Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)

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The criteria of WP:NSPORT here are too inclusive

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
When closing a discussion Closers are cautioned to: to judge the consensus of the community, after discarding irrelevant arguments: those that flatly contradict established policy, those based on personal opinion only, those that are logically fallacious, and those that show no understanding of the matter of issue. There are a number of statements about inclusion of sports figures that essentially come down to either WP:ILIKEIT or WP:IDONTLIKEIT, none of which are especially useful in evaluating consensus. These statements were partially or fully discounted in our evaluation.

This RFC discussed two related themes. The first theme was whether the subject notability guidelines given at WP:NSPORT are being used and interpreted correctly at AFD. The second theme was whether some of the subguidelines within WP:NSPORT are too inclusive.

The first theme developed a strong consensus that the GNG is the controlling guideline, while the criteria at NSPORT are useful tools to try to quickly determine the likelihood of an article meeting the GNG.

The second theme was the question of whether some of the NSPORTS criteria are too inclusive. Significant discussion only occurred for the cycling criteria. No consensus emerged on any specific adjustment to the cycling criteria, and no other criteria were discussed in sufficient depth for anything resembling a consensus to emerge.

The conclusions that can be drawn at this point are:

  • There is clear consensus that no subject-specific notability guideline, including Notability (sports) is a replacement for or supercedes the General Notability Guideline. Arguments must be more refined than simply citing compliance with a subguideline of WP:NSPORTS in the context of an Articles for Deletion discussion.
  • There is a general unhappiness with the permissiveness of some NSPORTS criteria, but no consensus in this discussion on any specific changes to any of them.
  • There is rough consensus that sources on older athletes are concentrated in print media. Because it is impossible to prove the negative that the sources do not exist to support an article, some intermediate standard is required for determining when an article on these athletes should be deleted due to lack of notability.

Due to the tangential discussion here on some points that have been raised below, there are issues that remain unsettled by this discussion. Follow-up discussion should be held to determine (in no particular order):

  • The appropriate result for an article at AFD about a sportsperson where they verifiably meet a NSPORTS criterion, but various levels of effort have not yielded significant sourcing (especially for older athletes or athletes from non-Anglophone locations)
  • The possible cut-offs for "older" or "non-Anglophone" in connection with the above question
  • Proposed specific changes for the criteria in each sports-specific subguideline

As with the RfC on secondary school notability, this should not be an invitation to flood AfD with indiscriminate or excessive nominations. (non-admin closure)

Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 19:26, 6 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Tazerdadog (talk) 23:25, 6 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Why is a substub like Magdalena Zamolska encyclopedic? Because WP:NCYCLING. I don't agree that participating in some competitions, without winning, or generating any coverage but a mention in the list of participants should suffice. Who decided those and similar exceptions to WP:BIO? Current research shows that 30-40% of biographies in Wikiepdia are of sportspeople. Most of them are substubs like this, people who did nothing except participate in events. Participation should not be sufficient to be in an encyclopedia; we are turning into a sport stat site. I am hoping the discussion here would be more representative of our community's thoughts than one that could happen at the sports notability talk page (where I'll of course leave a ping). --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 07:55, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

You didn't notify the cycling project about this (which I have done for you). The answer is that this individual represented her nation at an event that's the highest level for that sport. It's a long established consensus for sporting individuals that it'll pass the threshold for inclusion, along with single appearances at the Olympics, in cricket matches, football matches, baseball games, etc, etc. There's a lot of areas on WP that you could say are "too inclusive". Such as all populated places. How is this stub any better? Lugnuts Fire Walk with Me 08:06, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Leaving aside WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS (you are welcome to start your own discussion about possible problem with WP:NCGN), the problem with claiming we have consensus is that it is difficult to prove (citation needed). And when traced, we often find it was a discussion of five users... Anyway, I see some merit in saying that a sportsperson who "represented her nation at an event that's the highest level for that sport" is notable, but speaking as a someone who knows very little about sports - wouldn't that be Cycling at the Summer Olympics? Cycling, to stick to a single example (that is however representative of the problem with NSPORT) lists, in addition to Olympics, five more events: UCI World Championships, UCI World Cups, Grand Tour (cycling), UCI World Tour and Classic_cycle_races#The_.27Monuments.27, for most of those they are in fact several competitions, most of which occur each year. I repeat: it sands to logic to say that competitors at a single top level event are notable. When we get to a dozen of two top level events, we have a problem (of inclusionist creep). --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 11:11, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
The individual in question did compete in the 2008 women's road race, the very top level race for cyclists, organized by the UCI (the cycling governing body). The stub also addresses WP:BIAS, in this case a female athlete from Poland. Lugnuts Fire Walk with Me 11:40, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
And to answer your first question - encyclopedic means comprehensive, which is a different question to the one you're really asking (I assume about notability). Lugnuts Fire Walk with Me 14:17, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Lugnuts: Who decided that 2008 UCI Road World Championships – Women's road race is "the very top level race for cyclists"? Again, I don't understand the criteria here. Olympics, yes, but what else and why? You are ignoring most of my arguments - I asked why do we have the 20 or so top level races? Bias is irrelevant, we don't create article about women or other minorities because they are underrepresented, we create them if they are important. Oh, and the subject seems to have placed 89 out of 91 in said competition. I could understand the top 3 medal winners could be notable. Anyone else - I still don't see why. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 04:41, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
The community decided. Just like everything else around here. UCI events are the top level for the sport of cycling. You've said yourself that you are "someone who knows very little about sports", but you can find out more here. Lugnuts Fire Walk with Me 06:42, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Agree, and not just for cycling. All of sports suffers from this junk. Many of these contentless microstubs are so meager that they'd barely fill out a few cells in an excel spreadsheet. The "sourcing" tends to come from websites that indiscriminately aggregate statistics, often with a dubious record of accuracy. Not a word of prose to be found anywhere. In fact, many of these so-called articles rest on sources so poor that it's hard to distinguish two similarly-named people from each other or to determine whether two stat entries with similar names are actually the same person. Of course, these terrible articles get inflated to large sizes with endless infoboxes and templates to mask the lack of content. Wikipedia readers would be better served if this extremely useless clutter was trimmed, or merged into list articles. But no, it's super duper mega important to erect a shiny little shrine to every farmer who once hit a cricket ball around a church backyard in 1834. Reyk YO! 08:15, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Said the person who created this. And this. Chuckle. Lugnuts Fire Walk with Me 08:19, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Off-topic baiting and snapping collapsed
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
I know better now. Fuckwit. Reyk YO! 08:24, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I strongly recommend you apologise and retract that last comment. Lugnuts Fire Walk with Me 08:25, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
No and no. Reyk YO! 08:27, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, got here from Special:RecentChanges. Please, not in front of the children.MikeTango (talk) 08:32, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I wrote a handful of articles that don't meet the standards I now consider important. So what? It dawned on me what gibberish I was writing back then, so I stopped. Same reason I don't participate at DYK anymore; it was encouraging me to write trash in exchange for baubles. This tactic of digging through ancient edits hunting for a "gotcha" is neither helpful nor particularly honest. And if in future you want to try that again in hopes of getting me to lose my temper, save your energy. I know what the game is now, and it won't work a second time. Reyk YO! 09:09, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Everyone made mistakes in their early wiki career, I also created a lot of entries on non-notable fictional topic that I am not often nominating for deletion, because geek fancruft is not notable. If anything, this only drives home the point that sport geeks need to raise the threshold; currently it is really hard to be a non-notable sportsperson on Wikipedia. We should not be a catalog of sport stats. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 11:14, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
What makes you so sure the early stubs created were "mistakes" rather than the deletionist current perspective being espoused? Carrite (talk) 03:59, 30 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Because I am saying it was a mistake to create that kind of article in that state. Reyk YO! 22:57, 13 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Agree. "The answer is that this individual represented her nation at an event that's the highest level for that sport. It's a long established consensus for sporting individuals that it'll pass the threshold for inclusion" simply isn't true. Many sports are so minor that even the world championships themselves don't get an article here (or much media attention), never mind every athlete appearing in them being notable enough for an enwiki article. For example, Inline speed skating. I have created articles on a few inline speed skaters, I'm not biased against the sport in any way, but most competitors at the world championships are not notable. And then we have sports where NSPORTS explicitly sets the bar lower than competing at world championships. This is in itself defensible, e.g. everyone who plays in the Premier League is notable, fine. But this has been taken to extremes in some cases, like cricket, or cycling (especially women's cycling, where the bar for inclusion is lower even though the sport gets less media attention now and used to get massively less media attention in the past), or soccer (playing for a few minutes in an official game with the national team of a micronation is sufficient to be notable according to WP:NFOOTY). Often the mistake has been made that because people in sport X here and now are notable, this should be included in the guideline for then and there as well. This ignores the massive changes in populatity / notability one can have per sport over periods, countries, and gender. Even for the Olympics, one can reasonably argue that competing in the first games (up to at least 1920) often was not important and has in some cases not even been registered. Fram (talk) 12:01, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • @Fram: Wow. You know, I totally missed the FAQ. You are right, NSPORT clearly states that the subject still has to meet the GNG. But in my experience, the problem is that AfDs are often closed as keep solely based on NSPORT, with arguments that the subject doesn't meet GNG falling on deaf ears. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 05:15, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
      • Closers of AfD discussions for sports figures need to be reminded that if they ignore the context of the sports-specific guidelines, which is clearly laid out in the lead section and the FAQ, they are ignoring the community consensus that formed the guidelines, and the multiple subsequent reaffirmations on the talk page of the guidelines. isaacl (talk) 05:59, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Part of the problem is that many of the sport-specific guidelines were created by editors from sport-specific wikiprojects; and while not everybody is inclusionist about their favorite sport, very few editors are deletionist about their favorite sport. So instead of a nice balance between inclusionists and deletionists, there's just inclusionists and moderates, which tends to lead to an inclusionist bias.
    That said, many of the sports stubs (and substubs) are about genuinely notable people (as in, people who meet GNG); given that the number of articles about sportspeople is so huge, it's hardly surprising that sports editors simply haven't found the time to flesh all of them out; and NSPORT guidelines, as they're intended to do, discourage AfDs in cases like that.
    Part of the problem, too, is that many editors at AfD apply NSPORT overenthusiastically; as in "keep - meets NSPORT" without any thought as to whether the athlete actually meets GNG. "Keep - meets NSPORT" can be a good and valid argument, but AfD !voters often forget that GNG must also be met; and if the case is made that an athlete meets NSPORT but fails GNG, "keep - meets NSPORT" is too simplistic to be of any value as a !vote or a reply. Sideways713 (talk) 12:41, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
As a further note: the OP asked "Who decided those and similar exceptions to WP:BIO?" NSPORT doesn't create any exceptions to WP:BIO or WP:GNG; on the contrary, it explicitly notes (in the FAQ) that all sports biographies must meet WP:GNG to be kept. Sportspeople do get a freebie compared to non-sportspeople in that WP:BIO1E is practically never applied to a sportsperson, but that's not codified in NSPORT. Sideways713 (talk) 14:58, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Disagree. I think there is a problem with there being too many athlete articles as a proportion of all biographical articles on Wikipedia, for sure. But the problem is not that we're allowing too many articles on athletes, but rather we don't have enough articles on non-athletes. -- Earl Andrew - talk 13:26, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
It would be great if we could include more articles on other professions (academics for example are ones perennially under-represented) but then the issue is a matter of WP:V; it is very difficult to support articles on these other professions, whereas even for minor sports, websites with statistics exist allowing individual players to at least meet WP:V. --MASEM (t) 13:39, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Agree The ONLY principle for deciding if an article should exist is "could I fill it with enough well-referenced text to make it worthwhile". Any criteria that encourages the creation of articles which will never have enough text is simply ill-advised. --Jayron32 13:41, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Which is a much bigger project-wide issue that's not just related to sportspeople. Lugnuts Fire Walk with Me 13:52, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time... --Jayron32 17:50, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed. Let's not derail the discussion by saying "there are other problematic areas". This one is a very good place to start. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 05:13, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Note that NSPORT is, in theory, supposed to simply be a quick way to judge if it's likely that an article can be filled with enough well-referenced text to make it worthwhile; it's not supposed to create any backdoors whereby athletes who fail that basic criterion can be declared "notable", though admittedly that does sometimes happen in practice. Sideways713 (talk) 14:02, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Intent means nothing, all that means anything is what actually happens. Every notability guideline beyond WP:42 is an invitation to create articles which will never be developed. --Jayron32 17:51, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
And how do you decide what is "enough text"? You are proposing that we introduce subjectivity instead of objectivity. "Enough text" could be 95% waffle and duplication of info from other articles. NSPORT generally uses objective criteria such as "must have played at the highest level of domestic competition". Any stub can be enlarged but would the additional text be useful? Jack | talk page 16:18, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
WP:42 is a good start. WP:GNG, the expanded version, is pretty solid as well. Not sure we need more than that. But yeah, if an article can never be developed, it should not exist in the first place. If all we have to say about a person is that they lived, why even have an article? If we can't write about their childhood, their careers in some sense of completeness, analysis of their lives by others, etc. then what are we putting in an article? In general, the text of a Wikipedia article should be less than the text which exists in the rest of the world outside of Wikipedia, because Wikipedia should be a summary. When Wikipedia articles are longer than reliable source material about a person, and consist solely of three lines of text and a table, that's a problem. --Jayron32 17:50, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I've always thought a good rule of thumb is whether or not the article shows a reasonable potential of being developed into a Featured Article. Even a lot of perennial stubs show that potential. The article that sparked this thread might have that potential, if and only if someone is willing to do the research to show how that athlete fits into the larger context of the history of cycling in Poland. (And if the material to be researched doesn't exist, well, merging or deletion are the only viable alternatives. -- llywrch (talk) 19:39, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Potential article quality has little relation to suitability for inclusion in an encyclopedia. If we're covering someone as a sportsperson, the only essential is that we have sufficient sourced content about their significance as a sportsperson --Michig (talk) 19:51, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Your answer shows you haven't thought much about the issue. I have, because it's not unique to sports biographies. There are many articles -- both biographical & non-biographical -- currently existing in Wikipedia that will never be expanded beyond a stub because there isn't any further information about the subject. Yet one can argue the subject is notable.

So what to do? Avoid creating it in the first place? Delete them because they will never be developed beyond a stub? Or merge them into a list, much as tv episodes or fictional characters are? (You could call that the "Pokemon solution", in memory of the first time this issue came up.) Or perhaps there is another solution that this old Wikipedian is blind to. But a solution needs to be found because the issue of permanent stubs in Wikipedia is one that will only become more apparent as time goes on. -- llywrch (talk) 15:56, 20 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

