% trustworthy or because all of our articles are well written (featured status). They come here because the world has come to expect that with almost 4 million articles in the English Wikipedia alone there is a very good chance what they are looking for is here and that will lead them to other references and sites about the topic. I don't think realistically we are ever going to break that mindset, nor should we try. I agree that all the key topics probably have articles and some articles need a lot of help or, if need be, deleted or merged into a larger topic. As I have said many times before I often think we are too wrapped up around the notability criteria which is very very subjective. More focus should be placed on whether its referencable and verifiable. I do think though that there are plenty of articles still needing creation and if we can focus the potential new editors attention on those, it would be very helpful. I think that we can do this through WikiProjects. If we can somehow steer new editors towards a WikiProject that interests them, it would give them a place to ask questions, talk to like minded editors with a similar editing interest and provide a place to list articles needing creation, which many projects already do.--Kumioko (talk) 15:34, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

I mostly agree with the points raised about regarding what a better Wikipedia would look like with respect to article quality. That's the easy part. The point others have raised is the behavioral one - how do the sharp elbows and demands that new editors have thick skin imposed by old editors - the characteristics of argumentative (but inside our civility lines) editing discussions - encourage all those new editors to create all those desired new articles? patsw (talk) 18:54, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

WMF, please comment here

I'm assuming someone from WMF will read this eventually. So tell us: since the last idea that had overwhelming support (creation of new articles only by autoconfirmed users or after a while of observing) was flat-out rejected — what can we propose that won't be rejected? I'd say nobody here is fond of dreaming up and brainstorming great ideas just to be told "no". Thanks. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 01:33, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

For anyone interested, that WMF decision is documented here: WP:ACTRIAL and here. Diego (talk) 09:20, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

And even more articulated here. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 13:49, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Somebody said here (comment #19) that 80% of all newpages wind up getting deleted by one process or another. If that statistic is true, then what the HELL are we doing? To claim that "anyone can create a page here" and then wind up deleting 80% of the result is an enormous broken promise and an enormous waste of everyone's time. If the Wikimedia Foundation's overriding concern was "editor engagement" and "editor retention" (comment #25), that is not what the current process is producing. And that is exactly the point that the original poster here was making - the current process turns people off and turns people away. --MelanieN (talk) 16:19, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Again, that is why new editors need to bee steered towards editing existing articles rather than creating new ones. We can't blame them for creating crap if they have little to no feel for what type of article we want to retain in the project. How this project works now is like a big empty parking lot, a bunch of brand new cars being unloaded, and people who have never driven before are being given keys and told to go park without error. Tarc (talk) 16:34, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

I think thats a really nice analogy. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 17:15, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Not only must they park perfectly but they must stay in the poorly marked or unmarked lanes, while avoiding the pot holes big enough to break an axel, and deal with the often surly and uninformative parking attendants. Alanscottwalker (talk) 19:31, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Don't waste your breath. They're either unable or unwilling (probably the latter, though I don't want to rule anything out) to get with the reality of this problem, and for now, at least, I don't think they're going to bend; point 1 on User:MastCell applies here. Why should they care about what we think, as long as they can inflate the stats on new users; what was that again that Benjamin Disraeli said? The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 20:11, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Blade, I'm really sorry that you feel this way; as I've mentioned in the past, we've dedicated half our features engineering team to new page patrol for a solid 2-month sprint. That's a pretty big committment given the other half is busy on the visual editor until at least October: we've basically committed everyone we have. I've explained to the staffers in Engineering how New Page Patrollers feel, and they get it. If they didn't, they wouldn't be dedicating these resources to the problem. I appreciate a lot of people would like to see ACTRIAL, but it's simply not going to happen.

This gives you two options. For one, you can refuse to help us. I'd be sorry to see you go: you're a really experienced patroller, and your perspective would be really valuable when designing these new tools. Indeed, without the perspectives of experienced patrollers like you, the eventual features are likely to be far less useful than they might be. Alternately, you can help us. You can say "okay, so I think this is a bad set of changes, but it's going to happen. How do I make it the least bad set of changes?" If you do this, then sure, you don't get precisely what you want, but that wasn't going to happen anyway. What you do get is a stronger role providing input into how the Foundation understands new page patrol and better-designed software to help with that work. I, at least, hope you'll join us, either in providing feedback on the existing plans or suggesting new ones as written below :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 20:31, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Since the Foundation chose to so flippantly ignored the community, I have decided to stop dealing with new articles; I know that, probably, my contribution to that area has always been negligible and that my absence won't even have been noticed so far, but, considering the WMF's arrogant approach to the issue, I felt I could no longer do NPP. And quite frankly I hope that more and more editors start doing the same. Maybe, when we have another Siegenthaler incident, you will reconsider your position. Salvio ^{Let's talk about it!} 09:48, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

You are completely free to do or not do whatever work you want, although I'm sad to see one fewer patroller. We have dedicated literally all our available features engineers to this issue; I'm sorry we couldn't do precisely what you want, but, to be blunt, we're not going to. Continuing to debate something that was settled six months ago is not going to result in a productive outcome. Providing feedback on the tools we're developing to help patrollers; that can make a difference. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 12:23, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

All this tells me is that you are unwilling to consider the most obvious solution to a problem in favour of wasting massive resources to solve a side issue. And truthfully, I think you guys are looking at this all wrong. I've been on numerous discussion boards that required new registrants to wait x time or make y posts before they were allowed to create new topics. It doesn't stop people from joining up. There is no reason why Wikipedia is different. In fact, it could be combined with your new creation workflow to force funnel new editors into what would basically become a tutorial on how this project works. Want to contribute --> want to create an article --> go through ACW --> approved new article --> Article creation user right granted, congratulations and happy editing! There is nothing remotely bitey about that. What you are doing is telling the reader you want them to contribute, and you want to help them contribute. Meanwhile page patrollers might get some of their time back to work on other articles. Resolute 14:29, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Not at all; we did consider it. Then we rejected it. Sometimes that's the outcome of considering ideas; it doesn't mean the idea is bad, or not a step in the right direction: it just means that we think there are more elegant and efficient ways of doing it. I'm afraid I don't quite get what you mean when you say "side issue"; the landing pages work to inform new editors what our expectations are and reduce cruft, and the new Special:NewPages interface makes patrolling whatever cruft gets through a lot easier, and divides the work up amongst more people. Can you explain why this is a "side issue"? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 15:13, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

(EC) Switching off page creation by newbies was never going to stop the creation of crap articles that need deletion, it would certainly have reduced it, though with what side effects we can only speculate. My betting was that the spammers would have mostly learned the rules and done the minimum needed to get the right to create articles. The kids who've just decided their new bandname and are working out who gets to play what instrument won't be stopped, they'll just be diverted from creating a new article that no-one ever reads to adding a paragraph into the article on their town, school or maybe the record they are covering. I'm not convinced that diverting such people to articles that other people read was a good idea. An article on Effortless Moon and the Ramp Alternative was never going to be noticed by anyone but the band members and the newpage patrollers, a paragraph added to the article on the University or city where it was dreamed up might be, and it wouldn't get revdeleted or even rollbacked, just reverted as undue weight, and would be sitting permanently in the edit history. So even if Actrial had gone ahead we would still have an overly simplistic newpage patrolling system that could do with major improvement. I'm keen that we get in features such as:

1. Noindex for unpatrolled articles - reduce the incentive for spammers and stop Google caching attack pages.
2. An extra colour for tagged for deletion, so patrolled no longer means ready for mainspace or deletion and declined speedies revert to unpatrolled.
3. Display [mark as patrolled] to any autoconfirmed editor who opens an unpatrolled article - so categorisors and people looking at new articles of relevance to their Wikiprojects get the opportunity to patrol articles in the queue even if they never visit special:Newpages.
4. A different colour for articles created by people who've recently had an article deleted G3 or G10 so we can prioritise looking at their latest offerings.

