Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)

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RfC: Locality categorization by historical subdivisions

While there is significant support for limiting the categorization of current localities by historical subdivisions in some way, no clear criterion emerges to do so systematically.

The consensus is to stick with the status quo (option C), by using common sense to assess on a case-by-case basis whether the categorization of a page reflects a relevant historical fact rather than a cataloguing attempt.

− Pintoch (talk) 11:50, 2 May 2020 (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.

Question: What should the general rule/principle/guideline be for categorizing current localities by historical administrative subdivision in Central and Eastern Europe? There are quite a few articles of cities and towns that have been categorized not only in which administrative subdivision they currently are in, but also by the former subdivisions.

Typical example: Eišiškės, a small town in Lithuania, is in these categories: Category:Cities in Lithuania, Category:Cities in Vilnius County, Category:Šalčininkai District Municipality, Category:Vilnius Voivodeship, Category:Lidsky Uyezd, Category:Nowogródek Voivodeship (1919–1939). The first 3 categories reflect the current administrative subdivision. Vilnius Voivodeship was a subdivision in 1413–1795. Lidsky Uyezd was a 2nd-level subdivision sometime between 1795–1915. Nowogródek Voivodeship (1919–1939) was an inter-war subdivision.

General options:

A: categorization should be limited - by what? Whether it is referenced in the article? How long the subdivision lasted? How large the subdivision was? To the 1st-level former subdivision? To how recent subdivision was? Etc?
B: categorization should not be allowed (i.e. current localities should be removed from the former subdivision categories; historical information could be preserved in a different venue like a separate list or an addition to the locality article or something similar to the "historical affiliation" box as in Görlitz#History)
C: status quo; no general rules; specific issues with individual categories should be addressed at WP:CfD

22:24, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

Major concerns with such categories:

WP:OR/WP:V: many of the locality articles do not even mention or reference former subdivisions. In Eišiškės example above, only Nowogródek Voivodeship is mentioned in the article body (added by me 12 years ago without a reference). What is the basis to claim it was in the Lidsky Uyezd? An editor looking at a map? Finding out former subdivisions is not always straightforward, particularly for smaller towns or for older subdivisions – some medieval regions did not have well defined borders, while in more recent years administrative border adjustments are frequent.
WP:NONDEF: if many of the articles don't even mention the historical subdivision, it cannot be the defining characteristic (which is the central goals of the categorization system).
Confusion for readers: in the example of Eišiškės above, could you tell which of the 6 categories is for the current and which is for the former subdivision? (this could be somewhat alleviated by better category names)
Clutter/maintainability: Görlitz lists 23 different countries/states (not to mention subdivisions) that it was a part of. Should all of these be represented in a category? If not all, then which ones?

Examples of categories: just some samples from different countries. Category:Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia (did not have well-defined borders), Category:Republic of Central Lithuania (has other valid historical articles mixed in with current localities), Category:Telshevsky Uyezd and Category:Minsky Uyezd (2nd-level subdivision), Category:Lithuania Governorate (subdivision that lasted 5 years), Category:Ținutul Nistru (existed for 2 years), Category:Belastok Region (short-lived WWII subdivision), Category:Province of Catania (subdivision renamed in 2015), Category:Localities in Western Moldavia (without digging, can't tell whether current or historical subdivision), Category:Province of Westphalia.

Why this RfC? There were some CfD discussions over the years (ones that I am aware Aug 2015 (delete), Sept 2015 (delete), Oct 2015 (no consensus), Apr 2017 (no consensus)) but they did attract much attention (unlike AfD, CfD rarely attracts outsider attention), yielded inconsistent results, and did not hash out what should be done with these categories in general. And these categories keep proliferating. Therefore, looking for a broader principle-based discussion here, rather than individual consideration of specific categories at CfD.

Side note: some locality articles have "historical affiliation" boxes (example: Görlitz#History), though in some others it was removed as "nightmares" or "LISTCRUFT". And a user got blocked for adding them (and refusing to communicate).

Opinion poll: Locality categorization by historical subdivisions

Please place your !vote here.

A: definitely should be limited to may be current immediate subdivision and may be the historical in which a populated place was established. For the "historical affiliation" box mentioned above for Gorlitz, it should be avoided as a spam as it simply fails the Manual of Style for flags WP:MOSFLAG and infringes on original research WP:OR due to political speculations. Aleksandr Grigoryev (talk) 22:59, 21 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Aleksandr Grigoryev: I thought about it, and I don't think it's a workable solution. Many places don't have a specific founding date and they are just mentioned in written sources in year x, or even more broadly in century y. Plus what makes the first subdivision so special? Further, I don't think it's maintainable. If you think about it, it still means that there will have to be categories for all historical subdivisions of that region as localities were founded/mentioned in different times. So, for example, there will have to be a category for Vilnius Voivodeship that contains localities founded/first mentioned in 1413-1795 and for Lidsky Uyezd that contains localities founded/first mentioned in 1795-1915. But then, it's likely that someone will decide that the category on Lidsky Uyezd is not comprehensive and start adding articles purely by geographic location. Renata (talk) 03:15, 24 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

A (Current Subdivision and Historical One at Founding) I'm with Aleksandr above, the current geographical subdivision and the original seems reasonable. So Marseille would be both in the current French subdivision and be noted as a former Greek colony. (I don't want this approach to throw out all historical/former city categories beyond subdivisions though: Category:Former national capitals and Category:Populated places along the Silk Road both seem defining.) RevelationDirect (talk) 00:31, 22 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

C. This is far too broad a question and these things badly need to be determined on a case by case basis. Some of the above shouldn't have locality categorisation in this way. Some of them should. The idea that we can answer them on a global basis with reference to a handful of subdivisions in eastern Europe is the sort of discussion that leads to all kinds of ridiculous situations when applied to local situations in places nobody was giving thought to. The Drover's Wife (talk) 00:54, 22 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The Drover's Wife: not really looking to write any policy here, but just to get a rough idea/consensus from the wider community on what categories should or should not be present in locality articles. It would be very helpful if you could expand on your comment "Some of the above shouldn't have locality categorisation in this way. Some of them should." -- which should (not) and based on what criteria? Even if just considering the examples listed above. Renata (talk) 01:46, 22 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I am woefully under-educated about the history of this specific region and I'd hate to give pronouncements on things I don't understand well enough to have a sensible opinion. I'm just extremely cautious of a discussion like this creating a rule that then gets applied to completely different circumstances in other places. The Drover's Wife (talk) 03:23, 22 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