"sufficient sourced content about their significance as a sportsperson" is merely the standard we need to mention the person at Wikipedia as a whole. The issue is more about how to include text about their lives at Wikipedia: As part of a larger page or as a stand alone page. We aren't saying "Should this person be removed from Wikipedia entirely". What we are saying is "Is there enough text about this person's life to write to justify putting it on a separate page" If all we have to say is "Jane Smith competed in fencing at the 2012 Olympics" and we literally know nothing else about them, we can note that fact just fine in an article titled "Fencing at the 2012 Olympics". There's no need to ALSO create another page whose sole purpose is to contain that line of text. Jane Smith is at Wikipedia, all the information we have is already in the encyclopedia, and unless and until we can justify creating an entire page to house her biography (rather than just one or two facts about her participation in a sporting event) then the extra page isn't needed. No one is saying to remove the information from Wikipedia, just that creating an entire new page to house that information is not worthwhile. --Jayron32 16:09, 20 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Your answer shows you haven't thought much about the issue" - could you possibly get any more arrogant? I don't get your obsession with articles having to go beyond stubs - have you ever looked at the size of many of the articles in other works such as Encyclopaedia Britannica? I have no objection to merging really short articles to wider topics, but that's an editorial decision on how we organize content and a separate issue to notability. --Michig (talk) 17:38, 20 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    I've never said such a thing, and I would thank you for not accusing me of doing so. --Jayron32 01:51, 21 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Agree As a compromise, can we just have a guideline that makes such entries as the example in the OP presumed ok for a list but not for an article? Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:17, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: Unfortunately for the majority here, you're writing for an encyclopedia where the fundamental underpinning of notability criteria isn't "We think your profession is important," but "The world has heard of you." Of course there will be many more athletes and entertainers than academics represented here, because our culture pays attention to athletes and entertainers, and a third-line forward for the Boston Bruins or a minor actress who gets her kit off for three scenes in Game of Thrones has vastly more name recognition than your average Nobel Prize winner. I'm just curious as to what some of you think should be done about that aside from jettisoning WP:V. Ravenswing 15:03, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • Subject-specific notability guidelines can be more restrictive than the GNG (They can't be less restrictive though), if that helps to prevent excessive coverage in a topic area where imbalanced sourcing can exist. But the case argued here is different: it is that criteria in NSPORT have been selected that allow for the presumption of notability based on weak criteria that can be easily met with WP:V (like the OP substub) but show no strong indication of eventually meeting GNG. Just because an athlete can be documented doesn't mean they are necessarily notable. --MASEM (t) 15:14, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • While I agree with the rough sentiment, and I would not suggest any quotas on sportspeople, nor would I disagree that they are a highly visible type of a profession with high notability compared to many others, we have to draw a line a bit higher; consider the example I linked in the OP: that cyclist has very little world recognition, and I doubt her name is recognized by anyone except die-hard cyclist fans in Poland. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 05:20, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Agree that its too inclusive, not sure what you can do at this point. I think you would probably get a majority of people in a site wide RfC to agree on that, but I don't think you could get agreement on what the content specific guideline should be. On a practical level, any drastic change would probably be more messy than even the schools issue in terms of flooding AfD. I think for any changes you'd need to have a very carefully crafted RfC. TonyBallioni (talk) 15:24, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • I would definitely agree that an RFC regarding this must pre-emptively set up some type of grandfathering approach to existing articles, and a means to address fait accompli at AFD. We learned from the SCHOOLOUTCOMES RFC that if these aren't set in stone to start, a lot of editors will reject the change due to their fears that we'll flood AFD. Preemptive processes for this will help alleviate those matters. --MASEM (t) 15:50, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
      • Yes. In my mind the proposed grandfather clause would need to be set as the date the RfC would be opened to prevent gaming the system, which would happen just as surely as a flood on AfD. Sports aren't my particular area of interest or expertise, but if someone decides to set up a draft RfC, feel free to ping me. I was involved with setting up the schools RfC, so I have thoughts on both the positives and negatives that came from that which might be helpful. TonyBallioni (talk) 15:54, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Disagree. On the whole, WP:NSPORT is fine, but fine tuning is always possible and sometimes desirable. Having read the arguments raised by User:Piotrus, his issue is not about NSPORT but specifically about WP:NCYCLING and he needs to raise it with the cycling project. While he's there, he might ask them to stop obstructing the traffic on public roads. Jack | talk page 15:49, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • No, you are wrong. My issue ws with NSPORT, I just used NCYCLING as an example. Half if not more of the NSPORT guidelines are super-inclusive. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 05:27, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
      • @Piotrus: Perhaps, but not WP:CRIN of which I am the main author (it is summarised by WP:NCRIC within NSPORT). CRIN is actually exclusive because we insist that all cricketers must have performed at the highest domestic level to comply with WP:Notability and the article must clearly demonstrate, with verification, that the player has done so. For the most part, it means he or she has played for a team that is ranked "first-class". At WP:CRIC, we take any article that does not comply with CRIN straight to AfD. I don't know about the other sports projects but CRIC has set a high standard for inclusion and we strictly apply it. We have even taken cricket articles to AfD because there was no indication of first-class standard, even though subsequent investigation revealed that the subject did comply with CRIN but the author had been incompetent by not stating and verifying the notability. Maybe what is needed is for other sports projects to follow our example. Jack | talk page 18:14, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - I tend to agree that NSPORTS is far too inclusive. At the top of NSPORTS there is a FAQ. The first item in the FAQ refers to the GNG. The answer says:
The topic-specific notability guidelines described on this page do not replace the general notability guideline. They are intended only to stop an article from being quickly deleted when there is very strong reason to believe that significant, independent, non-routine, non-promotional secondary coverage from reliable sources are available, given sufficient time to locate them.[1][2][3][4] Wikipedia's standard for including an article about a given person is not based on whether or not he/she has attained certain achievements, but on whether or not the person has received appropriate coverage in reliable sources, in accordance with the general notability guideline.
My opinion, which I've expressed at several AfD, is that this makes NSPORTS and all of it's sport specific criteria, secondary to the GNG. It helps clarify who might meet the GNG but I tend to think there are cases where a person who's done something specific in the sports related field is unlikely to meet the GNG in itself.
Perhaps that's a way forward? Yes, they've entered this race/played in this match/been part of this competition. So find sources to satisfy the GNG for them then. Blue Square Thing (talk) 16:55, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, it's not just your opinion: this is the consensus that was agreed upon when the sports-related notability criteria were initially created, and reaffirmed multiple times since. isaacl (talk) 18:27, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
And to confirm further, most editors that were involved in NSPORT recognize that it sets a presumption of notability in lieu of meeting the GNG that can be challenged if an editor does the necessary legwork to confirm that the GNG cannot otherwise be met (eg following the steps at WP:BEFORE, particularly scouring print sources for athletes prior to 2000). If you can reasonable show no sourcing exists beyond stats, then it is acceptable to seek AFD for that athlete. Most of the editors involved in NSPORT that I'm aware don't think it overrides the GNG. --MASEM (t) 18:34, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Disagree. The guideline is, on the whole, a pragmatic approach that avoids spending time discussing every single article in depth to get consensus each time. So we have lots of stubs - so what? So we have a small proportion of sports articles on people who would likely be considered by most not significant enough to have an encyclopedia article - better than having a debate every time, and we have to consider the difficulty in finding coverage that undoubtedly exists on subjects who were competing more than 20 years ago. Our starting point should be to ask at what level in each sport do competitors become worthy of inclusion in a wide-reaching and comprehensive encyclopedia, not to ask how much content we can find about someone right now, which is all the GNG gives you. In that respect, while not perfect, WP:NSPORT is doing the right thing (although personally I would drop the nonsense about having to satisfy the GNG from it). --Michig (talk) 17:07, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    The problem is not the existence of stubs. Stubs are fine, so long as they could eventually be expanded with existing source material. The problem is the existence of stubs which can never grow beyond a stub because no source material exists. If we have a person for whom all we can say is "They competed in this one event." and have zero biographical material, well, we're creating an article for nothing. We already have documented their having competed in that one event. We don't have to do it twice. We really only need an article if we can write a biography about them. If we can't write a biography, why have an article? --Jayron32 17:54, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
But who's to say that x stub can never be expanded? Lugnuts Fire Walk with Me 18:08, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
"You can't prove sources DON'T exist" is a bullshit rationale and you know it. Demanding that people prove the non-existence of sources before allowing an article to be deleted is so stupid, I won't even insult you by explaining why. --Jayron32 01:26, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Typical non-answer and a great way to dodge the question, clearly demonstrating you can't actually answer the question. Lugnuts Fire Walk with Me 06:45, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
OK: Here is your answer: You cannot justify anything by demanding that those that oppose you prove the non-existence of proof. That's called Argument from ignorance and is a core informal fallacy because it is ultimately impossible to do. If you demand that unicorns exist because no one has ever produced evidence of a "lack of unicorns" in the world, that's baldly silly: You can't demand that we accept the existence of the unobservable merely because no one has produced a lack of observation of the unobservable. You simply can't demand that the world accept the existence of unicorns on the basis that no one has produced a "lack of unicorns" as a proof. It stretches credibility. In the same way, you can't demand that all articles be allowed to exist forever once created merely because no one has produced proof that sources don't exist. If THAT was the standard for deletion at Wikipedia, we couldn't delete anything because no one can actually produce proof of non-existence. That's why in LIFE (that is, in the entirety of human experience, including outside of Wikipedia) concepts like null hypothesis and Philosophical burden of proof exist. You can't just go around making random assertions and then demand people assume your assertions are true without any positive evidence! Because (and this apparently includes you) some people are unaware of the way this reality of human existence works, Wikipedia has a policies in place like WP:BURDEN which establishes that the burden of proof that content should exist at Wikipedia lies solely with the person who wishes to keep the content at Wikipedia. I had assumed you understood how basic logic and proof of existence of things worked. I will not assume that level of intelligence in you any further. --Jayron32 01:43, 20 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't "demand" anything. I stopped reading your pointless rant at that point. Lugnuts Fire Walk with Me 08:36, 21 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
You are seriously trying to pull the n00b arguments of WP:THEREMUSTBESOURCES/WP:ATA#CRYSTAL on us? Really? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 05:30, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Stubs are absolutely fine if they are properly sourced and tell our readers the key facts about a subject. There is no need for them to be expanded beyond that level to become worthwhile articles. --Michig (talk) 17:52, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Well, it is awfully inclusive. But one big advantage is that it sets an objective guideline, and this helps reduce arguments, probably. Like WP:BASEBALL/N... if you had one at-bat in a major league, you are in, period; and if not, you're not (except if you meet WP:BIO on other grounds, which is a different question). There's no back-and-forth of "Well, but he didn't play much... define 'much', where's your cutoff?", with a random decision based on who happens happens to be populating the AfD discussion for that particular page. This is a net positive for the project IMO. And course these articles don't harm anyone. UNLESS... one editor above says "The 'sourcing' tends to come from websites that indiscriminately aggregate statistics, often with a dubious record of accuracy". Well if that's true it's very different. Is it? That's the only question that excites me (For baseball players, the sourcing is usually Baseball-Reference.com, which is comprehensive and reliable. But I don't know about other sports.) Herostratus (talk) 17:43, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • The general consensus for discussions involving baseball and hockey players is that sites which are compendiums of stats are considered to be routine coverage, and thus not sources indicative of the player meeting the general notability guideline. (They can be fine sources for the actual stats, as is the case for the Baseball Reference site, but they aren't used to show that English Wikipedia's standards for having an article have been met.) isaacl (talk) 18:23, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Really? My understanding is that you have one at-bat in the National League in 1904, you get an article. Are you saying that the "general consensus for discussions involving baseball... players" is that at AfD many major league player articles are being deleted? Yeesh, that's a big change. Herostratus (talk) 19:47, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
A player with an at bat meets the baseball-specific notability guidelines, but as described in the lead section of WP:NSPORTS, as well as the FAQ, the article can still get deleted for not meeting the general notability guideline. To determine if this guideline is met, a reference in a stats site is not considered to be sufficient. I do believe there are some corresponding examples of baseball player articles that were deleted, and there have been examples of professional European hockey player articles that were deleted where an entry on a stats site was insufficient to keep the article. isaacl (talk) 20:15, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • A fully inclusive approach via NCRIC and others is the only way to achieve a proper, complete, NPOV encyclopedia. Why is it that not a single person who says "this is wrong" is prepared to offer a viable alternative solution? Let's take NCRIC for an example. One first-class appearance. Want to make it two? Three? Fifty? Fine. Offer that suggestion as an alternative. State NPOV reasons why. But doing so is more POV than any existing guideline.
How easy is it to invent similar "guidelines" for other sports? A single professional appearance? Soccer checkY, MLB checkY, NFL checkY, NHL checkY, NBA checkY... already done. No further need for discussion. Any other need will encourage violation of NPOV. This whole discussion is happening about ten years too late. Bobo. 18:36, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
We could just as easily set it at "played one complete season" checkY for team sports, and won an international championship checkY for individuals. Both would give us a much more realistic expectation of actually establishing notability through sources. Blueboar (talk) 18:55, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
How do you define "playing in one complete season"? What if a player misses one game? Or two? Or ten? Obviously it depends on how many games a season includes (MLB teams play 162 games in their regular season, whereas NFL teams play only 16), but your criteria are still arbitrary. The idea that winning an international competition is the only thing that makes a player notable is laughable; some of the greatest soccer players of all time never won an international competition, and some sports (read American football) don't even have an international competition to speak of, or at least the highest level of their sport is contained within one nation. – PeeJay 19:58, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I was considering that, Peejay. What is a "complete season"? The example I use is Robin van Persie. The season before he signed for Manchester United was the first season in which he played all domestic league games, and therefore the first in which he could be fully judged as a player in the English league. He then played another season before SAF retired, in which he once again played every single league fixture. After that, boom. Anyway, that's just the sports geek in me talking! For "amateur" players, who may have made only a single appearance, we probably don't know what they did for the rest of the season. Did they stay with the team or did they go back to working in their day job in the local pie shop? Bobo. 20:21, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
It's extremely rare to see MLB players play all 162 games of a season anymore. And what if someone's hurt and misses one game? Or suspended? A player could conceivably play for 20 years, be one of the elites in his sport, and never play every single game in a given season, especially in baseball. That criteria doesn't really work. Smartyllama (talk) 17:51, 28 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Disagree For the sports that I'm familiar with (football and rugby league) the guideline is probably about right in terms of identifying which players are definitely notable. If anything, WP:NFOOTY is used more to prevent articles being created rather than to allow them, as it's easy to create a well-sourced article on footballers playing well below the fully-professional leagues and we have a constant stream of articles on semi-pro players being deleted at AfD (there is also a small group of editors who have persistently attempted to relax the guideline further to allow semi-professional non-internationals). There may well be some individual guidelines that are too lax, but let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater here. Number 57 20:28, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    This is true. I remember one of the first things I did when I started trying to be "inclusionist" with footballers was to add articles on footballers for Alloa Athletic, who at the time were playing in the third tier of the Scottish pyramid. I now know the reasons why this was a bit excessive - and I understand these reasons fully, though I didn't at the time and it seemed inconsistent.
That and no two sources appeared to agree on how to spell Michael Bolochoweckyj's name! Bobo. 20:35, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Disagree For American sports, the ones I am most familiar with, the guidelines appear appropriate. Anyone playing in even one game in the National Football League, Major League Baseball, National Basketball Association, and National Hockey League are bound to have sources from at least two areas. The first is their college/junior careers. These sports, in the U.S. are well covered and therefore generate a lot of coverage. The second is that the teams are very well covered. Minor roster moves are covered in detail, including the drafts. For non-team sports, the events in question gain a lot of coverage. Boxing title fights, golf majors, the Ironman triathlon, etc. are all significantly covered. Would be nice if other professions got that coverage, but they don't. There is a reason kids, at least in the U.S., collect baseball cards with baseball statistics and not scientist cards that list scientific discoveries. Its because of how well followed baseball is and not the sciences or other areas (see [1]). RonSigPi (talk) 21:33, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    But if the sources already exist, why do you need the guideline in the first place? Doesn't WP:GNG already allow us to create the article? If the only reason we have the secondary guideline is to repeat exactly what WP:GNG says, then it is redundant. If the secondary guideline allows us to include material which can't be sourced, it's a bad idea. Which is it? --Jayron32 01:29, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    The secondary guideline is there to help editors evaluate whether it's likely that an athlete will meet GNG when sources in the article (if any) fail to demonstrate that he does, but sources not in the article (including hard-to-access offline sources and non-English sources, but also English online sources no one's gone to the trouble of adding) might show otherwise. As the OP noted, Wikipedia has countless stubs about sportspeople; some of them can never be expanded and some can, and NSPORT helps editors make a quick educated guess about whether a particular stub can (given enough time and effort to locate the sources) be expanded and shown to meet GNG. If that guess is "yes" more often than it should in a particular sport, then the sport-specific guidelines for that sport are too lenient; which is almost certainly the case for many sports, but the existence of thousands of poorly sourced stubs doesn't in itself prove that, and is indeed almost inevitable considering the vast number of articles to be written and the limited number of dedicated sports editors.
    The guess is always just a guess, and can be challenged at AfD if you think the real answer is "no" - though you'll need to be strong of heart to try that with a cricket article... Sideways713 (talk) 10:27, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    People keep saying that as though if by mere repetition, they would make it true. You may WISH the secondary guidelines exist to "help editors evaluate whether it's likely", but in the decade or more history of Wikipedia using such guidelines, we have ample evidence of their real use to Wikipedians: To cite in deletion discussions to stiffle discussion of source text and retain otherwise unexpandable articles. That's the raison d'etre of all secondary notability criteria: to provide a loop-hole to allow articles to exist which could otherwise never contain any substantive, referenced prose. You can keep asserting that they only exist to "help editors evaluate" but the bulk of evidence from actual use of these guidelines is quite not that. --Jayron32 01:49, 20 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    There's no need to take such an adversarial tone, as if I or other NSPORT editors were in disagreement about that. On the contrary, many of us are just as frustrated with NSPORT being misused that way as you are; and yes, sometimes it's not just misapplied by AfD editors, but used as a tool by inclusionist sports editors to justify keeping their pet perma-stub. But that's not the only reason NSPORT exists; it has a legitimate purpose, and not all articles it helps keep are unexpandable.
    And articles that meet NSPORT do sometimes get deleted in real life for failing to meet GNG; less often nowadays, unfortunately, but it does still happen. This AfD is a recent case. Sideways713 (talk) 09:43, 20 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    If you're frustrated with the use of the guideline, the solution is to nuke the guideline. Leave people with the GNG to work with. That would solve the problem quite well. --Jayron32 15:13, 20 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm frustrated with the current use of the guideline and with shallow "keep - meets NSPORT" !votes; but I'd be even more frustrated if AfDs for track and field athletes who do meet GNG suddenly spiked tenfold and I had to run around looking for sources to prove the keep separately every single time, which is what might happen if NSPORT was nuked. There are thousands of track stubs with minimal sourcing, not because the sources don't exist (true in some cases, but not most) or even because the sources are hard to locate (true in many cases, but not all) but because WikiProject Athletics doesn't have enough manpower. The people we do have have better things to do than run from AfD to AfD, or to be at loggerheads with each other about notability. I'm not entirely happy with NSPORT or the track-specific guideline (which is a mishmash of strict criteria, lenient criteria, strange criteria and some misplaced stuff no one's ever got around to removing); but they give us more time to concentrate on actually improving articles. Sideways713 (talk) 22:42, 20 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Agree, and as to the above about what the standards should be, we already have that standard. "If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to be suitable for a stand-alone article or list." If an athlete meets that standard, they are notable. If not, they are not. But a brief blurb just mentioning that they happened to appear is not significant coverage. Seraphimblade Talk to me 21:52, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Agree. Seraphimblade says it well, Alanscottwalker offers a possible compromise. When push comes to shove, I can't think of any topic notability guideline that works well and all of those I have seen acknowledge the pre-eminence of GNG. They are at best well-intentioned attempts by aficionados to carve out some sort of standard but they are used in effect to bludgeon through things that would never apparently meet GNG. - Sitush (talk) 23:28, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
The GNG is one of the worst standards ever adopted by this project. Any other sensible encyclopedia (as WP originally did) would take objective criteria much along the lines of the SNGs as their starting point rather than judging which subjects to include based solely on how much coverage they can find elsewhere. --Michig (talk) 18:00, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
So, where are you going to find source texts to add information to articles at Wikipedia, if the GNG wasn't there? The GNG only says that source text needs to exist before creating an article. Why is that so wrong? Are you really proposing we do away with that standard, and allow articles to be created on subjects even when no source text exists about that subject? --Jayron32 15:13, 20 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
What you have just stated makes no sense. We have the policy WP:V which would prevent articles existing even when no source text exists, whatever guidelines we might have. We can often glean sufficient sourced information for a properly sourced short article from several reliable sources, none of which would be considered to contain 'significant coverage', but GNG demands that the coverage in individual sources is significant. Plenty of unencyclopedic topics have 'significant coverage', and at the end of the day all it gives is the ability to create more detailed articles. --Michig (talk) 17:38, 20 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Disagree Like RonSigPi, I haven't had any trouble finding material on Australian athletes. The abundance of articles reflects the abundance of material available. That in turn reflects the degree interest of our reader base. Per Seraphimblade, GNG is our standard, and that means athletes get bios. Our guidelines merely reflect our accumulated experience of GNG, which is wider and more encompassing. An teenage athlete once asked me why a teammate warranted a Wikipedia article. I told her that it was because her teammate was a Paralympic medalist, and hence was notable. She said she thought you had to be a national hero. I replied that a Paralympian is a national hero. Hawkeye7 (talk) 23:57, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment It's objective standard? No, it is not, it's a made-up guideline, and it thus can be re-made-up. The arguments based on V and on NPOV, are just irrelevant, when what we are talking about is Notability - what we cover in a separate article, a separate biography, in fact - a biography covers birth to death - but what some appear to keep arguing is we need no reliable sources for their biography, just vital statistics and sport statistics, and the made-up guideline. And then there is the argument that there are a ton of reliable sources on these people because they are popular, well fine, but obviously they pass the GNG, then. Come now, and compromise over perpetual stubs (move them to Draft, put them in a list), now, what have you got to lose. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 00:00, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Disagree. There is no reason to change a standard that is working fairly well. We have a bright line of notability that makes sense and is easy to follow. Anything else and you get bogged down in perpetual afd debates about what quantifies as enough coverage. These arguments come up every so often by people who don't think athletes deserve the coverage they get... but thats rubish... more people follow sports than many other professions and will want comprehensive coverage of the major sports. Spanneraol (talk) 00:09, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
No one here is begrudging whatever coverage they get, but why is that apparently mountainous coverage not in these biographies. Alanscottwalker (talk) 00:16, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
And they can get that coverage from, in many cases, the single sports ref website that we cite. Simplistically, if we are aggregating information then we are sort of adding value to the reader experience but otherwise we are not. - Sitush (talk) 00:18, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
So we are saying that people who are looking to research their favorite team should go somewhere else to find information about the players who arent covered here? We should offer complete coverage of major sports leagues as we do. And Yes many of the bios can be better with more information in them... but that isnt any reason to change the guidelines... diligent editors are constantly improving the stub articles to make them better and more informative...deleting the stubs doesnt help them do that. Spanneraol (talk) 00:32, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Like I say, if the article has been uninformative for perhaps 6 months, send it to Draft. And send new ones (after a date certain) to draft immediately.Alanscottwalker (talk) 00:38, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Why? People are more likely to find and improve an article if it is in main space than if it is hidden on some draft page somewhere. Why the arbitrary timeline to improve an article? Spanneraol (talk) 00:42, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Because they are not getting improved, obviously. As for finding them anyone who wants to know and write about them will find them in Draft space. Alanscottwalker (talk) 00:47, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
We are not the article quality police.... and no it is much harder to find stuff in draft space. Spanneraol (talk) 00:49, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Police? What? We are not here to not write actual encyclopedic biographies. And I'll add, that those articles that basically just regurgitate that single sports stat site, does make Wikipedia terrible in the eyes of readers. The least one can do is put all those sources about their life you say exist in a further reading section, so the reader might actually learn something. Alanscottwalker (talk) 00:55, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Did you run some survey that led you to understand that to be the case or is it your personal opinion? You are essentially saying articles should be deleted if they don't measure up to your personal standard of what a good article should be. Thats contrary to the mission of wikipedia. Spanneraol (talk) 16:04, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
No. Per Wikipedia policy as in WP:PAGEDECIDE, I am suggesting putting these non-articles in Lists and moving them to Draft pages. The only thing contrary to the mission of Wikipedia is the continued refusal, or inability to substantiate that these subjects have the sources. As for the rest, it takes no survey to know an article that rips off another website by just regurgitating its contents is bad. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 20:39, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Part of the problem is that many editors think that a "presumption" of notability means something actually is notable. Our SNGs could clarify this by using "likelihood" instead of "presumption". It is true that the more an athlete has done in his/her sport, the more likely it is that they will meet our GNG. Blueboar (talk) 00:31, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • The first sentence of the sports-specific notability guideline is the following: This guideline is used to help evaluate whether or not a sports person or sports league/organization (amateur or professional) is likely to meet the general notability guideline, and thus merit an article in Wikipedia. The third sentence uses "likely" again: If the article does meet the criteria set forth below, then it is likely that sufficient sources exist to satisfy the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article. The third paragraph starts as follows: Please note that the failure to meet these criteria does not mean an article must be deleted; conversely, the meeting of any of these criteria does not mean that an article must be kept. I'm not sure how many more times this can be emphasized in the lead section of the guideline. isaacl (talk) 00:43, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Too often, the only part of a SNG that our fellow actually bother to read is the bullet pointed list of things that create a "presumption" of notability. They (mistakenly) think meeting one of these criteria makes the subject/topic notable... when all meeting the criteria indicates is that the subject/topic is likely to be notable (i.e. likely to pass GNG). Blueboar (talk) 00:57, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I appreciate that many editors don't bother reading the guidelines they quote, but closers of AfD discussions really must read the guidelines referenced within the discussions, otherwise, they are overriding the consensus that created the guidelines. Short of inserting the sentences I quoted above into every subsection, I don't know what more to do to publicize the underlying context of the sports-specific guidelines. I wrote the FAQ, with references to the original discussion that created WP:NSPORTS, to make its relationship to the general notability guideline crystal clear. isaacl (talk) 01:10, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
A topic is generally considered to be notable if it has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject. While the exisatence of such sources is possible, and frequently easy, to prove, the lack of them is impssible - especially given the fact that these sources need not be in English, on the internet, or freely accessable to the general public. In stead, we have specific guidelines which tend to indicate when topics are likely to be notable. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 03:46, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
The burden can't be on proving a negative. At some point, people who create the article, or argue to retain it, need to actually come up with references, not just handwave that they've got to be out there somewhere or another. Seraphimblade Talk to me 07:43, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Agree... But that begs the question: when do we reach "at some point"? A month? A year? Blueboar (talk) 10:05, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Blueboar: Well, to me, especially for an area where the vast majority of the articles will be BLPs, that standard is analogous to WP:BEFORE. Before you create the article, ensure that you have found sufficient source material to sustain a full article, not just a blurb or mention that would be sufficient to stave off BLPPROD. If you failed to, the article will be deleted, but if and when you turn up those sources, you can recreate it from them. Seraphimblade Talk to me 15:29, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
The majority of the articles that are actually stubs are not BLPs because they deal with athletes from the 19th century or early 20th century for which online sources are difficult if not impossible to find. Current living internet-era athletes in major sports are fairly easy to source and reference. The guidelines are meant to account for these people for whom sources are only available in newspaper microfiche at libraries. Spanneraol (talk) 16:02, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Well, then, same standard, really. Once you go to the library, read the microfiches, and determine that the source material really does exist, you can create the article, citing those sources. But just "Well I think it's at a library...on something...somewhere!" doesn't do. Create the article once you actually have the references in hand, not just with a wave of a hand that they must be out there somewhere. Seraphimblade Talk to me 18:42, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Agree that our standards for athletes' notability are far too lax and allow far too much cruft into the project. Take, for example, this guy: an 18-year-old kid who kicks around a football for a living. Essentially no in-depth coverage exists, but he's "presumed notable" per WP:NFOOTY, which apparently trumps WP:BASIC. (Certainly it does so at every relevant AfD I've witnessed.) By contrast, none of the faculty at the local university have articles, because WP:PROF is quite stringent, and rightly so. Nevertheless, these are people who've put in time and effort in obtaining doctorates, writing publications and teaching students. Similarly, none of the physicians at the local hospital is considered notable, although these individuals have studied medicine and are caring for patients every day. Again, I don't object, but what I do find objectionable, indeed downright bizarre, is that out of the economist, the oncologist and the basically random adolescent, it's the last we presume notable.
  • In terms of what should be done, I agree it's a more complicated problem now than it was ten years ago, but I think the focus should certainly be on having articles that comply with WP:BASIC: "people are presumed notable if they have received significant coverage in multiple published secondary sources". Presumption of notability should be granted for significant coverage, not simply participation and routine mention. - Biruitorul Talk 16:20, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • What's actually being proposed here? One note to keep in mind: how much coverage is out there that isn't online or in English. I've skimmed this thread and seen people challenge the notability of a Romanian and a Polish athlete. Has anyone checked the local papers where they come from? – Muboshgu (talk) 17:33, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • I don't think that's such a salient issue for contemporary athletes - in this day and age, newspapers if anything have more of an online than a print presence, and we have editors who know the major European languages. The heart of the problem lies with the too-permissive nature of WP:ATHLETE, which presumes notability for sub-stubs even in the absence of in-depth coverage. - Biruitorul Talk 19:05, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
      • I don't think the presumption is the problem as much as editor's application of it at AfD. In some cases, old articles that have shown no sign of being able to satisfy GNG are deleted despite meeting ATHLETE, but too often editors keep articles based on ATHLETE alone. Jogurney (talk) 19:11, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
        • While I agree the problem is the editor's application, I don't think the old article example is valid. The policy is good when a subject is relatively old. The older a subject is (or for an athlete the older their prime sporting years), the harder it is to actually find sources. While certainly this applies to pre-Internet players, I think that can go back as few as five years as many sources are not online anymore. Let's face it, most editors are sitting at their computer and doing online research. No one is going through hard newspapers finding sources. However, based on various factors, such as attendance and general understanding of newspaper, radio, etc. it can be viewed that era would have been covered - its just difficult and a lot to ask a volunteer website to go check those. Its a presumption the community that has knowledge on the topic has created and it should be respected. To be more honest, we have to make a judgement. Who can say that a 1900 Football League player was notable? None of us were alive then and no one is actually checking the sources. Its an unreasonable proposition to force the keep position people to find sources. If that is the case, then we might as well just say this is a project from 1997 on. Another time presumptions are good are foreign language. How many editors we have that know both English and Thai, are knowledgeable on the Thai League T1, and are in Thailand to access and evaluate sources (reminder - not everything is on the Internet even today). I assume very few if any. We have to make judgment calls and the sports projects (and other projects) are in the best position to make those calls. While I was a commenter, I think this whole idea was well reasoned by a number of editors in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Andy Ainscow. I think the solution is to have admins decide debates using critical thinking. Its not a vote, so a bunch of "Keep - meets WP:NFOOTY" should be discounted. For articles that are likely to have sources found (e.g., a 2017 National Football League player), make editors find sources since they should be able to be found. For a 1930s era racer at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, let's keep since no one is going to go though 80 year old French newspapers, but we know generally how well covered the race and its competitors were. Admins should use sound judgment, I think that solves about 95% of the problems. RonSigPi (talk) 22:55, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

One thing that leave me cold in these discussions is that nobody is making the case "Having these articles degrades the reader's experience, and/or is a burden on our system not warranted by the article's small value, because _________". Well what goes in the blank? If you don't have something exciting to put in the blank, you can count me off the boat, and a lot of other editors too: you are not going to get anywhere.

I'll tell you what doesn't go in the blank: "It it too permissive" or "these are not notable people" or "it doesn't meet our notability rules which were handed down to Moses on Mount Ararat" or "our printing costs are too high" or "it annoys me to see these articles" or "too many of these come up if I use the Random Article function" or "it is overloading the servers with data" or "these articles have small value" (true, but what I want to know is net value), and stuff of that nature

You know what I haven't seen? I haven't seen anybody say "I don't come here anymore, instead I use Britannica or just Google, because there are too many articles here about cyclists, and this degrades my ability to use the Wikipedia".

Now, there are arguments against having articles on unnotable subjects, and they mostly have to do with our own internal dynamics, and the one good argument that's raised for all obscure articles (not just athletes) is that is that there some overhead cost to any article -- which basically means, it has to be watchlisted or checked in the Recent Changes feed.

I wouldn't worry about that too much myself. Obscure athletes are pretty popular, relative to all obscure subjects. People like sports! Just as some people like to watch over maintain articles on lichen species, Parliamentary elections of the 17th century, and towns in Ecuador, so there are people who like to watch over articles on Portuguese cyclists. This enthusiasm is evidenced, in part, by the very existence of the articles.

And if you take those articles away, those editors are not necessarily going to be like "OK, they've cleared out most of Category:Portuguese cyclists, guess I'll focus on Category:South Carolina State Senators instead". It doesn't necessarily work like that.

On that score, there're a lot of subjects before athletes where I'd worry that nobody is watching them. I just found vandalism from 2014 in a (non-athlete) article. Is that happening a lot with athlete articles in particular? Nobody in the discussion above has claimed that it is. Is it?

Another good argument could be "no one -- quite literally, virtually no person -- is interested in this class of articles, as shown by the page views which are consistently at or near zero in the my sample of these kinds of articles, so the value is not just small but is zero". Of course, that's only a good argument if it is true. Is it?

In all the above discussion, I have seen one, and really only one, good argument against these articles: that they are frequently inaccurate -- the statistics and other data in them are wrong, to an unacceptable level of frequency. However, this was presented as an offhand aside and I suspect it is just an uninformed opinion. It if was true, then we would have a problem. Is it?

