Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)

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The idea lab section of the village pump is a place where new ideas or suggestions on general Wikipedia issues can be incubated, for later submission for consensus discussion at Village pump (proposals). Try to be creative and positive when commenting on ideas.
Before creating a new section, please note:

• Discussions of technical issues belong at Village pump (technical).
• Discussions of policy belong at Village pump (policy).
• If you're ready to make a concrete proposal and determine whether it has consensus, go to the Village pump (proposals). Proposals worked out here can be brought there.

Before commenting, note:

• This page is not for consensus polling. Stalwart "Oppose" and "Support" comments generally have no place here. Instead, discuss ideas and suggest variations on them.
• Wondering whether someone already had this idea? Search the archives below, and look through Wikipedia:Perennial proposals.

Discussions are automatically archived after remaining inactive for two weeks.

« Archives, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56

Report :Do proposal discussion Editors match Active Editor Demographics

The Wikipedia:Wikipedianscommunity proposal consensus is only true consensus if it has involvement of all demographics in terms of years experience,and diversity. Not as a percentage, but least as a voice to explain different views. The Wikipedia foundation board is thinking of expanding to reflect diversity, but we don't know whether our consensus is being dominated by one group

A way of doing this would be to have reports that

• Compare between proposal editors and Active Editors. the years of active editing, diversity, and editor type. (Diversity could be based on user page templates or Wikipedia:WikiProject_Accessibility membership).
• Compare the voting percentage (Abstain, Support, Oppose) by years of active editing and editor type
• Confirm whether a few voices dominate proposals. Consensus does not means the majority always wins, but you would expect that the majority would be in line with consensus most of the time

Why should we care? There is more editing to be done than has already been done; there are huge numbers of maintenance tags, article tags, open Talk topics especially non replied, various error reports, missing content, procedure readability improvements, missing or questionable references, missing or incorrect categories,mentors needed,stubs, low project membership, article quality etc,... Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 07:47, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

Do you really mean if it does not have involvement? I believe you have the sense reversed in your lead sentence. — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 09:23, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

Doh. Fixed Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 11:13, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

I would be surprised if the average policy consensus was particularly representative of the community or of the readers, along any number of axes. The problem of backing that up with numbers is more thinking than I'd want to do on a Friday night, however. Enterprisey (talk!) 10:11, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

Agee.My Suspicions is that is wildly unrepresentative Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 11:13, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

Just thinking about it, would it change anything.... probably not. I was interested to see if change was being blocked by WP:OWN editors Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 14:34, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

Of course it's wildly unrepresentative, @Wakelamp. This is known. This isn't even hard to prove with purely public information. The median number of edits per registered account is either zero or one. Of the people who do make their first edit, most never edit again for months, if ever. Anyone who makes two edits has an above-average edit count. 95% (ninety-five percent!) of registered editors have never made 10 edits. 99.8% of registered editors haven't made it to 500 edits. Every person who has replied to you so far in this section is well beyond that level: we are all in the top 0.01% by edit count. We have made more edits than 99.99% of registered users.

My question for you is: Do you really want every discussion to be equally weighted by edit count, so that completely inexperienced people get the same say as people who know what they're talking about? Perhaps it would be appropriate for question that affect newcomers the same as they affect experienced editors (e.g., whether the default image size should be increased), but maybe other questions (e.g., whether a given source is suitable for a specific article) should prioritize experienced editors. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:17, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

I agree 1 editor : 1 vote would not work with WIkipedia. There is too much experience needed. But my concern with this question was not about newish users (although the teahouse editors would make a good proxy), but about the current content creators, the crafters who work FA, etc. They may not do as many edits, but they create the content. So, I was trying to work out whether were represented, in some decisions For instance 1/ Allow IP editors. The consequences of that will be time and stress for NPP, CfD, (CfD already has a huge multi years backlog) And More NPP editors also create more tags, rather than fix tags (which affects wikignomes like me) 2/ Reference lists should not be defined in detail. Consequence of is that the Article Wizard can't ask them to fill in the references they will using before they spend 4 hours creating the article, then rage quit after AfD.3/ Clarity of procedures and guidelines - Does make it more difficult for those with less English skills, younger, or using voice readers to be editors? Does too much complexity encourage anger? Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 13:45, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Blockchain and Wikipedia

There is a lot happening in the blockchain world that is beyond crypto currencies. Non-fungible token (NFT) for example. Anytime you want to reward users towards a goal, or gameify a process to attract users, it might have an application. Is anyone working on, or proposed, or suggested, anything related to blockchain and Wikipedia? I'm not outright suggesting it be done, only want to learn more what is being done or discussed, if anything. -- GreenC 14:43, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

As someone dealing with ill-informed crypto boosterism creeping into my professional work, I really hope that I don't need to fight it on Wikipedia too. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 15:16, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

I am not aware of any such proposals, and to be honest I hope none ever materialise. Blockchain has always looked to me to be mostly a solution in search of a problem. firefly ( t · c ) 15:24, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

Please no. I would certainly attract people, but not the people we need. Vexations (talk) 17:25, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

Time to start selling NFTs for each individual diff! --Masem (t) 17:46, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

Putting aside how silly the idea is in general, I wonder whether NFTs, to comply with CCYBASA 3.0 would inherently themselves be under that license Nosebagbear (talk) 16:58, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

Describing the idea as silly is harsh @Nosebagbear. @GreenC has just suggested an elephant sized tool for a mouse size problem.

@GreenC thank you for being on Wikipedia for 18 years, wakelamp said after looking at your user page. :-)

Blockchain raises high levels of horror in IT, because it provides security through high processing time on each transaction, and adds complexity to implementing what otherwise would be simple processes. This makes sense for some situations, but the desirability, monetary value, and importance of the an achievement badge does not justify it. NFTs are really for trading things or identifying things uniquely, but there is no standard, and it has the same issue as blockchains. To give you and indication of the differences, Openbadge.org is very small and very quick and uses a digital certificates similar to a website.

Gamification is worth discussing, because we have an issue retaining new Editors, an obsession with # of edits, and our ideals not matching our interactions. Also when I see a user page (your's excepted of course :-)) I always want to run screaming the word "Geocities" .

Here are two game systems assosciated with forum and the creation of contents https://boardgamegeek.com/wiki/page/BoardGameGeek_FAQ and https://whirlpool.net.au/wiki/wp_smileysystem . Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 14:31, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

• Wikipedia doesn't need a blockchain. A blockchain is used for distributed consensus. But Wikipedia has centralized consensus; everyone agrees on what part of the encyclopedia Special:PermaLink/1054013081 refers to. As far as NFTs, we have Barnstars, which are already on the "centralized blockchain". Sure, you can't sell barnstars for money, but you're not supposed to profit from your Wikipedia edits, remember? User:力 (powera, π, ν) 18:17, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

FWIW Everipedia uses blockchain. I've never used it but is an experiment in applying the tech to a wiki environment. -- GreenC 21:36, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

I have looked at their site- It seems to be about paying content creators with micro- payments [1] Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 12:48, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

Eveipedia? That highly succesful experiment that e.g. lists Kamala Harris as Senator and Presidential candidate? I think we may consider Everipedia to be dead as a dodo. Even Joe Biden is still described as a candidate, and Donald Trump as the current president. Only blockchain and crypto articles still get updated, it seems. Fram (talk) 14:57, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Everipedia do seem to be the parallel universe of Wikipedia. (even to the Other Founder having been the CIO)., But i think it is good that @GreenC brought them up. What would Sun Tzu advice? :-) .. What can we learn from them? Why didn't micro-payment work? Was their platform more attractive to some editors than Wikipedia? Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 22:14, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

Talk and Article integration to reduce editing time

Topic was : Change TALK tab to show the # of non archived tasks The problem is TALK has no visibility on ARTICLE, TALK topic status is hard to know, and editing must be done on both ARTICLE and TALK. The Reader has no cues to article quality except maintenance template, and no incentive to look at TALK and become an EDITOR. An idea TALK Page

• Topics to contain an additional shortcut status Template:Done, similar to subscribe.
• the TALK Tab to shows the number of topics not DONE similar to inbox
• Maintenance templates to create a linked TALK topics - changing to Done removes maintenance template. Changing status to undone ass its
• Changing the first project importance and quality updates ARTICLE header

ARTICLE Page

• Selecting ARTICLE Publish - List of topics shows to the left. Editor can select topic(s) and change status. Or open up topic and enter directly The Publish Summary is automatically added to the Topic at
• Reverting a linked update on either reverts both

Topic was : Change TALK tab to show the # of non archived tasks Make the Talk Tab show the number of open non archived topics. So, similar to many systems for notifications, email, and messaging system Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 16:00, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

On most talk pages, "archiving" isn't used, nor is there a "close" of topics. This could possibly be useful for pages on on projects that use Flow. — xaosflux ^Talk 16:07, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

@Xaosflux Flow is marked as historical. is EN going to use flow?

With archives, I was going to raise a separate idea, if this one had potential. That idea was going to be that Talk has an option to mark a topic as CLOSED, similar to archive/closed tag used on RFC, but also with an option to REOPEN.

These two ideas were to solve

• An Editor on Article does not know there is anything on talk.
• An Editor on Talk has to skim all Talk Topics
• Maybe reduce the number of Talk Topics (especially from Newbies) that never get a reply

@Enterprisey I was after it for everyone Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 13:42, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

Might be doable as a user script. WP:SCRIPTREQ to request. -- GreenC 17:12, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

You're in luck: User:Enterprisey/talk-tab-count Enterprisey (talk!) 21:11, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

Flow became mw:Structured Discussions - and enwiki isn't using it anywhere (for now) - some other projects do use it, notable mediawikiwiki. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:16, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

Do other editors Look at talk consistently? And what are the downsides of this idea? Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 05:26, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

The chief downsides were given by xaosflux: we don't usually close or archive discussions, so it's impossible for a computer program to know if any single discussion needs a response. As a result, people would learn not to trust the number of topics displayed, because some of the topics could be obsolete.

If the idea is to get more people responding to talk pages, we could get a bot to comment on wikiproject talk pages with a random selection of talk page sections. But that would annoy people unless the links were all useful or interesting, so you'd need a human to do it anyway. That's a lot of work. Enterprisey (talk!) 09:17, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

The interesting or useful is really hard to detect. You can do keyword or weasel word searches, but how do you tell if they are interesting? Unless we allowed an editor to mark the topic as interesting.....hmmm.

We definitely shouldn't create extra work. I was looking through missing category history and a few other reports - we are indicating more work with tags and templates than we are getting rid off. (I was trying to work out a way of estimating the backlog).

I agree with you about archives..... Ok what about [[template:Done]] and squiggly brackets edit fully-protected ... answered=yes}} and Talk:Ninth generation of video game consoles. Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 11:23, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

Flow is used on a few Wikipedias, plus MediaWiki.org. See mw:Talk:Sandbox if you'd like to try it out. The WMF has no current plans for developing it further. If anyone finds about $10M and a spare dev team lying about, please kindly contact me, and I will give you a list of bugs and missing features in Flow to fix first (I'll give you the list for free.  ;-)).