All of the above would be useful whether or not we had Actrial. ϢereSpielChequers 15:18, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

• Hey guys. So, at the moment we're working on two things aimed at this problem. The first is a new set of landing pages. When a new editor goes to a redlink, they'll be offered various ways to create an article. If they click the one that involves direct creation, they'll be warned that they need to have things like references, no COI and not be writing about their friend Ethan's band (that practises in their garage and has recorded, like, four whole songs! I mean, that's an entire EP!). Alternately they can simply request the article be created (at requested pages), or go through the wizard and AfC. At the same time we're working on New Page Triage; a complete redesign of the new page patrol system that will hopefully reduce the workload of patrollers, both through making it simpler to patrol and either attracting more patrollers or simply distributing the workload more evenly. If you have any ideas relating to these, or want to leave feedback on what is being designed so far, you can drop notes on the mediawiki talkpages (which our devs watch) or, if you're not comfortable with mediawiki, email me at okeyeswikimedia.org or drop me a talkpage message. Or, hey, just leave them here ;p.
• As to what other ideas would be permitted - well, it's kind of hard to rule out a negative :(. I can say with near-certainty that no immutable restrictions on the ability of new people to create articles will be permitted - something ACTRIALesque, where you set a rigid barrier to participation - but if you have other ideas, I would dearly love to hear them. I must warn you that we've pidgeonholed new page triage and the landing system in for a two month coding sprint: we don't really have much time. So if you have an idea, bear that in mind (and get it to me fast!). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 20:04, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Can the New Page Triage include a special category for pages created by non-autoconfirmed users? Because those pages are the ones most likely to have problems with neutrality, conflict of interest, or notability. New Page Patrollers should be made aware that those articles need a courteous, personalized response explaining to the new user what goes on here - as opposed to a brusque speedy-delete request two minutes after the article is created. Maybe responding to those articles should be restricted to a new category of established editors - a "New Page Welcomer" or "New Page/New User Helper" or something like that. --MelanieN (talk) 20:54, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

(sorry, restructuring just for consistency). I think that would be a fantastic addition :). We're already discussing the first element; I can't confirm it'll make it into the final design (because, at the moment, we're discussing dozens of things. I can't confirm anything will go in) but it's definitely something worth considering. On the second, it'd depend largely on if we get the first thing introduced :(. But I think the point is well made: we do need some way to treat newbies better. Whether we do this through providing better ways to oversight each patroller's actions, through a special userright, through improving or altering templates, or through any other means remains to be seen :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 21:02, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

That was actually the whole idea behind the flagged revisions and this is how flagged revisions work in other language Wikipedias: Edits (not only the page creations but all edits) made by experienced users are authomatically marked as patrolled, all other edits need attention of more experienced users. Introducing flagged revisions here seems to me at the moment as having more perspectives that convincing WMF to prohibit non-autoconfirmed users to create articles.--Ymblanter (talk) 21:28, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Good luck getting that implemented; setting aside for the moment that I think that's more exclusionary than the concept behind ACTRIAL (I'll point out that I really don't, as of now, have a position on PC; far too many walls of text to read through), it's also a very politicized issue. In reading over some of the discussion of it, some people are so set in dogmatic, idealized views that they're blindly supporting or opposing it without carefully checking the merits of it (not at all unlike healthcare issues in the US, except far less important in the grand scheme of things). The great majority of people are set in their position, convinced that theirs is The Right Way^TM, and have no intentions of compromising, and that goes for both the proponents and opponents of it. I think it will be at least another year before we, the community, can even think of having a rational discussion on it, and that will require a very structured RfC, which is something that doesn't seem to happen too much on en.wiki. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 22:00, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Flagged revisions would be nice :(. As Blade quite correctly points out, though, it's far too much of a political hot potato at the moment. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 22:18, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

• IMO we have a deletion problem at Wikipedia.  We have a deletion problem here because we have a mountain of man-hours of hard work in the form of new articles that need to be deleted.  Our admin volunteers of necessity become efficient at the task, and in doing so they of necessity become desensitized to the humans behind the deleted articles.  Destroying written work associates with other areas of the project, such as enforcement of the written policies.  I believe that the admins are joined by editors with sadistic tendencies who are attracted to Wikipedia because of the unusual culture that values destruction.  Newbies are seen as targets of opportunity, and an editor verbally roughing up a newbie is, after all, an editor on the side of destruction.  IMO this pervasive problem goes far beyond new page patrol.  Therefore, the WMF would do well to spend the one man-hour to implement the low-barrier ACTRIAL while their new-page-patrol investigation proceeds.  Unscintillating (talk) 23:52, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
  • This is an encyclopedia project, not a hand-holding therapy retreat. All this talk about alternatives to deletion to avoid hurt feelings is just ridiculous. Tarc (talk) 00:17, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
    • And if anyone has a right to complain of hurt feelings, it's the people who try to maintain a minimum standard of quality and who understand that editing means deciding what not to include as much as what to include. They get called things like bullies, elitists, snobs, evil hordes, destructive, dishonest and sadistic. They're accused of taking delight in "demolishing" people's hard work and getting their jollies out of tormenting newbies. And with no rationale whatsoever behind these accusations, just name-calling. Now consider the differences between these attacks and deleting a newbie's first article: the attacks are personal, they're lies, and they're not taken seriously by the community because the attackers get a free pass with this sort of thing. Deleting newbie articles is not meant personally, the reasons are fact-based, and the amount of handwringing and anguished wailing they inspire wouldn't seem out of place in the Book of Lamentations. If anyone has a right to feel personally attacked, and that the community hasn't got their back, it's the people who put quality first. Reyk _YO! 01:36, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
      • Tarc and Reyk, I really appreciate the quality control work. It's hard, thankless, and it has to be done. I see comments like this as the other side of the same problem-- newbies are getting demoralized, but our "quality-control" teams get just as demoralized too. We get to build Wikipedia any way we want it, and we can also build things that aren't wikipedia. Can't we find a way for poor-quality authors to write here without it being part of Wikipedia, so that you don't have to burnout playing eternal wack-a-mole? --HectorMoffet (talk) 03:34, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
        • No, we cannot because this is not a blog; legally, the WMF and its projects are a charity with a certain goal, and its charity/tax-exempt status was approved with respect to those declared goals. If wikipedia becomes "the site where anyone can write stuff without aim, quality, or stated purpose", WMF will eventually lose its legal status. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 09:47, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
          • Actually, I take it the Foundation sends those authors to Meta [5], just slap "essay" on it. Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:02, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