Go get some data, or even anecdotes, showing some of these things to be true. Absent that, you haven't convinced me that it is a problem. Herostratus (talk) 10:31, 20 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Any stub has a higher chance of being if not inaccurate then at least misleading, because a stub will likely be based on a single source or a very small number of sources. Sources, even good reliable sources, are wrong sometimes, omit important information or concentrate on only one aspect of the subject (potentially creating WP:UNDUE or WP:BALASP problems); which is a problem with only one cure, namely introducing more sources. This is of course true for any stub, not just athlete stubs; but it does make it understandable that some people aren't happy to see so many athlete stubs, particularly given that many of them are BLPs.
A very concrete case of athlete articles being inaccurate unacceptably often was the recent Sander.v.Ginkel debacle, which led to the mass deletion of thousands of athlete BLPs created by Sander.v.Ginkel. The problem there was caused by a bad editor, not by too lenient sport-specific notability guidelines, but the stubby nature of the articles was still a factor; articles that had been fleshed out by editors other than Sander were less likely to have serious problems, though they were still included in the cleanup effort. Sideways713 (talk) 11:21, 20 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
We've had that argument before: it's the fiction purges of the late 2000s. --Izno (talk) 12:39, 20 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
OK, but "argument made previously" is not the same as "wrong argument"; so that's not really a refutation. @User:Sideways713, OK, fair point. But a lot of the material in these articles, I think, is "She finished third in the 1999 such-and-such race with a time of 27:13" and so forth. Well, its either true or isn't; its a statement of objective measurable fact. So if we have a site that is regularly giving times of 27:13 when the actual time was 26:43, then we need to blacklist that site. Most sites giving statistics are probably getting them from the official source, or are the official source, I would suppose. Although granted typos occur, yes.
However, most statements in the encyclopedia have a single source (if any). And multiple refs don't necessarily help that much, because errors replicate. I get that with birthates sometimes: eight sources that have it wrong, because they're copying from the same flawed source or each other. So I dunno. Possibly the single-source angle is an argument against a lot of lower-level articles, from politicians to villages to lichen species. Whether articles on athletes in particular are a problem on this account I don't know. Herostratus (talk) 13:12, 20 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
"She finished third in the 1999 such-and-such race with a time of 27:13" is a sentence not an article, and for an Article the pedia needs multiple qualified RS. Moreover, NPOV would suggest that most statements in the Pedia have multiple reliable sources, and common sense would seem to back-up that the tons of innocuous statements like "Paris is the capital of France" have multiple reliable sources, and for statements 'of note' per NPOV/OR/BLP, multiple sources would exist, as we rely on noted received knowledge. Sure, only one source is cited but it has 'weight' because of the multiple other sources that reconfirm it, contextualize it, and qualify it. Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:45, 20 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Beyond what Alanscottwalker said, there's a difference between statements that have only one source and whole articles that have only one source. Bad sources, typos and the like can cause a single statement in any article to be wrong; but if that single statement is the entire article, the consequences are more dramatic. For example, the article may be named incorrectly; obviously if there's a typo/mistake in the source, but also if the source uses a name that isn't the WP:COMMONNAME. With multiple sources it's usually easy to tell what the COMMONNAME is, or at least discard very uncommon names as definitely not being the COMMONNAME.
An even worse problem would be a poorly supported controversial statement in a BLP.
Often, though, the problem with an article that only has one source isn't so much what is in the article as what is not in the article. Say:
  • The source correctly notes she finished third in such-and-such race in 1999, but doesn't note that she won the same race in 2001, so that more noteworthy fact won't be mentioned in the article.
  • The source, and consequently the article, concentrates on her running career and doesn't mention that she's equally or more notable as a coach, a triathlete, a local politician, etc.
  • The source omits important controversies surrounding the athlete.
In these cases what's in the stub is perfectly true, yet still gives the reader a misleading overview of the topic. This kind of thing can happen very easily with athletes, maybe more easily than with non-athletes, because databases (commonly used as the single source in athlete stubs) sometimes give an incomplete view of a subject's athletic career and almost always give an incomplete view of their life as a whole. But the other reason why it may be a bigger issue with athletes is simply that there are so many of them. Sideways713 (talk) 15:53, 20 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Just as a general comment for brainstorming: WP:N does not require a standalone article should the GNG be met; WP:N only requires that the presumption that the GNG can be met to support a stand-alone article. What this means in another way is that we are not required to include every athlete that possibly may meet the GNG. Wikiprojects are allowed to specify SNGs purposely more stricter than the GNG if they believe that will improve their project's coverage. (As an example, over at the video games project, we developed what is now WP:NOT#GAMEGUIDE to avoid extensive strategy guide material, most which can meet the GNG but fails NOT. I will point out that WP:NOT suggests we are not simply a "Who's Who" type work, so while having the ability to document every athlete that might have ever played doesn't mean that is a feature we want. That said, finding a bar here that is above the GNG and still reasonably inclusive rather than deletionist is not a simple task at all.
    With that in mind, one of the things I do find about the current NSPORT that I've pointed out in the past is that they make presumptions on importance that while can be documented, really beg the question of whether they meet the GNG. A common one is for any professional NFL player that at least steps onto the field once. The argument, fairly enough, is that for someone to be pro NFL, they had to have had a college football career, and that college career can be documented. However, to some extent, that type of coverage could be considered rote or routine for most college players; there's definitely a few that quickly bubble to the top but with so many teams, the only type of coverage that gets every single players starts to become more localized (to the school), and more on stats than actual "content". In other words, if we took a stub for an NFL player than had an average college career, and only one game appearance before retiring, and fill out the article with their college career, we're still looking at a very weak article, content-wise, even if it is meeting WP:V, one that will likely never reach a GA or FA (which should be an ultimate goal for every article). Making this NSPORT presumption far too inclusive. Not all of NSPORT is like that, but I really do think there needs to be a re-evaluation that is going to avoid unexpandable permastubs that even if fully sourced will go nowhere.
    I don't think ditching NSPORT is right as there's far too many issues with print-only sources that the presumption of notability is needed to allow articles to expand, but there does need tightening of the loosest inclusion metrics for players. --MASEM (t) 18:14, 20 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • Perhaps a better place to start is expanding on the meaning of "significant coverage" in English Wikipedia's basic criteria for the notability of persons: the independent, non-promotional, non-routine, reliable secondary coverage of the subject should be sufficiently detailed that a reasonably complete overview of the person's life can be written. A reasonably complete overview includes major life events, accomplishments, and other significant influences spanning most of the person's lifetime. isaacl (talk) 18:40, 20 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
      • That's opening a huge can of worms - such a change could be used to drive massive deletions, not just of sportspersons, and not just of minimal content stubs - "major life events, accomplishments, and other significant influences spanning most of the person's lifetime" means that the majority of biographies, even of major figures and featured articles, could be deleted because we don't have references of where the person went to school, or what they did in retirement. For example - see Robert Millar - the article of this notoriously private person contains nothing of his life post 1998. Does that mean it should be deleted? Because by strict application of this rule, it would be liable for deletion.Nigel Ish (talk) 19:06, 20 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
        • A better line, but this would require a lot of thought, is the idea of avoiding people that are doing their profession in a routine manner, while while may be very visible to the world via sources, is just not necessarily an encyclopedic topic. This for NSPORTS would require recognizing that every professional player is not necessarily unique. Furthermore, this at least sets an apples-to-apples comparison between players within the same sport, or if outside NSPORTS, within the same profession (for example, not all CEOs of Fortune 500 companies are necessarily notable, some are just doing their job to keep their business running). This needs a lot more thought before even going that way, but it is a possibility. --MASEM (t) 19:11, 20 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
          • There appears to be a presumption in this discussion that a large proportion of articles on sportspeople MUST be deleted and that Wikipedia should have much less coverage of sport. Some people here are proposing much stricter application of GNG than would be applied to say 10th century royalty or to Politicians. This risks increasing systemic bias - by removing coverage of older (pre-internet) sportspersons, participants in less fashionable sports, participants in non-English speaking nations or of sportswomen, all of whom may suffer from any attempt to artificially ratchet up standards for sportspersons.Nigel Ish (talk) 19:31, 20 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
            • I'm not making any presumptions either way; I rather agree that sports figures and other persons should be treated in the same manner, as much as is feasible, which is why I think it is better to look at potential changes to Wikipedia's standards for inclusion for persons. I'm just exploring what I think the crux of the issue is: some editors want to use a standard for inclusion that requires sufficient source material to make a reasonable non-stub article. I apologize for not making it clear that my suggestion was just a starting point for discussion. I toyed with language to say that articles must cover the portion of the persons' lives during which they were engaging in the activities that make them notable, but I settled on what I wrote above as a compromise. The key problem of course is how to determine what makes a reasonable non-stub. (I know it will be hard to reach any agreement as Wikipedia's version of consensus has structural issues, including an inability to scale up, but nothing ventured, nothing gained.) isaacl (talk) 00:49, 21 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Disagree - Our notability criteria are here to make sure that everything on Wikipedia is able to be verifiable and neutral. With NSPORTS and such, we are setting the bar for what we can verify and write in a neutral manner. Without this criteria, we are excluding certain people without any noticeable benefit. Thus, getting rid of this criteria will be a detriment to the encyclopedia. RileyBugzYell at me | Edits 20:09, 23 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Disagree - We should seek to establish a high quality of articles on all athletes, but not having a great abundance of material on an athlete should not preclude us from including that person. Every major competition, MLB team &c. should be able to blue-link to players involved, since even so-called "non-notable" athletes often "get around." Editosaurus (talk) 03:57, 24 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Agree, I've long believed that NSPORTS allows us to keep articles on living persons that we would not otherwise have due to a paucity of reliable sources. This has led to a situation where there are a lot of low-quality directory style entries that are not adequately maintained and create an enormous risk of serious BLP violation. I'd be in favour of wholesale repealing it and moving back to the standard that substantial non-routine coverage in reliable sources is required for sportsperson biographies. Lankiveil (speak to me) 04:56, 24 April 2017 (UTC).[reply]
    • As discussed in the Wikipedia:Notability (sports)/FAQ, that is the standard. The sports-specific guidelines provide rules of thumb when this standard is expected to be met, but they do not replace the general notability guideline. Any AfD closers ignoring this portion of the sports-specific guidelines are substituting their own opinion for the consensus agreement that established the guidelines. isaacl (talk) 05:08, 24 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
      • I'm fine with that being the intent, but that's not what is happening on the ground at AFD. My observation from closing and participating in many, many, many discussions is that "Passes WP:NSPORTS" or similar is being used as a substitute for actually locating sources and presenting them for discussion, on the grounds that "well, they should be there". Potentially one could tweak the guideline to emphasise that it should not be used as a substitute for finding good references. I'd also suggest that for many more obscure sports, merely competing at the top level is probably not a good indicator of notability in the same way that it is for major sports. Lankiveil (speak to me) 01:34, 26 April 2017 (UTC).[reply]
        • I have argued for improved wording (in particular the second sentence and the nutshell summary), but to be honest, if closers are not reading the instructions that are right there in the first sentence and the third paragraph of the lead section, plus the FAQ which puts the context of the guidelines front and centre, tweaking the wording isn't going to help. It's an odd position where there is really agreement between the editors who have crafted the guidelines (*) and those who are concerned that the guidelines are not being applied in accordance with the general notability guideline, but closers are not following suit.
        • (*) For the sports that have been discussed on the talk page in the past few years; others can benefit from further review. isaacl (talk) 01:54, 26 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Disagree - Someone who competed at the highest level of a major sport is notable. These events receive significant coverage, both for them and the participants, and, as others have pointed out, it's useful to bluelink the participants. Smartyllama (talk) 18:16, 24 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • The general standard for a subject having an article in English Wikipedia is not based on attaining achievements, but by receiving significant, independent, non-routine, non-promotional secondary coverage from reliable sources. Accordingly there is no consensus that those who compete at the highest level of a sport are inherently notable. isaacl (talk) 19:23, 24 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
      • And therein lies the problem - a perfectly sensible real world definition of notability dismissed based on a guideline (WP:GNG) that is (generally) reasonable when applied to argue that a subject is notable, but absymal when used to argue that they are not. --Michig (talk) 19:32, 24 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
        • The issue is that consensus doesn't scale upwards. As long as the English Wikipedia editing community tries to follow its version of consensus (which is really a straw poll followed by people trying to convince each other to change their stated view), and doesn't / can't take into account expert opinion (*), it cannot agree upon what achievements should be used to determine if a subject should have an article. Instead, it tries to evaluate the question one step removed: are there adequate sources to indicate if a subject should have an article?
        • (*) There are pros and cons to this; a pro is that English Wikipedia can more easily expand into areas not covered by other encyclopedias. A con is that editor opinions end up weighted roughly evenly, regardless of their level of familiarity with the topic in question. This particular con plus the fact that (real-world) consensus only works when the interested parties are strongly aligned in their goals are huge barriers in trying to establish an achievement-based standard for having an article on a subject. isaacl (talk) 20:43, 24 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
        • @Michig: It is a very good point that we need to use common sense, and I totally support the idea that top sportspeople - ones who represent the nation at top events - are notable. But the problem is that there is no agreement on what is a top event: for someone like me, it is just the Olympics, but for some fans of cycling, apparently it is 10-20 events per year, and that seems excessively inclusive. Hence the default to GNG makes sense. If there is coverage, we are good. But if there is nothing but a stat site saying that someone competed in event X, didn't win any prize, just competed... I don't see what makes them notable. Again: I am fine agreeing to a GNG/BIO exception for Olympic participants and winners of several other major competitions, but run-of-the-mill participants of events who did not win any medals or such... why should they get special treatment? What makes them more notable than let's say a random average academic, who is also listed on an academic stat(citation) site? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 07:03, 26 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
          • In most sports, there are far more major events than the Olympics, and taking part in those events represents a competitor getting way beyond 'run-of-the-mill', e.g. in cycling there are world championships and other international track events, and on the roads major tours - your average club competitor won't get anywhere near these events. For some sports the guidelines are very inclusive (e.g. someone who played one first class cricket match), others quite the opposite. What a lot of people don't appreciate is that having a guideline for notability doesn't mean every subject that satisfies it has to have an article - if we have 100 minimal articles about people who played in one match for Glamorgan they can all be covered in one list article - if this isn't happening that's a fault of editors, not the guideline. This whole discussion is a bit bit pointless since there is no proposal for anything specific to be changed. If someone feels any part of the guideline is pitched at the wrong level of inclusivity they should make a specific proposal of how to change the guidelines. To answer your other point, as someone who used to be a random average academic, they don't tend to get covered because nobody is generally interested in them; Any that achieve something out of the ordinary and become top-level in their field will likely get articles, just like sportspeople who do that get articles. --Michig (talk) 07:26, 26 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
            • Wikipedia:Notability (sports) and the general notability guideline do in fact specify standards for having an article on a subject. So in the context of this discussion, the issue is what standards should be required for a sports figure to have a standalone article. I think everyone agrees a lower standard is required to be mentioned in another article. isaacl (talk) 15:46, 26 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
              • No, I disagree. There is no proposal here. If you read WP:N, it is quite clear, despite what a lot of editors seem to believe, that whether or not a subject is considered notable, and whether or not they should have a standalone article are separate considerations. After spelling out the notability criteria it states "This is not a guarantee that a topic will necessarily be handled as a separate, stand-alone page. Editors may use their discretion to merge or group two or more related topics into a single article." Given the editor who started this discussion is trying to get stub-level articles on world-class athletes deleted to try to prove a point, it appears that some people think we should either have a detailed article on sportspeople or should have no mention of them at all, which is ridiculous. If someone were to come up with a proposal on how to incorporate minimal articles on SNG-satisfying subjects in wider articles that would at least be constructive. The SNG tells us whether someone is likely to be notable, not necessarily whether they should have a standalone article. Maybe if more people understood that they would see that NSPORT isn't really the problem. --Michig (talk) 16:18, 26 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
                • I didn't say anything about there being a proposal. I referred specifically to the general notability guideline, and not the notability page in general. However, the first sentence in Wikipedia:Notability is On Wikipedia, notability is a test used by editors to decide whether a given topic warrants its own article. The sentence saying that a topic will not necessarily have a standalone article doesn't negate the previous paragraph, which starts A topic is presumed to merit an article. It just means even if a topic meets the standards for having a standalone article, there doesn't have to be a standalone article if editorially the content would better fit into another article. Also note the discussions that resulted the sports-specific notability guidelines specifically decided to create criteria for the creation of standalone articles. In my comments, I usually refer explicitly to "standards for having an article", or a similar phrase, to avoid any confusion regarding what aspect is being discussed. isaacl (talk) 17:44, 26 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Agree, god, yes. I have been slogging through the orphan backlog at Category:Orphaned articles from February 2009 (over 17,000 articles) and you see so many awful sub-stubs for random sportspeople who have played one single game of cricket or football or whatever other sport at a top-tier level and that is the sum total of their "notable" lifetime achievement, and yet because of WP:NSPORT, people insist that we maintain an article on them.
In almost all of the cases I've seen of these people, there is simply no WP:RS coverage of them that rises above the brutally routine sports stat collections: "Dude McDude of Some Second-Tier Team 1 game 0 points 0 whatevers 0 other important metric". No in-depth commentary, no discussion of their function in the game, not even trivial personal history. Nothing. Hell, I'd love to see an article that mentioned why the guy only played one game, but you don't even get that. We are not an indiscriminate collection of stats, and yet in many cases NSPORT forces us to appear that way.
As Masem noted above, "people that are doing their profession in a routine manner, while while may be very visible to the world via sources, is just not necessarily an encyclopedic topic." In many cases these people aren't even visible to sources except stat-farms. If there is something non-routine (ie, notable) about these people, it should be in the articles, but otherwise, there is no point to maintaining thousands of articles about people who did a sport once in a manner so dull as to be recorded as "1 game 0 points 0 whatevers". ♠PMC♠ (talk) 21:39, 24 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment A bunch of commenters seem to be missing the point that NSPORT and simiar guidelines are all meant to be subordinate to GNG. If there aren't enough sources to write a decent article, then the article shouldn't exist. The fact that a bunch of AFD commenters and a lot of article-creators also miss this point isn't a failure of the policy; it's a failure of the individual editors, and editors who repeatedly fail in this manner should be politely notified of the policy first, cautioned second, and (if both of those fail) sanctioned. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 09:37, 25 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Incorrect. As WP:N spells out: "A topic is presumed to merit an article if it meets either the general notability guideline, or the criteria outlined in a subject-specific guideline". WP:N, GNG, etc. are guidelines (rules of thumb), not policies - big difference. You can often have sufficient sourced information without finding anything constituting significant coverage, which is where GNG falls down. --Michig (talk) 09:58, 25 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, I was using "policy" in the figurative sense; if we were nitpicking about what are "policies" and what are "guidelines" then this whole thread, which is about guidelines, would be off-topic per the name of this page (which I also take as figurative). Also, you appear to be right to quote WP:N that way, but that wording is clearly in error, as it incorrectly assumes that all the subject-specific guidelines include explicit "significant coverage" requirements. Wikipedia doesn't contain standalone articles on topics for which enough sources don't exist to write a decent standalone article. This fact is so intuitive that it shouldn't need to be explicitly codified in any PAG, but it is in the "significant coverage" clause of GNG. All the other notability guidelines are subordinate to that in that if a topic has not received significant coverage, and the only way we could write a decent article is by engaging in OR, the topic doesn't merit a standalone article. I really think we should be discussing either (a) the removal the "either/or" part of WP:N, if it is being interpreted as allowing articles on non-notable topics, or (b) the addition a "significant coverage" clause to NSPORT and whatever other guidelines currently lack it. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 01:47, 27 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
No, right at the top of the page it states this page is for discussion of policies and guidelines, but there's a big difference between the two. The wording on WP:N is not in error, and the subject-specific guidelines do not all insist on "significant coverage". You can have enough sources to write a well-enough sourced short article without having anything that strictly constitutes "significant coverage" - short articles just like you would find in any other encyclopedia. --Michig (talk) 13:11, 27 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
The key word of WP:N is "presumed". We allow the standalone from a subject-specific guideline, presuming the criteria in that guideline are chosen appropriately, that in the future and with time and effort, a detailed article with significant coverage (which we do consider notable now, no presumption necessary) can be obtained. The presumption that allows for a standalone article can be challenged by demonstrating that a proper search of sources, as outlined at WP:BEFORE, brings forth no new sources or a lack of information that can bring the article up to meet significant coverage. That's why the subject-specific criteria are selected in a manner that assures few false positives (articles that can't be expands). --MASEM (t) 13:23, 27 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
You keep stating that the SNGs are just indicators that GNG can be met, but it isn't true. We had SNGs before anyone came up with the GNG. And no, satisfying the GNG is not a guarantee of notability. We really need to get away from this doctrinaire GNG-obsession because it simply doesn't make sense. --Michig (talk) 13:59, 27 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
WP:NSPORT was created on 29 August 2007. WP:N was created at least as early as 19 May 2005, and while it has undergone several moves and renames and changes of wording, the earliest expression of what we now call the GNG is found on 20 November 2006 when it was merged into WP:N by User:Uncle G who had been working it up in his userspace before that. Called "Primary Notability Criterion" it is essentially (with some minor wording changes) nearly identical to what we are using now. So you seem to be mistaken that NSPORT predates the GNG. The GNG had existed for 10 months before NSPORT did. Also, 11 years of continuous acceptance as a guiding principle on the minimum standards for a stand-alone article is a pretty good sign of consensus. --Jayron32 14:19, 27 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't say NSPORT predated the GNG, and WP:N has for as long as I can remember stated that subjects are presumed notable if they satisfy either the GNG or one of the SNGs. WP:N is the guiding principle, not GNG. --Michig (talk) 14:27, 27 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Please see Wikipedia talk:Notability/RFC:compromise, an RFC in 2008 that established the relationship between the GNG and SNG. --MASEM (t) 14:31, 27 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
And multiple discussions since with differing outcomes, as this old chestnut seems to get discussed about every 6 months. --Michig (talk) 14:37, 27 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Except it still remains valid, there's a reason we use the word "presumed" in both GNG and the SNGs, and link that to Rebuttal presumption. I am pretty confident that while I don't see eye-to-eye with many of the drafters of the NSPORTS often, that we have been in agreement that if you can satisfactorily prove there are not enough sources or significant to expand an article beyond a stub (that otherwise meets NSPORTS) to meet WP:N in general, then deletion is an acceptable route; it's just that with sports, satisfactorily proving that requires a great deal of effort for those seeking deletion (print source exhaustion for example). --MASEM (t) 15:47, 27 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Right, but the problem is that WP:NSPORTS/FAQ is not consistent with the general notability guideline: "The topic-specific notability guidelines described on this page do not replace the general notability guideline. They are intended only to stop an article from being quickly deleted when there is very strong reason to believe that significant, independent, non-routine, non-promotional secondary coverage from reliable sources are available, given sufficient time to locate them." However, it seems evident that in practice this is not actually observed: see for example this deletion discussion where there does not seem to be any effort to determine whether the subject passes the GNG, and instead going down the WP:NCYC checklist. Furthermore, to make matters worse, WP:NSPORT is internally inconsistent, since it also says "The article must provide reliable sources showing that the subject meets the general notability guideline or the sport specific criteria set forth below." This is consistent with the guidance put forth at the GNG, and it seems like it captures the way NSPORT is applied in practice, but defenders of the permissiveness of NSPORT seem fond of pointing out whenever asked that meeting NSPORT implies that the subject also meets GNG, which is false for the majority of articles about participants in minor sporting events. Sławomir Biały (talk) 10:42, 25 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I suspect the topic-specific guidelines were all written with the assumption that Wikipedians understood that topics need to have had significant coverage to merit standalone articles. In other words, they were written with the same assumption I made when I wrote my comment above, but WP:N incorrectly assumes that they were written with the assumption that they could act as a substitute for GNG. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 01:47, 27 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Michig, that is only partially true. There's actually three pieces of guidelines involved: the core concept of WP:N that we can flesh out a topic in detail with secondary sourcing, the GNG that established a presumption of notability based on at least some secondary sources existing, and the subject-specific notability guidelines that provide an alternate means of presumption (from the GNG) that WP:N can eventually be met, using criteria that generally assure secondary sources can be found for a topic, which in turn is generally based on reaching some level of achievement of merit. So to this end, the GNG and the SNGs are both subsidary to the core WP:N principle (that is, the SNG is an equal but alternate path of presumed notability), but in the long run, we do expect topics much meet WP:N with demonstration of the secondary sources. In all fairness, with something like NSPORT, this means that editors wishing to delete do need to do the footwork of exhausting to a reasonably good degree the available pool of resources (including print versions!) to show no sourcing exists, making it a difficult barrier to delete and avoids petty deletions. And in my past interactions with most editors behind NSPORT, they fully understand and accept this in drafting the NSPORT guidelines. What I think is the newer challenge that is being recognized is that most of those sources that NSPORT anticipates people will find when they actually search run afoul of being routine coverage for sports; for example, one criteria is for anyone that has played in (that is, actually on the field at some point, not just bench warming) a professional league game is presumed notable, the argument having been that one does not simply get into the pro leagues for a sport without having some career in the past (college, amateur, whatever), and those merits can be documented, at minimum. But it seems to me more and more that this type of reporting of team sports often is routine and very often focused only from local sources. Technically that all meets the WP:N/GNG, but... taking NORG and the recent discussion of SCHOOLOUTCOMES as examples, there's a general trend that in-depth coverage from only local sources is not sufficient for a WP article. Eg, its not clear how to resolve this but it is one of the factors I see what NSPORT is seen as too inclusive. --MASEM (t) 13:51, 25 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I mean, our rules are suppose to codify practice. If they don't, change 'em. If you can't change 'em -- and it's hard to change anything here -- ignore 'em. There are exceptions for core constitutional provision -- NPOV, V, BLP, and a (very) few others, where even if there's a local consensus to ignore, this is overridden by the functionaries. Whether or not we have an article about Joe Shlabotnik is not a core constitutional question.
So if you've got a 12-2 "Keep" vote based on WP:NFOOTY wielded in the a manner that makes it clear that the sentiment is actually "But we like us some football player articles", what are you gonna do? Sputter "Bu-bu-but our Rules, which were handed down from the Holy Mount"?
Since the days of Nupedia, it has been assumed that if
  1. There are sufficient good sources to have an article, and
  2. Some reasonable number of people would be interested in the article, and
  3. Somebody can be bothered to actually create the article,
then the default is that we should have the article. WP:GNG came later. It is reasonable and certainly something to consider, but is not Holy Writ and we can override whenever we want to, since this is a wiki. Herostratus (talk) 14:10, 25 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Well, GNG and your point 1 sorta go together. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 14:34, 25 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I think ignoring the explicit statements within a given guideline, which includes context on how to apply the guideline, is supervoting. Enacting the guideline was a result of long discussions held amongst a relatively (for English Wikipedia) large group of interested parties who were looking at the overall best interest of Wikipedia. If consensus agreements are readily discarded, there isn't much motivation to work towards a common understanding. isaacl (talk) 15:30, 25 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I can affirm there was a site-wide RFC run several years ago for NSPORT, no question. But things change. Again, looking at the recent SCHOOLOUTCOMES discussion, while not reaching any actionable steps, shows there's a larger concern about the use of local sources as primary sourcing for a topic, which at the time NSPORT's RFC was run, wasn't as large an issue. --MASEM (t) 15:33, 25 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I agree things can change, but they should change as a result of a new general agreement. As the context behind the original approval of the guideline has been reaffirmed several times since then, I don't see any reason why closers of AfDs should take a statement "per NSPORTS" to mean they should ignore the portion of NSPORTS that defers to the general notability guideline as the final word. Before this can be done, a new consensus should be established, and this may mean rewriting the sports-specific criteria, which were not developed with the aim of replacing the general notability guideline. (Note local sources were indeed discussed in the enacting RfC, and the basic criteria has qualifications on how local sources should be used. For example, with hockey players, local sources are regularly discounted as indicative of meeting the standards for inclusion as defined by the general notability guideline.) isaacl (talk) 16:10, 25 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
While the 2010 RFC did include aspects related to local sources, and passed with that, keep in mind that the broader communicate consensus towards local and more routine sources has changed; NORG has specifically added language towards this and the recent SCHOOLOUTCOMES discussion showed there's less tolerance to articles that rest too much on routine or local sourcing (they're fine to augment significant coverage from broad sources, however). This is a relatively new consideration that would absolutely require some thought towards planning an RFC, including principles for grandfathering and avoiding AFD flooding via fait accompli, and can't be changed just on the basis of this current discussion. But this is a new wrinkle that didn't exist when NSPORTS was passed in 2010. --MASEM (t) 16:22, 25 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
There has been discussion on the sports-specific notability talk page regarding local coverage, most recently in this thread. There are some enthusiastic editors who feel differently, but from the discussion over the past few years I think most editors are in agreement with what I wrote in that thread regarding sports journalism and local sources. Thus I believe the most interested parties in the sports-specific notability guidelines are in agreement with ensuring adequate sources are present for a sports figure to have an article, and that the quality of sources must be examined carefully to determine if they are suitable for establishing if the standard for inclusion has been met. The problem is English Wikipedia's straw poll approach to evaluating consensus isn't conducive to this type of examination. Closers will mostly look at an initial straw count, and so those pushing for inclusion with shaky sources are at an advantage, since their opinion will get counted with a lot less effort than those who take the time to look into the sources. Plus often what happens is someone dumps the first set of hits from a search engine, a bunch of people pile on say per person X, and person Y goes through the links and explains how they are routine coverage. By strength of argument considerations, the first set of opinions should be given no or little weight, but often the closer just goes by the raw count. isaacl (talk) 19:30, 25 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
This actually might out there's two separate issues at play: 1) the changing perception of how much reliance the notability of a topic (not just sports-related) can have from local or routine sources, which affects all of WP, and subsequently 2) how this change, if agreed by consensus, impacts the various criteria of NSPORTS. Or another way, to jump at NSPORTS before establishing and documenting a new consensus about local/routine sources is the wrong order. Otherwise, I can certainly understand editors at sports-related projects balking at this undocumented change that would be forced on them. --MASEM (t) 23:55, 25 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
In addition to the promotional/local interest nature of local coverage, and the entertainment aspect alluded to above, there is also a promotional aspect of sports journalism that is specific to sports. I think most editors understand that not every highschooler covered in a local paper should have an article, and that the same underlying issues with local coverage extend to higher levels of competition. Drawing the line is, as always, challenging. And if closers continue to ignore general consensus in favour of a local head count, any guideline changes will be fruitless. isaacl (talk) 02:13, 26 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