In terms of what to do, the Editing team is watching the ideas shared at mw:Talk pages project (and its multiple sub-pages). Different "stories" about how people think about talk pages are useful to them. For example, @Wakelamp seems to have a vision of a talk page that is a bit like a checklist of tasks to be accomplished. Other concepts are similar to spaces for decision-making, or a casual hangout spot. If you have a metaphor or concept (or a variant on a concept) that helps you describe what a talk page is for, then please post it at mw:Talk:Talk pages project. This kind of background or high-level information is more useful to the designer and product manager than you might guess. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:33, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

It's good that the discussions are of use, and those metaphors are good, but I really really think WMF reach out to the different Talk user types . (BTW My vision is changing based on the discussions, and as I dig through the various areas, but it is based on the 4th Pillar "editors should treat each other with respect and civility" (with a bit of stretching))

• Respect - Respect is not just listening to others you are in conversation with, it is also noticing that others have spoken. As a Wiki Gnome, my guess is 20 % of high importance talk topics are archived without reply, and nearly all topics on low importance articles never get a reply, or are even looked at. The stretch is that it it is also about being respectful of other's time - if something has been fixed, I don't need to know about it. If I must need to know about mark the topic as FAQ, In talk, refer to other's comments, and try to combine thoughts, not fragment them. All the article tags are a form of Talk - and most are a waste of time ; I can read an article and know it needs citations.
• Difference - The casual hangout things a good idea, but it should be at a higher level. I know of know other forum that doesn't have a casual lounge,. Some Wikipedians would dislike it as wasting editing time, ,but they also don't understand that others are different. Who cares if someone spends all their time editing their user page ( as long as it is hidden from google and reader searches)? If it increases the chances that they might do 1 edit in main it's awesome, . If they don't it is our fault for not engaging them
• Civility. This is declining I think, Many active editors have moved into tools, Many experienced editors, who were voices of moderation have got worn down and left,. New editors are not that attracted because of legalism and opaque rules. OVerall Wikipedia has an admin system for content and extremes,, but not a moderation system for medium bad behaviour. There are no consequences of being an ass. So I avoid long threads on Article Talk,
• Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 23:57, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

Google Doodle advance notice

Whenever there's a Google Doodle honoring a person, it always drives a ton of traffic to their article. Sometimes we luck out and it's an FA, other times it's only start-class. Idk if Google would be willing to give us advance notice or who to ping at the WMF to get in touch with Google to ask, but it'd help to have some time to prepare the article. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 18:13, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

How much traffic are we talking? theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (they/them) 18:17, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

@Theleekycauldron As a recent example, Charles K. Kao went from <400 page views per day to over 400,000 pageviews when featured in a Google Doodle earlier this week: pageviews. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 18:31, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

Google states that the doodles are "surprising". Probably, they want to keep them a secret. Bada Kaji (talk • श्रीमान् गम्भीर) 18:45, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

Do New Zealand etc. get it early (when it's a global one)? If so they can alert the rest of the world. Nardog (talk) 19:21, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

holy crap. Yeah, we should figure out if there's a way we can get some advance notice. theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (they/them) 19:00, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

Historical task force: Wikipedia:Articles for improvement/Google Doodle task force. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 19:12, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

Sdkb How often would this occour per years? DO you know the rough split by quality for the last yeat?

Looking at the root cause, Maybe we should ask Google to prioritize high quality Article? Of if thy still want a low quality item arrange for them to contact an editor group offline?

Nardog I am fascinated to know as well. I have asked the Kiribati Islands and Google Doodle on Quora Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 03:38, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

Redoing ping of Sdkb and Nardog. Also @Wakelamp:, in your edit that added these pings, you used closing parentheses instead of braces. This caused an unclosed template which meant that all the section links after this one stopped working. I've gone and fixed it. Graham87 11:38, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

Are we too focused on number of edits?

I can't find any proposal to add another measure that recognizes the people who create lots of non-reverted content, or for the people that fix up issues, or people who do AfD /AfC, or discuss on talk, etc.

"What gets measured gets done." may have been said by W. Edwards Deming who would have made a very good editor, Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 12:59, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 12:59, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

Wakelamp, This has been a topic of numerous academic studies. Some have proposed various better measures, but they did not get much traction. In the end, most of these require database analysis that is either difficult or simply nobody bothered with implementing them, so we are still stuck with a simple edit count. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 11:23, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

The database analysis issue might not be that bad - we already access every single record in the user file and every single record in the edit history. If we can use fields on those files it might be easier. . My thoughts were number of edits would be split into tool/non tool and the same for number of characters

• Ok - Number of characters
• ??? - Tool Assisted
• OK - BOT edit
• Ok - Roll back / reverts
• ??? tags removed - tags added  ???Good faith New Editor genuine Interactions -
• ?? - Roll back / reverts
• ?? - Number of AfD or speedy template
• ?? - Number who have not edited since you AfD/Roll Back/Revert Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 15:57, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Registered editors by edit count (all registered accounts)

If you have made...	you are about 1 in	then you rank in the...	or the...	That's more than...
1 edit	3	top 30% of all users	top 14,200,000 of all users	70% of all users
2 edits	5	top 20% of all users	top 9,400,000 of all users	80% of all users
5 edits	10	top 10% of all users	top 4,700,000 of all users	90% of all users
10 edits	20	top 5% of all users (the autoconfirmed)	top 2,360,000 of all users	95% of all users
100 edits	100	top 1% of all users	top 473,000 of all users	99% of all users
500 edits	400	top 0.25% of all users (the extended confirmed)	top 118,000 of all users	99.75% of all users
1,000 edits	1,000	top 0.1% of all users	top 47,000 of all users	99.9% of all users
10,000 edits	4,000	top 0.025% of all users	top 11,800 of all users	99.975% of all users
25,000 edits	10,000	top 0.01% of all users	top 4,700 of all users	99.99% of all users
50,000 edits	20,000	top 0.005% of all users	top 2,300 of all users	99.995% of all users
100,000 edits	50,000	top 0.002% of all users	top 900 of all users	99.998% of all users
250,000 edits	200,000	top 0.0005% of all users	top 200 of all users	99.9995% of all users
500,000 edits	1,000,000	top 0.0001% of all users	top 50 of all users	99.9999% of all users
1,000,000 edits	3,300,000	top 0.000031% of contributors	top 13 of all contributors	99.99997% of all contributors
For the purposes of this table, a "user" is a person who has a registered account on the English Wikipedia.

Registered editors by edit count (only successful contributors)

If you have made...	you are about 1 in	then you rank in the...	or the...	That's more than...
1 edit	1	–	one of 14,200,000 contributors	–
2 edits	1-2	top 65% of contributors	top 9,200,000 of all contributors	35% of all contributors
5 edits	3	top 30% of contributors	top 4,200,000 of all contributors	70% of all contributors
10 edits	5	top 20% of contributors (the autoconfirmed)	top 2,843,000 of all contributors	80% of all contributors
100 edits	40	top 2.5% of contributors	top 355,000 of all contributors	97.5% of all contributors
500 edits	133	top 0.75% of contributors (the extended confirmed)	top 106,000 of all contributors	99.25% of all contributors
1,000 edits	200	top 0.5% of contributors	top 71,000 of all contributors	99.5% of all contributors
10,000 edits	1,000	top 0.1% of contributors	top 14,200 of all contributors	99.9% of all contributors
25,000 edits	3,333	top 0.03% of contributors	top 4,200 of all contributors	99.97% of all contributors
50,000 edits	6,666	top 0.015% of contributors	top 2,100 of all contributors	99.985% of all contributors
100,000 edits	14,000	top 0.007% of contributors	top 900 of all contributors	99.993% of all contributors
250,000 edits	66,666	top 0.0015% of contributors	top 200 of all contributors	99.9985% of all contributors
500,000 edits	250,000	top 0.0004% of contributors	top 50 of all contributors	99.9996% of all contributors
For the purposes of this table, a "contributor" is an account with at least one published edit on the English Wikipedia.

Of course we should have a measure which is more meaningful than number of edits... but it's hard to imagine an automated measure that could not easily be gamed. Encouraging pointless edits (as we currently do) is certainly counter-productive. Fabrickator (talk) 13:40, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

See WP:EDITCOUNT.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 13:43, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

Wakelamp, I made this table for you. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:32, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: Just curious, are those edit counts global or just for enwiki? 192.76.8.91 (talk) 03:33, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

Thank-you for the table. I think it does gives a good indication of experience up to a point, but do you think it encourages peoples to use automated tools? And to encourages people to move from content creation to tool use? And maybe the word top is not the best? And it also has the disadvantage that it makes it impossible for Junior editors to catch up.

There are a number of statistics already in place and measured

X tools gives you 1/ edits in main, talk, wiki 2/ manual or bot/tool assisted 3/ % of edits classified as small, medium, large. 4/ You can also see that in the last 30 days there have only been 100 active admins

http://en.wikichecker.com/

I just found a research project that also measured whether words that you added stayed roughly in the same place versus the the current version. It also measured the number of hours worked. It's a few years old, but the charts are great but it makes the following points

1. Registered editors in English Wikipedia are not getting less productive despite a dramatic reduction in the active population of editors. {BUT it also discusses that this is due to tool use}
2. Anonymous editors contribute substantially to overall productivity; however, their proportion of overall contribution has been steadily declining since the beginning of 2006.

Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 11:18, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

I think that focusing on any metric can encourage people to "win" by that metric. Having multiple metrics can balance these effects.

OTOH, I think that if more of the people on this page knew that we were (almost) all in the 99.9th percentile, we might be less inclined to think that we were "typical" editors and that what works for us is what works for all editors. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:02, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

These numbers are enwiki only. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:19, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: Won't the results be rather skewed then by potentially millions of editors who signed up to edit other languages and other projects, who had accounts created here automatically by central auth without the user asking for one (or even necessarily wanting one)? 192.76.8.95 (talk) 10:28, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

Yes. It also includes people who tried to edit but couldn't figure out our software. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:24, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

...and users who just created an account to set up their display preferences or keep a watchlist. Cabayi (talk) 14:33, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

I have created a table just as a discussion piece for some major areas, and how I think their work relates to the number of edits. I have added in experience level and automation, to show my understanding that experienced editors use the automated tools more for instance (NPP Editor requirements). Part of this was inspired by reading the very interesting essay User:Cullen328/Smartphone_editing by User:Cullen328. It made me understand the work that dedicated "artisanal" editors do. He uses no tools, but has done 80 K edits; so I created a separate row for editors like him. :-) Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 11:34, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

Article Stage	Work	Edit?	Edits/Hour	Experienced or Junior	Stress Cause	Part of a team	Visible measure	Backlog
New Articles	Content	Manual	1 o 2	Both	Inexperience and Rejection Article Wizard does not have the same checks as NPP Large amount of time to create first article	No	Deleted Articles	No
Redirects	links	Scripts	Immense	Exp	None	No	????	No
AfC	Content Support	Manual	Few	Exp	New User Aggression from not understanding process High Backlog Lack of Resources	Yes	See discussion on AfC page	Medium
Support , Help , Teahouse	Support	Manual	Few	Exp	Agression	Yes	Thanks	No
NPP /Page curator/ Copyrights	Defence	Tools	Large	Exp	Low - high sense of satisfaction	Yes	NPP measures	No
AfD, images, copyright	Defence	Manual	Few	Exp	Aggression - especially based on country etc Scammers Systematic issues Fraud	Yes	Backlog ????	????
CfD	Judge	Manual	Few	Exp	Very low resources Highest Backlog 650 K + categories- nearly all not accessed Over-classifiers No category approval process Very easy to create new categories on the fly No process to ensure category-article process	Yes	Age of categories	Increasing and Huge
Stub, Maintenance tags,templates	Error ID	Tools	Large	Exp	None	Yes	????	????
Small fixes	Error Fix Small Content	Some tools	Few	IP Junior Gnomes	Insufficient Resources Errors are mostly obvious - so why tag, as more work Sense of satisfaction varies Low automation / multi screen process Talk is a waste of time on low importance	Many projects are dead	No measures of tags removed No automatic rating change (for low importance)	Very large and increasing - increase in various errors - movements in quality ratings - templates are in place for years
Animators, Artists	Images	Manual	None		??	???	????	???
Talk	Content	Manua	Low	Exp	Conflict seeking, Ad Hom, OWN,, Admin shortage What is important ? What has already been fixed, but no one closed the talk? Poor user of talk (splitting threads, no consensus building)	No	None	Decades
Content Creators	Content	Manual	Lower	Junior	Overcategorisers Lack of resources	Tech Areas Yes Other Areas vary	Self Direected	Decades
Quality Ugr	Content	Manual	1 o 2	Both	Either high interest areas or Artisanal solo editors working through their interest areas	Tech areas - yes other areas vary	lone	Centuries
Featured Article	Contents	Manual	1 o2	Exp	Resourced Artisanal	Yes	Featured Articles	No
Projects	Content Improvement	Manual But Some tools	???	Exp	Many dead. No recruitment prompts Unclear purpose sometimes Community is criticised by some Some work well, but they need a clear purpose	Varies	????	????
Proposals	Proposals	Manual	Low	Exp	????	????	Qualitative measures only	????
Policies and Procedures	Talk	Manual	Low	EXP	Conflict Resistance versus Reform	????	No measure of effectiveness No readability Extra work is not of concern	????
Bot writers	Tech	Manual	Low	Exp	Maintaining data used by scripts Unclear procedures Distrust by some editors of IT and Wikimedia	????	????	????
Admin	Prosecutor Investigator Judge	Tools Manual	Low High	Exp	Aggression Resources Stress	????	????	????

Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 11:34, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

@Wakelamp, I think that if you are trying to find metrics, then you should look at the edits by Alexbrn. He spends a lot of time removing bad content. His average edit "contribution size" is a negative number. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:20, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

It's true I do. I'd be fascinated to know what my net article-space byte change number was! Alexbrn (talk) 20:34, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

@Alexbrn I would be fascinated too - I had not realised that the Ecclesiastian Editor("a time to tear down and a time to build") editor existed (There is also a Scottish word meaning Terse, but I can't remember it) In the opposite case, at the extreme , a metric that praised words, could lead to verbosity, or readability issues. Or on Terseness could lead to single word Laconic ("If") articles. ~~~ Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 22:18, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing I think you misunderstand my intent. I am not after metrics for their own sake. I have a few concerns

• That a focus a single metric, (and the proliferation of tool use that has happened over the last 5ish year), has distorted editor behaviour, and
• That large number of tag edits is not increasing the quality of wikipedia especially on low importance items,
• That all Editor types (that have the same Goals as WIkipedia - so most Edit Wars should not be a thing), should be able to visibly see the value of their contribution to Wikipedia.
• So, if metrics should be line with Goals, what are the most important measurable current, and long terms goals of Wikipedia? Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 22:37, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure that most active editors are all that motivated by edit counts. Probably a few people are, at least for brief periods of time, but I'd guess that most people make edits out of a belief that their edits help Wikipedia. I might disagree that some of these edits are actually helpful (see, e.g., people who add Template:Uncat to articles, even though you could just use the automatic Special:UncategorizedPages if you wanted to find pages that needed categorization...), but I don't think people add those tags because it's a quick way to increase their edit counts. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:08, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

Is there a current report on OAUTH /Bot/Tool assisted edits.. I saw a chart somewhere showing that I think 6000 users were using tools create half the edits NPP has a metric, but I am not sure what it measures

Wikipedia:New pages patrol/Backlog drives/November 2021 Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 14:56, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

"most active editors are all that motivated by edit counts". Primary motivation varies as per the table, but there are lots of studies about people's behaviors changes based on how they are measured.. A few thought experiments

• A proposal is put forward that the number of edits is done is hidden for all users
• A proposal is put forward that the number of edits is no longer added to once it reaches a 1000
• A proposal is put forward that no data will be made available that ranks users by number of edits

Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 14:45, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

There is qualitative and quantitative, computers are great the second and terrible at the former. Meanwhile humans prefer qualitative and find quantitative to be a bad way to measure human performance. This is not unique to Wikipedia! Think of algos that rate people or schools. See Weapons of Math Destruction -- GreenC 21:00, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

That book looks excellent and I have now added it to my reading list. In the Other World, i have watched managers game metrics to achieve their bonus, at the expense of increasing costs/work/stress for others, and reducing the organisation overall. I found this immoral and abhorrent Based on your reading and experience, do you think that computers can measure qualitative issues that aren't about human performance (for instance Article Quality for low importance items, readability) and human performance that is not high stake (Well done on your third month of being an Artisanal editor OR achieving your personal goal OR you may be working too many hours OR are involved in many conflicts -Wikipedia can wait. ~~~ Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 22:59, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

With Google resources :) Hard to say maybe it's a matter of building blocks not today but with semantic web data in place things more possible in the future. -- GreenC GreenC 05:27, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

I think we need at least a split between bot/tool, and manual edits. There has been a massive migration to tools. And tools don't create content Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 09:00, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

Honestly I feel like 1 edit should not be top 50%. This means that with just a simple edit, you're already on of the 50% people with the most edits? ???????????????? I think there should be more, like 15 edits or 25 edits, something like that, to make it look serious. Because that doesn't make much sense to me. WaterflameIsAwesome (talk) 02:34, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

"Top 50%" is a generous rounding on my part. 71.3% of registered editors have never made an edit here. The next 10.4% have made one edit, but only one. The next 4.9% have made exactly two edits. If you have managed to make five edits here, then you are in the top 10% of contributors to the English Wikipedia (by number of edits). WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:04, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

71.3 % is rather large ..... anywhere else I would say it was a bot farm..... Do we know the distribution of account creation??? This doesn't include IP editors does it?? Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 06:32, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

It does not include IP editors. It includes people who didn't know that accounts are unnecessary, people who edit other Wikipedias, and people who tried to edit but couldn't figure out how. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:25, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing "people who tried to edit but couldn't figure out how." That's just depressing. I am analyzing all the New Article pathways, at the moment and I didn't have that one :-(. (Although I did have stuff about not understanding procedures), Can wiki detect new users who start an article and give up, or are user pathways tracked? It would be interesting to know if that improves with Visual.

@WaterflameIsAwesome The only way to do that is to get more editors to edit. :

Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 00:30, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

The devs can detect failed edit attempts, at least inside a Javascript-based editing environment. A "failed" attempt may be a good thing; it includes opening a page for the purpose of copying the wikitext, or opening the editing window and deciding that your planned edit (or comment) is a bad idea before you save it.

I suspect that this is in the category of sensitive data that is only kept for 90 days. The log item about the failed edit attempt probably (but someone would have to check) associates an IP address (or account id#) with the edit attempt. Once you know the editor, it should be possible to check Special:Contributions t see whether anyone using that IP had recently made a successful edit. I expect that this would be very painful to do manually, so you'd need someone with suitable privileges and automation skills to do it for you. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:58, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

Seems like the first step in establishing percentages should be to cut off the long tail. "Editors" (people who register an account) who have never made an edit shouldn't be included in the computations. Schazjmd (talk) 15:25, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

@Schazjmd, in round numbers, that would give us:

• 30% have made one edit
• 15% have made two edits
• 10% have made three edits (this is the median editor, 45th to 55th percentile)

and you would be number #2622 out of 12.2 million ever-successfully-edited-here editors, rather than #2622 out of 42.5 million registered editors. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:33, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

• Edit count is obviously a poor metric because it doesn't measure productivity – an edit can be good, bad or indifferent. And they are a form of cost or input, rather than being a measure of value-added output and achievement.

For an example of a better metric, consider the number of citations added which would be a better measure of quality content. Editors boost their edit count by gaming, griefing, gnoming, gossiping and grinding but these activities don't tend to result in quality content with citations. So, counting citations added might be a better proxy for measuring useful work.

For example, see performance indicator and note that it is banner tagged as needing more citations. The person who added that tag boosted their edit count but didn't add any citations.

Andrew🐉(talk) 14:27, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

How do we count citations? Citations may range over unformated urls or names of books, <ref>...</ref>, or {{sfn*}}, inline or at the bottom of the article. Some may need work to make them appear correctly, but shouldn't an ill-formed attempt to provide a citation count? I like the idea, but I do not want to be the one trying to build a bot to count citations. - Donald Albury 20:39, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

Apparently ORES data quality model counts ref tags, example use in educational dashboard here: https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/The_University_of_Hong_Kong/EASC4407_-_Regional_Geology_Fall_2021_(Fall_2021)/students/overview . Graeme Bartlett (talk) 23:18, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

Neat! I don't see how to access the counter. I am curious to see what it shows for my own edits. The note says it counts ref tags. I wonder if it also counts SFN* templates (which I use as often as I can, these days). I guess improperly formatted citations would have to be fixed before they were counted. - Donald Albury 23:46, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

• ORES is a machine-intelligence mechanism which has to be trained with examples of good and bad edits. This has been done for particular Wikis in particular languages and the details depend on the way that the sample data corpus is labelled as good, bad or whatever. This is a good way of building a metric because, if you have a simple rule like counting edits or citations, then people will then abuse and game it per the cobra effect, Campbell's law, Goodhart's law, Parkinson's law, &c. Ultimately, we ought to be able to run articles through such a tool and decide whether they are good or not. And then attribute this goodness to the editors who wrote it, in proportion to their contributions to the final form. And the final stage will be when the machine intelligence can also write the articles and so cut out the middle men. This is coming too... "A robot wrote this entire article. Are you scared yet, human?" Andrew🐉(talk) 09:49, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

Here's my personal opinion:

1 edit: Top 90%

5 edits: Top 80%

10 edits: Top 75%

50 edits: Top 60%

100 edits: Top 55%

500 edits: Top 50%

1,000 edits: Top 35%

10,000 edits: Top 25%

100,000 edits: Top 15%

500,000 edits: Top 10%

750,000 edits: Top 5%

1,000,000 edits: Top 1% (13 people have 1,000,000 edits)

Obviously, the list would change depending on how many users reach a certain point, how many users DON'T reach a certain point, and how many registered users there are on Wikipedia in general.

I added 1,000,000 edits because of the fact that multiple people have passed it, and it's over 10. However, this is how the list would go on (:O):

10,000,000 edits: Top 0.1%

100,000,000 edits: Top 0.01%

1,000,000,000 edits: Top 0.001%

10,000,000,000 edits: Top 0.0001%

50,000,000,000 edits: Top 0.00001%

100,000,000,000 edits: Top 0.000001%

1,000,000,000,000 edits: Top 0.0000001%

I went all the way to 1 Trillion edits :O

I know this is a far-fetched opinion but please respect it lol

WaterflameIsAwesome (talk) 01:05, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

Number of edits as a measure

As per previous comments, tools make doing a reverts a single click, gives a strong sense of community, and there leader boards showing the number of reverts

BUT there are

Consequences of Reverts using tools - good faith newcomers edit less, are more hesitant for up to a month and leave WP faster., editors active after 2 years has decreased *was 40 now 12%).

• A 2011 WMF by @EpochFail showed that sometimes what is reverted as vandalism, could be good faith newcomers, These good faith newcomers are far,far. more likely to have their first edit rejected, than the more experienced tool using editors were then they started editing
• The WMF paper found that reverting tools are increasingly and far more likely to revert the work of good-faith newcomers. (s there a quality check on false positives??)
• The WMF paper found these automated first edit reverts predict the observed decline in New Editor Retention - nearly 40% of new editors remained active for a year pre-2005, that number dropped to only 12-15% post-2007[
• The WMF paper found that Tool users often do not engage in best practice for discussing reverts or in their interactions .[Maybe a way of reducing this is to have canned comments)
• The WMF paper found that new users are being pushed out of policy articulation. Policies and guidelines are opaque and calcified, but Essays are being created to fix gaps. .
• Two papers by the same author showed an 80 % reduction of edits by new editors who have been reverted compared to new editors that weren't. It wasn't the difference between Vandals and good faith; Both groups had an equal chance of being reverted in the next 5 weeks.
• The same paper also mentions difficulty in "understanding the vast history of prior contributions, decisions, policies, and standards that the community has evolved over time.
• Another paper mentions that a study on a 1000 University students found that editors who had an edit "unfairly" reverted where more likely to vandalize or feel personal animosity towards that edit. This seems at odds with the WMF paper, but this was a qualitative survey
• This 2020 paper discusses these issues The following editors and others were recruited for a research project , were mentioned in the paper and may like to comment @Epochfail @jrmorgan, @Krinkle, @Chicocvenancio, @Rosiestep (Sorry, my second link to you today) , @Barkeep49 , @Nick Moyes @Timtempleton @SkyGazer 512 and @Ohanwe Emmanuel .I.. There are a large number of recommendations, but I would like to point to

"Users should be  incentivized  by  algorithmic  systems  to  behave  in  ways that create enduring value for the community."

• The same issue of keeping new and different editors is brought up, along with a suggestion to explain that it is the AI making that decision. I am not sure whether that is best. Maybe a scheduled edit for far longer than 5 minutes for marginal cases (to make them feel like it took time to a review), and the editor ability to choose a canned comment and a link to teahouse might be better; The paper also makes the assumption that experienced editors are best at managing conflict, But the article points out that conflict is a major reason that prolific editors leave.

"Wikipedia  has  become  like  an  ecosystem,  in  which  certain  kinds  of  people are  quite  well-adapted.  However,  “that  limits  the  diversity of  the  contributors.  So  the  ecosystem  needs  to  change  in  order  to  be  more  welcoming  to  certain  kinds  of  people.” 

“Identifying  stable  edit could  feed  back  into  a  model  that  provides  points  in  some  way that  does  encourage  good  behavior.”  @krinkle

• this paper extends it to show even experienced prolific editors finding negative communication about a revert as a major reason they leave. The authors intend to expand this metric to all Wikipedia
• Lastly, we should consider changing the publish function to run parts of ORES, so that the Editor can make the decisions to fix. Yes, Vandals will work out work arounds, but we can stop that Editor or Anon having access to the tool if they abuse it. Currently they can do the same thing. but it takes 5 minutes for NPP to give them an answer [User:Wakelamp|Wakelamp d[@-@]b]] (talk) 12:51, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

• Yes, many people are too focussed on number of edits, but the solution is not to look for another flawed metric to replace it. We should simply get on with doing the work, rather than evaluating people. Phil Bridger (talk) 12:55, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

• Couldn't agree more with Phil Bridger. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 13:36, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

People are too focused on metrics

Don't get me wrong, it's nice to have metrics (# of edits, # of articles created, # of redirects created, # of GAs, # of FAs, # of DYKs, # of successful AFD nominations, # of files uploaded, etc...), especially if you like numbers. But numbers are just that, numbers. The goal isn't to create the encyclopedia whose contributors' productivity can be measured, but to create the best possible encyclopedia out there, freely available to all of humanity. That I'm 79th in 12 million, or 79th in 44 million in number of edits is really besides the point. Or if we suddenly excluded semi-automated edits from the count, and I dropped to 148th in 12 million in the rankings, the value of my contributions wouldn't suddenly be half of what it used to be. My goal isn't to climb the ranks, my goal is to make Wikipedia better.