• I find WP:ACTRIAL rather disconcerting, that the WMF refused to implement something that received broad support of the Wikipedia community. IMO if they feel they are free to ignore us, then we the community are free to ignore them, e.g. The Foundation resolution of May 2011. Tarc (talk) 00:17, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
  • And now you found the actual problem why so many experienced users going retired: the WMF (esp in th last ~1.5 years) is introducing many new features without asking... and even when the community gets a consent, it will be either smashed down by the WMF or by the devs (see consent on the part of the "non account creation flagged users" are only able to create 2 accounts - and the bugzilla entry; in some discussions it is only of the length of the discussion). mabdul 00:53, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
    • Can you link me to that precise discussion, please? I'll take a look. I think it is unfair to claim that the experienced editor retention problem is down to the Foundation introducing new software; the data says different. I appreciate that the software work pisses people off, but it's slight hyperbole to claim it's the primary reason people are leaving. It's also a bit unfair to gloss over things like WP:AFT5, where we've been fully engaged with the community and notifying people every step of the way. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 09:30, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
• Compromise opportunity: We understand (ala WP:ACTRIAL) new article creation is difficult. WP:ACTRIAL said "Newbies, don't even try making new articles". Instead let's say: "Newbies, here's an 'draft' namespace, where we can collaboratively write without fear of quality-based deletion". Then let experienced editors transfer the useful input to main articles. --HectorMoffet (talk) 03:07, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

  That'd be WP:AFC. The line we're taking, at least, is more to replace "Newbies, don't even try making new articles" with "newbies, if you're going to try making new articles, here's what you need to have beforehand. If you don't have these things, stick it at "requested pages". Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 09:22, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

  Apart from the new editor issue, has the Foundation learned anything from the WP:ACTRIAL incident, that will hopefully prevent such disastrous miscommunication/wasted effort in the future? Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:23, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

  Sure. This might be a good direction in which to take the conversation, actually. So, things I've picked up on at the WMF:

  New Pages are a problem. Or, rather, the way new pages are dealt with and the way editors have to approach new pages. This has been bubbling away at the back of the consciousness for a long time, but ACTRIAL kicked it into overdrive; that's why the Foundation has dedicated a large chunk of resources to providing the landing page system and new page triage (as expanded upon above).

  The WMF needs to keep a closer eye on the community. Not in an Orwellian sense, but in the sense that there needs to be a greater awareness of what is being discussed so it doesn't catch the Foundation by surprise.

  The WMF needs to get better at explaining engineering decisions to the community. That's an element of my job; making sure that decisions or the lack thereof are communicated effectively, and providing an obvious port of call for people to talk to. So, if you look at WP:AFT5 and the material surrounding it, you'll see that there's been far more effort put into letting people know about the software than is the norm. That's the first project I've worked on; NPT is the second, and will hopefully incorporate lessons learnt from AFT5. I appreciate there hasn't been much communication about the specifics of NPT yet; that's mostly because we're still working out the specifics :). There's also stuff like the "enabling gadgets by default without wider discussion" issue, which I've been dealing with.

  The WMF needs to get better at involving the community in engineering decisions. Again, AFT5; editors have been fully involved all the way through development, providing feedback on the designs, evaluating the feedback left so that we know what editors think the best design is, participating in an RfC we held so editors could play a role in deciding on things like "what userrights should be able to do what with AFT5". With New Page Triage, we're going to be getting more responsive to the community than in AFT5. I'm afraid I can't provide details yet: I've written a big engagement strategy document, which should act as a breath of fresh air in this area, but I'm waiting on internal feedback until I can release it.

  The community, or big chunks of the community, no longer trusts the Foundation. That's the main outcome of ACTRIAL: people are, understandably, pissed. And if editors are angry with the WMF, editors are not going to be willing to participate in future development cycles and software choices, and this makes for crapper software; at the end of the day, everyone loses. So we need to regain trust, and we need to do this through involving the community more, through communicating our decisions better, and through showing that we care about editors. Because there's this perception that we don't: that existing editors are just a means to an end, as far as staffers are concerned. This isn't the case - as someone who as been contracted for four months, and editing for six years, I've yet to see a staffer who doesn't want to be supportive of the community - but the problem is editors and devs speak two different languages, and have two different sets of priorities. Most of the time the priorities are the same, but sometimes they drastically veer in opposite directions, and in those situations more effort needs to be put into reconciling the two viewpoints, having a way to explain the motivations of devs to editors and editors to devs, and seeing if we can find a middle ground that everyone is equally happy (or unhappy!) with. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 12:47, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. I wish you well. Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:16, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

In my efforts to make things better, or generally? Has my doctor told you something he forgot to tell me? :P. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:14, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

• Thanks for weighing in on this, everybody. I'd just like to say two things:

1. "The Foundation" is not a shadowy committee of moles living in a secret bunker under the earth. It's real live human beings like me, Oliver, Steven, Brandon, Erik, and Sue. We all spend 90% of our workday on the wikis and on #wikipedia-en on IRC, we all have talk pages that we check regularly, and you're always welcome to talk to us. Really! Honestly! It's a banner day when somebody comes to me with an idea they have, or just wants to chat about some nuance of the deletion or new article creation process they'd like to see changed. The problem is that when these discussions do happen, they're often framed as hostile jabs at "The Foundation" for not doing what the community wants. I'm not saying every comment in this thread is like that, or that every comment in every thread about ACTRIAL is like that, but you have to remember that we're all people, just like you, and when someone starts off a discussion by implying that every staff member of the Foundation is an idiot and won't listen to anything anyway, so "don't waste your breath"... well, it's less likely to be taken seriously.
2. Editor retention is a huge, complex, hairy problem, and the truth is that there's probably not any one silver bullet that's going to kill it. Our unofficial motto in the office, shamelessly stolen from Samuel Beckett, is: fail better. You can spend all your time and energy planning out one idea and then be crushed when it fails, or you can shake it off and move on to the next idea. All of us in the office have at one time or another uttered the words, "man, if only we could do this one thing, I bet we'd fix everything on Wikipedia!" but for one reason or another, whether it's technical or social, that one thing probably won't happen. Trust me, we all know that feeling very well, and we all know how much it sucks to feel powerless. But getting angry and quitting is not the solution. The solution is to find ten other things you can do, do them, and then do ten more.