FWIW, I disagree the guidelines are too inclusive. Plenty of sports have notable players who didn't represent their country nationally. And article quality. There will be loads of stubs of higher notability as well, its about folks actually writing them. One of WPs drawing cards is its inclusiveness so to tamper with that is risky. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 14:34, 25 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

  • Disagree - If a project area with many active participants creates a reasonable notability criterion I don't think we should second guess them without a strong showing of harm. I haven't seen anything close to such a showing here.--agr (talk) 15:00, 25 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • This applies to several of the more recent comments, but notability guidelines are not meant to be developed in isolation of community expectations. I point to the problem with Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) problem from about 3-4 years ago, where a small group of editors decided on their own notability guidelines, and required a lot of cleanup from that. This is not to say that NSPORTS was developed in isolation, there's enough different projects' eyes on it, but they also add and modify criteria without what should be put to wiki-wide review (I know that there was an RFC years ago for this, but more recently there hasn't). The subject-specific notability guidelines should have roughly equal acceptance across the project, and what this discussion seems to suggest is that there may need to be a better review of these criteria by the community to make sure they follow with other subject-specific guidelines. --MASEM (t) 15:18, 25 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Arbitrary break

Looking over all the above, my personal impression -- this is strictly my own personal opinion -- is that there are three classes of arguments for tightning NSPORTS:

  1. Arguments which, while reasonable and I understand where the the person is coming from, sort of come down to personal opinion, don't demonstrate any harm, and so I don't think ultimately will gain much traction, given the number of sports completionist enthusiasts here. These are arguments of the nature "these are too short", "we are too inclusive", "these will never advance beyond stubs", "This is not what the Wikipedia is for" and so forth.
  2. Arguments which make a claim of harm, but a weak one. "It is clutter, and clutter has bad effects in subtle but pervasive ways". "It encourages the wrong sort of editor". "Each article must be watchlisted, and that takes resources", and that sort of thing ( don't see much of this above, but you do hear this.) I consider these to be unproven mostly, or can be reasonably refuted (yes you need more watchlisters, but then then the articles bring in watchers), or even if true are not that big a deal.
  3. One very good argument, which is this: "A lot of these are referenced to a single source or maybe two at most, and you can't add more refs since they don't exist, and a lot of these sources are unreliable or at any rate we can't be confident of their reliability.

(Actually the point "No article should have just a single source, since no source is reliable enough to entirely support an entire article -- it is too dangerous" is also made. Fair point also.)

Speaking for myself, this third point and only this third point makes me sit up and take notice. We do not want to present false data and if NSPORTS is leading us down the path where we are doing so to an unacceptable degree, then that is a problem. Is it true? Yes, it is true in some cases if you take the "we can't be confident of their reliability" part.

I am mostly familiar with baseball, and we use sources like Baseball-Reference.com. Believe me, baseball sources are very reliable. Are they always right? Of course not. The question for any source is "are they wrong seldom enough that, generally, we can consider them reliable to our standard, such that we can be confident that their statements of fact are true, sufficient to put our name and reputation behind such a statement" and Baseball-Reference.com meets that standard.

For other sports, not so much. At least, editors above have vouchsafed that.

I wonder if the solution is not to mess with WP:NSPORTS but to seek out and blacklist the bad sources? Yes blacklisting is severe, but if the source is mainly used for statistics, and we can't trust their statistics, what use are they? Blacklisting some sports sources will cause many sports articles to fall as unsourced of course. What we'd need to know though is what sources are bad, with some indication of that beyond just assertion. This sounds hard, and I wonder if its possible.

Another solution would be rule against single-source articles generally (if a second source can't be found). This has nothing to do with NSPORTs, and would be tricky and easy to game (e. g., add the text "is from Barcelona, a city in Spain" and then a ref that Barcelona is indeed in Spain). So dunno about that. Herostratus (talk) 16:04, 25 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

  • Agree But it's no crisis. And just fixing the SNG wouldn't balance it out. Because Sports "coverage" is itself entertainment, sports tends to be "coverage"-heavy in proportion to actual encyclopedic notability as compared to other topics. Someday we can re-write wp:GNG to calibrate itself to such things and then get rid of the SNGs. There's a little project for someone.  :-) North8000 (talk) 19:53, 25 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Agree Why should the bar for inclusion be so much lower for sportspeople than for other professions? Taking part in athletics does not confer notability to anyone, even if it means they will be forever listed in almanacs of sports statistics. Even competing professionally does not mean there will be coverage of an individual, especially because there are many levels of professionalism and lengths of participation. The requirements for actual coverage of people in multiple reliable sources, not just listings on rosters and event reports in sports-related media, should still be met for sportspeople. This oversaturation of articles about individuals who have done nothing of note is an embarrassment to Wikipedia. Reywas92Talk 06:38, 26 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Agree I do not agree that verifiability and the completionist desire by sports project enthusiasts justify stand-alone articles for every participant in say a dozen competitions a year in a sport which gets little coverage. I do not mind a "one-at-bat" rule for baseball, because the few such unfortunate players probably have some coverage in books and articles about the odd cases of major sports.See a one-game pitcher, for instance. There are unlikely to be reliable sources analyzing the one-time cycling competitors who competed in one of 12 events in a year and finished 99 out of 100. Sport-specific guidelines should not trump GNG. It is inappropriate to close an AFD as "Keep" when the only argument presented is "Satisfies NSPORT." It is more encyclopedic to include the participant in a list than to have a one-line permastub article which only conveys the same information that inclusion in a list would convey. Edison (talk) 18:35, 26 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Agree-- NSPORTS is intended to support, not supplant, GNG. Focus on the quality and reliability of the sources. That said, I think that at times NSPORTS is a bit on the permissive side, but I also think that NPROF is often too restrictive. So really, just keep working on GNG to clarify standards for the pre-internet age where sources may be more difficult to locate, be careful not to let cultural bias sneak in (as in excluding an eastern European but not a similarly-situated American), and onward through the fog Montanabw(talk) 17:37, 27 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Disagree-- There's biographical dictionaries and encyclopedias of sports that are dedicated to documenting every single major league player released nearly every year (Where are the dictionaries of professors?), why should we deprive our readers of that knowledge? It will create more problems (Who meets the criteria etc) then it's worth. Also the fact that this will bring more bias to American sports as they are easier to find sources for due to dominant American media coverage. This policy change will result in more Americanization of the project. Having thousands of articles deleted is not in the projects best interest. GuzzyG (talk) 03:04, 28 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. In a perfect world, we'd have articles on just about everyone and everything, with access for everyone to reliable sources (even if they're behind a paywall or in a print-only medium) and an endless supply of volunteers to look after them. The reality of it is far different. Anyone who has patrolled recent changes will be aware that a large percentage of edits are to articles on obscure athletes and sports teams. Mousing over the diffs, I see updates to standings and other statistics that I cannot verify easily (if at all), news of trades and injuries and on-field dramas that might be verifiable if I happened to be fluent in the relevant language. Rarely do I see an edit summary. Checking the page histories, I see innumerable unexplained changes from innumerable IPs, occasional evidence of a low-profile edit war between supporters of rival teams, unreverted vandalism by someone who was upset with someone for playing a less-than-stellar game, and so on. And I have to wonder: how can anyone be confident this content is even a little bit sound? There are way more articles about way more athletes (and teams) than we have the resources to curate. I don't have any solution in mind here, but I do think there's a problem. RivertorchFIREWATER 16:41, 28 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Agree Oh yes, this has long irritated me. That someone who once kicked a ball in a single game is presumed notable with very little else being needed, as it often appears, is, to me, ridiculous. LadyofShalott 20:28, 28 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • I have to agree with that comment. The proposed blacklisting of these unreliable sources(and the subsequent deletion of otherwise unsupported articles via BLPprod/AFD) is, however, a step in the right direction. In a direction where articles not meeting WP:V are no longer kept.
  • To the other points: We have three places where we have something that should go against this sort of articles that aren't curatable in total. First is the essay WP:Run-of-the-mill, which sums up that sportspeople get more coverage, especially in local newspapers; second is the WP:GNG, specifically the sidenote that routine coverage may not be sufficient to establish notability, something that both these statistics sites and newspaper sources often are, routine. Third, we have the policy WP:What Wikipedia is not; especially WP:NOTNEWSPAPER and WP:INDISCRIMINATE, and the articles that are solely based on newspaper coverage and broad statistics databases should NOT pass WP:NOT.
  • The question immediately forming itself is:Why do we have so many articles that are being kept when they don't meet these expectations?

There are two possibilities: The first one is that these policies and guidelines are ignored because they are outdated, and no longer apply; at least not to sports articles; they have no consensus anymore. The second one is that we have a WP:Local consensus that keeps working to undermine a global consensus that these pages should actually not be kept. A WP:RFC might help here, however, it might have to be one that starts here, on this noticeboard, with a central notice, and especially without every sports fan going to inform every sports project that their precious articles are in danger, which would be disruptive to the consensus-building as canvassing.Burning Pillar (talk) 20:42, 28 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

As discussed above, the participants at Wikipedia talk:Notability (sports) largely agree that stats sites and descriptions of games are routine coverage and not indicative of meeting English Wikipedia's standards for having an article. The need to eventually meet the general notability guideline has been reaffirmed multiple times in conversations involving those who aren't sports enthusiasts as well as active members of sports WikiProjects. ("Eventually" is typically interpreted very leniently, though, given that there is no deadline to complete articles.) Thus a local consensus seems to be occurring at AfD where the consensus achieved in broader discussions is getting ignored. isaacl (talk) 20:54, 28 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Disagree with changing the current standards. If it ain't broke, etc. Carrite (talk) 04:03, 30 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Disagree - the problem with just using WP:GNG is that we'll end up with a lot more work debating whether (at least in the Football world) this player meets GNG and that player meets GNG. It's bad enough with just English sources, with various debates about what is a valid source, and what isn't - it becomes a nightmare using many other languages. Therefore, to simplify it, we need some kind of Bright-line. Our various notability criteria, such as WP:NFOOTBALL is that bright-line, and saves us a lot of work - requiring only focus on those who don't meet it, but still meet WP:GNG, and those rare individuals who do meet it, but have an extreme lack of verifiable sources. This discussion should be whether we abandon the Bright-line, but instead whether we shift or tweak it. Is it in the right place for Football? We certainly have enough players who don't meet it, and yet still meet WP:GNG - so one might argue that it's too high. Or perhaps, it needs to be modified by increasing the minimum number of appearances or something. But that's another debate - and it's a different one for different sports. Meanwhile, what's the damage? There's little indication that material here is false. There's a lot of verifiable information for many athletes who come know where meeting any criteria. There's probably less information that's wrong in a short stub, than a long article on a well-known player. Nfitz (talk) 20:03, 30 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Agree -- I've seen a number of sports related AfDs where the discussion went along the way of "Meets NSPORT-X, speedy close! And let's trout the nominator while we are at it." All the while the article contains one sentence, no sources have been presented and it's not at all clear whether they exist in the first place. I think things are at a point where the sports SNG are not in step with GNG; that is: they are not predictive of sources on these subjects actually existing to write an NPOV bio article. K.e.coffman (talk) 05:41, 9 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Agree – I created Tom Babson because the guy appeared in Cheers, not because he is an ice hockey coach. I saw a few months ago that it was nominated for deletion last year, indicating how NSPORTS is slowly becoming challenged. And I saw a few years back that "Sam Scarber", whose subject appeared also on Cheers, was created. On the general issue, if the guideline is trimmed or something, the notabilities of sports personalities will be challenged, leading to more and more AfD nominations. Nevertheless, I think WP:notability and WP:V#Notability will be adequate, especially if NSPORTS is deemed redundant. Also, notabilities of those personalities will become determined case-by-case, making NSPORTS less effective anymore. George Ho (talk) 19:10, 9 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment -- The people who are the subject of these problematic sports stubs just don't randomly appear, but by necessity are pulled into the sport for some reason; for example, another player was sidelined due to injury. This suggests that the stub should be merged into another article, say the one about the missing player. Or the team. Or the year of that sport. Doing so would force an improvement in the article the sub-stub was merged into: the article would have more detail about the fortunes of the team or sport. But if we are faced with a sub-stub about Some Guy who played a single game of Professional Tiddly-winks on 1946 for Lower Elbonia, & there is no article on Professional Tiddly-winks in 1946, let alone one on Professional Tiddly-winks in Lower Elbonia, then there is a larger problem than WP:GNG & WP:NSPORTS conflicting. -- llywrch (talk) 17:08, 15 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Agree -- I believe the problem arises from league/competition/championship classifications. E.g. tier 3 soccer (football) league (which is basically one step above amateur league ) is classified as "fully-professional", that's absolutely wrong. Some leagues on this list of fully professional leagues kept by WikiProject Football are not even close to professional level (sponsorship, stadium capacity etc.). Also I noticed that at least 3 people mentioned WP:NFOOTY. I absolutely agree that section 2 of this policy is way too lax: Players who have played, and managers who have managed in a competitive game between two teams from fully-professional leagues, will generally be regarded as notable. Basically, this sentence is implying that you can ignore WP:GNG & WP:NSPORTS as long as the person meets WP:NFOOTY, Jone Rohne Nester (talk) 16:29, 24 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment That very question was asked today at WP:TEAHOUSE and the answer given was yes, WP:GNG, WP:BASIC, and WP:NSPORTS are all overridden by WP:NFOOTY. MB 21:42, 24 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Disagree with a general statement like this. If you have concrete proposals, make them. Otherwise, I can only say that in my experience athletes that meet NSPORTS would be proven notable if editors bothered to access offline sources. ~ Rob13Talk 17:59, 25 May 2017 (UTC) Moved from the "How to best close this discussion?" section. --George Ho (talk) 17:42, 26 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Hi again, BU Rob13. Wasn't your comment supposed to go to the "Arbitrary break" section? George Ho (talk) 08:15, 26 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Probably. I'm contributing on mobile so it's difficult to find that location - I just put my comment at the end. Feel free to move it. ~ Rob13Talk 14:54, 26 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
 Moved as permitted by BU Rob13, for whom I thank him. --George Ho (talk) 17:42, 26 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Agree – Look at the list of notable alumni for any US high school or college and it's almost all sports figures who are there for no reason except that they played in some game that qualifies them for NSPORTS. You'd think US schools turn out nothing but athletes. Kendall-K1 (talk) 02:42, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Questions:Deletion

RFC: Conflicts between WP:GNG and WP:NSPORTS

No satifactory discussion and consensus has arose w.r.t to imposition of any arbitrary time limit.Broadly, the community is currently opposed to any such timeline. Winged Blades Godric 14:03, 20 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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.

What should be the maximum time limit for sufficient sources according to WP:GNG to be found before an article that meets WP:NSPORTS is to be deleted at WP:AFD?Burning Pillar (talk) 21:50, 28 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Survey

I think one problem is that people keep insisting on WP:There is not deadline when it doesn't work: If (as indicated by a patroller) the number of articles with poor sourcing we have cannot be curated well, then we need to cut down that number. A possibility is to set a time when this article should absolutely have something, because the current approach seems to end with "can be improved" in articles that are 7 years old. I'd set the cut at 3 months after the first AfD nominationor 1 year after page creation, whichever happens first.(The article would still have a last chance time period at WP:AFD, unless speedy deletion criteria apply)Burning Pillar (talk) 21:50, 28 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment -- this is a rather non-specific question. For all other AfDs, it's usually "put up or shut up" -- i.e. sources must be presented at the AfD for the article to be kept. I don't see why NSPORT would be an exception. K.e.coffman (talk) 05:28, 9 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Threaded discussion
  • It is normally agreed that the issue is that those seeking deletion of a NSPORTS-meeting article that they believe fails WP:N must do the burden of searching for sources to convince others that no such sourcing likely exists (you can't prove a negative completely, obviously). And so it is whatever time it takes for a reasonable search to be completed and the results presented. If you give me an athlete that played for a few seasons since 2010 in a US professional sport (as to meet NSPORTS) but took a life-threating injury and retired to a normal job, I would expect that someone can search for sources within a week, if not less, since most of that will be online. If you give me a similar athlete from 1960, I expect that to take a lot more work since that absolutely requires print source exhaustion. Moreso if we are now talking Indian or Chinese athletes from the same timeframe. --MASEM (t) 22:45, 4 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • I am opposed to any such arbitrary timeline. There is no reason for such a thing to exist and as others have said it would lead to lots of unnecessary deletion activity. From the prior discussion there is absolutely no consensus for such an approach either. Spanneraol (talk) 22:42, 4 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • The question is not limited to the timeline I proposed(and the answer could be infinite). However, a WP:BEFORE search only asks you to make a reasonable search. It does NOT require you to look everywhere where sources may exist if it would take undue time and effort. Ultimatively, the sources should be in an article, and if you have only sources not meeting our standards, then the article isn't reliable. And an article meeting WP:NSPORTS with the possibility of sources can get some period of time to allow for longer searches, but if the current approach is followed(articles about old subjects are kept infinitely without meeting WP:GNG, then we allow unreliable articles to persist. And if you compare the number of articles needing improvement with the number of articles getting improval, then you will see a gap. A gap that, by the way, is not only present in sports- rather in nearly every field, and not limited to verifiability, reliability but also neutrality.Burning Pillar (talk) 03:28, 5 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • How do you know the article isn't reliable? An article sourced only to a dependable stats site is actually reliable and accurate so if your only complaint is reliability most of these articles pass that bar. Spanneraol (talk) 15:15, 5 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • We should simply adopt NSPORTS, and deprecate the use of the GNG in this field except as an exception (or where there is notability in another field). This is exactly what we do in NPROF, and it avoids most of the arguments. Obviously we still want WP:V. The simpler the better. (I point out that we only keep from having WP flooded by millions of school and locally known amateur athletes by deciding in almost all cases that the sources aren't substantial or discriminating enough. It's amazing the number of undistinguished people in all fields that get covered by local newspapers. DGG ( talk ) 19:11, 5 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
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.

Speedy deletion criterion X3

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
This is being agreed on as a bad ideaBurning Pillar (talk) 18:41, 2 May 2017 (UTC)(non-admin closure)[reply]

Should the following speedy deletion criterion be created as exceptional criterion; for a limited time?: Articles related to sports that are either unsourced or only sourced via broad statistics databases and/or routine newspaper coverage. This must apply to all versions of the article, and the article must have been created before the 1st May of 2015."Burning Pillar (talk) 21:50, 28 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

My answer is yes, to remove all these problematic articles that seem to be possibly too numerous to let them all go through AFD without disrupting that process. It might generate a higher number of false positives than normally expected when using a speedy deletion criterion, however. This criterion should stop to be applied after 1 year.Burning Pillar (talk) 21:50, 28 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

This is a gross misuse of Prod - using speedy to get rid of articles which are sourced would ensure that many salvageable articles are deleted just because some people don't like them.Nigel Ish (talk) 22:32, 28 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sorry, user:Nigel Ish, but I don't understand what you mean with "This is a gross misuse of Prod". I also don't know why it is a problem-articles that are sourced may still be speedily deleted under some critera, for example a garage band that is sourced via facebook et al. These sources aren't establishing any notability, so why is that a problem?Burning Pillar (talk) 22:41, 28 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I mean that the proposal would be a gross misuse of speedy - to delete articles many of which could be salvageable. These are not articles that do not assert notability. (if so they would qualify for A7) - these are articles that you don't think are notable. Articles that are sourced from facebook etc should NOT be speedied unless they meet one of the very specific criteria, and not meeting GNG isn't one of them.Nigel Ish (talk) 22:51, 28 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong oppose WP:IDONTLIKEIT is not a reason for deletion, yet alone speedy. If it has an assertion of notability, then it shouldn't qualify for speedy. This seems to make it seem like you're just being lazy and/or know these articles would survive AfD and are trying to go around it. Mass speedy deletion is never good, especially for articles which could be salvageable. Smartyllama (talk) 17:41, 29 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - First off, the RfC/survey above has not even been concluded—oppose votes are roughly equal to support votes. Second off, speedy deletion is to be used for unsalvageable articles. Third off, this would be... very alarming to some experience editors working in these areas, possibly discouraging contribution. Overall, a terrible idea. RileyBugz会話投稿記録 17:50, 29 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose The only problematic articles are those that fail WP:V. Even those people who don't like the sort of stubs we are discussing, if they care about the project at all, should be looking at merging them into list articles. --Michig (talk) 18:59, 29 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Magdalena Zamolska has been deleted. The reason -- which I'm not necessarily saying is wrong -- was more or less "Well, it was a lively discussion, and the votes were about equal, but in terms of strength of argument, nobody made a credible assertion that she meets WP:GNG, therefore deleted on policy grounds".