What's worth more? 3 FAs or 4 file uploaded to commons? What if it's an FA on a topic no one cares about? What if the image is a simple arrow?

Numbers describe quantities well, not so much subjective value. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:53, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

For me, WP is not just content and structure, but is also an equal WP community of readers and editors. NPOV and 'best possible encyclopedia" need an active renewing community. Productivity is not that important (although wasting other editors time and energy is), but the current measures (Edit measures, number of articles deleted, reverts..) can lead to be behaviour that causes editors to leave. A few more measures won't fix this, but it would be fairer to editors that create content. Let them decide the relative worth ("What's worth more? 3 FAs or 4 files..").

1. Thinking about it, if we just had visibility of monthly figures on the rollovers it could be good
2. "The goal isn't ... contributors' productivity"" AND "But numbers are just that, numbers." I agree. IF we want " the best possible encyclopedia", then we need to concentrate on creation, respecting each other's time, and on editor's staying. IF an action causes a good faith editor to leave, then a one-minute decision has lost hundreds of hours of improvement. Creating thousands of citation missing on articles, disrespects another editor's time and ability; There are undoubtedly a few editors whose behavior is not extreme, but who cause a lot of people to leave by being the second last straw
3. Lastly, "Numbers describe quantities well, not so much subjective value." Subjective value can also cause issue - I get frustrated reading RfCs /reputable sources, because there are no numbers, no references to readers/new editors, and just anecdote. Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 11:17, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Sticky header

Moved from WP:VPR

It would be very helpful if on mobile devices in portrait mode the website header, which includes the "Wikipedia" link and buttons for search, notifications, etc, had the CSS attribute "position: sticky;".

At the moment, on large pages users have to scroll right to the top of the page in order to search for another topic or access their watchlist or contributions. Most mobile devices in portrait mode have enough screen space to display such a small header permanently.

This is just an idea that I wanted to suggest. I don't spend much time editing Wikipedia these days and may not follow the discussion. If you'd like a response to any comments please ping me. Cheers. nagualdesign 13:45, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

I like this idea, and I"m not quite sure if my idea built off of this would be possible but, in order to not impede article space I think that the header should sort of "collapse" into the top of the screen as the user is scrolling and after they've sat there for a bit without scrolling, it would come back again. What do you think of this idea @Nagualdesign:? ― Blaze The Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 14:32, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

What would be great, but I have no idea how to do it, is if the header moved just out of view when scrolling down and immediately came back in to view when scrolling upwards, like the top bar of the Chrome mobile browser. Position:sticky works fine though and is very simple to implement.^[example] nagualdesign 15:47, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

• Note: I moved this from VPR as this isn't a ready execute proposal - ping to prior participants: @Nagualdesign and Blaze The Wolf: — xaosflux ^Talk 14:35, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

  _{I don't seem to have been pinged but I watch the page so I did notice the move anyway} ― Blaze The Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 14:42, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

  _{Ping didn't work for me either. nagualdesign 15:47, 16 November 2021 (UTC)}

• Mobile devices should already be in mobile view (Example random article in mobile view). Are you referring to the <header class="header-container header-chrome"> element? — xaosflux ^Talk 14:44, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

  Of course mobile devices viewing en.m.wikipedia.org are in mobile view. Sorry, I'm not sure what your point is. As for your question, I can't give you a definitive answer as I cannot look at the source code using this phone, but by "website header" I'm referring to the grey navigation bar at the very top of the page, which shows (from left to right) a menu icon, the "Wikipedia" logo, a search icon, notification icon, and user icon. nagualdesign 15:47, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

  I just discovered that using the Chrome mobile browser you can view source code by prepending the URL with "view-source:". However, I could hardly make sense of most of it. In answer to your question I'd have to say I think so. nagualdesign 16:08, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

  @SGrabarczuk (WMF), I think Web is already working on this? WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:21, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

  That's true @WhatamIdoing although we're only building the sticky header for desktop. SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 23:14, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

This Village Pump is for developing ideas, not for consensus polling. Rather than merely stating support or opposition to an idea, try to be creative and positive. If possible, suggest a better variation of the idea, or a better solution to the problem identified. Before posting an idea here, please read What Wikipedia is not to understand regular suggestions that will not be actioned12.249.218.202 (talk) 13:24, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

• From what I can see so far, this would require a back-end change first (if you have a working personal CSS for this already - please point to the page that is successfully working) - as we certainly won't use a javascript hack for this (that is something that could be done as a personal userscript though). To request this be made available back-end, please file a feature request - you can model it off of phab:T283505 or one of its subtasks. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:24, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

Representation : Wikipedia Foundation Election Statistics

Do we need a better breakdown of the election statistics for the next WMF election? The 2021 election was very close (12 votes decided the 4th seat, and 212 separating first preferences for the 1st and 4th). Election irregularities didn't occur, but there was such a small turnout (6,873 votes) I must also explain that I am from Australia where election manipulation and irregularities (especially with STVs) are an artform, as we are "entirely peopled from criminals" to the point where thePublic Broadcasters election analyst is a national hero.

Irregularities I think could occur in a few areas 1/ Non-Editors (such as Foundation staff, external developers etc) can vote and could sway and there no is visibility of how many or for which candidate they voted. 2/ Audit. Statistics on irregular votes are not advised (votes are checked in the one week between the vote being complete and the announcement) and voters do not get confirmation of their vote. 3/ Group voting: Votes by Language edition or editor type were not advised for each candidate 4/ STV manipulation. STV voting only changed the vote for 4th place, But there are issues if

• Electors don't know enough candidates. The record in Australia is 110 candidates for 6 positions. And in our case this is made worse as there is no visibility of candidates for re-election performance.
• No criteria for a significant number of supporters to nominate a candidate.
• Low voter turnout. STV has not changed turnout, but voter confusion from some countries was reported as STV was unknown
• Candidates representing only 1 group

Overall, the issue is not misuse of cash or power, but the board being dis-functional or missing the skills the board asked for and identified was missing in . I raised similar issues on the election board. with JKoerner (WMF), but I have had more time to think now :-) I originally placed this one on the WMF page Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 10:13, 4 November 2021 (UTC) Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 00:39, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

No, we don't need the Ninja Turtles to audit the WMF election, and we don't need baseless fear, uncertainty, and doubt about the results. User:力 (powera, π, ν) 23:28, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

WP is not a democracy, but suggesting that "a better breakdown of the election statistics for the next WMF election" is FUD is too far; FUD grows when there is lack of transparency.

I wrote that "Election irregularities didn't occur". To be 100 % clear excellent candidates ( @rosiestep @Victoria @pundit and lorentzus ) were elected fairly.

BUT

Nonprofits have particular risks

- unwilling to admit corruption due to donation fears,

- boards not having the necessary skills especially to do with finance and detection of corruptions,

- Staff capture (the organization being run for the management's benefit or pleasure) especially in the creation of profit-making linked companies, and

- Volunteer disaffection.

So, any easy ability for management to manipulate governance must be blocked. (The Ninja Turtles would also make poor auditors) Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 00:47, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Another page of users with most edits

Would it be possible to have another page of users with the most edits? WaterflameIsAwesome (talk) 04:04, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

Do you mean in addition to Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by number of edits? — Mikehawk10 (talk) 04:59, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

Sure. The lists are user-generated by third-party tools and not official. Nothing prevents other users from creating their own list. The only question is "primary topic". Which list gets called "List of Wikipedians by number of edits". One option is make it a dab page. It depends if both lists are equally as good but have different features. It might require a vote to see. -- GreenC 05:53, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

Bot collation of questions on low-watched talk pages

In the discussion at WT:CSD#File talk pages which consist only of boilerplates, wikiproject tags, and/or text which has been copied to Commons Jo-Jo Eumerus commented that File talk page discussions are pretty common but they usually don't get an answer. to which Redrose64 replied Mainly because they only have one watcher - the person who created the discussion. This got me wondering about the feasibility of (probably) a bot that looked for new posts to pages with fewer than N (actively engaged?) watchers and produced a list (or lists?) of such pages so that editors know that the posts exist and can go and respond if required. I don't know what a sensible value of N would be.

To avoid false positives the bot should ignore posts that consist of solely adding things like WikiProject tags, old deletion discussion notices, {{Talk page header}}, {{Talk page of redirect}} and probably others (as well as redirects to these templates) - I guess experience will show others as well, so the list should be easily configurable. Maybe also excluding things like {{help me}} which already generate notifications elsewhere - indeed maybe we would want to restrict it to certain namespaces only (Talk: and File talk: definitely; maybe Wikipedia talk:, Help talk:, Template talk: and Category talk: ?).

Some of what it will find will possibly be spam or junk, but then we can just remove this sooner than we otherwise would. It would expose that these pages have few watchers, but this bot will effectively make them more watched than average negating any benefit to knowing that. Thryduulf (talk) 17:03, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

I think this is a really good idea! CapitalSasha ~ talk 17:06, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

The big issue is file talk posts on enwiki that are about Commons files - usually they can't be actioned here. A differentiated solution may be needed for those discussion page posts that are about Commons files, because they need to be actioned on Commons if anywhere. Perhaps we could ask the Commons folks if they are interested in a dedicated collation of all enwiki file talk page posts that concern Commons files? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 17:16, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

Some will be able to be dealt with here, and some by editors here making edits at Commons, but even though some will require action from Commons admins I don't think that means a list here would be without value. I can certainly see the benefit of putting such comments on a separate list to comments about locally hosted files though. Thryduulf (talk) 17:37, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

I like this idea. Another benefit could be that people post in the appropriate place, not posting where "there's more traffic" (but not necessarily more—or any—interest). That leaves discussions where they are relevant, and potentially, where others in the future will see them. — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 20:43, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

@Thryduulf, I wonder what you think of phab:T295392. That would let you get a list of the discussions on pages you are interested in. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:24, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF) while that's interesting and likely very useful, it's not the same as what I have in mind here. That seems to be:

• Tell me when there are new discussions related to this list of things that I am interesting in

Whereas this is

• Tell me when there are new discussions on pages that not very many people are actively watching

The latter will include pages that nobody has expressed an interest in (files and redirects will often only have a single watcher - the creator/uploader, who may not have edited Wikipedia for years), no WikiProjects have indicated belongs to their topic area, are too new for most people to know exist, etc. Thryduulf (talk) 20:58, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

What is the size of the issue? Are there any way to get the size of the problem? (Maybe by first project they belong to, Article importance and whether it is a new user (< x edits say)??

What do people think are the root causes for Editors creating discussions on no-watched/Low importance pages?

{{Thryduulf}} You mentioned interests - The biggest interest groups are projects. Would an addition to the new project dashboard showed the number of outstanding unwatched discussions encourage them being answered?

{{Jo-Jo Eumerus}} Can you explain about why the Comments can't be actioned here? I don't know anything about commons, Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 02:37, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

Forget about "Commons", this is an issue that can arise on any little-watched talk page in any namespace. Second, a talk page question can be asked by any editor who ends up on a particular talk page, ranging from a genuinely curious reader who seeks clarification of something on the page or suggests a change to a WP:POINTy troll leaving an inappropriate remark. Sometimes articles on relatively obscure topics are created by editors who do little else in the encyclopedia and leave before a comment is added there. It's a good general cleanup project to address. BD2412 T 02:46, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

@Thryduulf I think your suggested report is of crucial important for Editor retainment because it makes them feel listened to, not isolated, and their needs are being met. In general, I am against many reports that are not run JIT on Articles. Many reports are unvisited except by search engines, have no or few using them (stubs, categories), are sometimes have completeness issues (Category-Article lists), but in this case a report is needed.