Apologies if I sound exasperated, but I'm tired of conversations that split us off into "the community" and "The Foundation," as if those entities don't overlap and aren't all working really hard toward the same goal. Maryana (WMF) (talk) 21:35, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

For my part, I hate to see one of our best users at the point where he feels he has to step back from en.wiki affairs after cleaning up from a series of preventable disasters. As I'm neither omnipotent nor capable of mind-reading, I don't know how much he was actually listened to, but it certainly didn't seem to him like it was much. His frustrations largely match up with my own, as we've worked together for considerable lengths of unpaid time to resolve some of these issues; if you're not already aware, I can elucidate our (as well as other users, i.e. WereSpielChequers and Scottywong) take on the NPP survey. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 22:45, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure if Kudpung's reasons for stepping out were related to the NPP and IEP issues or not. If you want to drop me an email, I'm happy to listen to your concerns, or have a skype call with you if you want to run through them properly. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 23:55, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

My perspective on this survey would in some ways be different to Kudpung's. He was in that clear majority of the community that supported the Actrial idea, I was in the sizeable minority that opposed it. However one thing that we could agree on was that there were other changes that could be made to the newpage patrol process, and that many of them would be less contentious than stopping newbies from creating articles. In fact many of the ideas we chewed over would be useful even if we do at some point stop newbies creating articles. The survey idea was originally Kudpung's, I made some suggestions re questions though I'm not sure much that I suggested reached the final version. It is ironic that a survey requested by a supporter of Actrial should provoke a response so focussed on that issue. I think it is a positive that the Foundation are planning to invest in improving that aspect of the site, I worry as to the extent that the development will actually be influenced by the community as opposed to the Foundation. The discussion at http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:New_Page_Patrol_Zoom_Interface (warning it uses that rather unfortunate liquid thread system) seems a little stale and we don't know what is in or out; Even uncontentious ideas such as making unpatrolled articles NoIndex to remove the incentives for spammers and stop Google caching attack pages. I hope that Zoom winds up working well, and incorporates enough of the suggested improvements to be a better patrolling tool.

On a broader note, the focus of the Foundation on readers and neglect of the editing community, combined with the policy of treating the English Language Wikipedia as the guinea pig risks doing great damage to the editing community on this wiki. In particular the imposing of new initiatives here without first getting the consensus that would be sought on other wikis is something I find troubling. It is one of the major reasons why nowadays I'm more active on Commons than here. Improving the interface so as to make the site easier to use and enabling editors to get more done in the same time is an obvious way to keep people active. Commons has the advantage of having major recent improvements in Cat-a-lot. Wikipedia needs a similar initiative in tools that are important here, obviously it would be preferable and much more efficient if it was a community based initiative. But a Foundation based one could work, provided it focuses on delivering things that the community here wants written. ϢereSpielChequers 00:09, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

If you read my above comments you'll see that getting editors more involved in engagement over NPT is a priority, moving forward. Improving the interface is a big priority - the reason there isn't any big movement at the moment is (appropriately enough) that everyone not involved in the visual editor is tied up in new page triage. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 00:23, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

I haven't been active at that page for a while, its good that we eventually won the argument not to default to the back of the queue and leave attack pages up for days. But the current page isn't looking very promising despite the survey and the talkpage discussions. At the heart of it is the page patroller right which I'm personally ambivalent about and which the majority in the survey were opposed to. ϢereSpielChequers 08:02, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Sure. So, let me elucidate a bit; while the discussions on the talkpage at MW will be taken into account, the eventual release - that is, the basic framework we come up with for proper community discussion - may not look anything like this one. We're in a series of rather grueling meetings to work out what to do; some people think the basic methodology of patrolling needs tweaking, and we should tweak that. Some people think that making substantial methodological tweaks will cause a low rate of uptake from experienced patrollers, and so we should go with something closer to (but better than) what we've got at the moment. We'll work it out soon, but it's currently sucking in a large chunk of time and means that you can't take what's written on that page as concrete (it's also why being told that I neither care about nor are working for the benefit of patrollers makes me reach for high-calibre weaponry). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 08:46, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

While that is somewhat reassuring as I'm really not keen on Zoom as currently detailed, it does make it rather difficult to engage with the design process. First we have a discussion on mediawiki rather than here, then we're told not to worry about what has been said as there as the real decisions are being taken off wiki by staff at the WMF. My view on this is that we are much more likely to get a useful improvement to the system if the community is somehow part of that dialogue. Kudpung, myself and others have put a lot of time into this over the last year, I think we've nipped in the bud bright ideas such as leaving attack pages up for weeks by making everyone patrol at the back of the queue. But judging from experience so far, we really need to have several patrollers in the discussion at this stage. I don't dispute that you've done a humongous amount of patrolling, probably tens of thousand more articles than me. But this is a classic crowdsourcing exercise - different people approach NPP from very different angles. For example, you have been known to plough through screen after screen of the backlog, I'm very selective and might only open one in ten articles (but if I'm at the front of the queue that will include most of the attack pages). The current design for Zoom, at least as far as we can see on Mediawiki, assumes that people will plough through the whole of each batch that they select; That might suit you, but it doesn't work for me. How do you intend to feed those gruelling meetings back to the community, are you going to run an RFC on the list of features that will and won't be in the product? I've enough experience of developers to accept that sometimes things aren't practical or can be coded for, but even after that there are going to be major decisions made in the design of Zoom and I'm not seeing how the community can influence them ϢereSpielChequers 14:11, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Okay, it seems I'm not explaining myself clearly. We are not having gruelling meetings over the list of features; we are having meetings over the basic methodology and premise of New Page Patrol. There are currently two "camps"; one group wants to go for something similar to the current format. This is because we need to produce software that existing patrollers are comfortable with - although software that still allows for the training of new patrollers, and software that is far more intuitive and self-explanatory than the current format. The big advantages here are that, as mentioned, it's more useful for and useable by existing patrollers, and it is an excellent way to involve the community and show that, actually, we do care. The alternative is something that alters the basic methodology behind new page patrol. The advantage of this is that we can alter practises to work with what is most efficient and all-encompassing, rather than having practises that were brought about because of the features of the current format (or the lack of such features). The disadvantage is that this has a high barrier to entry for existing patrollers, who not only have to learn new ways of working but have to unlearn old ones, and is (quite understandably) likely to infuriate a lot of our editors: hardly the best start for a consultation process. But that's the basic question we're trying to work out here; do we completely reimagine New Page Patrol from the ground up, risking the alienation of existing contributors in the hope that people will fill the gap, or do we work to adapt the software properly to what it is currently being used for (with changes aimed at increasing participation in patrolling) and wait until things are in a more stable situation before altering the methodology.

Because we're working on that very basic and important question, we're not in a situation where we can decide on specific features. When we are, the floodgates open; I'll be releasing an engagement strategy soon (as repeatedly mentioned) that aims to include editors as much as is humanely possible: at the moment, though, we're not at that stage. This is the only question that is being handled exclusively "off wiki by staff at the WMF"; it is not practical to open it up to the entire patrolling community. Let me be clear; I was not hired by the Foundation because I'm a new page patroller, nor is my role to allow them to concentrate all their needs for editor consultation into one 5 foot 7 package. Every time I give an opinion on this software, I point out I could be an edge case. When we talk about including a group of patrollers; we're doing that. When it comes to working out who patrols in what fashion, we've got a load of screencasts and interviews that highlight a range of different ways people work at the moment. And, when we come to a situation where we're not just presenting the community with a blank sheet of paper - where we actually have something to say - everyone can participate. As soon as the staffers clear it, I'll be releasing a full engagement strategy on the subject.