OK, this is interesting. By my count the vote was 10-6 in favor of Keep (the closer characterized that as "roughly equal", which, maybe). It is extremely usual (although certainly not universal) for a result like that to be closed as "no consensus" if not outright "keep". But as the closer pointed out WP:CONSENSUS says "Consensus is ascertained by the quality of the arguments given on the various sides of an issue, as viewed through the lens of Wikipedia policy" (which BTW shows that "consensus" as used here is quite different from the normal dictionary definition of the word). And "does not meet GNG" was certainly true -- there's no question of that, since there was not "significant coverage". There was not one sentence on where she went to school, or what her class background was, or her path to becoming an athlete, or if she is married, or what her opinion on state of sports in Poland is, or anything. Just raw statistics, essentially.

Bot on the other hand... we are a community. 10-6. That's quite a poke in the eye to a segment of our community. And GNG is not technically a policy -- it isn't labeled as such, and hasn't gone through the process by which guidelines are elevated to policy. But the quote by the closer was "...viewed through the lens of Wikipedia policy".

Anyway, this suggests that as practical matter GNG has attained the status of NPOV, BLP, V, and other core principles as policy de facto. In my personal opinion this is a new thing and an unwelcome sea change.

But it is what it is. If that's what it is, then adding a Speedy Deletion criteria "Incontrovertibly does not meet GNG, by any reasonable interpretation of 'significant coverage', and is judged unlikely to be able to do so with a reasonable level of effort" or something. We could certainly clear out a lot articles quickly that way.

Wouldn't this be logical? If an article is AfD'd, and the vote is 17-2 to keep, but it clearly doesn't meet GNG and can't, and so is going to be deleted anyway -- what's the point of a long discussion?

That's a separate discussion, to be had over at Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion. And probably at Wikipedia:Notability should be proposed to be formally promoted to policy, or perhaps WP:GNG split off and just that promoted.

At any rate we can possibly cap this discussion -- if NFOOTY and the rest are not going to be considered, what are we even talking about here? Herostratus (talk) 18:34, 29 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

A guideline is only ever a rule of thumb (and should never be more than that), and consensus within an AfD discussion, as long as people are not putting forward arguments that contradict policy, should never be overridden because of a line in a guideline. I think that's a very poor close. --Michig (talk) 18:59, 29 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I have mixed feelings (I voted to delete BTW). Closing is hard (its amazing we get smart people to do this stuff for free). Going the other way could have been criticized too. Anyway what matters is not what you or I think but what closers, as a class, are going to to generally. If this is the trend... Herostratus (talk) 21:16, 29 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
The purpose of a discussion is to verify that indeed the article doesn't meet the GNG. This is why I oppose the notion of a temporary speedy deletion criterion. In my book the AFD for Magdalena Zamolska has gone exactly as it should have; when you take away the bolded words in that discussion and don't treat it as a vote, it's clear that nobody was able to demonstrate that the article met our criteria. Lankiveil (speak to me) 04:28, 30 April 2017 (UTC).[reply]
Besides, if anyone feels the AfD was closed incorrectly, they are free to use WP:CLOSECHALLENGE. — Gestrid (talk) 04:31, 30 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I have left a message on the closer's talk page. We'll see what happens. Smartyllama (talk) 15:10, 1 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
That was an excellent close from Scottywong, who (correctly) judged consensus based on policy-based arguments and not a vote count. The keep voters, while numerous, completely failed to make a case that Zamolska meets GNG; many of them even seemed to regard meeting GNG as optional, which is the exact opposite of what NSPORT says and therefore undermined their appeals to NSPORT. Sideways713 (talk) 23:13, 1 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Opposed - Disimprovement of the encyclopedia. GNG works, leave well enough alone. Carrite (talk) 04:06, 30 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
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.

Tightening up NCYC

Trying one small step at a time, I proposed tightening of NCYC with detailed rationale why I think that particular subguideline needs rewriting, at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Cycling#Tightening_up_of_WP:NCYC. Sadly, it has been 48h and nobody commented there - I guess the project is sem-active. Perhaps the discussion needs more light, so I am posting it here (and feel encouraged to repost the link to any other relevant forum). --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 05:38, 4 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Changes to WP:NSPORTS

I changed two parts of WP:NSPORTS, one after a discussion of one day, one without discussion(that one seemed obvious to me). I was quickly reverted, and the comments were very negative. It was pointed out that any substantial change should be discussed througly before to avoid changes that are not welcomed by the community as a whole. I have to agree with that. Now, I know that there are definitely problems with WP:NSPORT, so I quickly checked if someone else had done such things in the past. The substantial changes are:

  1. Resulting from a WT:NSPORTS discussion:[2];[3](both)
  2. Resulting from a discussion of a WP:WikiProject:[4];[5];(both)
  3. Changes without discussion on WT:NSPORTS without attribution to a WikiProject:[6];[7];[8];[9];[10]

These are the changes of one year. Quickly reverted changes are not included.Two (significant) changes were discussed at WT:NSPORTS only, two were discussed at a Wikiproject only, one was discussed at both, and five changes seem to be undiscussed. Burning Pillar (talk) 20:57, 13 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion is still ongoing - you need to wait for some sort of consensus to form in the discussion before trying to change the guidelines if you want your changes to be accepted by the community.Nigel Ish (talk) 21:17, 13 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Those changes I proposed are under discussion, and I agree with you. I just wanted to share this because there were concerns about undiscussed changes, and there are some that are indeed undiscussed changes(and those that were not discussed at the right talk page).. And this could be related to the discussion above.Burning Pillar (talk) 22:09, 13 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for the analysis. I find edits like [11] quite problematic, as they are likely edits made by fans of a certain sport, pushing for yet more inclusiveness, seemingly without discussion. And attempts to revert such changes later are criticized as 'no consensus', even when there often is 'no consensus' to broaden the criteria in the first place. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 05:08, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Piotrus: The problem you uncover is another - a part of a guideline or policy should have to get consensus to be added, but also to be retained, after all, guidelines and policy should have strong community support, so the burden to get consensus for the part of the guideline/policy should be on those who want the text to be in the guideline or policy. Oh, and you know that there is something wrong with a special notability guideline that states "Motorsport figures are presumed notable if they[...]2.Predate the sharp distinction between professional and amateur (prior to World War II)."(this has been in the guideline for more than a YEAR) And no, this sentence is even being defended on the talk page, even if it should be obvious that this criterion cannot have been developed with WP:GNG in mind. In addition to shifting the burden on those who want something in the guideline, we probably have to make sure that proposed changes are scrutinized well enough, which just does not seem to happen(e.g your example above, and that sentence I provided). There are probably some methods to assure that. One of them would be full protection of WP:Notability (sports), another would be requiring consensus on the talk page, in a RFC or here, before the change is to be made, for any substantial change and for any change that someone assumes to be substantial. I hope there are more, less problematic but still effective methods.Burning Pillar (talk) 00:25, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

How to best close this discussion?

Before asking a request for closure, I just want to be sure how complex or simple the issue is before requesting it in one venue, either WP:ANRFC or WP:AN. Seems that the issue is notability of sports personalities and the inclusivity criteria of NSPORTS. I listed this discussion in the "Centralized discussion" template. Numerically, the consensus appears divided. However, if the issue is more complex and requires more than one closer, I would go to WP:AN to request teamwork closure. Thoughts? --George Ho (talk) 03:29, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It is too soon to close this discussion. It is still active, and a new section was started that generated recent comments.Burning Pillar (talk) 00:01, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
No, I think it should be closed... The conversation has too many threads and its clear that nothing will get resolved from this as there just is not consensus for change.. or any real concrete proposals. Spanneraol (talk) 18:00, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, Spanneraol. Is just one closer okay, or do you think more closers are needed? --George Ho (talk) 19:16, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see why we would need multiple ones. Spanneraol (talk) 19:49, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Two closers might be needed, just to check for consensus, as whether there is a lack of consensus or not might be a problem. RileyBugz会話投稿記録 21:43, 21 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I requested closure at WP:ANRFC and then WP:AN three days later, just in case. --George Ho (talk) 18:49, 22 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Update: Tazerdadog says that he'll be one of the closers. If necessary, at least one more may be needed. --George Ho (talk) 02:52, 6 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see any need for two closers. isaacl (talk) 03:16, 6 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know. 1) The one who started the thread was very undecided on how to request a closure. 2) The votes are split, and the arguments of both sides may be logical. 3) It was listed in the "centralized discussion" template. 4) The discussion got very lengthy (if not heated), and two subsequent proposals failed. 5) It's been nearly two months since the discussion started (including nearly three weeks after first 30 days), indicating that it's not an easy close yet. 6) Amending the NSPORTS is still on the works. 7) Two above editors disagree on how many closers are needed, i.e. one or two closers. 8) A closing rationale may affect multiple biographical articles of sports personalities. --George Ho (talk) 04:17, 6 June 2017 (UTC); amended. 04:24, 6 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Forgot #9: One exemplified article shown in the OP was deleted per AFD; the deletion review ended with "no consensus" defaulting to "deleted". George Ho (talk) 04:29, 6 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Whether it demands two editors or not, I've started working with Tazerdadog on a possible close. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 04:31, 6 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Cool. Two should suffice if third closer is unnecessary. Okay. I'm awaiting the closure then. George Ho (talk) 05:04, 6 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
These are common characteristics of many discussions with dissenting views that have been closed by a single closer (because nearly all discussions have been closed by a single closer). One person saying, hey, maybe two closers would be useful, doesn't mean that two closers are needed. Two closers don't necessarily help discussions get closed faster (the two co-ordinating can in fact slow things down); discussions often remain unclosed because they are lengthy with a lot of views to dig through. isaacl (talk) 12:44, 6 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Sure, they may be common for most discussions. However, the topic isn't about one article or another. It's about a bunch of them and their notabilities. Also, the consistency between Notability guideline (longstanding one) and NSPORTS has been questioned here. I don't know whether you believe the matter is simple to close and resolve. Well, no point on arguing further whether a second closer is necessary; we already have two closers working on the closure. Moreover, I'm not seeking a rushed closure but an accurate one because, as you also said, arguments have to be thorough checked, not missed. BTW, the person said earlier, "Two closers might be needed." George Ho (talk) 14:55, 6 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
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.

Labeling illegal (or undocumented) immigrants correctly

Consensus is not to have a policy or guideline requiring the use of "illegal alien" or "illegal immigrant".

The terminology should be decided on a case by case basis, and the argument should be about what term reliable sources use to refer to the persons in question and not based on the terms used in law.

And there is a weak auxiliary consensus against using the word "alien".

Bryan Henderson (giraffedata) (talk) 02:25, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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.

This has been a term that has been debated heavily on Wikipedia forever. Whether or not to call them "illegal immigrants" or "undocumented immigrants". I propose that we settle this debate by creating a policy or a guideline that requires all pages to either use the term "illegal alien" or "illegal immigrant" given that this is the term used by the US government. as seen in Arizona v. United States. Federal district court Judge Andrew Hanen of the Southern District of Texas was quoted as saying: The Court uses the phrases ‘illegal immigrant’ and ‘illegal alien’ interchangeably…The Court also understands that there is a certain segment of the population that finds the phrase ‘illegal alien’ offensive. The Court uses this term because it is the term used by the Supreme Court in its latest pronouncement pertaining to this area of the law. See Arizona v. United States, 132 S. Ct. 2492 (2012). I am open to amending the details of my proposal and encourage anyone to think before opposing it and suggest how to make it acceptable. THE DIAZ talk • contribs 12:52, 5 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

See Antonio Vargas history and this now-removed comment on my Talk page. On the merits, this proposal is fatuous as what term to use depends on the article and the context. It would be impossible to have even a guideline creating a presumption as to what term should be used.--Bbb23 (talk) 13:03, 5 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@The Diaz: Snarky but not snarky question: You are aware that Wikipedia exists outside of Texas or indeed the United States, right? --NeilN talk to me 13:42, 5 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Illegal immigration to Australia cause some debates in Australia about what to call the people. And Wikipedia has a whole Category:Illegal immigration by country on the topic of other countries. Mitch Ames (talk) 13:58, 5 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • The BBC has actually gone into this (language RE migrants) in some detail in the past, both covering others and how they use it themselves. You will often find disclaimers about why they use a particular phrasing on their online articles in the area. One of the related articles is here. FYI - almost no one uses the word Alien anymore except the US. Only in death does duty end (talk) 14:08, 5 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • The pronouncement of one court in one case should have little if any bearing on Wikipedia, which should be based on the usage demonstrated through a preponderance of reliable secondary sources. What term is used by newspapers, journals, magazines, reliable books, etc. on the subject? If there is a single term which the preponderance of them use, we should go with that. If there appears to be interchangable terms, then we default to WP:ENGVAR guidance. --Jayron32 14:13, 5 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
The BBC does it depending on their (confirmed) status. They are otherwise 'migrants'. (eg, someone jumping off the boat from Cuba may be an economic migrant, a refugee/asylum seeker, an illegal immigrant etc, if there is no confirmed status it just reverts to 'migrant' as a neutral word to denote someone crossing borders - migrating from country to country. It does mean they tend to get blasted from both ends of the political spectrum, the right have a go at them for not labelling them the filthy illegals they are, whilst the left complain they are not labelling obvious refugees as such. Only in death does duty end (talk) 14:25, 5 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Whether to use "illegal immigrant" , "undocumented immigrant", "migrant", etc, is as Jayron points out something that should be determined topic by topic based on the common usage in reporting sources. However, I would agree we should avoid "illegal alien" and use "illegal immigrant" instead. "Alien" is not as wrong but has the same negative connotation as something like "negro", as well as for non-native English speakers, potentially confusing, and "immigrant" works as an equivalent replacement without loss of meaning. --MASEM (t) 14:33, 5 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I think the word "alien" applies to the legal documents/status. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 14:38, 5 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I do know it is a term defined by law in some areas (US for example it is anyone not a citizen or national), and not meant derogatorily there, but I've seen it used in media opinions in a more derogatory way. More often, though, when we are talking what the media says about these cases, it is a very uncommonly used word over "immigrant". --MASEM (t) 15:06, 5 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • I am in agreement with Jayron32 on going by what the reliable source calls them. For comparison there is also Native Americans, American Indians, or just Indians. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 14:36, 5 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • The first post in the thread says in part "Whether or not to call them "illegal immigrants" or "undocumented immigrants". [Emphasis added]. The correct term all depends on who they are. A person who goes illegally to a country with the intent of staying indefinitely is a illegal immigrant. The term "illegal alien" would cover illegal immigrants, and also those who only intend to stay for a brief visit, and those who's intent can't be determined. An undocumented immigrant could be an illegal immigrant, but cold also be a foreigner who is entitled to be in the country, but who's documents are lost, stolen, in transit, etc.
As a notary, I've dealt with a substantial number of undocumented persons. These persons give the appearance of being not only citizens, but members of families who have been living in my state for many generations. But they couldn't get regular driver licenses and had to settle for driving privilege cards instead. I'm sure nearly all of them could cure their undocumented status if they put their mind to it; if they're citizens, they are under no legal obligation to possess evidence of citizenship (although such a lack is inconvenient from time to time). Jc3s5h (talk) 14:54, 5 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Best to have no rulebook on this whether it's the Wikipedia or Political Correctness rulebook. E.G. calling drug dealers "undocumented pharmacists"  :-) Since the PC rulebook rears its head by default, a positive "use the most accurate, descriptive term" statement would be good. Then the most accurate relevant term for the context will be used which is "illegal". And usually the actual context for the second word would dictate "immigrant" and only occasionally "alien".....the distinctions on that second terms are minor enough to give flexibility there. For all of the other wilder stuff we don't censor, we should certainly not PC ness to informally censor the most accurate, informative terms. North8000 (talk) 15:10, 5 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    Odd. Who are you arguing with? No one here mentioned political correctness as a rationale before you brought it up. The most accurate, informative term is the one used in a preponderance of reliable, independent, secondary sources. --Jayron32 16:56, 5 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    It's also a straman since no one has ever suggested using terms like undocumented pharmacists to describe drug dealers.--64.229.167.158 (talk) 19:56, 7 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • North8000, come on man. Let's not have this nonsense about supposed PC speak here; that tune is getting old. Drmies (talk) 16:23, 8 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • My "undocumented pharmacists" was a sidebar chide on the choice of words. On the main thread, I think that nearly all of the time the "undocumented" term is used, it is in a sentence is about illegal presence. Generally something that is illegal is called illegal (especially if that status is germane to the statement of the sentence) even it were possible to make it legal by the right permit or paperwork. My point is what, what in this case would dictate many to avoid the more direct, informative term and substitute a vague euphemism?... and I think that the answer is the PC rulebook. North8000 (talk) 18:21, 8 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

How about just making it a policy or guideline for any topic relating to illegal immigration in the United States? THE DIAZ talk • contribs 15:44, 5 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Instruction creep... not needed. Blueboar (talk) 18:19, 5 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Blueboar: What is an instruction creep? THE DIAZ talk • contribs 21:10, 22 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
See: WP:Avoid instruction creep. Blueboar (talk) 21:30, 22 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Actually, a/c general BLP principles, we can't use "illegal" unless there is a RS that they have been found to be illegal by a court of comp tent jurisdiction. That they are expelled from a country (much less not admitted) does not necessarily mean that a court has formally ruled. "undocumented" avoids some of the possible difficulties here. DGG ( talk ) 19:16, 5 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@DGG: Actually, the term "illegal immigrant" or "illegal alien" are the terms for an alien who enters the U.S. illegally. It's a fact that the Supreme Court uses that term regardless of any immigration court ruling, as their purview is only to declare an immigrant or alien "removable". THE DIAZ talk • contribs 21:10, 22 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • No, let's not codify our contributions to the marginalization of The Other. When we're directly quoting a source, we obviously go with whatever terminology the source uses. In Wikipedia's voice, "migrant," "immigrant", and "emigrant" are all reasonable choices, depending on context, but "migrant" is safest because it works in either instance, coming or going. "Alien" is either legal jargon or pejorative, so that's definitely never optimal (except in a direct quote). In many cases, I suspect that preceding it with an adjective, whether "undocumented" or "illegal", is quite unnecessary. Both are primarily used in American English and may be confusing to readers abroad, but if one or the other must be used in Wikipedia's voice, "undocumented" should be preferred because it lacks the negative connotations of "illegal" (which, when used by itself as a noun, is derogatory). RivertorchFIREWATER 04:45, 6 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Illegal alien" just sounds weird, That aside we should use whatever the sources state which would be the easiest way of doing it (Personally I prefer illegal immigrant" however it's not about preferring it's about what sources etc use). –Davey2010Talk 16:51, 26 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
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.

SCHOOLOUTCOMES again

A couple months ago we had an RfC about WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES. About 100 editors participated and it was closed by four editors in good standing. In the closing statement is a summary that includes this text: "Secondary schools are not presumed to be notable simply because they exist."

Today, I was disappointed to come across Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Korea Kent Foreign School, which looks like it's heading towards being kept based almost entirely on arguments along the lines of ~"there's a long-held consensus that we keep articles about secondary schools if they verifiably exist".

Putting aside the specifics of that AfD, if school AfDs are primarily attended by those who see the February RfC as illegitimate or otherwise don't agree with or don't like the close, what purpose did the RfC have? (That's a real question, not simply rhetorical). — Rhododendrites talk \\ 20:15, 6 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The outcome of that RfC was no consensus to the actual question asked as at least one of the closers (Primefac) has stated when asked about it. The rest of the close was an observation of the implications of no consensus. The close was difficult, and I think muddied the waters, to be honest (not intended as a critique of the closers). SCHOOLOUTCOMES now shouldn't be cited, but you have admins saying that referencing school outcomes and then explaining the reasons behind it is a fine argument since that makes it cease to be circular. From a practical standpoint, this leaves us exactly the same place we were before the RfC, which is what a finding of no consensus is in the end. TonyBallioni (talk) 20:37, 6 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Economical with the verité or what? Primefac also said that the arguments being used by admins like Necrothesp - which are identical to the ones Rhondodendrites mentions - are a de facto invocation of SCHOOLOUTCOMES and are not valid. This end-running by admins in particular needs to stop. I am particularly appalled that DGG is attempting the trick, even though he does generally have a reputation as an inclusionist (eg: extremely broad application of SYSTEMIC). - Sitush (talk) 20:53, 6 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Sitush I wasn't trying to give the impression that Primefac was endorsing the SCHOOLOUTCOMES arguments (its why I stated that it shouldn't be cited, which I am in agreement with you on.) I was simply noting that the part of the RfC that is very rarely mentioned is that the close to the actual question asked was no consensus. This basically leaves us where we were before: fighting over the notability of schools in South Asia and Africa on a case by case basis.. TonyBallioni (talk) 21:01, 6 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Fair enough, sorry. But I'm still pissed that people who should know better are in fact citing it in all but name. It's about time we scrapped all these notions of presumed notability and enforced WP:BURDEN, ie "use it or lose it". - Sitush (talk) 21:17, 6 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again now... instead of a "presumption" of notability our SNGs should talk about the "likeliness" of notability. Blueboar (talk) 21:27, 6 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Which will just enable even more crap that no-one has time to maintain and which in many cases is fundamentally just promotion. - Sitush (talk) 21:30, 6 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
SCHOOLOUTCOMES isn't even a SNG, the RfC tried to effectively tried to elevate it to one, but that failed. It is a description of the typical outcome of AfDs. I've said this before, but I think there is going to be uncertainty on what to do with secondary schools for a while, and then there will be a de facto compromise reached at AfD, which will then likely cause OUTCOMES to be updated. DGG's argument for that is strong, in my opinion, but the compromise will probably be different than what we had seen pre-RfC. TonyBallioni (talk) 21:38, 6 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
DGG's argument is usually that something might turn up. It's not strong at all. Take that road and we may as well not delete anything on notability grounds. - Sitush (talk) 21:44, 6 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
We need closers of such AFDs to recognize that one clear outcome of that SCHOOLSOUTCOME is that we can't have the Catch 22 of using SCHOOLOUTCOMES as the only !vote reason (WP:ATA was updated to include this). It doesn't meant secondary schools can't be kept, but the strength of argument has to be towards sourcing and notability (but it doesn't have to be fully GNG-meeting) and not just regurgitating SCHOOLOUTCOMES. I wonder if we need a template message for such deletion debates to remind editors that !voting only on a SCHOOLOUTCOMES-based argument should be discounted by the closer. --MASEM (t) 14:27, 9 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I feel like Wikipedia needs *some* policy regarding SCHOOLOUTCOMES. I am opposed to the status-quo of "ignore this policy entirely". For example, would evidence of notable alumni be sufficient for notability? Proof of enrollment? There are very few online newspapers from Nigeria; a requirement for that type of coverage may cause needless deletions. Power~enwiki (talk) 01:46, 23 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Power-enwiki: SCHOOLOUTCOMES is not a policy, nor a guideline, so there is no policy to ignore entirely. Please do not mis-state it as such. --Izno (talk) 03:07, 23 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Izno: then what is it? If it's nothing, it should be deleted entirely, or it should be replaced with an actual policy or guideline. Power~enwiki (talk) 03:56, 23 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Power~enwiki: The page itself says it is a supplement, but neither policy nor guideline. Why do you think it should be deleted entirely if it is not replaced by a PAG? --Izno (talk) 12:36, 23 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete SCHOOLOUTCOMES and replace with an actual guideline - If the school doesn't have reliable and indepth sources of any kind (regardless of the country) then it should be deleted, We're strict with everything else on this site so we should be strict with Schools too. –Davey2010Talk 16:46, 26 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

pre-RFC on user talk page archival

Okay, so I'm not going to put this up as an official RFC because I might get thrown bodily out of the room, but I wanted to gauge people's opinions on user talk page archiving. While I know it is entirely up to individual editors when and if to archive their pages, but I have seen multiple times on multiple talk pages recently where there are hundreds of sections and some old discussions going back to 2010. Maybe it's just me, but when you get user talk pages reaching 400k (or even more ridiculous at over 900k) it gets hard, not only for the processor to load, but to read through. I'm on a fairly new computer, and it still throws a hissy fit any time I visit these pages.