B (A if we have to): Limited to current subdivisions only, as has been the long established practice; bio articles relevant to the polity itself are also currently placed in the category named for that polity -- it is Category:People of medieval Wallachia, but not Category:People from Saac County (i. e. a defunct county in said Wallachia). This avoids a massive overcrowding. I don't see when populated places would be placed even in articles pertaining to those polities, let alone their subdivisons; only nostalgia and irredentism can be the driving factors here, and neither is encyclopedic. Current subdivision also establishes a neutral standard: populated places that were once in Romania are categorized by their current subdivision in Ukraine, but the same standards would apply to localities in Romania that were once in Hungary. Dahn (talk) 05:46, 22 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

A or B, one could say "A, because we should allow this if a historical subdivision is a defining characteristic of a locality", but in practice it never is a defining characteristic, so A and B are very similar. Marcocapelle (talk) 08:47, 22 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

A. Current and historical are enough. Historical division/subdivision should at least be mentioned in prose before including it. In addition, as already noted by other editor, the "Historical affiliations", including the mentioned problems, should be removed, because it is unsourced, trivial, and just takes up unnecessary space of the page. – Sabbatino (talk) 11:13, 22 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Sabbatino: Can you clarify which "historical" is enough? All of the examples above are "historical" so you are not actually limiting to anything. Renata (talk) 15:56, 22 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Country and first level division (governorate, state, province, etc). – Sabbatino (talk) 13:05, 24 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

C I'm with The Drover's Wife on this. It's unwise to make policy decision on such a broad front. Examples can be listed of multiple short-lived political entities to which a city may have been attached over many centuries; it would probably be excessive to make the city a child of all of them. Cities changed hands multiple times in the Holy Roman Empire. On the other hand some administrative sub-divisions, while practically defunct, nevertheless remain on the statute books. For example Thurles (civil parish) is in the ancient barony of Eliogarty. While Eliogarty no longer has a practical administrative function, it has never been legally abolished. I would not like to see Thurles being removed from Category:Eliogarty. In summary, such thingsare best decided on a case-by-case, CFD basis. Laurel Lodged (talk) 11:36, 22 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Laurel Lodged: As per your own comment, the barony in question still exists, in some definition, and the first verb in Eliogarty is "is". This is therefore an irrelevant example to this particular discussion, equivalent at best to including cities and towns in their traditional or cultural region. Dahn (talk) 10:03, 23 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

C Per The Drover's Wife above. I believe handling this on a case-by-case basis and category-specific CFDs is the way to go.--Darwinek (talk) 16:01, 22 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, I have narrowed down the geographic focus of the RfC just to Central and Eastern Europe (because that's really where the issues are). Ping to editors who already commented, in case that changes their thoughts: Aleksandr Grigoryev, RevelationDirect, The Drover's Wife, Dahn, Marcocapelle, Sabbatino, Laurel Lodged, Darwinek. Renata (talk) 16:09, 22 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

No Change in View Based on the limitation of scope to the discussion. RevelationDirect (talk) 19:24, 22 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - CFD Piecemeal Approach A CFD discussion is just as likely to suggest a global approach as this discussion might suggest a case-by-case approach. The area I have concern with is the subcategories of Category:Districts of East Germany, where we categorize literally every populated place that used to be part of the GDR by former region, which doesn't seem remotely defining to me. If I nominated that tree for deletion, it's likely to come up why I'm not nominating the Lithuania examples Renata provided. Does anyone see a difference between those two examples? RevelationDirect (talk) 19:24, 22 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- I'm not sure why it would come up. It doesn't follow that that what might be appropriate in one situation must be appropriate to another in a completely different geographical, political and historical context because they're both abolished institutions. If you think the German and Lithuanian ones you've both mentioned are equivalent and that they suck, nominating them both is a much better outcome than attempting to make global policy affecting thousands of situations you haven't considered. If you're preferring the few-heads global policy attempt because you think you're going to lose a CfD on the two (I don't know, this is emphatically not my area of knowledge in the world), that should tell you something. The Drover's Wife (talk) 20:23, 22 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  - I'm not sure anyone can name a situation when categorizing by past subnational entity would benefit anyone. Mind you, we're not talking about examples such as "Ancient Greek colonies" or "Former capitals of...", none of which actually refer to a subdivision. We are talking about subdivisions for all purposes defunct, and the type of info one would be able to recover from the article and/or a map. Nobody would benefit from having Places in modern-day Turkey grouped under their former Ottoman vilayets, though the article on both the place and the vilayet should include references to one another, at least once theyre both developed. Dahn (talk) 09:59, 23 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    - ...unless someone was trying to find out what happened to the cities that were once within a particular Ottoman vilayets. I'd expect that to be unusual, but I can imagine it happening (at least for larger cities). (That sounds like a great school assignment: "Pick one of the Ottoman vilayets we've been talking about this week, figure out what it's biggest city was, and find out what's happened to that city since then.") WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:59, 25 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
      - @WhatamIdoing:: Except we are not a teaching aide (leaving aside that "go on wikipedia and click two links" isn't really a proper assignment at all). Dahn (talk) 14:02, 1 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
        Whether it's "proper" is going to depend on the context (e.g., age of the students and whether this is meant to be an important assignment or just a few minutes' homework). I do not say that we have to accommodate that reader. I only say that when billions of people have access to Wikipedia, the odds are high that at least one reader would sincerely appreciate whatever seems unimportant to any given editor. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:02, 2 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
        @WhatamIdoing:: The main point is that we're not here to offer that kind of assistance. Dahn (talk) 05:33, 2 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
        We should be here to provide every type of encyclopedic information. Some of our tools for doing this are pretty awful at the moment (consider, e.g., the necessity of Category:18th-century British women writers, when it'd be better to have a way to record the simple facts of "18th-century", "British", "women", and "writers" and let the software combine them). The same general type of system could be used for geography: Here is the location, and now give me a list of every relevant Wikipedia article. It'd be clunky to do this with just categories, but I hope that in the future, people will be able to look up any the patch of dirt and see all of its history, from well before being absorbed into the Ottoman empire, through the creation of the province/vilayet system, to the end of the Ottoman empire, and what's happened since then. I think that helping people understand history is consistent with our goals. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:10, 2 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
        @WhatamIdoing: One can understand the point of having women who lived in the 18th century and practiced a certain trade, and were of a certain nationality, in a standalone category, however: the encyclopedic relevance of having articles placed in defunct administrative divisions is entirely unproven, and unargued -- beyond "it would help hypothetical students perform a hypothetical inane assignment with even more ease". What we do have from the above is your hope that we should all embark on this "patch of dirt" pet project (which, btw, is an immense task you unload on anyone writing articles on such topics, without offering them the option to refuse -- since once this is a standard, everyone will be expected to follow it). Instead of simply dreaming of how interesting it would be to have that goal materialized, you could consider that it has no objective use, while demanding a lot of work from "someone else". Dahn (talk) 06:38, 2 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
        I don't think so. We already put {{coord}} in articles about geographical areas, and Special:Nearby already lets you find articles within a certain distance of your location. Wikivoyage (and other projects) is using Wikidata, Commons, and/or OpenStreetMap to mark territories (e.g., Alpine County#Communities – the region, not just a single point within it). It doesn't seem impossible to take that existing data and using something similar to Special:Nearby to find all the articles that are within that arbitrary shape, rather than all the articles that are within a certain radius of a single point. None of this would require any extra work from editors. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:30, 2 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I'd go with B, with the usual allowance for exceptions in exceptional cases. This is a classic list role. All the problems that afflict using a category for this information would disappear if using a list. A list is also much easier to maintain and add any necessary qualifiers to (as might be needed for example if administrative boundaries shifted during the relevant historical period). As a bonus, a list is also much more likely to attract the attention of contributors with relevant historical expertise. I can see no reason why the approach would be different from one geographical area to the next; the arguments with respect to Central and Eastern Eurperiodically I ope would seem to apply equally well in any other geographical context. -- Visviva (talk) 04:33, 24 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
C. I'm not sure why this is such a contentious issue. If the town existed in the past as part of a former subdivision, why would it be inappropriate to note that? It actually sounds fairly useful; if I were trying to find out what was the extent of and former municipalities in, such-and-such of a now-defunct province, the categorization of places into such categories seems like a natural way to do that. --Jayron32 18:53, 25 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- @Jayron32: Because it adds a million categories that could be simply replaced by lists in/alongside articles, and because it serves no purpose other than to satisfy dreams of lost glory? Dahn (talk) 14:04, 1 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I'm leaning C (no particular rules). I'm not sure that every little village that was once part of the Roman empire should be categorized that way, but Vienna was the capital of multiple empires/nations, and it seems odd to limit its categorization to only the most recent. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:00, 25 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
C. Should be treated case-by case basis, and the text must support categorization, with valid refs. In fact it is often important to know who belong where at a particular time, and periodically I am thinking about adding a kind of timeline template to articles about locations. Staszek Lem (talk) 20:07, 25 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
C (A if we have to): Definitely not B. When talking specifically about Central and Eastern Europe, some places actually have more connection to their former subdivision in terms of historical importance than their current one, so it would be strange not to categorize them by their former subdivision. Ejgreen77 (talk) 11:43, 26 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- Ejgreen77: can you give an example of "some places actually have more connection to their former subdivision"? Renata (talk) 18:21, 3 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
A/C Some of these categorisations (and not only for former east European areas, it goes for the whole of the world) are utterly confusing (at least in my opinion). There are objects that are categorised by current areas where the organisation never existed in that current area (organisations (in the most broad sense of the word) that have been discontinued well before the current area where they would have been if the organisation still existed existed (intentionally confusing sentence)). I had to look, but 1962 Northern Rhodesian general election was once categorised in Category:1962 in Zambia where Northern Rhodesia was renamed in 1964 to Zambia (this one has since been fixed: Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2013_June_18#1935_establishments_in_Zambia; however, there is still Category:Elections in Zambia on the article ...). Within the volatility of the 'countries' in Europe in the past, there are many cases where things happen to an organisation while they are in A, then country changes to B and something else happens, country changes again, to C, and they stop existing, and if they would now still have existed they would now be in D ... Categorisation in these cases should be limited (A) and well thought through (which is basically what should happen now: C). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 06:24, 2 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
C I'm with User:Staszek Lem on this one: if referenced text in the article supports the historic categorization (and thus it's presumably appropriate text that does not violate WP:UNDUE), then the cat should stay. But if no referenced article text supports the category, then the categorization is the result of original research and should be removed. UnitedStatesian (talk) 19:16, 6 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Unarchived to request closure at WP:ANRFC. Cunard (talk) 00:58, 5 April 2020 (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.