I appreciate the enthusiasm people here have for change, and I appreciate that it must be frustrating not knowing all the details. Heck, at this stage, I don't even know all the details. But I would appreciate it if people assumed good faith. We aren't being non-specific because we're making all the decisions in a secret cavern in California illuminated by burning brimstone. We're being non-specific because we haven't worked out the general plan yet - and because when it comes to the specifics, we want to ask all the patrollers. Not just me, not just a select group; everyone who is willing to participate. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 15:10, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

OK that is partially reassuring, but currently the Mediawiki page that you referred us to earlier in this thread reflects a whole different reality. May I suggest that you update it to reflect where we actually are in the development cycle? ϢereSpielChequers 15:23, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

I've got a meeting with Howie tomorrow morning to talk about just that - and also to beg for an actual timetable we can put up somewhere :P. I appreciate how annoying it must be to hear answers like "it's coming!...soon...ish...and we don't quite know what it'll look like". Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 15:28, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Just to comment on one thing you said above, in summarizing what WMF has learned (and BTW I really appreciate your taking all this time to discuss things here): You said one of the things WMF has learned is "New Pages are a problem. Or, rather, the way new pages are dealt with and the way editors have to approach new pages." Has WMF not learned that New pages are a problem in themselves - it's not just about the way we approach them? I saw a statistic that 80% of new pages wind up getting deleted in one way or another. If that statistic is accurate, it should be clear that there is something very wrong with a system that allows unlimited creation of new pages, then deletes 80% of them. --MelanieN (talk) 16:12, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

"80 percent of those created by newbies who have no idea what they're doing" is the correct stat. And yes, this is a problem - but it's a problem that we think we can solve with weaker restrictions than ACTRIAL; see the new landing page system, mentioned above. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:45, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Is it 80% of ALL new pages (that was the stat I saw), or 80% of new pages from non-autoconfirmed users, that are getting deleted? Just so I'll have my facts straight. --MelanieN (talk) 17:30, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

The latter; if it was the former we'd be in real trouble :). As it happens, newbies product a tiny minority of the pages actually created. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:49, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

When ScottyWong measured the fate of articles created by non-autoconfirmed newbies in putting the case for Actrial it was 27% kept, 72% deleted or redirected. Some people have rounded that up to 80% or even from the fraction 0.72 to 1, others have extrapolated it from newbies to all new page creators. Of course an unknown but hopefully small proportion of the deletions are incorrect, but I'd concede that at least two thirds of the articles created by newbies merit deletion under our policies. What I'm not sure of is the comparable figure for edits to existing articles. Newbies do tend to make newbie mistakes, and a large and growing minority of newbies make the sort of badfaith errors that imply they won't belong here. But 27% false positives is a price we would normally regard as unacceptable. If a rollbacker was only getting it 73% right we'd take Rollback off them, if a bot had 27% false positives we would deflag it. A better system would be something that more gently guided errant newbies without losing the good edits. For example a large proportion of newbies are from the copypaste generation and need to be taught that writing your own words is not the same as copying from other websites. Currently we do this laboriously and painfully by bots checking after the event, and people sweeping up after the bots. But that is a design from a different internet era. What we should have today is an edit filter that incorporates the search that corensearchbot does, so if someone clicks save on a paragraph of new text the system can spot that this is a straight copy of foo.com and explain to the newbie why we don't do that. I think that would be less bitey for the nebies who do need to be taught about Copyvio, and much less bitey for those newbies who submit valid articles. ϢereSpielChequers 17:53, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm troubled to hear that you're having a debate deciding between an interface that supported the current patrollers workflow or an overall redesign. If we have learned something in 30 years of computing-for-the-masses, it is that an interface that infuriates its current users should never be considered as an option (at least in software services, where the user can't decide to keep using an older version). If you think there's a possible design that would provide a more efficient and encompassing workflow, the sane way to implement it and the only one endorsed by usability experts is to "introduce big changes in small increments, so that an overall redesign can be achieved without breaking consistency at any single step". I hope you comment this idea to both "camps" an it helps settle the debate. This is a winning strategy; both goals can be achieved, but it must be done one at a time. Diego (talk) 16:20, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

That's my proposed way forward too. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:45, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

And how is it faring? :-) Of course my comment above is not informed on how the discussion is actually proceeding, so forgive me if I stated something obvious. But that someone suggested throwing out the current workflow when it's actively being used by experienced patrollers didn't sound well. Diego (talk) 17:53, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

I've got two meetings Tuesday, one on Wednesday and one on Thursday (plus numerous emails flurrying back and forth) to work out what'll happen. At the moment we're firmly in Too Soon to Tell Territory. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:06, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

HectorMoffet, the shoe is on the other foot, now.

You say that you have limited time. Go to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Fair-Value Accounting's Role in the Subprime Mortgage Crisis. As someone with such limited time, would you write "Delete: Essay." there and never look back, because it's easy and quick and doesn't involve researching a subject to see whether it is encyclopaedic? Or would you actually practice yourself what you are asking other people to do? Yes, it's hard to do what you say other people should do. I've been practicing what I preach at AFD for a long time, and I can assure you that it takes time and effort to do things properly. I expended time and effort in that very case reading the article and its edit history, and finding and citing all of those sources that weren't handed to me on a platter. I'd have done one of my infamous "Kerrrzappp!"s if I'd had more time, but my time is finite, too, so all (sic) that other collaborating editors have are a set of correctly formatted citations, in the wikitext of the discussion right there ready to use.

AFD works very well when multiple editors all take the time and effort, double-checking one another to cover for blind spots. And it makes its most egregious mistakes when multiple editors just sheep vote and don't bother at all to do any research of their own (or even read the article at hand in some cases that I could mention). The way to ensure that it doesn't make these mistakes is to push back against the sheep voting, the research-free rationales, the Google hits counting, the drive-by participation, and the other sillinesses. Are you willing to do that by doing things properly?

Editor retention is a complex affair, and blaming it upon notability is to fall into the trap that everything at Wikipedia is about AFD. A lot of the editor retention problems have nothing to do with AFD or even New Page Patrol. There's drive-by tagging with no explanation, for example. Or ridiculous MOS warriors. Or people who don't keep citations linked to the text that they support when inserting new stuff or paragraphing. Or the continual dulling of the senses that comes from having to combat sockpuppetry for years. Or the problem editors who cannot actually write, and so substitute stealing copyrighted work from other people wholesale. Or the fact that Wikipedia is the encyclopaedia that anyone can write the word "penis" into. …

Uncle G (talk) 00:48, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

• I appreciate greatly the invitation to become an AFD participant myself, thank you Uncle G for extending it.

  I believe the problem I raised has to be solved institutionally. We shouldn't just harass our admins for not doing enough handholding over and over-- we need to actually make their jobs easier. Instead of handling the same problem over and over, we need to build a better solution, so writers can just write, alone or together, without getting overwhelmed by deletion fears.

  Then, when we do AFD, the stakes aren't so high. Delete my work, I hate it. Send it back to draft space so it's still accessible to others, I'd probably appreciate the editorial feedback.

  Quality vs Quantity is a false dichotomy. We can have a "junkyard" full and full of good-faith but poor-quality writing, so long it's clear it's junk, not Wikipedia. --HectorMoffet (talk) 03:26, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

  • As I said, it's not solely deletion fears that is at the root of the editor retention problem. The incompetent writers overwhelming the compentent writers is a complaint that I've heard a lot, far more than any complaint about AFD. I've even hit it myself, most recently at Swiss cheese model.