Some other things you may wish to consider to minimize the amount of Talks to review -

• Prioritize new or returning editors
• Exclude Topics that are in action or marked as done (There are done and in progress templates and it could work like the topic subscribe)
• Excluding Topics that need no action (So we still need a done flag)
• Can we get the discussion editor to make a choice? I believe strongly that editors should have the same information. Why not tell them there are no active watcher? And why not and remove inactive editors from article watch lists"
• BOT created Topics - You would need to exclude, but do we need them at all?
• I love the idea of identifying interests, but how??
• Automation - Because of the size, maybe we need a tool with canned responses, a way of viewing a all the discussions and marking them done from Publish?
• Responsibility - Many monthly reports seem to have gigantic backlogs (categories missing, stubs ..) How do we ensure that it is actioned? Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 03:12, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

• Sounds like a good idea to me. Enterprisey (talk!) 03:20, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

  @Wakelamp Responding to your comments in both messages:

  • If a page has WikiProject tags then it makes sense to flag the discussion to those projects (maybe as part of article alerts?) but not every page has them (e.g. random article took me to St. Louis School of Fine Arts where I have just created the talk page with project banners). So "interests" is not really relevant for this idea, my mention of them was distinguishing this project from the one @Whatamidoing (WMF) mentioned (where they are relevant).
  • I don't know how prioritisation would work, but if it can be done it might be useful. We shouldn't exclude established users though, as I know that I have posted comments on low-watched talk pages of articles I have come across but lack the subject knowledge to fix.
  • I'm anticipating this bot waits a while (a few hours? a day?) before flagging comments in this way, and so it would likely make sense to exclude any that have responses (by registered editors?) as that would suggest the issue is being/has been dealt with. Similarly if the comment has been removed, it shouldn't be reported here (regardless of why it was removed).
  • If the list is long (I honestly have no idea how long it will be) then some way of highlighting when someone has looked at a comment to avoid duplicating effort would be good. Maybe just remove an entry from the list when you've dealt with it? Dealing with it could just be flagging the problem somewhere someone who knows what to do should see it. For example I wouldn't have a clue how to verify whether a comment saying that $article misinterprets South African law is correct or not, but I could flag it to the South African and Law Wikiprojects.
  • Posts by bots should not be reported here, but a comment followed by an edit by Signbot should be reported.
  • I don't know the size of the problem, so I can't say anything about what level of automation is worthwhile, nor what form it should take. I think this is something that might be best developed with experience after we get a feel for how it works in practice.
  • Getting things actioned is a realistic concern. I don't know how to ensure that, but if it doesn't happen we aren't actually any worse off than we are now.
  • Letting people know that a page has few followers is a double-edged sword. We don't do it now because it would make the page a magnet for vandalism, and if we aren't reporting things instantly that would still be a potential issue. Maybe just an edit notice for talk namespaces that note not all pages have active watchers? Thryduulf (talk) 13:18, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

  For the last bullet, the "Page information" feature's "Number of page watchers" entry shows "Fewer than 30 watchers" for non-admins. This was a deliberate decision not to show the exact figure, and has been discussed at both Help talk:Watchlist and at WP:VPT. Re the last sentence, we already have Template:Editnotices/Namespace/File talk, Template:Editnotices/Namespace/Category talk and several other similar notices. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 15:00, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

Prevent basic errors getting into articles

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.

---

Wikipedia is based on the idea that it doesn't matter how poor your edit is; someone will fix it. In general, obvious vandalism is indeed fixed quite quickly. But edits that are well-intended but poor persist for years. Some of the most glaring issues that I frequently see include:

1. First sentences which are a pointless restatement of the article title
2. Bold text that does not correspond to the article title
3. Use of contractions and ampersands
4. Incorrectly capitalised section headings
5. Links within section headings
6. Links within bold-face reiterations of the article title
7. Misuse of /

There are of course many others. But it would be trivial to prevent or inhibit any of these basic errors from ever getting into articles. A simple edit filter could apply simple quality checks, and warn the user if their edit fails them.

I can think of any number of advantages to basic quality control, and not a single disadvantage. Interested to know what other people think. 51.6.138.90 (talk) 10:19, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

The style guide Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style has discussions on MOS:AMP MOS:&, and Use of contractions and ampersands. They also give many exceptions such as AT&T and quotes containing contractions, Exceptions are what makes programming complicated. The disadvantage is that if you disallow such changes then an editor may not finish their edit, or worse quit Wikipedia Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 12:25, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

I'm not suggesting disallowing anything. Rather, if one makes an edit that contains, for example, isn't, and the text is not within quotation marks. you would simply be warned that contractions should not be used, with a link given to the relevant part of the MOS. If there is some valid reason to use the contraction, you would just click save anyway. I can't remember how but I've certainly encountered edit filters with that behaviour before, where you can save the edit after a warning. 51.6.138.90 (talk) 13:05, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

I think it would result in user experience issues. It certainly makes me mildly annoyed every time I trip an edit filter. Kleinpecan (talk) 13:20, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

I would anticipate the user experience, if the filter were tripped, to be something like the following:

1. user who did not read the manual of style makes an edit including text like "It should be noted"
2. user is prevented from saving the edit immediately, with the reason displayed including a link to the MOS
3. user revises their edit, and is less likely to make a similar mistake in the future

How would you see it playing out? 51.6.138.90 (talk) 13:43, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

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

How can we help WMF Operations" - Which data/Processes/Tools take up the most processing time

UP to 99.7 % of database time calculating edit counts per Editor, may be wasted"" The Mediawiki documentation states that the edit count is checked on every user (not just active or logged in) every time. The true figure will be less because there will be a temporary file created from the history file, and a flag may be set on user every time they do an edit since the last counter dat. I have no idea how much time this takes up, and how often the job is donee

Source of numbers. The 99.7 is based on figure from whatamIdoing (12.2 million ever-successfully-edited-here editors, 42.5 million registered editors) and Wikipedia:Wikipedians advising 125,307 active editors

WMF operations : Data Issues and Constraints 

WMF operations are as core to WP success as Editors; but we tell them our issues, but we don't know theirs. IF we knew what take the most time, we could work with them to see if a change was possible with us Some proposals are vetoed here because of WMF database capacity constraints (such proposals as moving template tags from Articles to Talk) or developer availability . BUt maybe they could have been possible if we were happy for it to happen over weeks, or we were prepared to change our requirements subtly, or we had more information Unused lists If we knew that that nearly all automatically created lists were only ever looked at by people and this took a lot of databasetime, then we could consider removing the majority of them by a process change. Perhaps this (It think inactive) development Wikipedia:Category_intersection (by {{User:Sam}} and ((User:Rick_Block}} may have helped.With maybe a new category/info/date of birth/death search above category, we would have ended up with an accurate category-article relationships, reduced the 650 Kcatgeoriesm and avoided the multiple countries claim the same person.

""" Pushing wiki to extremes Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 06:56, 23 November 2021 (UTC) Very long lists (which we get around by splits which makes reader search harder), and too many categories on an Article for things like treaties. Maybe we just need a new way of handling this, such as storing the data in WIkidataWakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 06:56, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

Pillar 2 NPOV means Notability should be predictable in Article Wizard

== Reduce Conflict by allowing All editor Tool type Checks on Individual Articles == Summary

1. We are losing new editors as 84 $ of articles fail, and we let them waste 2 to 4 hours creating

"did you know that an average of 79 nominations per day were made between 2005 and 2020, for a total of 449,950 (and only 16% of them closed keep)" User:JPxG

1. There is more than a 50 % chance that a new genuine editors first edit will be reverted, and they will leave in 2 months
2. The Afd debate is often larger than the articles
3. Notability is unpredictable - AfD don't vote 100%. Our procedures are an impossible learning curve
4. We encourage readers to brave and create an article if their search fails
5. We are measuring editors using tool they don't have access to
6. Our NPP tools do not require comments, and our training advises them not to help

Needed

1. An article editor should be able to predict success
2. All editors should be able to do the same checks on an article

A simple consistent measure that is checked in the Article Wizard

• is there enough for a start article? (ask google to autocheck)
• Ask google to give us a tool estimating notability worldwide and by country
• Use the NPP tools for reference relibaility (based on fact check site)
• Refer borderline under to Project who can make decision which can then not be NPPed
• Allow projects to override notability "There are no rules"

But

1. Force a user that passes notabiity to stay in draft until start class article.
2. Use rater to automatically advise them of status and issues

(talk) 14:18, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

New Editor interaction	Exp Editor Opinion	Good Article	Good Artticle AfD	Good Article AfC	Vandal	Vandal AfD
Starts an article	NA	Excitement			Joyful
Uses Wizards		Confusion
Edits		Worry
Saves - Draft Article		NA		Worry	NA
Saves - Draft Article to AfC				Uncertainty
Waits for AfC	Backlog to fix			Indifference Frustration
AfC - Disccussion	Satisfaction Frustration			Pleased Confusion Upset
AfC - Fail	Uease			Anger
AfC - Pass	Satisfaction			Relief
Publish Article	Backlog	Pride			Amusement
Screen dump of artcile	NA				Pride Status
Publishes Article accidently and NPP/Other Edits immediately	Satisfaction	Upset			Amusement
Tools - tags	Satisfaction	Frustration
NPP - AFD	Pride	NA	Shame Anger	Fear
Further Edits	NA	Ok Upset			Pride the longer it lasts	Amusement
Edit Reverts	Satifaction	Guilt Anger			Amusement	Amusement
AfD -Pass		NA	Relief	Annoyed	Amusement	Amusement
AfD - More work			Frustration	Frustration	Amusement	Amusement
AfD - Fail			Anger	Anger	Amusement	Amusement
User page for Deletion		Indifference Anger Hatred			Amusement	Amusement
User Page edited (Personal Page)		Anger Hatred			Amusement	Amusement
User Talk (personal space)		Safety Thankful Friendly Relief Confusion Rejection Frustration Anger			Troll
Talk	Satisfaction
Teachouse	Satisfaction Unease Frustration	Thankful Relief Frustration
Help Desk	Satisfaction Stress Frustratio

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Wakelamp (talk • contribs) 14:23, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

• If nothing else, en-wiki has made it very clear that it does not support reducing notability standards for under-represented topics, even if the WMF would like it. The notability standard holds two purposes: it acts as a filter from everything being included, but it also works to ensure a certain minimum standard of sourcing and thus content and accuracy for that article. Changing it (and also changing our definition of reliable/independent source) would inherently have a negative impact on every article, not just those within the category, as readers would note a decline in quality but not be aware of the split-structure (just as they aren't aware of, say, Geoland's lower hurdle or NCORP's higher hurdle). There is a semi-automated tool for rating, but we deliberately require a manual look, because automating what makes a good wikipedia article isn't the same as a regular piece of text. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nosebagbear (talk • contribs) 14:59, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

  @NosebagbearI can see your point, but I find it unfair that New (non-sockpuppets)Editors can no longer create a new article and pass AfD; Even experienced editors disagree about what is notable, so how can we expect them to? And after wasting 4 hours on their first one I can see why they leave. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Log/2021_November_26.

  # Notability standards :Can you point me to the last RfC? "en-wiki has made it very clear that it does not support reducing notability standards" BUT WP:CONEXCEPT WMF is responsible for legal issues. Equal opportunity is a legal issue, a charity issue, and a reputation issue. Women who starred in a major film - no. But a minor cartoon character - yes.

  1. IMDB reputability is a particular problem. We use their information without acknowledgement. Either

  • with no references. TV shows have all the non-main cast/crew in the order as IMDB (number of episodes), even many of those people do not appear on credits. Movies have them same order.
  • or we have used them to inspire our own searches for often incredibly obscure links (posters, blogs, and very low rep. blogs)

  Wikipedia:WikiProject_Film/Resources#Questionable_resources

  • IMDb content is mostly user-submitted and often subject to speculation, rumor, hoaxes, and inaccuracies. The use of the IMDb on Wikipedia as a sole reference is usually considered unacceptable and is discouraged. Its romanization of Chinese titles does not follow the standard. Reliable sourcing from established publications cannot be stressed enough. Anonymous or pseudonymous sources from online fansites are generally unacceptable. So, while itself discouraged as a source, IMDB might provide information leading editors to the preferable reliable sites. Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 14:53, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

  • The WMF didn't do the easiest job at archiving, so the best way to see how hostile the Community was to changing the notability rules is to go to any page in the strategy recommendation process on it and take a look at the talk pages. For example this was the first draft of one, and then there are multiple talk pages of the later iterations. It was also made clear on the village pump, and in innumerable zoom calls. As the WG was responsible for assessing commentary on its own work, it still persisted into the final form, despite a unanimous opposal on the final version. Take from that what you will. While the WMF has responsibility for legal functions, equal opportunity a) applies to things like employment, not encyclopedic content, b) would require a level playing field. Were we to say "female biographies need 8 good sources, male need 3", that would be uneven (though still not a legal matter). In futher response to what you say, in a sense, we don't expect new editors to know how to handle the notability guidelines. We discourage writing a new article as the first thing to do, and also heading straight to AfD. However new editors can create new articles (but through AfC) and pass AfD - it's not like we auto-fail any argument backed by a new editor in AfD, they just may not be aware of what those are (as are some experienced editors). Nosebagbear (talk) 17:16, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

    A question. If you created an Article what do you think your chances would be to get no NPP templates, or fail at AFd? ( and 30 % or the Articles that end up at AfD have no notability issues)

    1/I am sure I read about it on an EU website applying to written work...There is also something about allowing equal access to work and not discriminating,,, In Australia, volunteering and work have the same safety rules. Our current process removes far more more women

    2/ With discouraging - not so much with the 'Be Bold' everywhere. And after a SIMPLE :-) spelling error on search, you get "Create the page "SdifjoIWEHF" on this wiki!"