Is it time to place greater restrictions on AfD?

Deletion discussions remain one of the most hotly controversial parts of the project, but the bar for participation is lower than most other controversial parts of the project.

Bad faith nominations are a common form of harassment or POV-pushing, and while such nominations are rarely successful, there are no protections in place to prevent it from taking a toll on the victim (in cases of harassment) or taking a large amount of volunteer time (for harassment or for POV-pushing). Starting a deletion nominated currently requires autoconfirmed status (4 days + 10 edits).

Once the nomination is started, it's common for people associated with the subject to use social media channels to influence the discussion (whether to support or oppose deletion). New users who sign up just to advocate a position in a deletion discussion rarely take the time to familiarize themselves with Wikipedia's deletion-related policies and guidelines, leading to large numbers of low quality !votes that complicate discussions. In very rare cases, after discussions are already severely affected by canvassing, we semi-protect them. Canvassing creates a lot of drama, rarely helps a deletion discussion, and wastes a huge amount of time and energy.

Is it time to place greater restrictions on AfD? Three inter-related questions for the community. Please note that this is not a proposal, but a discussion to see if a proposal makes sense.

1. Should there be stricter requirements to start a deletion discussion?

2. Should deletion discussions be semi-protected by default?

3. If yes to either of the above, what is the best way to allow new users to participate productively (for example, using AfD talk pages)?

— Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 22:10, 9 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion (AfD restrictions)

Some context for why I started this thread: For years I've participated at AfD and have seen the problems caused by canvassing over and over again. So question #2 has long been on my mind.
What has me thinking about question #1 took place over the weekend: a Wikipedian created an illegitimate sock puppet for the sole purpose of nominating for deletion three related articles: Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman, Corina Newsome, and Earyn McGee. It's not the first time I've seen people use AfD to nominate groups of related articles in bad faith, nor the first time I've seen it used to to target biographies of women or people of color in particular. It didn't take long to cause a stir on Twitter, etc., perceived as yet another example of systemic bias on Wikipedia.
Of course, those of us insiders know that this was actually an example of process working in the end -- that this was just one illegitimate sock puppet causing trouble, and the articles had little chance of being deleted because it's "not a vote" and whatnot. Here's the thing, though: it's still damaging. Bad faith nominations are not only a huge time sink to the community, requiring people to make sure process does win out; it's also a terrible experience for the article creator/editors, it's a terrible experience for the article subject, and it's a terrible experience for anyone else who looks in and cannot be expected to see what we see. They see Wikipedia working on deleting a topic they care about, and cannot be expected to understand the "don't worry, it's not a vote, and process will win out" part that we might say to ourselves while grumbling.
So I, for one, do think it's time to raise the bar a bit. How much to raise it is the big question as far as I'm concerned. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 22:10, 9 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