    I rescued that article from deletion in 2007. Someone else came along, decided that it should be morphed into an article about something else, renamed it, progressively section blanked it, and ended up with the abysmal article — with less than half the verifiable material than there was, none of the further reading and clear scope for expansion, and still about the one subject rather than the broader scope that was promised — that can now be seen at Organizational models of accidents. As you can see, in five years the editors who promised something better only managed to make something worse, instead.

    Another thing: Remember that some ideas have been tried and have failed. We tried the model of articles only entering the encyclopaedia when they had been reviewed with Nupedia. It failed. Citizendium initially had the idea of zapping and starting afresh badly written articles that languished perpetually without any hope of reaching approval. According to its deletion log at any rate, the Citizendium people have given up on that idea. (The last deletion on those grounds was this one in October 2011 and the one before that was in April 2011.)

    The model that we have now, with Wikipedia, is where — yes — we have poor quality articles in the encyclopaedia proper. It has demonstrably worked, even if atrociously slowly. (Witness North Asia (AfD discussion). It took five years for us to remember to write more than a sentence about a significant fraction of the planet.) However, it means that the overwhelming majority of Wikipedia is stubs and badly written stuff — the junk that you talk about. Push that out of the main namespace, and there'll be very little left. Uncle G (talk) 08:57, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

If you think the status quo is sustainable, perhaps that's okay then.

I stand back and I see one stream of energetic but novice editors meeting up with another stream of energetic quality-control editors. When the two meet, their collective energy gets wasted working against each other. It's inefficient, I think it's unsustainable. We can do better. --HectorMoffet (talk) 09:10, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

• Uncle G:I sympathize with experienced people that think their good writing is messed up by others but really, this is a wiki, they should know what that means. Alanscottwalker (talk) 11:53, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Confused

I am confused! I do not often get involved with this process so I may have misunderstood something or there is guidance to explain the steps that I think were taken.

HectorMoffet, I had a look your talk page and picked a couple of the articles listed there:

1. Proposed deletion of Larry Reid (councilmember) (history)
2. Proposed deletion of Libby Schaaf (history)

You created both articles and in both cases someone nominated them for deletion using the {{Proposed deletion/dated}} template and then someone else removed that template and hence the nomination for deletion. Why in both cases did you put the template back (albeit with other concern)?Larry Reid (councilmember) 12:58, 24 February 2012 HectorMoffet and Libby Schaaf 12:54, 24 February 2012‎ HectorMoffet Does the template not say: "If this template is removed, it should not be replaced"?

Have I made a mistake in understanding the history of the articles and the actions taken? Please explain what happened. -- PBS (talk) 02:45, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

When I realized I was out of touch with community standards, I wanted others to glance over my work and see what else needed deleting. Some of the articles were on subjects less notable than another article that appears to be non-notable, so I figured some other article are probably non-notable too. So, I just put templates up, just asking for doublechecks to bring all my contribution back in line with the community's standards. (Standards which I disagree with, of course, but that's what community is all about). --HectorMoffet (talk) 03:11, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

I removed both of the Prods. An article can only be Prodded once. Since both articles had Prods and then were removed they are ineligible to prodded again. GB fan 03:26, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

If you want them deleted you can put {{db-g7}} on them. That is a deletion request by the original and only significant author which you qualify on both. GB fan 03:30, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

No no, I don't 'want' anything legal deleted, just wanted to make sure I helped clean up any potential mess. :) Thanks for helping out! -HectorMoffet (talk) 03:38, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

HectorMoffet please check the other articles that you were notified were subject to {{Proposed deletion/dated}} templates and make sure that you have not put the template {{Proposed deletion/dated}} back onto any of them. These templates are part of a process that sits between speedy deletion and an AfD and the process is explained in detail in Wikipedia:Proposed deletion. Perhaps when you have read it you will be able to reconsider if these templates are part of a process that is as demoralising as you initially thought they were. -- PBS (talk) 04:57, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Tomorrow at work Tomorrow at work, take a close look at the type of people who work around you. I have been at the same job with around 100 employees for the past seven years and it is striking how the management has shaped the way the business runs. Every step of the organization is influenced most by the head manager of our organization, every step: who is hired, the atmosphere of the job, what ideas are fostered, and what ideas are disregarded. Our head manager is quiet and soft-spoken, and a little awkward socially. Almost without exception our entire staff is like him. What is even more fascinating is his assistant managers are both in the exact same office, but their groups they manage are subtly different similar to the assistant manager over them.

Jim Wales is the problem Every organization has a company culture which defines the atmosphere of the group. Jim Wales, and by Wikipedia extension Wikipedia, has continued to build a company culture that many media outlets have basically called "bullying". Sure there are exceptions, a couple come to mind, moderate editors who support editor retention who are administrators, but the general trend, the overall trend is that those who have little respect for other editors work excel on wikipedia. Wales rewards and supports these caustic editors. I can't see an extremely vocal supporter of editor retention ever becoming an admin, yet extremely bullying editors become admins here all the time, and the rate is accelerating. As a result of this caustic company culture, contributions will continue to drop. Okip 22:59, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Obscured sigs

What do we make of user sigs which use 'leet' or other obfuscation (for example changing ls to 1s or Os to 0s), making it difficult to search for the user's contributions on busy talk pages? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:11, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Use of leet in usernames is part of a user's personal expression. You can use copy-paste to put it in your Find box. Dcoetzee 03:20, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

WP:SIG nutshells "Please sign your posts on talk pages, using ~~~~. Keep the coding of your signature short, do not make the signature too large and ensure that the end result is easily readable by virtually everybody." It's nice to have a brief discussion about a simple guideline that everybody should be able to agree with. ;-) --Hjal (talk) 05:16, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Quite, Do we think leet sigs comply with that? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:51, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

We're here to build an encyclopedia, not express our personality; the latter should not stand in the way of the former. Copy & paste requires first finding an example of the sig... Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:51, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

I think the usability issues are minor. Many people consider the specific leet spelling of their name to be the actual name of their esablished online persona, distinguishing them from similarly named people. In the notable scifi work Snow Crash, there was a character named "Da5id" who was referred to as such consistently throughout the work and in critical analyses. He is not "David". That said, I really think sigs should match usernames, regardless of whether the usernames use leetspeak or not. Dcoetzee 22:48, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

What about the other way around? ^_^ —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 12:13, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Fixed. ^^ —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 10:06, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

People are allowed to make stupid and childish looking signatures. As long as they are more or less readable, I see no problem in them. As stated above: a personal expression. Night of the Big Wind _talk 16:04, 25 February 2012 (UTC) hmmm, do I see a non-standard sig there?

Because people are allowed to be stupid and childish (if it is that) does not mean they should be encouraged or coddled to be. Alanscottwalker (talk) 22:39, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Talk page

Wouldn't it be more convenient if we made our talk page and whatnot subpages?

[[File:Wink.jpg]] (talk)

P.S. You can sign with ~~~ now!!!!

Well that three tilde just means no date. And reading your sig I can't easily tell its from Walex03. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 11:02, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

I changed my sig. But anyway, can you talk to me about that? I'll be signing with ~~~~ if I'm putting down a date.