Now obviously, there are some people whose talk pages are huge because they're heavily involved in areas where they simply get a lot of commentary on their talk pages, and that's not really what I'm concerned about. I'm concerned about the people who are apparently unconcerned with ridiculously long pages.

So here's my general question: should we force users to archive their talk pages if and when they reach a certain length? For the sake of this argument, let's say 200k, since that seems to be about as long as I can find of people who do have archiving. Primefac (talk) 17:18, 22 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Attaching "must do's" to userspace is something we should be very careful with. There are obviously necessary limits on userspace for the safety and security of the project that I think nearly everyone accepts: Don't have hate speech on a user page, don't have copyright violations, don't have libelous material, etc. We need those restrictions but there's a philosophical difference between "you can't do these things" and "you must do these things." I think the closest we have to the latter we have currently is leaving declined unblock requests and a few other notices (Arbcom, some deletion ones) on the user talk pages, but even that is a restriction that actually says: "A number of important matters may not be removed by the user..." It goes back to preventing a user from taking an action rather than imposing an action that the user must perform. This proposal would be the first example of the latter category I'm aware of and that means it breaks a lot of new ground. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 17:44, 22 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I think a lot of users probably don't know how to archive pages or don't think it's worth the time. Forcing them to do so would just make them mad.. Perhaps a friendly note about archiving with some helpful instructions would be better? Spanneraol (talk) 17:49, 22 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I agree, so long as it's bot driven and not involving any effort on the user's part. We often create policy in order to make Wikipedia accessible to all, I don't see why this should be an exception as it cripples browsers (mine included). In general, I feel it would be a courtesy to the user as archiving either manually or bot-assisted can be a bit of a hassle to some. Drewmutt (^ᴥ^) talk 17:53, 22 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Perhaps an essay describing the benefits of archiving and how to set it up would be the way to go. Then, if a talk page is getting overly long, we would have something to point to. Encourage rather than force. Blueboar (talk) 17:57, 22 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm genuinely curious how your browser struggles with something like this. Stock Chrome reports the page requires 2.2 MiB of data and a mere 83 MiB of memory. By comparison, scrolling past a dozen posts in my Facebook newsfeed fetches 4 MiB of data and requires 118 MiB of RAM; CNN's home page necessitates a whopping 5.4 MiB data transfer and fills 245 MiB of RAM for the tab. My tentative feeling is that a user whose talk page is already substantially leaner than many contemporary websites should not be forced to archive it; 900 KiB is not an unreasonable amount of data in 2017. Rebbing 17:58, 22 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • PCs, sure, but iPads? Tablets? Phones? People don't just browse on PCs these days. There are semi-weekly complaints that WP:ANI is getting too long, and some of these talk pages are longer than ANI. Primefac (talk) 18:37, 22 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'd quite strongly oppose enforced archiving. While I agree it's an issue (and have recently commented at length on the talkpage I assume prompted this proposal to that effect), for third parties to try to second-guess which threads the editor will no longer keep is a recipe for endless revert-wars and frayed tempers. Unless it's set so ridiculously high as to be useless, a bot-enforced maximum talkpage size will be completely impractical; as a straightforward example my talkpage is currently 170,000kb in length and generates a server load more than twice as heavy as EEng's, but that's because there's one very long thread currently there which contains multiple large images, and an enforced bot archiving to bring it below the recommended 75kb would have the perverse effect of removing the one thread currently on my talkpage in which people are still currently commenting. Some situations just don't lend themselves to firm rules, and this is one of them; the way to force people to keep talkpages to manageable sizes is through social pressure and the hope that if enough people say "this causes problems for some people and keeping it doesn't have any obvious benefits to outweigh those problems", the editors in question will at some point decide that they don't want to be known as "that jerk with the disruptive talk page". ‑ Iridescent 19:08, 22 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • I must be missing something obvious here, but yours is currently 154k (I guess the bot came by since you posted) and EEng's over 900k according to the page information. That translates to 277k and 1.6M HTML, respectively. Opabinia regalis (talk) 19:35, 23 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
      • @Opabinia regalis In terms of bandwidth rather than just "nuisance to scroll through" it's not the text that causes issues on big pages, it's images and templates. (These are the actual bandwidth loads broken down by component for EEng's talk page and my talk page. Note that for my talk, virtually all the load comes from downloading the two big screen-captures.) You probably don't see it because you've visited my talkpage repeatedly between the images being added, so they're in your cache and not being downloaded each time. The easiest way to see how long a page will take to load for someone coming to it fresh is to open the page in the Wikitext editor (the real one, not the love-child-of-VE experimental new one) and select "preview"; because of how MediaWiki operates that forces your browser to re-load all templates and images from scratch rather than using the cache. (With images, bear in mind that except for a few exceptions like animated gifs it's not the size of the file that causes issues, it's the size of the displayed image as the actual image processing is done server-side; a tiny file displayed at 300x200px will create more load than an 18Mb high-definition scan displayed at 200x150px. If you really want to fry your browser, go to a high-def architectural blueprint like File:Noel Park plans.jpg and compare the time it takes to load the thumbnail with the time it takes to load the full-size image.) ‑ Iridescent 20:45, 23 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
        • You're right, I forgot about the images. I also forgot about your randomized top image, till I just now got the cat video. Unrelatedly, I kinda like the love child of VE.... Opabinia regalis (talk) 22:52, 23 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • I may support it provided a provision that this excludes threads which have been active in the past week - that is, if the threads which were active within the last 168 hours add up to a very long total, you don't need to have it archived. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 07:35, 23 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'd probably oppose a 'mandated archiving' solution, but just for the record, holy shit is this annoying. I catch up on wiki stuff on my phone a lot and I really have no interest in using my mobile data to download someone's talk page threads from 2010. Rebbing isn't wrong that these are not unreasonable amounts of data, but they are unreasonable amounts of unwanted and irrelevant data. I already have a mental list of "those jerks with the disruptive talk pages" and really, I want those neurons back. Opabinia regalis (talk) 19:35, 23 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • For whatever it's worth, I much prefer talk pages (user and article) that are kept tidy and somewhat relevant. I have the bot set to keep mine under fifteen threads; even with pictures (I probably should archive those), it weighs in at only 229 KiB. Rebbing 20:03, 23 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
      • OR, not wanting to commit lèse-majesté but I feel I ought to point out that by far the worst offender for "volume of irrelevant crap on a user page" is one of your esteemed fellow arbs, whose talkpage is currently hosting considerably more threads than does EEng's, and doesn't even have EEng's virtue of occasionally being interesting or entertaining. ‑ Iridescent 20:52, 23 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
        • Who reads arbs' talk pages? There are arbs there! Well, except Drmies; everybody reads his talk page. Opabinia regalis (talk) 22:52, 23 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
          • Drmies isn't actually top among the current arbcom. Why anyone would want to read DGG's talkpage when there's perfectly good paint to watch dry, I leave as an exercise for the reader. ‑ Iridescent 22:59, 23 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
            • Hmm I thought I was more popular than DGG. Far be it from me to criticize my fellow arbs, but I agree that DGG's talk page is a heavy load to handle. As for the matter at hand, I also don't want to enforce certain limits--but EEng's talk page (he knows I feel this way) is torture. His I try to avoid; DGG's I visit rather frequently but only when I have to: those two pages are difficult if not impossible to load navigate on a mobile device, and even on my desktop. Drmies (talk) 04:24, 24 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
              • DGG may be the most watched, but you're the highest traffic by a long shot: [12]. In other news, I'm somehow not the most boring arb, and I beat NYB by six whole views in the last three months. Neener neener! Opabinia regalis (talk) 04:27, 24 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Like other editors who have commented, I would oppose anything that is mandatory. But I think that it could be a reasonable advisory to have on a guideline page. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:35, 23 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm sure glad Iridescent brought that up because I had the bytes tabulated and names of admins lined up...but the sign says "Please do not feed, touch, poke, prod, tease, pester, annoy, torment, worry, irk, harass, disturb, bother, or ruffle. While we tease EEng about archiving, he is not an admin, so discourse is optional unless there is something that requires an elevated amount of attention. There's always the option of pinging him from one's own TP. He does archive, and like others who commented, I would oppose anything that requires mandatory archiving. Atsme📞📧 21:25, 23 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • *coughs quietly* Flow would fix this problem if I'm not mistaken. Eman235/talk 21:47, 23 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • You are mistaken (except in the sense that Flow's handling of images and templates was so fubar that it would have rendered the issue moot). Even text-only pages using Flow sucked up bandwidth like a hoover owing to all the kludgy javascript (example); once you started scrolling through them, the lazy-loading setup was spectacularly inefficient. (Try scrolling through a Facebook or Twitter feed—or anything else using lazy-loading—on a metered connection and watch how quickly your data goes. You'll be shocked.) ‑ Iridescent 21:58, 23 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment -- Users' Talk page archiving looks like a non-starter. Although, automatic archiving of article Talk pages would be quite welcome. I.e. if one could add a template that would automatically transclude to set it up, it would be great. K.e.coffman (talk) 04:28, 24 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thank you everyone for the input. While I can't stop people commenting, I'm going to echo coffman and consider this discussion  Closed. Primefac (talk) 14:04, 26 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • I have received as many comments that people are glad I have a system of manual category archives, as I have received complaints that the main page is too long. I also have a system for follow-up that I must manage manually--I typically have a considerable number of in-progres follow-ups dating back to initial inquires a few months back. I know I have fallen behind on both, but I can & will fix that. I absolutely do not want it archived automatically; it will make things even more complicated for me. DGG ( talk ) 16:02, 26 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • FWIW I would probably oppose the RFC but instead would support a detailed guideline, Another user that springs to mind is Hullaballoo Wolfowitz who received quite alot of shit for the size of his talkpage, Anyway I'd happily support a guideline. –Davey2010Talk 16:33, 26 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Mandatory user talk page archival (and talk page archival in general) is a non-starter until the archiving bots work reliably. They currently don't, and it's not clear if anyone is maintaining them. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 16:33, 26 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • This sort of policy will be akin to a legislation saying that no person in the country will weigh more than 80kg⮘FORCE RADICAL⮚ 10:46, 30 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

RfC: Alternative language articles

Proposal withdrawn due to overwhelmingly negative consensus. THE DIAZ talk • contribs 09:08, 29 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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.

Here is a new proposal that would amend the Manual of Style's National varieties of English policy and the format of some articles' titles. While I find nothing prohibiting my proposal, I still seek authorization.

I propose a new way to include any dialect of English in Wikipedia for anything. In other words, we could make certain articles in certain varieties of English and we could note that in the article's title.

For example, World War II could have two articles, one in American English (using the mdy date format) and one in British English (using the dmy date format). We could note this by making the article's titles look like: World War IIUS and World War IIUK respectively. Searching "World War II" would take the user to a dialect selection page that could read:

For American English, click World War IIUS

For British English, click World War IIUK

For Canadian English, click World War IICA

We would only need to put the small abbreviation on the title if there was another article with a different dialect of English. We could also put a message on the top of the article saying: "This article is written in _________ English. For a different dialect, click here."

I invite anyone to share their opinion and encourage any editor thinking of opposing my proposal to suggest a way to make it acceptable in their eyes. THE DIAZ talk • contribs 15:01, 27 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Survey

  • Support as the maker of this proposal. THE DIAZ talk • contribs 15:01, 27 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose for practical reasons (the difficulty of maintaining two forks), but the real motivation for my oppose is the fact that one of the great educational features of Wikipedia, IMHO, is that people are exposed to stuff they might not be familiar with, including the horror that some people spell "color" as "colour", and that some even write dates in the wrong order! It's a big world. Johnuniq (talk) 02:26, 28 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Unworkable for the reasons noted above. Also, entirely unneeded as the varieties of English are not so far apart as to cause any confusion.--Jayron32 03:21, 28 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose I might consider the idea of having a "national-level" Wikipedia for English-speaking countries (where all the articles on sports matches, sub-national politicians, and high schools can be put) but this isn't a way to do that. Power~enwiki (talk) 04:21, 28 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose as written, would be a content attribution nightmare moving between all the versions - if this were to be pulled off it should be with the translation extension - but I still don't think that is appropriate here. — xaosflux Talk 04:42, 28 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. If you think your language is different enough to need separate articles, the correct way to handle it is to make a separate Wikipedia with separate articles, as for instance the Scots and simpletons (um, is there a more politically correct term for this group?) have done. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:41, 28 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose as being a maintenance nightmare (keeping multiple articles on exactly the same topic up to date). Also, as Johnuniq points out, there is merit in exposing readers to different variants of the language rather than encouraging the readers to think that (for example) Australian and US English are mutually unintelligible. That being said, see my comments under "Discussion" below about a "browser-lang" template. Mitch Ames (talk) 06:20, 28 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - just keeping these articles synchronized correctly will be a pain. It can't be done by a bot, since the bot wuld need to know every ENGVAR issue or else it would mess things up when a new one enters the article; and it's too much work for a human. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 09:32, 28 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. As per previous contributors, this is both impractical and wrong. Peter coxhead (talk) 15:21, 28 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. The proposer neglects to suggest how their proposal would constitute an improvement, and small wonder: even if it were feasible (which it almost certainly isn't), it would be no improvement at all. One of the best things about en.wp is that it takes our readers—and us editors—outside their geopolitical-linguistic comfort zones, encouraging them to learn about the vast but often mysterious intersection between language and culture and enhancing even native speakers' literacy within their own language. Why would we want to discourage that? RivertorchFIREWATER 16:01, 28 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose; unworkable. The Chinese Wikipedia already does this semi-automatically without requiring six different versions of every page. Jc86035 (talk) Use {{re|Jc86035}}
    to reply to me     04:52, 29 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

I'm very tempted to put this in the form of an "oppose" but I thought that I'd ask first: If these are different versions of the same page, i.e. three articles with the same title but different language variants, they would each be subject to being edited independently. How would you propose to keep the content, other than the differences due to language, constant between the articles? Regards, TransporterMan (TALK) 16:36, 27 May 2017 (UTC) PS: And just how far would you want to go with it? How about regional varieties of English? We here in Texas have a variety of English which is, perhaps, more different from the variety spoken in California or Maine as the general-American version is from the general-Canadian version. How about For Texan English, click World War IITX? How about East Texas vs West Texas, they're pretty different, too, y'all? — TransporterMan (TALK) 16:46, 27 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@TransporterMan: That would be tricky, but here's what comes to my mind right now, we could have a WikiProject dedicated to making sure the articles are the same or at least similar, we could have a bot that copies edits from one article to another, or (in my mind the simplest way) we could create a template telling the editor that they are encouraged to add their edit to all articles and put the template on top of the editing page. Regarding how far we would go, in my mind we'd just divide it by spelling. In other words, there would only be American English with spellings such as labor, traveled, realize, analyze, defense and center, British (or Commonwealth) English that would use labour, travelled, realise, analyse, defence and centre, and Canadian English which would use labour, travelled, realize, analyze, defence and centre. We'd avoid regional slang terms present in only minor regional dialects of English, (such as y'all, mema, and tonic). Other English-speaking countries already use British spelling so naming other countries wouldn't be necessary in my opinion. Hope that clears it up. THE DIAZ talk • contribs 17:01, 27 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Hi The Diaz I'm sorry but this is totally unworkable. That is, putting aside whether we would want this for other reasons, even if we did it is not feasible. Let me start at copyright – for which this would be a nightmare. As a baseline, one page would have to be the base article, containing the page history where the copyright owners are listed, and the other, satellite, variety-of-English pages created would then have to have notes on their talk pages, and in the edit summary upon creation, directing people to that base article where the page history was held – in order for a barest form of copyright attribution under our licenses to be met. But this would still be very poor attribution, attenuating the copyright in a manner that is really unsustainable. The only possible way to make it work would be some new type of facility that when the page was split into its variety versions, there would be duplications of the page history for each variety article. Even if we agreed to that strange redundancy scheme, after the duplication, every time an edit was made to one page that was then placed in the others but not by the same person, we would need to go through the attribution ritual of placing an edit summary stating the attribution and hyperlinking the source, or naming the user who made the edit. This would have to be done assiduously, with a bureaucracy set up just to monitor it and provide attribution repair compliance constantly, as it inevitably was not done by the original user (probably most of the time). As these pages were created for thousands of topics, the bureaucracy to fix the copyright attribution would need probably fifteen or so people to do nothing else eight hours per day (but we're a volunteer project...). I go through that detail because it's emblematic of a base problem that is transportable to multiple other aspects that this would require be done, e.g., the Wikiproject you speak of that would be tasked with keeping the pages in sync.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 19:43, 27 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Fuhghettaboutit: Perhaps we could have a bot do all that instead of a Wikiproject? Or maybe the articles could be allowed to be different from each other, but place a template saying "This is the article written in American English. This subject has other articles written in different varieties of English that you are encouraged to edit as well.". Or something like that. THE DIAZ talk • contribs 20:00, 27 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure that this is a good idea, but I'll mention it anyway...

We have the {{convert}} template to cater for variations in measuring units. Consider a template that displays a word (or phrase) in the reader's preferred spelling, as determined by browser or operating system settings. (My browser, Pale Moon, allows me to specify my preferred language, eg En-AU vs En-US, as does my OS, Windows 7 although I don't why the browser just doesn't default to "get language preference from OS".) We actually have an {{engvar}} template that looks like it might do something similar (on a bigger scale) but dependent on the article language preference rather than the browser language preference.

Imagine a simple template; call it "browser-lang" for the nonce. In the article, you put 

Smith's {{browser-lang|favourite}} {{browser-lang|colour}} was red.

and it would display "Smith's favourite colour was red." or "Smith's favorite color was red." based on the reader's browser settings (independently of any article engvar setting). Rather than forcing the editor to list all the possible variations each time (eg as I think {{engvar}} does) we could have a global list of the variants, to which editors could add words as necessary - Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Spelling § English spelling comparison chart would get the list started. (The template would accept any variant of a word.)

Presumably this may require some technical work to happen, and I'm not sure that it is worth the effort. Per comments in "Survey" above I think we may do a disservice to our readers by hiding the variations, but it doesn't hurt to mention the idea here. Mitch Ames (talk) 06:20, 28 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Mitch Ames: That is a great proposal. My initial thoughts are that the default display should be in American English (since that's where the majority of English speakers come from) until the editor selects his or her preference, or Wikipedia could check the IP address that the viewer is visiting from and set the preference from there. Could that work? THE DIAZ talk • contribs 15:42, 28 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
No, just unworkable. It potentially adds ridiculous amounts of code to pages for no real gain. What next, {{punctuation-lang}} that moves the period from inside to outside quotes depending on whether you are a US or UK English reader? Unless or until there is EN-US WP and an EN-GB WP and EN-CA WP etc then just accept the differences and has been mentioned above lets educate readers that there are variations around the world. Nthep (talk) 16:57, 28 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Also, when converting words like license and practise to British English, how will this template know whether to convert to the noun (practice/licence) or the verb (practise/license)?--Ykraps (talk) 21:20, 28 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
{{Engvar}} is just as bad an idea as this proposal, and I have just nominated it for discussion. Jc3s5h (talk) 17:24, 28 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
You may want to withdraw that, Engvar is a legitimate (and fairly old) template used for a different purpose, per the comment on your discussion. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 17:53, 28 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • I disagree. But I do admire the bravery of the proposal. It made me rethink this issue, which is good. -DePiep (talk) 20:27, 28 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The Diaz, may you please withdraw the proposal? The whole consensus opposes it, and I expect more "oppose" votes when the discussion continues. George Ho (talk) 00:47, 29 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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.

Awards in article?

Hi!

I'm writing an article about a person who has been awarded several times for his works/profession. Can I write it in the article or will it be suggested as "G11: Unambiguous advertising or promotion" ?

Thanks in advance! Strongline123 (talk) 13:27, 29 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

There's no way to answer that in the abstract. Context is everything. If the award is the Nobel prize, then it's clearly relevant; if it's a amateur football league participation award, not so much. It also depends on what else can be established through reliable sources about the person. Instead of trying to create the article in the live, main part of the encyclopedia, consider using the article wizard so that your work will go into a draft space where other editors can review it and suggest changes before you take it live. Regards, TransporterMan (TALK) 15:34, 29 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you so much for the answer! I will do that!

Strongline123 (talk) 06:53, 30 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Appel de décision administrative de blocage

Hello,

I'm really sorry for my middle-level english language, it is enough to read and good enough to write basic sentence but for this question I need a better accuracy than I'm able to be in english language, so I will write in french language, with the hope and expectancy that some people will help translating my words.

Le problème est le suivant : je pense avoir été la victime d'une sorte de complot. Non réellement un complot, plutôt la coalition provisoire de contributeurs qui, par esprit de groupe et par solidarité, ont réalisé une série d'actions qui font que je ne suis plus en moyen de me défendre, étant complètement bloqué, au point qu'un robot automatique à fonctionnement permanent a été activé pour réagir instantanément si un contributeur se connecte à partir d'une certaine adresse IP. La question n'est pas de savoir qui a raison ou qui a tort, cela peut se régler après, si j'ai la possibilité de mettre le problème sur la place publique.

Voici mon interrogation: la présomption d'innocence ne fait-elle pas partie des principes même de Wikipédia, et en ce cas mettre en place un mécanisme automatique de blocage préalable d'un IP dont la communauté n'a pas décidé qu'elle devait être bloquée, n'est-ce pas une violation d'un principe intangible? Et si c'est le cas, est-ce que quelque personne lisant cela pourrait, en quelque sorte, se faire mon avocat non pour le fond mais pour la forme, la demande du respect des formes pour décider du blocage d'une IP. Quoi qu'il en soit, merci d'avance pour les réactions à ce message. Olivier Hammam (talk) 15:36, 29 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Anyway, I will try to translate myself (it's easier than writing directly in a non-native language :-) If somemone can improve this translation, je remercie d'avance cette personne.

(translation)
Here is the case: I think I have been a victim (more or less in the meaning of patsy) of a kind of plot (more or less, a conspiracy). Not really a plot, something like a temporary trust where, with an "esprit de groupe" (I think you know the meaning) and in a spirit of solidarity (more or less, interlock), they chained several actions that leaded to a complete lock and now I really can't do nothing to try to defend myself. The point is not to know who is wrong or good, this will be decided later, but to obtain the ability to get explanations about this.