On the last two of those, unless I'm missing something, that was an empty nomination ? I would say that admins should feel empowered to close empty or bad faith nominations, especially if they believe they may draw external involvement (Which should be taken as a given for any BLP for anyone of an underpresented minority on WP). If an experienced editor believes the article does merit deletion, let them open a fresh deletion discussion with proper rational (and there should be no penalty here if that's opened even the same day as the rapid closure of the previous one). We may not catch all the bad faith ones, if they are nominated with a reasonable cause (as the first of your three appears to be on a first quick read), but at least we shouldn't let the clear bad ones linger for the 7 required days and cause long term problems --Masem (t) 22:26, 9 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Right. Like I said, process usually wins out, but why is this permitted to begin with? How often do you see successful, good faith, policy-based nominations from new users, as compared to the kind of problems caused in this example? How many of those positive examples could be handled through other means (e.g. requesting an AfD at WT:AFD, PROD, etc.)? My central point about question #1 is about new users' nominations being a net negative, and that the negative effects probably reach further than most people would think, because we tend to think of AfDs as being behind-the-scenes projectspace business. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 22:32, 9 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I think the deep problem is identifying bad faith nominations. I worry that closing empty nominations is not a robust solution to the problem, because it doesn't take much for disruptive editors to learn how to give the appearance of a rationale. Just quickly looking back over the (all presumably good faith) AfDs I've participated in this year, the modal deletion rationale is typically one sentence along the lines of "This article does not meet the notability guidelines", and (very reasonably) nobody blinks an eye when that's written by an editor with a few hundred edits who stacked a dozen pages in AfD in one afternoon with identical rationales -- most of the time, that sort of deletion is just a user who spent a few hours helping to build the encylopedia by patrolling for non-notable pages, and decided they found several. So I worry that resting everything on an idea like "admins should delete any rapid string of AfDs by a new editor with empty/totally trivial deletion rationales" just moves the problem to a question of how to tell the difference between good faith (but perhaps rather lazy) tagging on the one hand, and disruptive trolling on the other. In this situation, for example, it seems reasonable to guess that with a bit more effort the person who started this AfD might have been able to write a persuasive appearance of a sincere deletion rationale, since they openly admitted to being a sockpuppet during the AfD (as was noted at AN). And that same AfD but with a policy-motivated deletion rationale would still have been subject to all the same canvassing, spam, and trolling. - Astrophobe (talk) 23:06, 9 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Empty nominations are easy. And given that most experienced editors know of the BEFORE process and how to nominate, I could see that when we have a sub-par nomination (no sign of prior research, maybe just claimed "person is non-notable", and a quick check of the target AFD page shows 20+ sources with clear reliable sources being used, they can do this rapid close and add something in their close "Any experienced editor, believing this was a valid AFD, may reopen/restart this". Heck, that's even better, just have the rapid close if the admin thinks it is a bad faith AFD, but if an experienced editor thinks it is valid, they can ask to have the nomination opened again on the admin's talk page, mimicking the process one uses to question the standard admin closure process.--Masem (t) 23:49, 9 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Masem and Astrophobe: we need to be more nuanced instead of immediately calling this a "bad faith nomination" just because the nominator chose a sock-puppet account rather than their established Wikipedia identity. As someone who has recently been singled-out and targeted by a right-wing website for my involvement in blacklisting The Epoch Times, I can understand why someone wanted to shield themselves from the backlash of a self-righteous Twitter mob crying racism and sexism. --bender235 (talk) 13:57, 10 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I would never base a "bad faith nom" on the basis of the account only, unless I know that editor has some type of block/warning or the like specific on using AFD in that topic area or in general. (eg, someone that I know has a AP2 DS on them that they are not to make any edits in that area, and they nominate a topic clearly in the AP2 topic area, that's a bad faith). Barring knowledge of that, the only assessment of "bad faith" is the nature of the nomination and the actual sate of the page - is there a massive disconnect that indicates that this may be a POINTy or nonsense AFD that AFD doesn't need to waste its time with. I agree we should not judge the editor - IP, new editor, or experienced - otherwise in evaluating whether an AFD is good or bad faith normally. --Masem (t) 14:07, 10 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

That is good to know, but I felt like having to emphasize it because the general conclusion in WP:ANB seems to have been along the lines of "three AfDs were started by sockpuppets accounts with a vengeance," i.e. not worth being taken seriously (I'm quoting Silver_seren specificly, but it was more or less the general opinion). --bender235 (talk) 16:20, 10 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I mean, if this solution I suggest is implemented, and one finds that a single user has been submitting several AFDs in a row that have been quick closed as these bad faith noms and suspects possible sock activity, by all mean then check to see if the editor is a sock. But the editor should not be pre-judged outside of any known DS/bans attached specifically to that editor's name if we all for evaluating bad faith noms. --Masem (t) 16:28, 10 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

First off, I would be against semi-protection by default because many articles listed for deletion are from new editors, and they should be able to participate in the deletion discussions of their articles. While this doesn't always wind up for the best, I imagine locking them out of the discussion or bunting them to an unseen talk page would have even worse outcomes. However, I would be in favor of raising the bar for filing a deletion to extended confirmed, as virtually all new page patrollers will meet that standard easily, and it will create a significantly higher hurdle for bad-faith actors. This won't stop PROD or CSD tagging - but that's a feature, not a bug. Both are easily removed in cases of abuse, and let people that are not extended confirmed and still want to help address the worst new articles. The Squirrel Conspiracy (talk) 23:03, 9 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