The #1 Awesome Guy ;) (talk) 22:28, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

If I understand your original query you are suggesting that your talk will be User:Walex03/talk. This would be difficult for the links on the user page and contributions that links to user talk:Walex03. This is actually a media wiki name space, and has options in search pages, so if you make talk a sub page you would remove it from the search and linking features, and many people would still post to your user talk page instead of your user .../talk page. Can you see any advantage to it? Graeme Bartlett (talk) 09:33, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Time for a policy on tagging?

It's been clear to me for some time that dispute tags (by which I mean {{POV}} and friends) are frequently misused as a means of protesting against a decision with which editors might disagree, or otherwise 'warning' the reader. Many, many times I've seen tags hastily applied with no explanation, making them entirely useless to anyone who might be able to help. Incredibly, I've recently seen editors arguing that the existence of any NPOV-related discussion on an article's talk page would justify a tag (which would, in effect, imply that many articles should be permanently tagged). I don't wish to imply that tags are necessarily bad — they can be used well and effectively — but better guidance seems badly needed. WP:DRIVEBY contains some good, and some bad, guidance, but it isn't policy. The documentation at {{POV}} contains some good, but sadly too brief, discussion.

I believe that we need a policy (or, perhaps more realistically, a guideline), documenting among other things:

• When it is (and isn't) appropriate to use these tags
• What their purpose is, and how long they are expected to be present
• What information needs to be provided on the talk page, in order to help editors determine how to resolve the issues, and indeed whether they've been resolved
• Some guidance about unresolvable issues (eg., those that are mere misunderstandings of policy rather than violations)

I had thought about drafting something, but I thought it best to get a feel for community feeling first. Thoughts? Jakew (talk) 18:54, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

I think it's a larger issue than that! Besides POV, I often find myself re-dating and/or removing Unreferenced (those that tag an article rarely bother to add a References section with {{reflist}}, which is a great way to annoy and confuse novice editors since most of them don't know how to cite inline, much less create the section for it), Merge (shocking how many merges never get... merge discussions), Notability & Disputed (same reason as Merge), and others with less frequency such as Cleanup or Copy Edit. My rule of thumb is that if the tag is more than a month old and the editor that added it didn't bother to write any guidance on the article's talk page as to why he tagged it, it goes unless it's obvious why it's there. Best, Markvs88 (talk) 23:27, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

UPDATE: there is a wikiproject starting up to clean up the merge tag backlog, which now stands at about 3 years. Feel free to join up! Perhaps after it is established this project can evolve to target the other tags as well... Best, Markvs88 (talk) 18:58, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

• The project has now been started, so you can go directly to Wikipedia:WikiProject Merge if you want to sign up (the more the merrier!). Quasihuman | Talk 20:06, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

And what annoys me is seeing the big orphan tagging on top. I want to read the text of the article, not a bunch of warnings. It would help if those top tagging were less intrusive, some perhaps could just add to a hidden category. Though I feel that we are getting a lot of bureaucracy and too many pages of instructions and policies and guidelines. However it would be good to have helpful text on the topic for those that do want to read it. I don't imagine drive by taggers to want to put a huge effort into knowing how they should be used correctly though. A warrior over POV will still be a warrior even if they are told not to use a POV tag as a weapon. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:40, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

I have run into the exact same problems as both Jakew; using tags as weapons/scarlet letters/badges of shame, insisting they have to stay on the article effectively forever until they get their way. I've also run into the problem mentioned by Markvs88, people insisting they can stick a "merge" tag on an article but don't need to open a discussion about the merge: in this current discussion a user objects to having to do so, despite my explanations. Jayjg ^(talk) 17:45, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Additionally, there is no need to put most of these cleanup tags on stubs at all because the fact that its a stub is enough to say that the article needs cleanup, expanded, copyedit, etc. Some such as Unreferenced and Disputed are ok though. With all that said, unless someone is willing to stand up and say that some of these arguments like not opening a proper merge discussion rather than just slapping a tag on it is not appropriate and has the support of the community there is little point in arguing it. It often seems that we have policies only when we choose and not when the editor that does it is an Admin, well liked, etc. If we can start evenly enforcing some of our policies things will work themselves out. --Kumioko (talk) 20:34, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Cleanup is different from stub in my opinion. Stub means it needs material added, cleanup means that was is there needs work (copyedit, layout, etc.) However it is odd that a stub need cleanup because there is so little there that it is easy to cleanup, usually. RJFJR (talk) 17:51, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

I ran into this problem recently with an editor who was doing a lot of drive-by tagging. He then started to go back and delete chunks of text simply because they were unreferenced, even though in one case the article was already very well referenced and the remaining unreferenced sections were uncontroversial. I discovered that there is an essay on tagging at Wikipedia:Tagging pages for problems but was surprised to find that there was no official policy. Perhaps this could be used as a basis for a policy. I think it would be helpful to have some agreement, especially in terms of the length of time that tags should stay in place before actions such as merges can be done and when it is acceptable to remove unnecessary tags. It seems silly to me to add lots of tags and templates about a lack of references to stub and start articles. Dahliarose (talk) 18:00, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

As some food for thought, consider that the purpose of these tags in mainspace is to encourage our readers to become editors, and should absolutely not be a replacement for editor-to-editor communication of problems on a talk page. They should be carefully used to highlight overarching problems with articles that we can anticipate that an interested reader should be able to fix anonymously (if they so desire).

As such, we should not be placing these when only a small portion of an article is a problem (for example if the article is well sourced except one section, the {{Unreferenced section}} should be added at the right point rather than at the top via {{Unreferenced}}.

Thus, there are some of these that should never be on the main page but placed on a talk page for the article. For example, {{Citation style}} - consistent citation style is important, yes, but I don't expect the non-registered reader to know how to fix this immediately.

My opinion: I'd think all these tags would be better on the talk of the affected article, but I would like to see one unified header tag that has specific callouts for specific problems that we can expect inexperienced readers to possibly help to fix, with language to encourage them to fix it. Section-specific and line-specific (eg {{cn}}) tags are still fine when they are fine-pointing problems, but its better to advise the help for probably that don't require a lot of en.wiki policy/guideline/mos understanding to fix, leaving that message to the actual editors on the talk page. --MASEM (t) 18:29, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Stand-alone lists no longer marked as a guideline

Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Stand-alone lists (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been edited so that it is no longer marked as a guideline. It was previously marked as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Discussion for shortening the length of PUF

There is currently a discussion going on for shortening the length of time for PUF from 14 to 7 days. It is at Wikipedia talk:Possibly unfree files#Proposal to shorten discussion time. Magog the Ogre (talk) 20:33, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

WP:NOTCENSORED

During my time editing I've seen the WP:NOTCENSORED policy thrown around several times, and as best I can remember it's almost always to push some sort of an agenda or circumvent some other policy. For instance, I've seen it used to insert pictures of nude people in articles that don't necessarily need pictures of nude people ([6]). While I agree with the policy itself, I think it's often abused or misunderstood, and I was wondering if anybody else has thoughts on this, or potential remedies. The policy curently states: "'being objectionable' is generally not sufficient grounds for removal or inclusion of content" but perhaps that's not strong enough... Perhaps that sentence could be expanded slightly, or maybe specific examples (such as the nudity one) could be added. Thoughts? ~Adjwilley (talk) 21:56, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Inserting specific examples/cases into a disputed policy is a bad idea, because it leads to wiklawyering. A general corollary is needed instead, stating that NOTCENSORED is not, in and of itself, a reason for including anything, and that a discussions of controversial material need to focus on the value they add to the article when compared to other less controversial material or to not including any material at all. (Principle of least astonishment is not that corollary because it's poorly worded and poorly focused). Sven Manguard Wha? 22:18, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Your first part is already there: "'being objectionable' is generally not sufficient grounds for removal or inclusion of content". Beyond that, what qualifies as "more" or "less" controversial is a point of view, and a very subjective one at that. Resolute 22:23, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