    3/ AfC is not forced, but they told me that 80 % fail for lack of references

    4/ I would love the split for New Article into speedy, AfD (pass, fail, quit, rename)m AfC

    5/ And I just found out that ORES does rated articles up to C CLass using Rater Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 19:55, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

    In Australia, volunteering and work have the same safety rules. Our current process removes far more more women. Those "safety rules" would apply to the volunteers themselves, not to the articles they write. Do we have statistics that new editor retention is far worse for women? --Ahecht (TALK
    PAGE) 20:12, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

    I will post in women in red. I think Our male/female split has got worse, which means that it must be so

    Anyway I have seen 4 articles

    • Women and men are far nearer to 50/50 to edit WP, but are far more find it unwelcoming, And are far likely to leave.
    • Educated women are more likely to leave workplaces that are aggressive
    • Women are more likely to respond negatively and personally to critical computer warning messages
    • Women in power imbalance situations are more likely to be passive or avoidant. There only restorative is to exit Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 13:50, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

• User:Wakelamp, I especially appreciate the analysis of emotional states, which is often so overlooked. As the rest, can you provide an executive summary of what you're saying here, and thinking as to possible actions? I'm not super smart and am having trouble interpreting the chart. I think you are thinking along lines of changes to some software rather than just rules? Herostratus (talk) 16:31, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

• I'm a bit lost on exactly what this idea wants to do? It seems like it is proposing that a new article workflow gets a "google" to evaluate the article, and some "fact check" provider to provide some sort of feedback to the editor? Am I missing something? — xaosflux ^Talk 23:43, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Redesigning and simplifying the English Wikipedia website

I would like to start a discussion on redesigning the English Wikipedia website. I'm not sure if the WMF would need to get involved with this. Here are some design changes I would like to see and would like to know your thoughts on them. To start, I would like to see the sidebar's contents be moved to the top of the page as menus and be replaced with the table of contents of a particular article. Britannica does it best there with its articles (example). I would also like to see the main page to be redesigned. Since the 2006 design, the design has changed very little and I think the main page is due for a redesign. Britannica also does good here with this factor with its modern look. The current main page is dated and I was hoping we could make an RFC on what we could do to make it more user friendly. I would appreciate any comments about where to start with how we can simplify and redesign the Wikipedia website and the main page. Interstellarity (talk) 23:04, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

@Interstellarity: have you tried the "new vector" interface? — xaosflux ^Talk 00:36, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: No, how do I access it? Interstellarity (talk) 01:29, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

@Interstellarity: in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering select the skin "Vector", uncheck "Use legacy vector", check "enable responsive mode". You should be able to tell you are in it if you can collapse the left sidebar. — xaosflux ^Talk 02:26, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

Hi Xaosflux,

While I think this is an improved version of the old vector design, I think it could be improved by moving the sidebar's controls into tabs like most websites do. I think for articles, instead of placing the contents in the article, they should go where the sidebar's current controls are. I think if you want to navigate from one section of an article to another, you would have to scroll up to the contents to go where you want to go. If the contents were on the sidebar, it would be a lot of easier to navigate from one part of an article to another. These are my ideas of how to make the user interface of Wikipedia more user friendly. Interstellarity (talk) 16:09, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

Workspaces

What about if editors could rearrange the window as workspace. If you edit a page the page appears on the left say, the talk on the right, and the history at the bottom. Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 08:56, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

Adding "AfD closer" status

So, AfD sometimes works non-excellently, help from non-admins is needed, non-admins can't really process AfDs well since they can't make "delete" closes because they can't delete articles, so let's address that. We're not ever going to (and shouldn't) give non-admins the bit to delete articles, so forget that, on to Plan B.

More exposition on this (optional)

So, my basic starting point is the admin corps is understaffed (IMO it's worse than people think, because while few admin tasks aren't taken care of, some seem rushed. And, IMO AfD doesn't work as well as it might. So, one way of dealing with that has been to offload tasks onto editors -- flag to allow non-admins to edit templates etc etc etc.

So, we have Wikipedia:Non-admin closure. And non-admins close various things, and WP:NACAFD addresses closes of AfDs specifically. Any editor can close an AfD but really only speedy-keeps, or expired ones, and those have to be closed as "keep".

That's not very useful. Only being able to do "keep" closes is inherently unbalancing, like being a judge who can only acquit. And also, I'm not going to spend an hour or hours looking at a discussion (old ones are often the thorniest), only to determine that "delete" is in order so I have to throw away my work. Who would.

And I mean, I personally am not convinced that admins overall are really any better at closing AfD than any other good editor. Admins are good at many other things, they are carefully vetted because they do important and difficult things and handle sensitive info and situations -- edit wars and ANI complaints and vandals and reviewing deleted articles etc etc etc. and I'm confident they're good at it. But they're not really extensively vetted, usually, on their qualifications for AfD closes specifically. I'm not saying admins are bad at that but I'm not convinced they're any better than other good editors.

Another point is that AfD closer would be a helpful step for people who do want to be admins. You know, like "100 AfD closes with no complaints" would be another data point for someone wanting to undergo RfA, in addition to the useful experience.

This suggestion is that we make a new page, "Wikipedia:Requests for permissions/AfD closer", which looks and works a lot like say Wikipedia:Requests for permissions/Template editor. An editors applies there and, just as for template editors etc., an admin grants or denies the status after consideration. (Presumably the editor would have previously participated thoughtfully in AfD discussions, gaining experience and also WP:AfD stats to aid consideration).

If "AfD closer" status is granted, there's no bit added, the editor just gets put in Category:AfD closers. A new criterion is added to Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion and in Twinkle, something like "A12, deletion requested by a certified AfD closer following an AfD 'delete" close".

If an AfD closer closes an AfD as "keep", the procedure is the same as before. But if she closes it as "delete", she slaps an A12 CSD on it. The next admin clearing out CSD deletes it. But as you see there's an an admin backstopping the process and catching anything that looks wrong.

Criticism and advice requested. Herostratus (talk) 17:27, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

I realize this is contradicted a bit by the existence of non-admin closures but closing contentious AfD discussions has always seemed to me like an area requiring enough wisdom and discretion that there is value in having community input into who is given that responsibility. It seems different than things like page mover or template editor permissions where the main issue is that the user can be trusted to not break things too badly with the tools. CapitalSasha ~ talk 18:38, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

OK, but as I said a person who can only close "keep" is like a judge who can only acquit -- not helpful. Yes and let's say all admins are good AfD closers, there are also many non-admins who would also be good closers, and there aren't enough admins. We need some sort of solution.

And remember, an admin cannot be removed except in rare exceptional cases, so if they're a mediocre AfD closer and can't be talked out of doing it they could still be doing it in 2040. An "AfD closer" can be instantly removed from the category by a single admin (and allowed to re-apply). Herostratus (talk) 00:58, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

• I would oppose. It would be a hassle for admins to regulate and monitor these closers, AfD is incredibly subjective and conflict-ridden. The thing about admins, they have a lot more at stake then someone with a special-purpose bit, admins are more judicious in deciding a close. A special power is a hammer looking for nails, once you have it you will want to exercise it. Such a power is a mandate of one's supposed superior abilities in deciding to delete. It would also form a club of sorts, where fellow bit holders will find it useful to support one another, making it difficult to oppose a group of deletion specialists and their supporters. -- GreenC 18:43, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

OK. I don't agree with some of your points, but I've been wrong before. But do you agree that AfD closes sometimes don't get the involved consideration they require, and if so what should we do instead? Herostratus (talk) 00:58, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

• The thing about admins, they have a lot more at stake then someone with a special-purpose bit - is this actually true? It is very rare for an admin to be de-adminned, and I can't recall it happening over bad AfD closures in recent memory. --Aquillion (talk) 22:31, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

• I'm intrigued. I have no intention of ever becoming an admin, but I could imagine requesting this permission. I find it interesting to keep an eye on the book-related AfDs and I think I have gotten to know the process well. I'd close uncontroversial deletes periodically. Some threshold requirements -- e.g., account at least a year old, !votes in at least X AfDs, whatever seems likely to increase AfD competency -- could go a long way in screening for good candidates. But none of those metrics will do a good job of screening for the interpersonal skill and judgment, not just "experience", which makes for a good AfD close. Having admins do the actual delete provides some "safety net" but a bad AfD closer could sow a lot of discord. I think it's worth considering what processes might give this permission to the most suitable candidates. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 06:05, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Yes of course, votes in X number of AfDs would be necessary. I don't know if X should be a hard number. Ten is not enough, 100 is, in between it depends; obviously nobody is going to consider someone with ten, we hardly need to say that. And OK, Interpersonal skill is fine, but I don't have it and I've closed hundreds of AfDs with no complaint. Patience, analytic skill, very good knowledge of the relevant rules and usual practices, and diligence are more important IMO.

Since this the idea lab, I'll keep idea'ing. I like simple, cos that give best chance for adoption, but you could add all kinds of stuff:

1. Rrequire the signoff of X admins... 3 or 5 or whatever, instead of just 1.
2. Or, instead of just an admin(s) given the status (as in Wikipedia:Requests for permissions/Template editor etc, You could have a full-blown "Wikipedia:Requests for closership" -- like WP:RFA but very much simpler and shorter (see hatted material).
3. Or, other. Let's hear it.

Some important points which I'd recommend reading, but skip if you wish

The editor is not asking for the ability to block persons, see deleted material, edit protected pages, adjudicate WP:ANI cases, and so on. Just for the one ability (which isn't even a bit, and is backstopped). All questions could revolve just around that. Extensive knowledge of rules outside those useful at AfD, being good at vandalism patrol, at handling edit wars, etc etc aren't in play. (Demonstration of good character and intelligence would be of course.)

And, to that end, we have Wikipedia:AfD stats. here's mine. Easy to read charts showing the editor's level of engagement. How often the editor did or didn't vote in accordance with the eventual outcome. How "deletiony" or "keepy" the person is, compared to the general population. Links right there to check her contributions, a random sample or all. You can also see just her AfD nominations, read them, and see what percentage were agreed with. Your vote practically writes itself. (Of course this info is also available to admins if we go the "Requests for permission/xxx" route.)

Also, good grief, I just saw Wikipedia:Successful requests for adminship. We have had seven new admins this year. This isn't sustainable and sooner rather than later we are likely to end up with some AfDs being closed too hastily. If that hasn't happened already. And remember, a big effect isn't just to help AfD but to free admins to do other tasks better.

Come, on, people, we have got a non-excellent situation here. It is not going to get better. We need a fix. IMO we don't need to hear "Well, but then there's this downside" (EV-ER-Y thing has downsides) or "Well, but maybe this bad thing might happen" (In which case, we just stop doing it or fix it) or "Well but maybe a troll or deep-cover vandal might get in" (trolls and vandals get in everywhere, a few; we unddo their work and deal with them) or "But what if the AfD closer turns out suck at it after all" (a single admin can kick him out of the category (and he can re-apply), and so on. Don't take counsel of your fears, don't fear that our experienced editors who want to help out here are dolts. If they are, let's find out. Individual dolts are removed -- no trial (unless people want that). If the new AfD closers turn out to be dolts generally, the admin corps will stop appointing (or the community electing) new AfD closers, and it just dies and is eventually deleted. There's only one way to find out. We need to keep adjusting to circumstances -- 7 new admins this year, under 20 in a typical year, and that's not accounting for retirements -- or face a decline.