This is a good point. I actually intended to be less specific than "semi-protection by default" in order to allow for that one exception (article creators/editors weighing in), but forgot when it came time to hit save. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 23:35, 9 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for starting this discussion Rhododendrites, and I think it's worth reinforcing that this problem of targeted and high-profile bad faith deletion spam is not at all new, and that with the growth of conversations about Wikipedia across other major platforms, I expect this sort of canvassing to only grow more severe. Per the opening paragraph of the discussion and per The Squirrel Conspiracy, I expect that I would agree with a proposal to require a higher bar to begin AfDs. But requiring a higher bar to contribute to AfDs is, to my mind, much more complicated. On the one hand, I am really sympathetic to the argument that it would be dangerously discouraging to new editors. I remember vividly my early experience editing Wikipedia: I believed that about $3/4$ of whatever you do on this website will get rapidly undone for completely opaque reasons, with lots of giant paragraphs full of incomprehensible acronyms and links and all sorts of emphatic italics about how astonishingly bone-headed you must have been to write that content (I'm not saying that's the impression people were trying to give, just that that's how it often feels to very new editors). People absolutely should be encouraged to WP:BB from their very first edit, including writing pages from scratch, and if their page comes up for deletion they should be allowed to participate in the discussion on it. From personal experience I believe that good faith participation in AfDs by brand new editors who don't yet have a clue is a huge net good for the project, especially as a hugely important (if often unpleasant) learning experience for them. Nothing motivates you to wade deep into notability policy like trying to come up with an argument for why your afternoon of work shouldn't be undone. Having said all of that, not raising the bar for AfD participation leaves half of the problem we're talking about unaddressed: it means that canvassing good faith and constructive deletion discussions is still just as easy, whether you're trying to sway the discussion towards keep or delete. It's very easy to imagine a good faith editor questioning the value of a page about someone with tens of thousands of twitter followers and that person reacting by canvassing support, just as happened in this instance, in which case we would be in the same exact position that we're in now. So I would be very interested in discussing further policies that would allow people with a sincere connection to the page to participate, while ruling out the kind of canvassing that is already a very serious problem and that looks like it will only get more serious over the next few months and years. - Astrophobe (talk) 23:44, 9 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I honestly don't see it as a problem. Most of the time canvassing is obvious and the topics are notable. I actually got stuck into the project because I wasn't specifically canvassed, but I read something about whether something should be on Wikipedia off of Wikipedia. Not being able to participate may create a "walled garden" effect for the entire community. That being said, there is a bad faith nomination issue, it was obvious in the cases you mentioned, and we need to do a better job of a community of not defaulting to "no consensus" when a deletion discussion goes off the canvassing rails, but I don't really support increasing the standard threshold. For instance, this should be very unlikely, but there may be instances where a low profile BLP realises there's an attack page written about them here and needs to deal with it. I might be willing to support a specific action item, though, such as a flag when a non-extended confirmed user starts an AfD. SportingFlyer T·C 01:47, 10 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I would oppose these type of changes. Its hard enough to delete an article as it is. Think about it, it only takes one person to create a bad article, but many to have it deleted. And when we can't agree and the AfD is closed as "no consensus", it gets kept by default. This actually contradicts WP:ONUS where the person adding the material must get consensus, not the person proposing deletion. As for sockpuppets, that is not a issue exclusive to AfDs. They can show up in any discussion anywhere.--Rusf10 (talk) 02:07, 10 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

can show up in any discussion anywhere sure, but in structured discussions they can be more disruptive. it's also a place where it's much less likely they'll be able to contribute positively. in an article talk page, there's at least an argument from the perspective of knowing the subject; arguing about notability is a bit more, well, technical from a procedural standpoint. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 23:52, 13 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Let me amend Rhododendrites's account of the three AfDs that triggered this discussion by the fact that questionable tactics were used on both sides of those "arguments." While it is true that the AfDs were started by sock-puppets, it is equally true that all three subjects of the articles for deletion were using their social media presence to WP:MEATPUPPET the discussions. So it won't surprise you that for more than half of the participants—Protonk, Kslays, Wurstendbinder, nejaby, AmyFou, Mglymour, Kellyjeanne9, Mfield, Dziban303, Rtol, Younotmenotyou, LadyFaeyre, Plcoffey, Smreillyatx, Kithrup—their keep !vote just so happened to be their first edit in months (sometimes years!), and another seven—Co2ke, Watchtower2.0, Loveofstreams, Bunsenberner, LadyAedes, Jtshapiro, Sharkirk—were outright single-purpose accounts. Unfortunately this strategy had success, and as I already elaborated elsewhere, I am afraid that without proper adjustments on our part, this will be the "new normal," i.e. the new go-to strategy for medium-scale Twitter personalities who always wanted a Wikipedia shrine for their personal vanity. --bender235 (talk) 04:07, 10 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Right, canvassing for keeps is a huge problem. And isn't that what Rhododendrites's suggested point 2 addresses? The way I read it, the problem you describe is a big motivation for that remedy. - Astrophobe (talk) 04:52, 10 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I would even equate off-line canvassing by a subject or by a connected contributor to COI editing. Point 2 of the proposal would not take care of the issue (most of these accounts were autoconfirmed, just dormant), and probably has zero chances to pass at any RfC anyway.--Ymblanter (talk) 05:51, 10 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Bender, are you suggesting that the three articles in question should have been deleted? That they are "Wikipedia shrine[s] for their personal vanity" in your book? Axem Titanium (talk) 07:39, 10 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Axem Titanium: as explained in my !vote in the AfD and later my comment on ANB, I do not believe that the either of the subjects meet WP:ANYBIO. Regardless of that, though, I refuse to accept that we now have to tolerate "WP:SELFPROMO by proxy" in which people essentially solicit their own WP:RESUME from complaisant social media followers, as Opoku-Agyeman implicitly did, and then funnel those same followers into AfDs or other discussions under the guise of fighting for social justice (that just as an explanation why a number of overzealous editors in those AfDs immediately were crying racism and basically compared the AfDs to people being killed in the streets). As I wrote elsewhere, once the word spreads that this is a viable strategy for any minor social media personality to brute force their way to a Wikipedia vanity shrine, we're pretty soon facing chaos. --bender235 (talk) 13:05, 10 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I do agree with you that offline canvassing is essentially just COI editing. What I do not think is clearly true that most of the accounts in the recent spate of canvassed AfDs were autoconfirmed editors -- look at the two rapidly closed (and therefore actually readable) AfDs at Corina Newsome and Earyn McGee. Both of them were absolutely overrun by IPs and single-purpose accounts. It's easy enough to say that the suggestion as written here so far wouldn't perfectly solve the problem or is pretty much guaranteed to fail at RfC, both of which I agree with. More interesting is asking how we can tweak AfD to make it robust to these sorts of multi-front attacks from the outside, which have already been seriously disruptive and I believe will only grow more severe. It could very well be that the answer is there is no possible reform and we just have to live with this issue, but I don't think that's possible to conclude without some more discussion. - Astrophobe (talk) 08:14, 10 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I think if every instance of canvassing on twitter would result in a COI template appearing on top of the article, and potentially in an appearance of a paragraph explaining how he subject was canvassing on twitter then they will start thinking twice before starting canvassing. I agree that semi-protecting AfD would generally help (though not entirely) to this issue, however, it is not really desired from other points of view, and this discussion so far shows a clear opposition to this proposal. In addition, I have no idea what to do if (i) a Wikipedia editor canvasses other sympatheric Wikipedia editors outside Wikipedia (which happend a lot and in the past resulted in keeping clearly non-notable articles) and (ii) people are showing upat AfD and it is clear that they are correlated but the source of canvassing could be found. --Ymblanter (talk) 10:02, 10 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The really harmful perception that encourages canvassing seems to be that it's a straight up or down vote that everyone in the world has an inherent right to participate in. We already have Template:Not a ballot, but it's clearly highly ignorable for motivated people. I wonder if there is a template that is garish and intimidating enough to actually persuade people that canvassed votes won't work. Maybe a pop-up like some web sites have to discourage ad blockers, and an mp3 that autoplays a siren noise when you load the page ;) - Astrophobe (talk) 18:31, 10 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Astrophobe: as Ymblanter correctly pointed out, a lot of the Wikipedians canvassed to those AfDs were inactive but established accounts. A rule limiting the participation of newly created accounts therefore wouldn't help. Of course, generally restricting sporadically active Wikipedians for !voting isn't a viable solution, either. After all, we are a project of volunteers and clearly not everybody finds time and means to contribute on a regular basis. It's just that in those particular three AfDs the canvassing was so blatantly obvious, with person after person basically copy-pasting the same rational referencing the rarely cited WP:BASIC over and over again. When I was looking for fellow veteran Wikipedians to intervene on the evening when all of this unfolded, Sulfurboy reassured me that "any admin worth their salt will see past meat and spa votes." Unfortunately that never happened. --bender235 (talk) 13:05, 10 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