Here is the thing: is the "presumption of innocence", not in a legal but in a general meaning, a part of Wikipedia fundamentals or no, and if it is, does the activation of a robot (a web "bot") to prevent any connection through another user account than this I use here currently with the same IP address a lack of respect of Wikipedia fundamentals?
(end of translation)

Kind regards. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Olivier Hammam (talk • contribs) 2017-05-29T15:36:26 (UTC)

@Olivier Hammam: I think you are asking about two related topics, the use of alternate accounts - and the use of these as bot accounts. You can read the English Wikipedia policies about these on the following two pages: Wikipedia:Sock puppetry, Wikipedia:Bot policy. — xaosflux Talk 15:40, 29 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Also if you have a specific alt-account that is blocked, you can use the Template:unblock to request a review. — xaosflux Talk 15:41, 29 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I really can't understand nothing in your purposes, User:Xaosflux, sorry, and it's not because of my, so said, «mauvais english», I'm fluent enough in this language, as you can see, but I really can't understand your writings. Olivier Hammam (talk) 17:38, 29 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

User:Xaosflux directed you to three English Wikipedia pages that may help you understand how to bring your case to a good end. Please follow these links and read the suggestions.
To be utterly blunt, if your English is too weak to discuss in that language you should seriously reconsider whether you can deliver relevant input into the English Wikipedia version. After all, following another Wikipedia page explains that sufficient control of the English language is required to be a valued editor (see WP:Competence under language issues). Perhaps it would be a wiser choice to become an editor on French Wikipedia rather than having the ambition to be one here. Arnoutf (talk) 17:47, 29 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Arnoutf: FYI this user is now blocked for personal attacks after warning; it appears they are also blocked for personal attacks on frwiki - it may possibly be a compromised account. — xaosflux Talk 17:50, 29 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
<edit conflict> Actually, this is about them being blocked at the fr-wikipedia, because of nothere-contributions to the bistro over there (about the same as the village pump here), and now being blocked here because of nothere-contributions to our village pump (Conspiracy!!!!). Kind of a rant actually, interspersed with rather heavy personal attacks (in French) added to their talk-page after the block. When I look at older contributions, this looks like a compromised account. I actually would up the block to a week at least, for them to calm really down. And remove talk-page access to boot. Lectonar (talk) 17:56, 29 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
And yes, they are blocked over there for repeated personal attacks; some edits had to be oversighted in fr-wikipedia. Lectonar (talk) 17:58, 29 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Je ne comprends rien, mais alors strictement rien aux bavardages stériles des personnes (ou supposées personnes) qui bavassent ci-dessus à propos de choses dont elles ne savent rien et croient tout savoir, et cette incompréhension n'a rien à voir avec mon supposé niveau insuffisant en anglais, beaucoup à voir avec la vacuité de leurs supposés échanges, même s'il me semble n'entendre qu'une voix, celle de l'écho. Je regrette fort que mon intervention ici n'ait, à ce qu'il semble, attiré que des mouches du coche. Triste chose... Je me demande si ces propos anodins et factuels vont encore provoquer un blocage, et me demande encore en quoi le précédent avait la moindre validité. Olivier Hammam (talk) 06:28, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Olivier Hammam: Notez que sur Wikipedia Anglais les reglements ne sont pas necessairement les memes que sur sur Wikipedia Francais. La pluspart des utilisateurs ici (incluant moi-meme), nous ne sommes pas necessairement familiers avec les reglements du Wikipedia Francais. Il semblerait d'apres Lectonar que vous ayez ete bloque pour raisons d'edition disruptive ou "POV"/point-de-vue non supporte par les sources fiables ainsi que pour motif d'incivilite (incluant l'utilisation de la page personelle de facon abusive apres avoir ete blocke). Xaosflux evoque meme le fait qu'il serait possible que votre compte aie ete pirate. Nous avons ici WP:APPEAL, WP:OFFER, WP:ABK (autoblock), etc. Il est possible que le Wikipedia Francais aie aussi l'equivalent. Les administrateurs etant egalement differentes personnes sur les differents projets, je doute qu'ici soit la meilleure place pour votre requete. Desole pour le manque d'accents dans mon texte, et bonsoir, —PaleoNeonate - 07:00, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Merci pour votre contribution, Paleo. J'ai tout-à-fait conscience de ce que vous me dites quant aux différences dans les usages des wikipédias anglophone et francophone, mon problème est l'incapacité où je me trouve de faire valoir mon point de vue, qui est possiblement mal fondé, sut WP:FR, du fait de mon blocage complet. Je sollicite simplement une bonne volonté de WP:EN, non pas pour défendre mon point de vue mais pour l'exposer, tel que présenté ici, sur ma page de discussion francophone et aussi, si elle le souhaite, sur la gage où a été décidé ce blocage. Si donc quelque personne de bonne volonté peut relayer la part de mon premier message qui commence par «Voici mon interrogation» jusqu'à ma signature avec un peu de contexte (lien vers la source du message, si la personne le juge opportun motifs qui l'ont conduite à relayer ma demande...). Merci encore à vous, et merci par avance à qui voudrait accéder à ma requête.
Amicalement. Olivier Hammam (talk) 09:19, 6 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Edit warring

This is just to clarify :Who is obliged to open the talk page thread for discussion. The one who first inserts content or the one who reverts it first? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Forceradical (talk • contribs) 10:51, 30 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Both parties are obliged to discuss... and either party can start the discussion. If "you" are involved in a potential edit war, don't wait for the "other guy" to start a discussion... it is up to "you" to stop the revert/counter revert cycle by starting a discussion. Blueboar (talk) 11:43, 30 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Pre-RfC: Political Memes

It seems that every time Donald Trump sneezes, somebody creates an article for it. We have Covfefe (AfD) and Trump orb (AfD) created and sent to AfD in the past week.

I propose that there be a new Speedy Deletion criteria for any pages related to new political memes of the past two weeks. It's somewhat difficult to define what should be included, though. If Congress creates and passes a new health care bill, we don't need to wait two weeks to create an article. For things which are fundamentally noteworthy because people talk about them a lot on Twitter (and a significant portion of the press will cover whatever political gossip people talk about on Twitter), the articles should be deleted (or redirected) as a matter of policy.

If any of these memes or news stories are encyclopedic, they will still have coverage and still get an article in two weeks. If they're not, we discourage dozens of editors from making unproductive contributions. Power~enwiki (talk) 23:28, 31 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

  • No, you can't create arcane policy pages at Wikipedia that will prevent good-intentioned people from creating articles you don't like. There's no impending harm from these articles going through the normal AFD process. Wikipedia is in no rush, and it gets it right eventually. This would be an abuse of the speedy deletion process, which is not for deleting articles like the two cited, and never was. --Jayron32 23:37, 31 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • I am suggesting a change to the policy, of course it doesn't fit in the existing speedy deletion process. Perhaps "redirect and protect" is a better suggestion? Power~enwiki (talk) 23:40, 31 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
      • It's not merely that it doesn't fit existing criteria, it completely and utterly violates a core principle of CSD. There's a distinction to be made here, CSD does not exist merely to allow us to delete stuff we can't be bothered to wait around to delete. CSD is entirely and totally about extreme examples of WP:SNOW-level deletions, things like an article which is nothing but a copyvio of another source, or articles which are gibberish, or written about your cat, or things like that. There's no need to hold an AFD discussion deleting an article which consists of someone who blindly smashed their keyboard and hit "save". However, potentially encyclopedic content is never suitable CSD material, even if we find it really annoying. Such content should always be discussed. That the discussion ends up deleting the content does not mean the discussion wasn't necessary in the first place. Indeed, the discussion should happen, because deciding which recent events have met the threshold of suitability for an article is something that requires more than one person's feeling. That was my point, your proposal was not to create a new definition of gibberish, it completely violates a core principle of CSD. --Jayron32 03:42, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
        • With multiple keep votes cast by users with non-automatic user rights, and at least one keep vote by an admin for each, this is clearly not speedy material. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 05:01, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Cease using Rotten Tomatoes in film articles

I know next to nothing about Wikipedia policies and how they work, and, from what I understand, the closed-shop attitude of many users therefore means that my proposal may well be dismissed out of hand, which is fine. This problem is likely to be exacerbated by the fact that I do not have any awareness of what policies currently support the current tendency to which I am objecting. Nevertheless, I believe it should at least be stated: it is detrimental to the encyclopedia, to cinema, and to culture in general that film articles on Wikipedia almost universally refer to the "Rotten Tomatoes" score for a film. This score, composed of a sum of thumbs up and thumbs down, represents the absolute nadir of critique. It indicates nothing of significance or importance about a movie, and only contributes to the general lowering of critical capacities, and probably to film producers being even further encouraged to worry about nothing except the lowest common denominator opinion. Use of this score represents, to me, nothing but the laziest approach to composing encyclopedic articles on cinema. In my view, whatever policies or guidelines support the constant reference to this website should be changed to prevent this use, and articles that currently refer to this "score" should be edited to no longer do so. Perhaps this question has already been debated and decided upon (I would have no idea where that debate may have taken place), but if so, it is time to revisit it: Rotten Tomatoes really is something rotten in the heart of Wikipedia's film pages. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 49.194.22.210 (talk) 04:37, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you Kirk Cameron, for your input. It is nice to see a filmmaker of your caliber editing Wikipedia. --Guy Macon (talk) 05:13, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm... Although I happen to disagree with you, I think that it is best to provide context to things, and that there shouldn't just be a section saying "It was rated highly by critics" or something like that. I do think that stuff like that should be removed, but I think that if there was any context, like "It was rated highly by critics, especially for its score [music, in this case]" then it should probably be good. I do try and do stuff like this when writing the articles I write (in my case, I write about Japanese politicians, and I try to give the reader an idea of some of their main policies). But, it would almost certainly be discouraged for one to remove stuff like this wholesale—the best method would to try and fix it and context to the issues. I think that some information which could be helpful is better than none. RileyBugz会話投稿記録 14:48, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
We have a noticeboard to discuss and determine if sources can be used, the Reliable Sources Noticeboard (WP:RSN). I don't personally have an opinion about using Rotten Tomatoes or not. Thank you for your comment, —PaleoNeonate· 17:53, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
This isn't a debate on how reliable the source is, it is a debate on how much information is actually passed along by the score. RileyBugz会話投稿記録 18:23, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
In my experience with film articles, review aggregators like RT and Metacritic are used for a quick summary of critical reception before the article launches into a round-up of specific reviews and critiques. Well-written articles certainly don't rely on the aggregate score alone. Since this discussion relates to film articles, WT:FILM is probably the best place for it. For more info on how film articles are structured, see MOS:FILM (especially the bit on critical response). For an essay on review aggregators, see WP:ROTTEN. clpo13(talk) 18:05, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

RfC: Wikimedia referrer policy

What referrer information should Wikipedia send to an external website when a reader clicks on a link? --Guy Macon (talk) 15:00, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Limitations: The Wikimedia foundation is not bound by Wikipedia RfCs, so this RfC is purely advisory. If there is a strong consensus for a particular referrer policy, a request will be made to the Wikimedia foundation to implement that policy. The request will contains the words "if possible" and "as far as is practical" to make it clear that we are saying what we want, not how to accomplish it.

Background:

Extended content

Previous discussions:

Overview:

When someone who is reading Wikipedia clicks on an external link their web browser may be given referrer information to be passed on to the external website. Depending on various factors, this information can range from telling the external site exactly what Wikipedia page the reader was on when they clicked on the link, telling them that the link was from Wikipedia but not telling them where on Wikipedia, to telling them nothing at all about the site that the link was on.

For example, consider the case of someone reading the Wikipedia page at Bomb-making instructions on the internet#References who clicks on the link to The Low Cost Cruise Missile: A looming threat?. (example ignores our recent switch to HTTPS for clarity).

Depending on how we configure Wikipedia, the aardvark.co.nz website (and anyone monitoring the connection between the user's browser and aardvark.co.nz) could be told that site/page the link was on (the referrer) was:

  • en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomb-making_instructions_on_the_internet#References (full URL)
  • en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomb-making_instructions_on_the_internet (page)
  • en.wikipedia.org (full domain)
  • wikipedia.org (partial domain)
  • No referrer information (a silent referrer)

Furthermore, Wikipedia might send additional information that some sites may (or may not) choose to honor in various ways. These are discussed in the technical comments section below.

Many web sites have a legitimate desire to know who links to them. Alas, spammers also desire to know who links to them so that they can refine their spamming. Most users, including those who fear surveillance by governments, corporations or criminals, desire to send the minimum amount of information that is consistent with them being able to use the website.


History: (needs to be double checked; please post corrections in the comments section)

Before 2011, Wikipedia was an HTTP site with full URLs sent in the referrer.

In 2011, Wikipedia added support for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS). Users who accessed Wikipedia with HTTP still sent full URLs in the referrer. Users who accessed Wikipedia through HTTPS and clicked on an HTTPS external link also sent full URLs in the referrer. Users who accessed Wikipedia through HTTPS and clicked on an HTTP external link sent no referrer information.

In 2015, Wikipedia stopped offering HTTP and only offered access to the site with HTTPS.

In February of 2016 Wikipedia added the following to the HTML code on every Wikipedia page: 

<meta name="referrer" content="origin-when-cross-origin"/>

Various websites talk about this leaking information to an eavesdropper when a user clicks on an HTTP link, and some recommend... 

<meta name="referrer" content="strict-origin-when-cross-origin"/>

For example, [13] says "Warning: Navigating from HTTPS to HTTP will disclose the secure URL or origin in the HTTP request." and "Likewise if you're thinking of using origin or origin-when-cross-origin then I'd recommend looking at strict-origin and strict-origin-when-cross-origin instead. This will at least plug the little hole of leaking referrer data over an insecure connection."

What this RfC is not

  • This RfC is not binding on anyone. It is purely advisory.
  • This RfC is not a discussion of the technical details regarding what is and is not possible using current technology, which may change. It is an RfC about policy, not implementation. There is a section on the bottom for technical discussions such as what HTTPS does and does not allow, etc. All comments that focus on "how we should do it" rather than "what should we do" may be moved to the technical discussion section by any user.
  • This RfC is not about links to other Wikipedia pages or to other projects that are under the control of the Wikimedia foundation. It is assumed that, as far as possible/practical, other WMF sites will receive as much information as they want to receive.

Questions

Question 1: As far as possible/practical, should referrer information contain full URLs? (en.wikipedia.org/page#section)

  • Support example support comment.

Question 2: As far as possible/practical, should referrer information contain full domains and pages? (en.wikipedia.org/page)

  • Support example support comment.

Question 3: As far as possible/practical, should referrer information contain full domains? (en.wikipedia.org)

  • Support example support comment.

Question 4: As far as possible/practical, should referrer information contain partial domains? (wikipedia.org)

  • Support per my comment below about the benefits to the Wikimedia community of sharing this information, which I believe to be a net positive. Sam Walton (talk) 12:08, 2 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Question 5: As far as possible/practical, should referrer information contain no information? (silent referrer)

  • Support Here is the reason why, whenever possible, we should reveal as little as possible about what pages our users read or what links they follow:
Locals Questioned by Suffolk County Police Department after Googling "Backpack and "Pressure Cooker"
Google Pressure Cookers and Backpacks, Get a Visit from the Feds
Update: Now We Know Why Googling 'Pressure Cookers' Gets a Visit from Cops --Guy Macon (talk) 15:00, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support The HTTP-Referer header is one of the basic security bugs of the web. While there are ways to suggest to browsers how to act, that is also a type of bogus opt-out feature software may or may not properly observe. It may be useful for users to use specialized software to forge those (pretending to originate from the destination site itself). However, I support doing what is possible to limit this issue for users with common software and default configurations. Another reason to support this is that link spammers are interested to know where clicks originate from. We already attempt to limit unnecessary tracking information from URLs themselves, and we use nofollow for search engine indexing (and noindex where appropriate), this is another step forward. Thank you for posting this RfC. —PaleoNeonate - 06:36, 3 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Question 6: As far as possible/practical, should referrer information contain something else not listed above (please be specific about what you think it should contain)

  • Support example support comment.

Discussion

General policy comments

Please comment about what we should do, not how we should do it. Misplaced comments may be may be moved to the proper section by any user.

User:Guy Macon... can you please state what problem you are trying to solve in this RFC, before trying to ask a wide variety of very technical questions that most people will have trouble answering with full understanding ? Why not ask less technical questions like "Do you think it is important to indicate to other websites and partner organisation where there traffic is from" "Do you think this should be limited to partners that make use of of https" etc.. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:40, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
mess up my ping User:Guy Macon.. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:40, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
No need to ping me. When I make a comment I check for replies.
I thought that the following was clear:
"Overview: When someone who is reading Wikipedia clicks on an external link their web browser may be given referrer information to be passed on to the external website. Depending on various factors, this information can range from telling the external site exactly what Wikipedia page the reader was on when they clicked on the link, telling them that the link was from Wikipedia but not telling them where on Wikipedia, to telling them nothing at all about the site that the link was on."
The problem I am trying to solve in this RFC is that the Wikipedia community was never consulted before the Wikimedia foundation made decisions about what information about what pages/websites our users visit is given to external sites that the WMF does not control.
As for "partners". I believe that they are covered by the following:
"Many web sites have a legitimate desire to know who links to them. Alas, spammers also desire to know who links to them so that they can refine their spamming. Most users, including those who fear surveillance by governments, corporations or criminals, desire to send the minimum amount of information that is consistent with them being able to use the website."
A "partner" would seem to be an example of "a web site that has a legitimate desire to know who links to them".
What would be helpful would be a list of these "partner" websites, and why they might want this information about what websites and/or pages a user visited before visiting their site. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:01, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
It could have helped to state that you wanted to validate the current position of the foundation, this is unclear from the current consultation and now it feels like a random Q/A without effects. The simpler RFC seems to be (in pseudo): "This is the current status quo, and this is what it means. For the following scenarios please indicate which information (none, hostname, url etc) you would be comfortable with disclosing" maybe a sibling question of "Do you think the Foundation's current referral disclosure should change from what it is now ? "
Also i didn't really ask about partner's, it was an example. But I see that you have a keen interest in that particular area. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:33, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I don't want to validate the current position of the foundation. I want the users of Wikipedia to have a say about whether the sites that they visit when they click on an external link are sent information that allows the site to figure out what Wikipedia pages the users read. --Guy Macon (talk) 20:37, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It's easy to point to examples where sharing this kind of information is bad, but I've seen sharing some information be a real benefit to Wikipedia, and wanted to make sure we talk about that. I have an obvious conflict of interest for this particular example, but it's the one I'm most qualified to talk about; The Wikipedia Library. As much as we would love for all the publishers and databases who give free access to Wikipedians to be doing so purely out of the good of their heart, some (not all) are doing so at least partly from a business perspective. More Wikipedians citing their content on Wikipedia means more people clicking through to their content - that's unavoidable. As such, one of the metrics by which some organisations judge whether they want to continue giving Wikipedians free access to resources is traffic from Wikipedia, which they can only track if we're at least sending them the current amount of information (wikipedia.org). Removing that information would have a demonstrable impact on TWL's ability to expand, as well as to continue existing access donations. My main point being, the ability to monitor traffic levels from Wikipedia is a really important way to convince organisations to get involved with the Wikimedia community; if they can see obvious benefits to doing so they're much more likely to work with us to make the Wikimedia projects a better place. I know there are other examples where sharing this data is ultimately beneficial to Wikipedians, and would encourage anyone who has a similar case study to share it. Sam Walton (talk) 12:06, 2 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I am looking at Wikipedia:WikiProject Resource Exchange/Resource Request, and I am not seeing any examples where a publisher or databases gave free access to the world, which they would have to do in order to get traffic from Wikipedia or anyone else. Of course me not being able to find it does not equal it not existing. Do you have any specific examples that lead to links on Wikipedia? --Guy Macon (talk) 22:27, 3 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Guy Macon: My example wasn't about the resource exchange, but rather the access donations. See File:Wikipedia Incoming Traffic Graph.png for some example traffic data, showing the increase for one TWL partner, which led them to be enthusiastic about continuing to give free access to Wikipedians. That plot is also interesting to see the HTTPS dip, before the referrer tag was put in place :) Sam Walton (talk) 23:11, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

General technical comments

Please comment on the technical aspects of this proposal, not on what our policy should be. Misplaced comments may be may be moved to the proper section by any user.

Comment: Allowing the domain in the referrer (en.wikipedia.org) does not protect the Wikipedia reader from the target site figuring out what Wikipedia page they were on when they clicked the link. Most sites only have a few links, and we provide a linksearch tool that tells anyone who asks exactly where those links are. Only being a silent referrer protects against this. --Guy Macon (talk) 15:00, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: Twitter has figured out a way to hack the default HTTPS behavior, See Hacking HTTPS -> HTTP referrers --Guy Macon (talk) 15:00, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Given that it's the browser that decides to send the referrer information, I think it would be more fruitful to lobby your favourite browser vendor to include a mechanism to disable sending this info. For example, Firefox has the network.http.sendRefererHeader configuration setting and various other settings starting with network.http.referer that allow you to control if and how the referrer information is sent (see [14] for more information). Firefox and Chrome both seem to have addins that allow you to control when the referrer data is sent. Perhaps the browser you use has equivalent functionality available. isaacl (talk) 03:48, 2 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Already done. As far as I can tell, every modern browser obeys the Meta Referrer tag, so Wikipedia can decide not to send referrer information for all users without them having to make a special configuration change. The key point here is that the Wikimedia foundation decided to send information to every website that we link to containing information that allows the site to figure out what Wikipedia page the user was reading, and they did it without asking us if that is what we want done. Shouldn't that be our decision as a community to make?
My post was regarding the need for a policy, so not sure why it was moved to this section. I think the user should control the decision on what the browser should send, as this can be applied generally to all web sites. Thus I'm not convinced of a need in a change in policy. Of course, any editor or group of editors are free to put forth a proposal for changing the meta tags sent, as is being done here. isaacl (talk) 14:02, 2 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
HTTPS

Comment: The fact that Wikipedia uses HTTPS and whenever possible uses HTPPS links makes some of the listed options impossible using current technology (the technology may change and this restriction may change in the future). In particular, when you click on a link from Wikipedia (HTTPS) to a non-https site, the default "no referrer when downgrading from HTTPS to HTTP" policy protects you against someone monitoring your connection (someone intercepting your WiFi, your ISP, the police...). The default HTTPS behavior means that the eavesdropper only knows that you visited en.wikipedia.org, not what pages you went to. Without the default HTTPS behavior, when you click on a HTTP link and leave Wikipedia, the Wikipedia page you were on would be sent in an unencrypted HTTP packet to the new site, and the eavesdropper would see it. --Guy Macon (talk) 15:00, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

But also remember.. It's pretty easy to draw out which IP addresses you connect to begin with. So even when you have https with all the referrer protections you could think of, computer models can be built to follow your path of connections you make (and how often). Unless many websites share IP addresses between eachother or you are using TOR, you can be tracked / data mined by ISPs or the government. (actually even with TOR, this tracking was applied in the past by governments using a bug in TOR I seem to remember.. It was speculated that this type of profile building was even used to identify TOR users by matching two similar profiles). I'm mentioning this, because while yes, some of the referrer information can be used to identify you, but at the same time very similar OTHER information will remain even if you hide some more of this referral information. And that is an important element to this consideration. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:01, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
We are talking about different threats. Consider the example I gave in the overview: someone reading the Wikipedia page at Bomb-making instructions on the internet#References clicks on the link to The Low Cost Cruise Missile: A looming threat?, but this time assuming that both sites are HTTPS and wikipedia does its best to be a silent referrer. What does an eavesdropper know? For convenience, I will call the user "Alice", the person who controls the external site "Bob", and the eavesdropper "Eve".
  • If Eve is monitoring Alice specifically, you are correct in that Eve knows which IP addresses Alice connects with, and thus knows that she accessed Wikipedia.
  • If Eve is monitoring Bob, She knows that Alice visited Bob's site, but she knows nothing about Alice visiting Wikipedia, and neither does Bob.
Now assume the same scenario, still using HTTPS, but with Wikipedia sending domain-only referrer information. Now Bob (but not Eve) knows that Alice came to his site from the English Wikipedia, and a quick check with the link search tool we provide will show that the only two articles on Wikipedia with that link on them are are Bomb-making instructions on the internet#References and Bruce Simpson (blogger)#DIY Cruise Missile If if Bob gets a court order or his servers get hacked, other people know what Wikipedia page Alice visited.
It is my contention that the users of Wikipedia should have a say about whether some site in New Zealand is sent information about what Wikipedia pages they read. --Guy Macon (talk) 19:14, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
So your concern is the leaking of referral information from, for instance the hacked server's (Bob) access logs and then reverse engineering that information back towards the behavior of Alice... I guess that's a possibility... Although again, i would argue that domain information is already leaked and that as you point out, page level information can be reverse engineered with the link search tool from that. I would like to point people to these extensions btw: Referrer Control for Chrome or Firefox. — Preceding unsigned comment added by TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:56, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Meta Referrer Tag

Comment: Including a Meta Referrer Tag in the <head> section of a Wikipedia page allows us to specify what information is sent when people follow links to any other site, whether it uses HTTPS or HTTP. This means that we can specify referrer behavior that HTTPS normally would not allow. --Guy Macon (talk) 15:00, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Rel=nofollow on links

Comment: Adding rel="nofollow" to external links instructs search engines to ignore the link when ranking of the link's target in the search engine's index. It makes adding spam links to Wikipedia less effective, but otherwise does not have any effect on the referrer information. --Guy Macon (talk) 15:00, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

No: using "nofollow" also conflicts with other standards, for example rel="me". And it punishes non-spam sites as much as spammy ones. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:40, 2 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Query strings and similar tactics

Comment: It is possible for a spammer who inserts a link to create a unique URL. this would let them identify the exact page that the incoming link was on no matter what we do with the referrer. There are multiple ways that this can be done, including

  • www.example.org?ID=myevilpointer
  • myevilpointer.example.org/
  • www.example.org:3717/
  • www.example.org/reasonable_page/my_evil_pointer/

Some of these could be fixed by a robot looking for such links. A simple robot could mass-remove all query strings in external links, but some links do not function without them. A more sophisticated robot could remove them only in cases where the page is identical with and without the query string, but so far Wikipedia has not shown itself to be technically advanced enough to create such a robot. --Guy Macon (talk) 15:00, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

This does not seem simple at all to me really... The false positives would likely be gigantic. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:09, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry for being unclear. What I was trying to convey is that the problem is complex and that a simple robot most likely would not be able to solve it. It would be a fair amount of work, but I believe that I could create a program that solves the problem with a minimum of false positives (the key to doing that is doing a byte-by-byte comparison and only removing the suspected evil pointer in cases where the page is byte-for-byte identical after the change to the link), but I wouldn't want to try using anything other than C/C++. Some of the languages listed at #Programming languages and libraries seem to be poorly suited for such a task, but to be fair some of the others have a good reputation -- I am simply not familiar enough with them to know whether they could handle such a task. --Guy Macon (talk) 20:30, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Even if a robot could solve it, do you really trust that the pages in question wouldn't be able to detect it, and serve the robot different text? —Cryptic 21:40, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Anything having to do with spammers is an arms race. Every measure generates a countermeasure, witch in turn generates a counter-countermeasure. Along the way you lose the dumber and less skilled spammers, but nobody has found the magic bullet that stops all spam forever. --Guy Macon (talk) 01:23, 2 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure if there's already some robots checking for this, but by routine among citation cleanup tasks if I see unnecessary tracking information in urls I remove it (other than what is needed to reference to a page or relevant query of course). I remember reading that it was discouraged, but I now fail to find it quickly via Wikipedia:Citing_sources#Citation_style. It may be a good idea to make this more obvious if that is considered good practice to avoid. —PaleoNeonate - 06:50, 3 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Server Name Indication

Comment: Server Name Indication may be able to leak some limited information about a Wikipedia session to an eavesdropper who is monitoring the SSL handshakes. I believe that an effective countermeasure to this would be becoming our own certifying authority. Because wildcarding is allowed *.wikipedia.org will work with all Wikipedias, *.wiktionary.org" will work with Wiktionaries, etc. --Guy Macon (talk) 15:00, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

This seems to have little to do with the referrer discussion, but also, I think you are mistaken. As far as I remember, SNI is a client-side driven part of the negotiation and unless you modify your browser and it's TLS libraries, you cannot plug this leak of information. If this has you concerned, you should probably be using Tor. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:48, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
"SSL handshakes (part of the HTTPS encryption) *already* include our domain and the IP address of our servers (through Server Name Indication), so any passive observer of the HTTPS traffic could uncover this data with minimal effort. Source: Astinson (WMF),[15] Posted 23:09, 4 April 2016 (UTC) at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy), archived at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 126[reply]
"SNI could be simply disabled by becoming our own certifying authority, and re-issuing certs as a standard part of rolling out new projects. This would be an improvement in security, but is not part of the issue I raised. (Note: Since wild-carding is allowed "*.wikipedia.org" covers all present and future wikipedias, "*.wiktionary.org" all Wiktionaries and so forth, so we would only need a new cert once in a blue moon anyway.)" Source: Rich Farmbrough[16] Posted 00:33, 5 April 2016 (UTC) at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy), archived at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 126
BTW, I already use TOR. See my user rights list[17] and you will see that I am IP block exempt, allowing me to edit through TOR. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:21, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I think Rich misinterpreted that. While yes, that strategy avoids using SNI on the server side, a browser supporting SNI, will send you the SNI extension with the hostname information regardless. At least that is my understanding from the protocol. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:35, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Yes SSL/TLS is designed to be proxy-able (with proxy-generated alternate certificate signed by an authority trusted by the browser, often added when installing antivirus or other software). Because of this some information is visible in the handshake, this still is a different issue than passing information to the destination site when following a link from another (about the origin of that link). —PaleoNeonate - 06:58, 3 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Other

Comment: example policy comment.