Seven new admins this year. We have to take some burden off the admin corps. If you've got a better idea, let's hear it. Don't just be a naysayer, please. Herostratus (talk) 19:04, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Herostratus, I've always thought of you as a good editor, but I guess I'd like a persuasive statement from you as to exactly why you think this new permission is needed. Sometimes, AfDs are not closed after exactly seven days, but usually there's a discernible reason (low participation, the possibility of further comments' leading to a clearer result, particularly problematic discussions that would probably be beyond the competence of your proposed AfD closers, etc.), but I've not noticed that there's often a severe backlog of AfDs that need closing. What prompted you to propose this? Deor (talk) 21:53, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Hi. Well, I explained in detail above, such detail that that I hatted a lot of it to avoid TL;DR syndrome. It's been in the back of my mind for some months. So anyway, I'm not so much concerned about lack of backlog, as quality. Don't get me wrong; quality is good! Most closes are fairly easy anyway. Most are deletes, and properly so, or they wouldn't be at AfD. Occasionally we lose an OK article. I personally hate to see that, but it's not a crisis. Occasionally I see (IMO) a close, keep or delete, that seems rushed. It's not a crisis. I guess... maybe 19 out 20 closes are OK. That's good. It's not humanly possible to get that last 5%, probably. I don't know... A part of what I'm trying to do here is think of ways to allow the admin corps to have more time and energy to focus on the many things that only they can do.

As to "beyond the competence", mnmh. I don't see a clear admin/editor line such that the editor corps is mostly blockheads, and I mean after all you're talking about people who have participated significantly in AfD, competently, have not shown poor character, and want to be closers, and meet any other requirements the people granting the status want to personally impose, such as length of service or whatever. But that's my opinion. Herostratus (talk) 00:46, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

• TBH while there are areas that lack for admins, I'm not sure AfD tops the list. The really big problem is WP:AE, which is largely handled by just a few admins - until recently El_C was doing a huge chunk of it, and right now it's just a handful of people. Fortunately we've generally had evenhanded admins handling it, but no matter how good they are it's still not ideal to have so few people making those decisions, not in the least because of the load it puts on them. And AE isn't really something we can farm out to non-admins. --Aquillion (talk) 22:31, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Well... I mean if El_C needs help, what about the admins who are closing AfDs right now? I don't know how fungible admin time is, but maybe some. And I mean you cannot have non-admins doing WP:AE, so where can we find a way to support the admin corps?

Let's see... at AfD, 24 November, 95 articles. 25 November, 68. 26 November, 87. That's a lot. Lot of those are quick slam dunks, a fair amount aren't. Some of those, you need to check that BEFORE was done well enough, weigh other matters. It can take time. How many man hours to close 95 articles? Say 15 minutes average, that's 24 person-hours right there. I don't if we average 15 minutes per close, but if we don't that may just mean we can't, not that we shouldn't. Herostratus (talk) 00:46, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

URFA addition to article milestones

Hi! I was recently made aware of WP:URFA by SandyGeorgia. I was not aware of this before and I noticed there are many articles there that have notes such as "satisfactory", etc. to indicate they still satisfy FA criteria. However, this is not shown in article talk pages in the milestones thing but could be useful information (e.g. seeing an article passed FAN in 2004 but its FA status was last discussed/checked positively in 2019), both to make the great work volunteer editors do in maintaining the curatorial standard in Wikipedia be more transparent to newcomers and lurkers, and also to encourage more participation in that process. Articles can change immensely in the years (sometimes decade+) since they were listed as FA, but that does not necessarily mean their quality has dropped in relation to the encyclopedia's other articles. I'm not saying there is a dire need for more reviews (nor saying there is not), but just a small idea. I thought of posting this in URFA's talk page but was also wondering about the perspective of less involved editors on this. My main concerns have to do with increasing the visibility of these reviews while not making them too bureaucratic to perform (e.g. many links, templates, etc. to perform), as well as the fact I myself am not experienced with this process so might be unaware of previous consensus in regards to something like this.Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 22:33, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

Hi, AC! So glad you have taken an interest. Actually, the current link is WP:URFA/2020 (URFA is the original, but old, effort).

Yes, we need more reviewers; WP:FAR was moribund for years, and now we have quite a backlog to get through. And we sure do need a way to draw more attention to the effort to review older FAs.

As far as Article milestones go (I was involved in helping develop that), we really shouldn't include the informal "satisfactory" marks from URFA as a milestone, because those are only intended to indicate FAs that are good enough to not need to be submitted to FAR, whereas those that are actually submitted to FAR, are recorded as an entry at article milestones. With so many needing review, we had to have a process that allowed us to focus on those that are truly outdated or neglected, because we can't actually review that many thousands! @Hog Farm, Buidhe, and Z1720: (the other main participants at URFA/2020) and @WP:FAR coordinators: . Open to ideas, though Best, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:42, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

I missed some others who have worked at URFA/2020: @HJ Mitchell, David Fuchs, and Femkemilene: (probably missed more, but didn't mean to :) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:47, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

Not opposed to this idea. A concern I've had with URFA is that, at our current pace, it will take years to check every article. An article marked satisfactory today may deteriorate in five years, but will not be rechecked at URFA/2020 because it is already deemed "satisfactory". Having this added to article history might allow us to keep track of the satisfactory FAs and know to re-check them after a certain number of years. Something like the above idea might not be necessary if URFA/2020 were to complete at a quicker pace, which is why I hope more editors will get involved in this process. I welcome more brainstorming and ideas on this topic. Z1720 (talk) 22:51, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

(ec, essentially duplicating Z1720) I like the idea of including it in the article milestones, or noting somewhere that the article has been looked at and deemed satisfactory. A record might come in handy in another few years when we come to review our oldest FAs again. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 22:54, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

Z and HJ, possibly one way to add those marked Satisfactory by at least three reviewers to Template:Article history would be to name a new process to be added to the template (something akin to FAR-light), but then someone would have to program that in to the template, and we'd have to either add those deemed satisfactory manually, or get a bot to do it ... and we'd need a page to record them (like a FAC or FAR page, unless we just used a diff to the URFA page) ... so quite some work is involved in adding a whole new thing to article milestones, just food for thought, because some of those template editors are always coming up with good stuff. I'm not sure we're ready for it yet ... we need more FA-experienced reviewers first! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:56, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

I would rather add URFA to the template in our early process. This will advertise the project on talk pages, causing editors to discover or become reminded about the process. Also, adding it early will mean there are less articles to update when this is first implemented. And I fully agree with Sandy that URFA/2020 needs more reviewers. Z1720 (talk) 23:21, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

Maybe someone with the technical expertise will come along and suggest how we might do that via only using diffs, rather than having to institute new archive pages ... or something ... creative ... SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:29, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

HJ Mitchell we do have a record (see here) but as AC has pointed out, it’s not very visible, in fact, is quite transparent to most people, who would never know where to look for it. But when/if we have to do this again, we do know where to get the data. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:44, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

The milestones idea was the first thing to come to mind, and I do see your point above not including informal marks as a milestone. I don't have enough experience here I think to have any great ideas to propose, but perhaps I can be of help as a representative for the new editor/lurker perspective :P. Backlogs are truly the wildest horses to tame. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 22:53, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

Yep, but not my first rodeo :) The original WP:URFA looked insurmountable when we first tackled it, but that we did. Keep the ideas coming; I see that both Z and HJ like your idea, so maybe someone can put all the pieces in place to make it work, as the list is becoming unwieldy. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:59, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

I don't necessarily have too many ideas here for the actual article history thing, but I wonder what y'all's stance on finding some way to implement quid-pro-quo into the GA/FA process would be. I have found being made to do a QPQ when nominating for DYK a great way to make sure too many of those aren't ignored, so maybe some way of "include qpq link of urfa review when nominating for FA" might go some way to slow the backlog creep Z1720 accurately identified above. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 23:04, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

That has been talked about quite a few times at WT:FAC, and it opens the door to some problems so that it has been repeatedly rejected. It would be better to ask that at WT:FAC, so we can keep your ideas going here on how to advance the WP:URFA/2020 effort. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:07, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

I'm a little bit hesitant to put an informal assessment such as URFA/2020 into article history, but I think this is a good idea in background and there's going to be a way to do this right. I'm pretty sure the GA sweeps from years ago was in article history, but I'm not sure if that's comparable, because GA is a one-reviewer process, which makes it quite different from FA. One way to solve the linking problem would be to make it a standard practice to create a URFA section on the talk page and note that you're marking it as satisfactory there, which could then be linked to in the article history section. The one issue would be if old items are auto-archived, but I reckon this could be worked around by fixing the thread so that it does not get archived. Hog Farm _Talk 00:55, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

As long as the URFA log line is clear enough I don’t think there’s much difference between URFA and peer review, which does get an article history notice. People can either ignore it or hit the link and get an explanation of the process like everything else in article history. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 14:20, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

That is now three in favor (and some against). If we go this direction, I suspect we need to go to subpages for the process, which I fear will deter involvement, and we need involvement! On the other hand, perhaps it will encourage involvement from those who want the line in article milestones … SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:06, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

Could you explain a bit more the issue with subpages? I agree they're not an ideal solution but want to understand your personal perspective here a bit better, SandyGeorgia. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 15:10, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

Most events that are recorded in article milestones have an event link entry to a subpage where the evaluation occurred (DYK, Peer review, GA, FA process, etc). There are a few that don’t (ITN, OTD, main page date as TFA— all involving only a date). Those are typically recording only a date, rather than an assessment. (Study Template:Article history). I’m not sure a one-line-link assessment like ITN or OTD or maindate will work for this case, as we expect at least three reviewers to assess an article as satisfactory before marking it at WP:URFA/2020, so that seems to be calling for a full assessment page. A whole ‘nother process, which would be akin to WP:FAR lite. As an example, look at Talk:Malcolm X in edit mode, where you will see the difference between events and dates, and then look at it not in editing mode. My concern is that, to go this way, we would have to essentially repeat a FAR-like process so that we could record an event page. Easier said than done, and will there be unintended consequences? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:19, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

So, to summarize my points above, the short question for those who like this idea is, would it suffice to add only a one-line link (like this with a date) to articlehistory, or would we be forced to a full subpage event? @Z1720, HJ Mitchell, and David Fuchs: If we are forced to a full subpage new event process, I would be seriously opposed, as we would essentially be creating a FAR-lite new process. If we can add a one-line event, the template coding to that might be simple, but not my skillset, could be wrong. Also ping Hog Farm to revisit this idea based on this new feedback. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:29, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

If we could add a one-link item to articlelhistory, it would essentially be the same way OTD is done— where we add a date and a diff, the diff in this case being the third editor to mark satisfactory and move the article to the Kept or FAR not needed section at WP:URFA/2020. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:31, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

DYKs also have subpages, albeit for their nominations, and are edited by at least 3 people (nom, reviewer, and promoter). I haven't found the subpage issue to be as impactful there. One possibility that could maybe work here is when an article promotes to FA a bot automatically creates a subpage (either of the article, URFA or elsewhere). If there is a minimum time for when it will be reviewed by URFA, that could be added to article milestones with that link (e.g. 18 February, 2023 - Next scheduled URFA (the accurate wording here is hard for me to find)). This could greatly increase the visibility of URFA throughout the project, as editors wouldn't learn about it only through articles who have gone through urfa (which seems like not enough). The bot-generated subpage could also include pre-made text/templates to make editing there less cumbersome, which could also help make it easier for new editors to be involved. As a new editor, noticeboards and pages like URFA that have many sections, tables, and stats can be quite scary, so maybe subpages could help from that point of view. DYK subpages felt like a very accessible way to get involved in that. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 15:38, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

I'm not necessarily for or against the idea but I think the way to do it without involving a subpage is to use the specific revision current at the time the third person "signs off" on the URFA listing. It shouldn't need a devoted subpage but a link to the specific revision that was ruled satisfactory is useful, especially as it means if the article does deteriorate in future there's a "last good version" that can be referred to. ᵹʀᴀᴘᴘʟᴇ ꭗ 15:42, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

Yes, that agrees with what I see as the easiest way to do it, should we decide to do it. I will later ping some others in, but want to first see if this idea truly has support, and then would also want an RFC (since I don’t like adding things to milestones without broad consensus). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:45, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

The FA process already has automatically generated subpages (for FAC, FAR), and those are maintained in articlehistory by a bot, as are DYK entries. (TFA is a manual addition by TFA Coords). I’m not entirely following what you are suggesting. If we hear back from HJ, Fuchs and Z, I will try to ping in others familiar with how to make this happen … later today. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:43, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

Agree with Grapple X. I don't see a need for individual subpages. That would add a whole new layer of bureaucracy to the process. A one-line link is fine as a record that the article was looked at and deemed satisfactory. As was mentioned above, the GA sweeps were recorded in article history and some of those reviews were only very slightly more verbose than "satisfactory". HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 15:44, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

Great, so far we agree on this part then. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:45, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

I would not like to use a new subpage. I think linking the revision version that was deemed "Satisfactory" by the third editor will suffice, as noted by Grapple above. Z1720 (talk) 16:07, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

I also don't think a new subpage would do anything good here, and would just bog down the process. I know article history can handle an item with no link - that was done for some of the old GA sweeps ones, and I've seen it for GA reviews from before they created dedicated GA subpages. Would be certainly doable to just have a link in there. Hog Farm _Talk 16:20, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

If we were to ask

... template and bot editors how to make this happen, I suggest it would look something like this. (I don't want to actually ask them until/unless we are in agreement, but it does appear that all agree that a new process/subpage should not be created, and we should just link to the third "Satisfactory" diff.)