As I see it, there are two separate issues. One is people who have (almost-)never used Wikipedia before, who have no investment whatsoever in the site, either being unaware of our rules about things like canvassing and COI or having no reason to care about them. Anecdotally I think this is one of the most far-reaching problems confronting Wikipedia. I know that when I've tried to explain things like "you shouldn't write a page for your dad" to people in my life who don't edit here, the most common response is something along the lines of: nobody cares about Facebook's terms of service or Twitter's terms of service or The New York Times's terms of service, why should I care about Wikipedia's terms of service? It's easy to imagine that a bunch of the first-time editors who were canvassed into that discussion would tell you that the principle they were following in voting keep is more noble than abiding by Wikipedia's policies would be. That's the issue that I think there's room to fix. The second, separate, issue is people who actually are editors here, or who have been active editors in the past, who may or may not be breaking COI/Canvassing rules. I'm not interested in accusing anyone of anything so I'll just assume for the moment that is a problem that exists in the abstract. It's hard to imagine a policy-based solution to that problem other than sanctioning the user, because if somebody has an investment in the website and is ignoring policy anyways, then I definitely agree that we shouldn't adopt a suboptimal global policy to handle that; we have a whole other set of rules for user misbehaviour. So I see the former as worth trying to fix with a policy change, and the latter as just a matter of users breaking rules and all the various policies we have to deal with that. - Astrophobe (talk) 18:47, 10 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

XfD is already biased too heavily towards indiscriminate inclusionism. We smile benevolently on keep vote canvassing, and allow personal attacks on nominators to pass without comment. Now here is a proposal to skew the conversation even further away from discussion of article subjects and contents and further towards lawyerly rules about who is allowed to talk. I am not in favour. Reyk _YO! 08:42, 10 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure I've ever seen an indiciation of AfD being a hotbed of indiscriminate inclusionism, nor indeed community encouragement (or at least, lack of notice or reticence) on canvassing of Keep votes. Nosebagbear (talk)

This suggests that there are areas where pretty much everything nominated gets kept, does not matter whether or not material is compliant with WP:GNG. Not that I strongly oppose this, and in some areas (such as localities) it probably makes sense, but this definitely backs up the inclusionism claims.--Ymblanter (talk) 09:51, 10 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Well, by its nature XfD tends to attract pages that ought to be deleted so in that sense it leans towards deletionism. But what I mean is that the lenience we show to misbehaving editors correlates directly with whether they voted keep. For instance, I once objected when some pretty blatant keep vote canvassing was allowed to determine the outcome of an AfD/DRV. All I got in response was blank looks and a (hopefully not serious) suggestion to counter-canvass if it bothered me so much. That's not advice I intend to take because, even if I felt like being unethical, a delete voter could never get away with it. I could give other examples of keep voters free to make insulting personal commentary and delete voters getting in trouble for backchat but of course if I did it would only be dismissed as a list of personal grievances. Reyk _YO! 10:26, 10 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I could understand this position regarding #1, but #2 is much more likely to apply to canvassed keep !votes than canvassed delete !votes (at least in my experience). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 23:52, 13 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Call me a cynic if you like, but I don't see that ever being enforced consistently. Reyk _YO! 12:22, 14 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

So, I get both the base concern(s), but also the issue with SP - that the creator in particular is disadvantaged. On the thought of Extended-Confirmed to start an AfD - does anyone know what % of good-faith AfDs are started by non-EC users? That seems relevant here. It's a shame we don't have PC2 - this would be a great area for it. Nosebagbear (talk) 09:44, 10 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
AfD needs improvement, for certain. Some kind of competency requirement for nominating articles could help, so could a quicker closing process for bad nominations. Unfortunately, it's hard for me to come up with a good way of accomplishing...Jacona (talk) 12:58, 10 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
AFD will never be perfect and it is 100x more "friendly" than it was 10 years ago. Participation is lower as well. I see no benefit to suppressing participation any further and that is what more rules will do. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 13:48, 10 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
This would be solved if we had more mechanical and less subjective notability rules. Then it wouldn't matter who was being canvassed. We should repeal WP:N altogether and just amend WP:V to require two independent, in depth, reliable secondary sources for every article. Then AFDs will just be about whether there are two qualifying sources or not. If there are, it can have a stand alone page. If there aren't, no stand alone page. Simple and no need to discuss whether or not something is "notable". No SNGs to argue about. Basically, make GNG a hard policy and be done with it. Levivich ^{[dubious – discuss]} 16:21, 10 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- We've seen editors try to work with more mechanical/objective application of notability "rules" , claiming things like "I have three sources, that's enough", but this makes things worse because now you have people gaming the system worse than what we see now. Also, this underminds the purpose of notability on WP, which is to reflect topics that are likely to be able to be fleshed out to fuller articles but need sourcing work to help get there, and because we have no DEADLINE, require the flexibility of judging what sourcing exists at AFD rather than rote rules to keep them. --Masem (t) 16:34, 10 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- @Levivich: I disagree, because that would only further muddy the distinction between what's verifiable and what's notable. Those two are not the same, and while the existence of reliable sources (i.e., verifiable facts) is necessary for someone or something to be notable, they aren't sufficient. --bender235 (talk) 16:50, 10 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- Going to echo Masem here and agree that this would be susceptible to gaming the system. Axem Titanium (talk) 16:57, 10 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  - @Masem, Bender235, and Axem Titanium: Thanks for your comments. To clarify, I am indeed proposing something radical: far more than "blurring the lines" between V and N, I'm talking about getting rid of that line altogether. That's why I'm not worried about "the purpose of notability", because I advocate getting rid of the entire concept of "notability". Let's face facts: 6,000,000 articles, and they're not all about important topics. We have hundreds of thousands of articles about athletes, songs, Pokemon characters, and all the rest. If the purpose of notability is to reflect topics that are likely to be fleshed out, well, then WP:N has failed miserably at that purpose.
    It's the entire concept of "notability" that is to blame: the notion that a topic has some property, "notable", that determines whether or not it should be in the encyclopedia, and we, as editors, are tasked with examining the topic and determining if it has this property or not. We act like notability is something we discover. It's not. It's something we invent. "Notability" is whatever we say it is; literally, whatever we agree to write at WP:N. If the purpose is to identify topics that can be fully fleshed out, there is no better way to do that than to identify if there are two good sources that we can use in the article. If there are two good sources, we can write an article about it that complies with V, NPOV, and NOR. If there aren't, we can't. This is the principle behind GNG, WP:THREE, WP:42, etc.
    We should embrace the fact that an AFD is not about a topic's inherent property of notability, but really just about whether to have a stand-alone page or not. We should have a stand alone page if we have the sources to support it. By making the "notability" simply a matter of "sufficient available sourcing: yes or no" and not about anything else, it will be harder, not easier, to game. Every keep !vote, to "count", would have to identify the two sources, and the entire discussion would be about whether the two sources meet WP:GNG criteria. The current system is already being gamed, and has been gamed, for a long time. Gaming is what led to this thread in the first place. Restricting the conversation to just be about the quality of sourcing and nothing else, will lead to less gaming, nor more. Levivich ^{[dubious – discuss]} 17:30, 10 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    - @Levivich: that's a radical idea, to put it mildly, and I'm afraid that completely eliminating the notion and threshold of notability would turn Wikipedia into somewhat of a repository for everything that was ever written, and every person that ever existed. I mean, I might be able to find a census entry and a birth announcement (two reliable sources!) of some 19th-century John Smith of Iowa, but what's the point of writing up an article recounting his dull biography of plowing the corn field from the cradle to the grave? At some point we have to be firm and say Wikipedia is just not the place for this. --bender235 (talk) 17:39, 10 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
      Bender235, 6,000,000 articles says to me that Wikipedia already is a repository for everything that was ever written. Please note that I didn't say "two reliable sources", I said "two independent, in-depth, reliable secondary sources" (in other words, same as WP:GNG), so no, a census entry and birth announcement wouldn't cut it. Requiring two GNG sources for every article will reduce, not increase, the number of stand-alone pages. Of this much, I'm sure. What makes my proposal radical is that if it were implemented, millions of articles would be eligible for deletion, which are not currently eligible for deletion, because meeting GNG isn't currently universally seen as a requirement. Levivich ^{[dubious – discuss]} 17:57, 10 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
      