"Ethnicity" on templates.

Last year there was a discussion that removed "religion", and "ethnicity" from infoboxes all being centered on the U.S. American politician Bernie Sanders, and the people "reached consensus" (the "strongest possible oppose" "votes"were all literally just different people repeating the same arguments that either ethnicity was always irrelevant, or that "it's hard to define"), despite there being several counter-arguments that explained that in many people's infoboxes it was needed because simply placing one's citizenship wouldn't be enough (it's like saying that all notable Jews that died 💀 during the shoah were just "Germans"), but the same repeated arguments keptpersisting. Over that year I've seen numerousarticles about E.G. Austro-Hungarians or Yugoslavians where the individual's ethnicity mattered that look now like a complete mess.

The rules should've been amended that it should be only mentioned if relevant to the individual's circumstances (like many have pointed out, for example an Iraqi Kurd being "a Kurdish national" makes no sense, as It's now replaced by "nationality"), my other annoyance comes from replacing it with "Nationality", in general English the word "nationality" means citizenship, and "a nation" is often a geographical and political entity, I've seen several ethnic Italians or various other people that have lived centuries before Italy was even a thing as "Nationality = Italian", that makes no sense, for many historical people their ethnicity could play a lot into who they were, and oversimplifying it by saying "it's hard to define, therefore don't use it", or "it's never relevant" only take into account modern perspectives, and yes, modern taboos. This violates the WP:NPOV, if we write about historical figures we shouldn't treat them like "living people".

42.112.158.179 (talk) 05:34, 2 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I think you've misrepresented the consensus in your argument above. The primary issue is that discussions of ethnicity require some context, and a single-word mention in an infobox does not provide the necessary context. As an aside, let such matters go. Infoboxes are a minor issue anyways. Focus on the text of the article, where ethnicity can be explained in detail. --Jayron32 05:49, 2 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
42.112.158.179 misstates the result of the RfC(s). We didn't "remove 'religion' from infoboxes".
There were actually three RfCs, and they all dealt with listing non-religions such as "none", "atheist", "secular" and variants thereof in the "religion=" field of the infobox. All three RfCs specifically allowed such information to be added to the body of the article, subject to our usual sourcing rules, and all three RfCs specifically allowed listing actual religions in infoboxes.
15 June 2015 RfC: Template talk:Infobox person/Archive 28#RfC: Religion infobox entries for individuals that have no religion
This RfC had a clear consensus for removing the religion parameter from the infobox for individuals (living, deceased, and fictional), groups, schools, institutions, and political parties that have no religion, but that RfC was determined by the closing administrator to not apply to nations.
17 June 2015 RfC:: Template talk:Infobox country/Archive 11#RfC: Religion in infoboxes of nations
This RfC had a clear consensus for removing the religion parameter for countries, nations, states, regions, etc., all of which were determined to not have religions.
31 December 2015 RfC: Template talk:Infobox/Archive 11#RfC: Religion in infoboxes.
This RfC was a response to certain individuals insisting that the previous RfCs did not apply to their favorite pages (schools, political parties, sports teams, computer operating systems, organized crime gangs...) and had a clear consensus that in all all infoboxes in all Wikipedia articles, without exception, nonreligions should not be listed in the "Religion=" parameter of the infobox.
It took a lot of effort, but we finally had a community decision that "religion=atheist" and "religion=agnostic" would no longer be allowed. This should not have been an issue, because...
"Atheist" is not a religion. Atheism is the lack of any religion. "Agnostic" is not a religion. Agnosticism is the lack of any religion. Bald is not a hair color. Bald is the lack of any hair color. Off is not a TV channel. Off is the lack of any TV channel. Barefoot is not a shoe. Barefoot is the lack of any shoe. Silence is not a sound. Silence is the lack of any sound. Never is not a date. Never is the lack of a date. Clear is not a color. Clear is the lack of a color. Not collecting stamps is not a hobby. Not collecting stamps is the lack of a hobby. --Guy Macon (talk) 23:41, 2 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
This, a million times this. Calling atheism a religion shows a complete lack of understanding of what it even is, and is offensive to atheists. Beeblebrox (talk) 00:42, 3 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
With regard to religion, I believe the OP is referring to a fourth RfC, Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 126#RfC: Religion in biographical infoboxes, closed on 11 April 2016 with consensus to remove the religion parameter from Infobox person. --Worldbruce (talk) 01:24, 3 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Ah. I had missed that one. Companion RfC: Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 127#RfC: Ethnicity in infoboxes.
So we have an overwhelming consensus to remove the religion= and denomination= parameters from Infobox person and against adding an ethnicity parameter to infoboxes (that RfC doesn't specify what kind of infoboxes).
Based upon my experience with with the three RfCs it took to finally stop certain editors from calling atheism a religion in the infobox, in my opinion the two RfCs I just listed will not prevent Wikilawyering ("The RfC didn't say that I can't add religion to the infobox at Rwanda and Pikachu. It says "person"). ("The RfC says 'no ethnicity parameter in infoboxes', so I am removing the ethnic_groups = parameter from Japan"). --Guy Macon (talk) 17:29, 3 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Do redirects encourage poor spelling?

discussion started by a banned user in violation of ban --Jayron32 04:16, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

Our article Street hierarchy is a redirect from street heirarchy, which means that someone typing in the incorrect spelling may never realise that they are spelling the word wrong. Another example - the word "calendar" is often mis - spelled "calender". If you type "Julian calender" you will get the article you want and may be none the wiser. If you type in "religious calender" the search result asks "Did you mean: religious calendar". Should we adopt the second approach to improve readers' spelling? 86.148.116.248 (talk) 09:25, 3 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I am not sure that it is a Wikipedia's mission to improve reader's spelling. Ruslik_Zero 10:34, 3 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I agree about not improving reader's spelling, but there is another huge advantage to asking "did you mean...", which is that you can answer "no". Maybe I really did want to search for "heirarchy"[18] instead of "hierarchy". --Guy Macon (talk) 17:51, 3 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
We are supposed to be assisting our readers find the info about the topic, more so than helping them spell. Perhaps redirect from misspelling can cause the title of the target article to show in flashing red with a pop up saying they had a spelling error. But it is just annoying. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 22:03, 3 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Google search for "street heirarchy" says "Showing results for street hierarchy" and Street hierarchy is the first hit. Wikipedia search for "street heirarchy" says "There is a page named 'Street heirarchy' on Wikipedia" and Street hierarchy is the first hit. I think readers can find what they want easily enough without deliberately misspelled redirects, and I also question whether benefit exceeds cost here. It is not Wikipedia's mission to teach people how to spell, but it is our mission to spell correctly in articles if we wish to call ourselves remotely professional and seek public respect. If an editor misspells an English word in a link, the red color would be a great way to tell them that they should consult a dictionary (or the target article's title). That said, I know that the chances of a change here are infinitesimal so this discussion is academic. ―Mandruss ☎ 22:35, 3 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I think that this is fallacious—if the misspelling redirects to the correct title, then most readers should be able to notice that they were redirected, and that the title of the article differs in spelling from the redirect. One can also relate this problem to what some philosophers thought of books in ancient Greece—they claimed that books might endanger our ability to remember things. But, since having memory is useful even with books, the capacity to remember things did not decrease. Same thing here—Wikipedia isn't the only time when people have to spell things, and it isn't the only chance that people have to be reminded of their spelling. Look at Google. They use the system you suggested. So, with that combined with the fact that readers will probably/might notice the fact that the redirect title is different than the article title, there is no benefit in this proposal. But, there are drawbacks. First, the fact that we aren't really in the business of being a spell-checker, we are in the business of giving people general information. Second, it will, although not much, slow down the process of getting to an article by a bit. Third, how would we implement such a system? Since redirects aren't just for misspelling, we wouldn't want to get rid of all the redirects. So, how would we get rid of all the redirects related to misspellings? It would likely require humans to check it, and even if you automatically get rid of the redirects that are categorized as misspellings, there are a lot of redirects that are not categorized. Thus, due to the minimal (or no) benefit and the significant detriment, this is not a good idea. RileyBugz会話投稿記録 23:40, 3 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Look at Google. They use the system you suggested. I do look at Google, and Google does not go out of their way to facilitate incorrect spelling on their own websites. That is a very flawed comparison. there is no benefit in this proposal except for that silly professionalism thing which, contrary to widespread opinion, is not actually something to be avoided in an encyclopedia. we are in the business of giving people general information. As I suggested, I'm not aware of evidence that deliberately misspelled redirects are needed to help people find the general information; in fact, the only actual evidence presented in this particular discussion belies that notion. As far as I can tell, then, that is an unproven popular myth that probably originated before search engines were as smart as they are today. I'm willing to be corrected with actual evidence. ―Mandruss ☎ 00:16, 4 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
For Google (I'm talking about search here), if one types in "Heirarchy" it says "Showing results for hierarchy". But, for some search results that are further off, it says "Did you mean: term". So, I'm not exactly wrong there. I don't really understand the argument behind about the professionalism thing (I mean that I don't understand where it came up and why it relates to this). Next, whether they are needed or not. The redirects aren't really needed, so it might do good to delete them. But, the argument of them not being needed also brings up whether this is needed. It would be much easier to keep the current system, which might not have any benefit, than implementing another system, which might not have any benefits. I think that whether we should delete these redirects is something for another day, so I think that we should focus on the current debate. RileyBugz会話投稿記録 01:31, 4 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Note: I just realized something, so ignore most of my previous comments. Basically, I had thought that this proposal was on the implementation of a feature, which is incorrect, so I withdraw my comments. RileyBugz会話投稿記録 01:36, 4 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Any likely typo, if it doesn't have a different meaning, should exist as a redirect, to make it easier for our readers, Their spelling isn't our problem; them finding the page they're looking for is. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 18:03, 4 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Petition to re-add the categories "ethnicity", and "religion" to "infobox person".

It's generally considered bad form to resurrect an issue a year after it was settled, especially one that had so much participation and debate. Even if you did, it would need an RfC. The community consensus is that the downside of these parameters exceeds their upside. I'll stick my neck out and close this per WP:SNOW and WP:BOLD. ―Mandruss ☎ 17:58, 4 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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.

Last year the categories “religion”, and “ethnicity” were removed from the infobox template “person”, and in response to this sudden removal a new infobox “religious person” was created that could only be applied to a person whose entire notability and coverage is based on their status within a religious hierarchy. On the part of the editors who removed these two categories this move seems rather unfounded, and worst of all deletionist, the repeated arguments were that what someone is, or what they believe in aren’t a part of their notability so these categories should be removed but if we'd go by that logic we could scrap not just the entire infobox, but remove anything from the article ‘’other’’ than what made them famous, basically making Wikipedia into a redundant add-on to the Wiktionary.

Let me dissect and debunk every major argument that lead to this “consensus” (it was more of “a popular vote” since those in favour to keeping these categories were often ignored, and if responded to only got addressed as to why these categories were irrelevant to the U.S. American politician Bernie Sanders).

The idea that “religion/ethnicity” are “deeply personal things that can’t be summed up in an infobox”, what this argument misses is that for various people their religion, ethnicity, Etc. are important factors in their political or public life. And I mostly have to agree with the proposals that these categories should be kept but only included according to a strict guideline but that argument was “shot down” multiple times by being responded by with “this is not the place for such suggestions” or “talk about it elsewhere” basically making it into a “yes or no” “discussion” (more like a vote), for example some politicians may want to add aspects of their religion into their legislature I don’t see how this makes their religion “irrelevant”, another thing could be how rarely “ethnicity” was used.

The same argument above requires another kind of debunk for the “ethnicity” argument, yes It’s impossible to simply say “that person is that ethnicity”, and for Bernie Sanders the argument was used “according to American laws he would be White, not of Hispanic origin”, even if the argument was limited to Bernie Sanders it would still be wrong, “White, not of Hispanic origin” is a ‘’racial’’ and not an ethnic grouping, him being a Non-Hispanic Jewish American would fill the category, in America you have races (who can, or can’t be Hispanic, you can combine any race with “Hispanic” thus having a Black, Asian, and/or White politician all being “ethnically Hispanic”, though it’s more of both a linguistic and geographical thing, but that’s another discussion), I must agree that “ethnicity” could be hard to define as not all ethnic groups are genetic, you can have ethno-linguistic groups such as “Hispanics”, and “Arabs”, ethno-religious groups such as Croats, Muslims (Southern-Slavs), Serbs, and Muslims (genetically Han Chinese), and yes it could be hard to ask whether an “Ethnic Muslim” from Bosnia and Herzegovina who is an Atheist should be seen aa “a Muslim” but again, that’s a while different debate, and if they would still ethnically define themselves as “Muslim” despite not believing in God (yes, I’m calling “Allah” God as we write in English), and (s)he lives in a predominantly Serbian area where discrimination is rampant and news 📰 stories constantly repeat that the person is “brave fighting Serb supremacy” than removing “ethnicity” from that person’s infobox does the reader a disservice. The same argument could be said for Jews in the shoah, their “citizenship” would still say ”German”, and placing “Jewish” at “Nationality” would confuse some readers with little idea of history that the person was an Israeli citizen.

Which brings me to “Nationality” simply doesn't replace “ethnicity”, the main argument I read for the cases where ethnicity was relevant was that we should “simply use Nationality”, not only does the term “nationality” only describe “ethnicity” in America, Canada, and Bolivia (thus making the term confusing for readers who aren’t from there), even in those places “nationality” could still mean which country’s passport you hold. To give a good comparison in the Republic of China you have 3 types of “Chinese/Taiwanese” people, you have “Chinese/Taiwanese citizens” (people who are registered in a R.O.C. family book 📚), “Chinese/Taiwanese nationals” (people who hold a R.O.C. passport, but don’t necessarily live in the free area), and “ethnic Chinese/Taiwanese” (people of Han, Mongolian, Tibetan, Manchu, Muslim, Etc. Heritage in the world, thus making it well over a milliard “Taiwanese” people worldwide), in this context it could be easily understood that “citizenship” is residential, “nationality” is which passport they hold (thus “national”), and “ethnicity” is genetic.

Another argument I would like to propose is that in some occupations ethnicity is important such as acting, for the sake 🍶 of keeping up with the WP:NPOV policy I never clarify who, or what I am, and what I believe in, but I could tell that some of the arguments proposed came from “politically left” people that felt that ethnicity, and religion should NEVER be disclosed, and that It’s ALWAYS irrelevant. Well, I’m far-left myself, and I think that in real life someone’s ethnicity, race, gender, sexuality, Etc. Should be irrelevant, but if I would put that into Wikipedia I would actively violate the neutral point of view where they are possible, look no further than acting. To me personally I can enjoy a good visual story regardless of if the protagonist or antagonist is male, female, homosexual, heterosexual, non-Hispanic White, non-Hispanic Asian, non-Hispanic African/non-Hispanic Black, Hispanic and/or Latino, if they speak Wolof, Hausa, Cebuano, Quechua, Etc. A good story is a good story, but in reality people (and by extend reliable secondary, and tertiary sources) do care about these things, if Bruce Lee is known for being a Non-Hispanic Chinese-American in Hollywood who broke various barriers for other Orientals than removing his Han ethnicity would remove crucial information from the infobox, the infobox should be “an article within an article”, a condensed “article at a glance” look and withholding information for any reason is simply un-encyclopedic, it’s not something that should be done, let alone celebrated. Yeah, by my own above argument I could watch “yellowface”, and yeah, I could if the story is good enough, and so could people during the 1920’s, if there’s a yellowface actor removing their ethnicity would be equally of a disservice as the fact that they weren’t Oriental makes it relevant to their profession, and yes even to their notability. (if a White (wo)man is famous for playing Asian that shouldn't be omitted).

Further, and this is beyond Wikipedia’s scope, but infoboxes help make search engines like Microsoft Bing, Google, Etc. In categorising data at a glance, though I do think that there should be strict guidelines when or when not “religion”, and “ethnicity” can be used (and I’d even propose an “irreligion” category for non-theists like Atheists, Deists, Free Thinkers, Agnostics, Etc. But I digress), removing them simply doesn't do anyone a arrive.


Which brings me to my final argument, why such a weak attempt? The categories at the bottom of the pages for religions, races, and ethnicities still exist, clearly it's worth categorising people as such when it’s relevant, and to claim that “it’s private”, Wikipedia talks about people’s sex lives if that’s been covered by the news 📰/historical sources so “WikiGossip” is already a thing, and if they openly disclose these things to the public, why should we hide it? Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia about notable, and relevant information, removing information from hundreds of thousands of articles because 1 American politician’s page was subject to edit warring is not only childish, drastic, and unnecessary, it’s unproductice and removes relevant information from countless of other articles.

Sent from my Microsoft Lumia 950 XL with Microsoft Windows 10 Mobile 📱.

I hope that someone who read the above is willing to debate this. 1.54.210.203 (talk) 11:49, 3 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose - In my opinion, both religion and ethnicity are irrelevant details for the majority of our bio subjects... and certainly not worth highlighting in the infobox. In most cases, it does not matter if someone is/was of French or Scottish or Serbian heritage... it is what they did that makes them notable, not where their ancestors came from. In most cases, it does not matter if the person is/was Jewish or Christian or Muslim... What matters is what the subject did, not what their religion is/was. OK... sure... there are some subject who are notable because they are of a given religio-ethnic background. And in such cases we can create a custom info box to note this. But the template should be for the majority of cases where this is not the case.
Secondly, all too often, adding a subject's religion or ethnicity to an info-box ends up fomenting argument... as editors with an agenda try to claim the subject as "one of us" (or perhaps more importantly, not "one of them"). Such arguments can be avoided by simply omitting the data from the info-box in the first place.
Finally... you mention the religious and ethnic categorizations... I am of the opinion that adding religious or ethnic categories to bio articles is all too often a case of Wikipedia:Overcategorization. I think we should enforce WP:NONDEF with more vigor, and remove such categorizations in cases where the subject's religion or ethnicity is not really central to what makes them notable. Blueboar (talk) 15:40, 3 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • There were too many arguments before about this. Having a parameter in an infobox tempts people to fill in the value, even when really unknown or poorly sourced. So it is better to leave it for the text. The facts and any nuances can be expressed in a sentence with a reference. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 22:00, 3 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. The issue was thoroughly considered at the RFC, and the reasons for the outcome have not changed. I think this discussion can be boxed up early. The significance and details of religion and ethnicity are better addressed in the article text. (With an allowance for boxes such as clergy, where religion is intrinsically significant.) Alsee (talk) 02:22, 4 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose the results of the previous discussions were sound. Two points for the OP 1) please take note of WP:TLDR and 2) nobody cares what device you made your post from. MarnetteD|Talk 02:41, 4 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose per Blueboars arguments. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 08:57, 4 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose" per the overwhelmingly clear consensus at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 126#RfC: Religion in biographical infoboxes and Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 127#RfC: Ethnicity in infoboxes.
Sent by whistling into my telephone into a 56K modem line and running data compression, TCP/IP Stack, and HTTPS encryption in my head. --Guy Macon (talk) 11:33, 4 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Put simply, if a field is there, some numbskulls will think it has to be filled in. But in the overwhelming majority of cases, someones ethnicity and/or religion is irrelevant. —Farix (t | c) 12:06, 4 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
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.

Overlinking

MOS:DUPLINK says, "Generally, a link should appear only once in an article, but if helpful for readers, a link may be repeated in infoboxes..." I have seen many editors remove linking on this basis, on the grounds that the first instance should be linked, but not the subsequent ones. For example, in an article on "Widgets", "John Smith" is linked to the article on "John Smith" the first time "John Smith" is mentioned. However, later in the article, John Smith is not linked to. I can understand the logic in this, but it seems to imply that people read Wikipedia articles from start to finish. I don't think this is true. People read what they are interested in. For example, someone might read the section entitled "Widgets in Spain" and see a mention of "John Smith". Who is this "John Smith"? they ask. There is no link. There is a link to "John Smith", but it is buried halfway through the article under "Widgets: Technical Aspects". Is there any research which says that people read Wikipedia articles from top to bottom?--Jack Upland (talk) 02:17, 6 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think there's any research, but instead it's part of our MOS. Things like linking, abbreviations/initialisms, last names over full names, etc. are all based on the assumption that there are two ways we anticipate readers use articles: They read the lede only, and they read the lede followed by the rest of the body. We know people will jump to a section, but it makes it very clumsy for us to account for this mode and still make the other modes cleaner to use. We're still writing that each article should be usable in a standalone mode. I do agree that people shouldn't strip away links without any thought, but their inclusion does require careful thought. --MASEM (t) 02:28, 6 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Is there a policy about writing articles about the same subject at 2 different technical levels?

Hello again. I've seen several articles with the "too technical" banner produced by {{technical|date=}} at the top. Is there a wp policy about how to deal with this, other than what is stated in the banner "Please help improve it to make it understandable to non-experts, without removing the technical details"? What I want to suggest is to have TWO articles about a topic. For example, there could be an article Endoplasmic reticulum (which currently has a too technical banner) that was written so that a freshman high school student could understand it, and a second article (red link for now) Endoplasmic reticulum College level written with all the details expected by senior university students. If somebody searched wp for endoplasmic reticu... both articles would appear as suggestions. The reader could decide which to access. Readers of the basic article would be alerted to the more detailed article by hatnote at the top and "see also" entries. Is there a precedent for this? Is there a policy against it? Thanks, JeanOhm (talk) 16:34, 6 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@JeanOhm: There is precedent (see Introduction to evolution and Evolution and also Category:Introduction articles) but it is rarely done and usually only for "popular" subjects. --NeilN talk to me 16:39, 6 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
If we were to do that then we might as well have a whole separate encyclopedia for advanced learning. It would also cause issues as one person's opinion on what is "college level" differs from the other. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 16:39, 6 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, this is best avoided. We're an encyclopedia, which means we present information in WP:Summary style. That often excludes highly-technical details. You can always make use of further reading sections to suggest more advanced texts and liberally use wikilinks to provide in-line explanations for technical words/concepts. ~ Rob13Talk 16:42, 6 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Not a policy here, but you can always fork an article to simple:Simple English Wikipedia. — xaosflux Talk 17:26, 6 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
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