Sample diff: This is what an edit that marks the third "Satisfactory" at WP:URFA/2020 looks like, as it also moves that entry from the list of articles that need review to the list that has been marked as "FAR not needed". (Those that are "Kept at FAR" are already automatically processed by FACbot.) That would be the diff upon which the Template:Article history entry would be based.

1. Who is programming/maintaining Template:Article history these days? (Gimmetrow, who designed and used to run a bot to add every content review process to the milestones is basically gone.) That is, who can code this new entry in to the template?
2. If the editor who made the final "Satisfactory" move, then placed that diff (sample) at a subpage (WP:URFA/2020/Bot archive or something similar), could that be the trigger to call a bot to process the item in to article history, just as the move to FAC and FAR archives now triggers FACbot to do the rest of the bookkeeping?
3. Can a bot pull the article name from a diff like that ?
4. Just as FACbot then pulls a diff to the corresponding version of the article at the time it was marked satisfactory, could that be done here as well ?
5. Can FACbot do this ? Or is this type of task more suited to the bot that processes DYK, or the bot that processes ITN?
6. Then, could FACbot (or another) process that archived diff in to article history with an event that looks like this (where x represents the next open event number and the sample diff listed is used)?
7. And then, could that result in a line in articlemilestones that reads: Date (linking to article oldid) ... Unreviewed featured articles (linking to sample diff) ... Marked satisfactory ?

| actionx       = URFA
| actionxdate   = date from diff as in sample above
| actionxlink   = diff as in sample above
| actionxresult = Satisfactory (this would not technically be needed, as they would all be "satisfactory" by definition of how we are doing this, but leaving it off may confuse article editors)
| actionxoldid  = oldid that the bot pulls from the article that corresponds with the date of the sample diff

| currentstatus = (this would not change ... the article remains an FA)
}}

If I have this right, I will next ping in those who can opine. I would also recommend a formal RFC before we do this, if the bot and template people sign on. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:59, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

This makes sense (to me anyway). However, to play devil's advocate—anyone monitoring URFA is likely already an experienced editor familiar with article history templates; could we theoretically begin doing this manually at first to see how it pans out before engaging a bot to automate it once we see how a few instances of it will pan out? There are still some article history entries that are entirely handled manually (FTC/FTRC for example) so this wouldn't be unheard of and I for one don't mind doing the bookkeeping of updating these things if someone wants to pawn it off, but it might identify the best method to automate if we do it in practice for a bit first. ᵹʀᴀᴘᴘʟᴇ ꭗ 17:00, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

ugh ... I do TONS of manual maintenance of article milestones, and It's a Bitch. The worst part of doing it manually is that DrPda's (or Gimme's, can't remember) script to return an oldid based on a date is no longer working, so finding the oldid is a bunch of work, that is (somehow) already programmed in to FACbot. One of the main things you find is the number of times unfamiliar editors mess them up! Also, most of the code for this should be already present in the (at least three) bots that are already doing this.

But I do agree with you in principle ... that we would a) first ask it to be coded in to the template, b) second add all (or most) of those already done manually to see how it goes (I could do that), and only after that, then c) ask for a bot to continue. Great thoughts ! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:08, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

If this were something I anticipated a lot more newer or intermediately-experienced editors doing then sure, the ability to mess up or miss a step would certainly be magnified but I think it's a safe bet we're likely to only see editors much more familiar with intricate operations working on this. If we want to identify some initial articles to test it out on after any RFC then I'd be happy to take a list of a few dozen and grunt through it just to see what works. ᵹʀᴀᴘᴘʟᴇ ꭗ 17:15, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

OK, when/if we get to that stage, you and I can divide the list to be initially processed. Thanks! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:20, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

PS, we already have a perfect division of labor at WP:URFA/2020, as we have two different sets of "FAR not needed" by date. You could take one, and I could take the other ... when/if the time comes, we're on! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:38, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

Hawkeye's MilHist Bot and FAC Bot already add to the Article History template, so if he has time perhaps a bot task would be something Hawkeye7 could help with. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 17:42, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

I was hoping to wait until I was sure we were all on the same page, and only then ping in all those technical people at once. So, since you've already pinged Hawkeye, I will go ahead and ping the rest of them, via a post at the talk page of the articlehistory template. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:07, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

Queried Template talk:Article history (and I also placed crossposts at WT:FAC and WT:FAR). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:20, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

Getting more freely licensed media by allowing fair use images of living persons

So hear me out: many living people have no image on their Wikipedia article, and the subjects in question generally just don't care. They only start caring once they do have a picture and they don't like it.

I've seen this on multiple occasions as I've uploaded many crops from group photos (where flaws that weren't too noticeable in the full picture become more apparent) and screenshots from freely licensed videos (some people literally never close their mouth while keeping their eyes open when they're in frame) and added them to articles. Nobody cared for years, but after I've added a less than perfect picture (because that's the best we got), the subject wakes up.

An example of this that I remember is Jaap Smit. His article was created in 2011 on nlwiki. On 27 June 2018 I added a photo, File:Jaap Smit CNV 2012.jpg. That's a crop and his glasses magnifying his left eye combined with the angle make the photo not the most flattering there could be. (but the only freely licensed media we had) On 20 August 2018 the photo was replaced by Rob van de Webredactie provincie Zuid-Holland (Rob from the web editorial staff South Holland) who was instructed by Smit himself (talk page: "Het is de wens van de heer Smit om zijn foto te (laten) wijzigen.", translation: "It is the wish of Mr. Smit to have his photo changed") This eventually resulted in a CC BY 4.0 license being added to https://www.zuid-holland.nl/overons/bestuur-zh/gedeputeerde-staten/cdk-jaap-smit/beelden-publicatie/ and we now use File:Jaap Smit 2 (cropped).jpg.

So if we allowed fair use media for living persons but somehow made sure the media isn't overly flattering (the 0.1 megapixel restriction for fair use in general clearly isn't enough for that), we just might get more free media. This is pretty much a brain fart, but it may be worth brainstorming on how to exploit people's vanity. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 10:35, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

@Buidhe, Nikkimaria, and Elcobbola: I doubt this is doable, but they know better than I do. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:08, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

Even without fair use we could perhaps do more. For example, we could have the infobox automatically insert a generic silhouette when there's no image that links to instructions on how to license a photo properly. Probably not as effective, but indicates more clearly that something is missing. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 15:21, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

We used to do that, but the practice was deprecated after a community discussion. See WP:UPPI and Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Image placeholders for the background. Nikkimaria (talk) 15:27, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

I admit I am a little uneasy at manipulating people in this manner. It feels a little bit like extortion - give us a free image or this unflattering one will remain up instead. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 15:33, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

I don't know that it will necessary work like that—we essentially have that in place at present, free images are often taken from poor angles, at seated events or behind microphones, that sort of thing, so donating an image to improve the aesthetics of an article is already a possibility. That said, I'm leery of this for the simple fact that it will undoubtedly lead to tens of thousands of non-free images being plucked from the internet and added to articles which don't need them, and I don't believe that's something to encourage, especially as the knock-on effect will be "well, we have an image, no need to try to obtain a free one now", and the search for/creation of freely-available images will be curtailed. ᵹʀᴀᴘᴘʟᴇ ꭗ 15:47, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

It certainly does work that way, especially when they find that news sources often use our images. I get a lot of complaints about unflattering images, and know of many cases where the athletes were sufficiently aggrieved to upload a better image. Most would prefer that we use a flattering PR image. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:26, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

But that's the point I was making--it already works that way, it wouldn't be a byproduct of a change to fair use, it just is how it is now. ᵹʀᴀᴘᴘʟᴇ ꭗ 19:41, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

I question the idea that adding pictures is always of encyclopedic value. Let's take a subject like Hans-Lukas Kieser, who currently has no photo. Kieser is a historian known for his writings, not what he looks like. Even leaving aside the copyright issues, what benefit to the reader is advanced by letting them know he looks like this? Sure, if there was a free image I would have no objection to adding it but I'm skeptical that it does much to raise the value of the Wikipedia article. (t · c) buidhe 21:34, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

Humans use facial recognition as a primary tool for recognizing other humans. So anyone hoping to recognize the person (perhaps to meet them a conference, or to identify them when seeing them in a documentary or on television if there is no graphic indicating their name, ...) would benefit a photo of their face. CapitalSasha ~ talk 22:39, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

That may well be the case but Wikipedia is not LinkedIn, we're here to educate and not to network—if there is an informative need for a nonfree image that's one thing (perhaps a snippet of music that is being discussed, or a piece of visual art that cannot be conveyed in words alone) but in the case of a living individual we might actually be better served using free files that illustrate their work or the context around their lives than by a simple non-free portrait. In Buidhe's example, for instance, Kieser is an historian of the late Ottoman Empire and his bibliography lists several works on genocide; perhaps a contextual illustration like File:Assyrian_population_1914.svg conveys more about the subject than claiming "fair use" on a picture of him alone could. I'm also a fan of illustrating articles with quotes where possible as well; has this writer said something succinct which conveys who they are or what their work means which could fill a quote box instead of an image? ᵹʀᴀᴘᴘʟᴇ ꭗ 22:54, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

I am inclined to wrap this thread in {{archive top}}/{{archive bottom}}, in order that no more time should be wasted. Please see my closing summary at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 170#Allow fair use non-freely licensed photos of politicians. If we can't allow it for politicians, we can't allow it for anybody else who is still alive. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:12, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

Redrose64, this is VP idea lab, not VP proposals. Your proposal has the goal of just allowing more fair use because you've given up on a high quality free alternative. This thread is about the idea of exploiting people's vanity to get more freely licensed content. I grant you that actually doing this with fair use content would require a change to foundation:Resolution:Licensing policy, but if the community would feel that it's worth it such a change wouldn't be impossible. It's unlikely to happen in the form I described (never say never, but, unlikely), but perhaps there's another way to achieve something similar. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 14:20, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Merging flag template system with the ISO 3166 system

I was looking for a template similar to {{Country name}} that would take a country code and output a wikilink, such as {{Country name|USA}} → United States, but I sure can't find one. I could simply put Country name in [[ ]] like I did just now, but that doesn't account for the two Georgias, among other disambiguates. I kept finding myself looking through the guts of the WP:WikiProject Flag Template system and the Module:ISO 3166 system and I wondered why they weren't operating off of the same internal data. I feel like Template:Country data United States and Module:ISO 3166/data/US should be using the same code base. –Fredddie™ 00:02, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

{{flagg|xx|{{Country name|GEO}}}} → Georgia is one solution. Agree there should be a {{Country link}} template, and unified database if possible. Sod25 (talk) 12:33, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Add a "Funding & Donors" tab under large corporations/organizations

In the heart of democracy, transparency, and informative research, there should definitely be a more standardized category under most large corporations, organizations, non-profits, etc. that discloses said org's donors and funders. Open for discussion! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tadism (talk • contribs) 00:15, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

@Tadism: our articles don't have "tabs". As far as categories go, not sure how you would want to integrate these to the category system? If the funding for an organization is noteworthy and referenced, you can add edit the article to add it already - either somewhere it fits, or in its own section. I don't think it would be encyclopedic to simply include a list of names of everyone that ever donated to an organization in their article, - only ones of special relevance. — xaosflux ^Talk 11:54, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

I imagine that the funding for particular organizations could be incorporated into the body of the article if it’s reliably sourced and constitutes due weight. I imagine that there could be space for “key people” to be listed in nonprofit infoboxes if there is a person or two who bankrolls an entire operation, but that has to be a case-by-case thing. — Mhawk10 (talk) 21:27, 30 November 2021 (UTC)