      @Bender235: (sorry for the multiple pings), as one concrete example, under "my" suggested system, this AFD would have resulted in "delete" because there aren't two qualifying sources. Levivich ^{[dubious – discuss]} 18:27, 10 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
      No matter how you slice it, WP:PROF almost certainly needs to remain a standalone rule. Many academics are worth having an article written about them despite never having appeared in a newspaper. Significant coverage in secondary sources is not a requirement; merely having one's research (a primary source, albeit a reliable one due to peer review) cited heavily by other papers is sufficient to meet the bar. And we can write an article on their work using mostly those primary sources, with the reassurance that they are reliable because they have been thoroughly vetted by the academic community. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 19:01, 10 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
      King of Hearts, if we did this, I would support having exceptions (specifically to the "independent" and "secondary" requirements), including PROF exception, as well as for other specific areas where there is a lack of independent or secondary sourcing, but where the community feels non-independent or non-secondary sourcing is nonetheless reliable enough to satisfy V.
      
      Instead of asking, at an AFD, "is it notable?", we ask, "is there enough verifiable information to support a stand-alone page?" A statement, to be verified, needs to come from a reliable source (a source with a reputation for accuracy), it needs to come from an independent source (or else there's a bias concern, usually), and it needs to come from a secondary source (to avoid OR interpretation of primary sources). For an entire page to be verified (or in other words, for a topic to be verified), we also need in-depth sources: enough content to fill a page.
      
      Even if the community adopts this view of verification, it can still decide that there are some topics, like PROF, where a "reliable source" need not be independent or secondary, and so exceptions could be made. This is also the sort of exception that could be made to address under-coverage of historically marginalized people and topics. Thinking of whether to have a stand-alone page as a matter of V instead of N is a better framework all around. And then, in AfD discussions, the only keep !vote that would count would look like "keep - [source 1] [source 2]", and it wouldn't matter if people were canvassed or IP editors or socks or whatever, because instead of counting votes, or assessing votes, we would just be counting sources and confirming that they meet "the test" and that there's two of them. Levivich ^{[dubious – discuss]} 20:26, 10 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- I agree with those who argue that an uninterpreted WP:V is not enough of a basis for deletion policy, but I agree that notability has not served us well. The problem that deletion policy is there to solve is that there are forces out there that aim to undermine the encyclopedia, so we need to choose the ground that we can defend. The notability criterion is a solution: it says the topics we should have articles for are those on which good articles could be written. I have thought since 2006 this is wrong: the criterion we should apply is maintainability, not notability, and we should deal with articles as they are, not as they might be (although I am all for editors who transform bad articles into good ones during the AfD process). The events that convinced me of this led to this AfD: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Stephen Schwartz (journalist), an example of something then unmaintainable that I thought should have been deleted, although the subject was notable. More recently I have been bothered by how the WP:INHERIT criterion has frequently been used to delete high-quality, well-maintained, encyclopediac content; cf. Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2020 June 8 for the most recent example I aware of; there are have been better exmples. We should drop the abstract ideal of notability as the criterion we use and adopt the pragmatic criterion of maintainability that I think in time would lead to a more intuitive deletion policy. — Charles Stewart (talk) 06:45, 11 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Speaking as a proud simpleton who loves hyper-minimalist rules, I would support this, but it seems like a different (though of course related) proposal. - Astrophobe (talk) 18:37, 10 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I think one of the issues is that AFD, unlike a lot of other Wikipedia processes we think of as happening "in the background", slaps a big red notice on top of an article in articlespace. I'm not suggesting that we change this at all, but it is worth keeping this fact in mind when we discuss solutions. The notice demands your attention when you're on an article and even invites you (yes, you!) to participate in the deletion discussion. You can imagine that a new/IP user would feel confused if they're not allowed to participate at all at this point. Axem Titanium (talk) 16:57, 10 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
If a change were made, we could update the template accordingly. Levivich ^{[dubious – discuss]} 18:02, 10 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