I think you're looking for WP:GRATUITOUS. It is actually linked from NOTCENSORED, or at least it was last time I checked. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 00:01, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

What WP:NOTCENSORED is supposed to mean is that we don't remove pictures solely on the grounds that they have naked bits in them or might offend some group of readers in some other way, and similarly we don't (for example) replace words like "fuck" with "f---" in quotations, simply because people also find them offensive. On the other hand, why I more commonly see it used for is to insist that any and all information must go into an article, because a specific editor thinks it's really important, regardless of other policies like WP:UNDUE etc. Jayjg ^(talk) 00:45, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for the responses. I have also seen NOTCENSORED used to fight policies like WP:UNDUE by editors with some factoid or agenda they want to promote. I'd never seen the WP:GRATUITOUS policy before, and that was very helpful. Thank you! ~Adjwilley (talk) 03:47, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

The basic test that any addition to an article need to pass is if it enhance the readers understanding of the article subject. When suggestions is made to replace a objectionable image, the replacement need to proved the same amount and quality of information, or the edit fails that basic test. When this happens, I tend to often hear the cry that the article scares away potential readers and thus we should accept a less informative image for the benefit of more readers. Thus for me, NOTCENSURED is the active choice not to accept sub-optimal information in favor of more potential readers. The question should thus not be "do we need a nude picture in the lead", but rather, it should be "does the nude picture in the lead provide more and better information than the alternative image". Belorn (talk) 21:26, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Well, there's also the case of "do we need an image so badly that we'll accept one that's 'offensive'", where it seems that the answer is often "of course". Mangoe (talk) 21:56, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

If the image enhance the readers understanding of the article subject, then of course it should be added. Doing anything else would go against everything I described above. Looking at the pregnancy article example, the issue there is fairly simply. The nude image would be more informative if the lead was focusing on the outside physical changes of the female body. Since the lead is not focused around that, the nude image would only add undue/distracting information in the lead space. The more suited placed for it is thus in the relevant section further down in the article. The question of the "offensive" nature of nudity does not impact that decision, and that is in my view how it should be. Belorn (talk) 22:26, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Lead images need a different type of care than anywhere else on a page. It is an unavoidable image that appears when you look up a page, so it has the most potential of "shock value" if it is anything more explicit than it needs to be. It is also an image that we are consciously putting forth as a visual association of the topic in question. Now, this doesn't mean that we have to change lead images on pages like "penis" because if you are searching or clicking a link to this page, you better have some idea what you're getting at (per our standard disclaimers). But with something like "Pregnancy" the question of a use of a nude image as the lead image is one that we should recognize is not appropriate since a clothed woman in her late term is clearly just as good a visual association and has no shock value. This doesn't mean that later the nude picture of a woman can't be used in the article, because it is educational to see unburdened the changes a woman's body goes through as a result. But it doesn't need to be "front and center" on the initial sight of the page about pregnancy nor as the visual association with the word.

Basically, the lead image is a unique case where NOTCENSORED needs to be curtailed to some extent simply due to its placement on the initial page load and its use for topic association. --MASEM (t) 23:03, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Hello.

I have noticed that Wikipedia has or has never had a Wikipedia policy or guideline about newcomers. In an attempt to create the page, I kept it in my sandbox. The page is a stub, I even put the stub label on it. So the link to the page is here and I hope I can review it over with someone on my talk page.

The #1 Awesome Guy ;) (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 22:25, 26 February 2012 (UTC).

Try Wikipedia:Introduction. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 00:53, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

See also the fairly new Wikipedia:Teahouse, which is designed as a more welcoming, friendly way to introduce Wikipedia to new users. --Jayron32 19:02, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

COI RfC

Now live at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/COI. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 00:55, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Use and abuse of transclusion?

I have a general concern over uses of transclusion that are opaque and make general editing unnecessarily frustrating for individuals.

One of the real strengths of the wikimedia software is that the markup language it supplies is supplies is very, very simple. It is much simpler than troff, or sgml. It is so simple the basics can be explained to someone in a single session.

Currently, however, transclusion is not well supported. If not used carefully transclusion can produce opaque and frustrating situations where the standard mechanisms for editing pages fail. They fail in ways that are extremely frustrating and erode the project's general expectation of simplicity.

Today I encountered Template:cathead patrol vessels of, which, incorrectly, assumes all patrol vessels are naval vessels, when some are fishery patrol vessels, customs patrol vessels, environmental patrol vessels, constabulary patrol vessels -- ie non-naval vessels.

I tried to fix Category:Patrol vessels of South Africa, using hotcat -- and couldn't at first, because the errant categories were being transcluded into the category.

At the risk of jumping ahead I will state how I would like the WMF software to support transclusion. Currently, when we want to edit an article, image description, category, we look for the edit button next to the closest subsection heading, and click on it. That isn't always convenient. If that edit button is to a high level heading, followed by some lower level headings, the whole shooting match gets included into a single editing box.

I would like the WMF software to support an alternate way of selecting the text to edit. I'd like to be able to sweep my mouse across a section of the screen, selecting it, and then indicate I wanted to edit just the text that rendered into the stuff I selected. And, importantly, if the text I selected made use of transclusion, I'd like the WMF editing software to show me the text of what was being transcluded, or to allow me multiple editing boxes, so I could edit what was being transcluded.

Way back in 2007 I tried to use transclusion in article space. An administrator surprised me by closing a deletion discussion over a template I created in a naive attempt to include an image with the same caption in all the articles where it was used. The administrator was patient, and offered solid reasons not offered in the discussion as to why the use I made of transclusion was problematic. They convinced me, and I went and fixed the other template I had naively created to include another image. created, which represented exactly the same problem.

Another contributor, who continued to see value in the use I had naively tried to make of transclusion created some templates of his own. In doing so he exposed further weaknesses to this approach. His templates included a section heading, and a paragraph of text.

The section heading he transcluded added a considerable burden to editors. Although I understood what was going on, it was a burden for me. It was a level 2 heading, and it made editing text that followed the transcluded paragraph very difficult. One had to edit the section prior to transcluded heading.

Eventually he learned enough about the interaction between the wikimedia markup language, and html, that he could add a second edit button.

I didn't use his template, although I recognized how useful it was to those who knew how it worked. But since practically no one would recognize the implication of this use of transclusion it should not be used until the WMF software has a clear simple way to edit both the non-transcluded text and the transcluded text.

Similarly I would question whether invisible templates should ever transclude categories, because of its opacity.

Templates that transclude a nav-box and a category of categories are a separate issue.

The kind of transclusions I have discussed here are possible. I think we need to discuss whether they are a good idea.

Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 19:48, 27 February 2012 (UTC)