This is a good point, thanks. If we enacted some sort of restriction like this, at very least the wording of that notice should be changed, but I'm not sure in what way. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 23:52, 13 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sure that banner is responsible for a good chunk of the hollow "keep" votes that show up for pop-culture articles. It stands to reason that if you're looking up the article for a particular thing, you beleive that particular thing should have an article. (Even if there's no particular policy-based reason for it to.) ApLundell (talk) 14:52, 18 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Personally I would support automatically adding extended confirmed protection (30 days/500 edits) to all AfDs as they are created. Positive contributions from editors not meeting these criteria are incredibly rare IMO, and it would stop SPAs, socks, IPs called from social media etc. Number 5 7 17:46, 10 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with this suggestion. Article creators who are not EC can make their case on the talk page (along with other non-EC editors). EC editors can read those talk page arguments and take them into consideration in their AFD !votes. The closer can also take into consideration arguments made on the talk page. But it'll help keep the discussion more focused if only EC editors participated on the AFD page. Frankly, non-EC editors do not have the experience necessary to meaningfully contribute at an AFD, even if they wrote the article. And I say this as an editor who participated in AFDs before I was EC (and I shouldn't have, because I had no understanding of notability guidelines then [or now really]). Levivich ^{[dubious – discuss]} 18:01, 10 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I would like to see some facts here. How many AFDs in the past month/year can we reasonably classify as being disruptive in the senses concerned in this proposal? I would say that if that number is less than 5 or 10%, I don't see a need for systemic change. --Izno (talk) 18:13, 10 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
What happened in the AfDs mentioned above is being repeated at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone now. What happens on Wikipedia doesn't stay on Wikipedia. With every AfD like this, someone on Twitter will be more emboldened to post their vanity shrine on Wikipedia. EC protection will really help in cases like that. TryKid ^{[dubious – discuss]} 22:21, 10 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@TryKid: Also the same tactic was just tried by MethanoJen at CfD/Black geoscientists. Something needs to change before this really becomes the new normal. --bender235 (talk) 23:26, 10 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Will editors who are not admins be able to nominate articles for deletion? Hawkeye7 (discuss) 23:52, 10 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Under these suggestions anyone who is extended confirmed could nominate AFDs. Personally I would support limiting nominations and participation to extended confirmed users and the article creator because it would give more time to block the sockpuppets who seem to zero in at AFD whether they are nominating or voting, imv Atlantic306 (talk) 00:20, 11 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Atlantic306. Mccapra (talk) 12:01, 11 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Under normal circumstances I think our AfD process works fine and don't need adjustment - usually no or minimal disruption and no need to protect the AfD until something problematic happens. For example, I recently dealt with an case where an article creator was blocked during an AfD of their article and suddenly brand-new accounts showed up to !vote. SPI, checkuser, semi-protected just because of the sockpuppetry, bam - dealt with. What we need to have a process for is cases like these, which are the exception rather than the rule - demonstrable and widespread off-wiki canvassing that turns the AfD into chaos (a flood of mostly-new users using non-policy-based arguments). I think semi-protection is the right call in most cases, but what do we do if there's demonstrable canvassing of experienced editors, for example? creffett (talk) 00:45, 11 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Some of the examples listed above are quite extraordinary, I agree with bender235 that “something” needs to be done before this becomes the normal. Whilst it would not deal with bad-faith nominations and canvassed inactive users, perhaps upon presentation of evidence of off-Wiki advocacy, !votes be restricted to extended confirmed users and !votes already cast by non-XCON users be struck/deleted. Cavalryman (talk) 03:42, 11 June 2020 (UTC).[reply]

@Cavalryman: actually what upset me the most in these Twitter canvassing campaigns is the piggybacking on a social justice cause. People weren't just told to vouch for the notability of some hashtag activists, they were sent here to fight supposedly systematic sexism and racism in Wikipedia and its entire community (see [1], [2], [3]). And sure enough the majority of canvassed !voters came waltzing in crying racism right away without even bothering to consider the arguments presented up to this point. That's what concerns me the most. Apart from slandering the Wikipedia community unjustly, it makes certain subjects and topics toxic to a point where our usual (bureaucratic) processes can no longer be applied. Who wants to be the Wikipedian permanently branded as a racist in the Twitterverse simply for questioning the notability of a social media starlet? The nominator of AfD/Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman stated that he/she created a sock puppet rather than use his/her established account to avoid online harassment, and perusing the comments and replies of the self-righteous Twitter mob above, I don't think that was a stretch. To me, this whole incident and its likely future copy-cat versions are worrisome. (And just to show that I am not exaggerating, here is a now-deleted tweet by MethanoJen singling me out by name, simply for questioning whether her newly created Category:Black geoscientists doesn't fit our existing category pattern.) --bender235 (talk) 16:39, 11 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Please write to T&S about the tweet, this is a cleart wiki-harassment. I have warned her in the morning (qand may be this is why the tweet has been deleted), but if I have seen this I might have indeffed.--Ymblanter (talk) 17:41, 11 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Ymblanter: I don't think it will be necessary to block her. After all, she deleted the tweet immediately after I told her it was uncalled for. But it goes to my point that the social media canvassing tactics used in AfD/Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman, AfD/Corina Newsome, and AfD/Earyn McGee, will soon be the "new normal," because they clearly worked. All three articles are now even being pushed for DYK (see DYK/Black Birders Week, DYK/Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman). With this much success, why wouldn't this strategy be copied? --bender235 (talk) 19:05, 11 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

bender235, I agree completely, aside from the utterly appalling conduct of that editor the broader trend in identity politics is to brand anyone who presents a rational and articulate counterpoint a racist/bigot/Nazi etc, thankfully not a common issue in the dog articles I tend to edit and to be honest one of the reasons I usually give anything political on Wikipedia a very wide berth. I tend towards supporting the idea of BLUELOCK for AfD discussions (less article creators), I suspect SILVERLOCK would be no impediment. One of the reasons I proposed a middle ground above is to protect closers from the inevitable social media targeting that would follow from a close that went against canvassed IP & SPA opinion. Kind regards, Cavalryman (talk) 22:48, 11 June 2020 (UTC).[reply]

Wikipedia has already strayed too far from being the encyclopedia anyone can edit. Keeping that in mind, further restrictions on editing abilities for newer users should only be implemented when absolutely necessary. I think our admins are pretty good at recognizing canvassing and meatpuppetry by SPAs and the like. Since AfD isn't a vote, closing admins are expected to throw out !votes that are frivolous and/or not based in our policies and guidelines. Even if that weren't possible, I'm not convinced it happens often enough to justify such drastic action. We also have to consider the effect this would have on editor retention. Wikipedia is already confusing enough to newbies, with its byzantine policies, litany of jargony acronyms, and Kafkaesque bureaucracy-that-isn't-a-bureaucracy. I'm convinced this would be a net negative. AfD has far more pressing concerns to deal with anyway. The biggest two that come to mind are careless nominations where WP:BEFORE clearly didn't happen (especially wrt non-English sources), and nationalistic or politically motivated bloc voting by established editors. Established editors know how to make their !vote look like a valid policy-based rationale even when their real motivations are ILIKEIT/IDONTLIKEIT. Freshly recruited meatpuppets don't know how to do this, and so closing admins can safely disregard them per WP:NOTAVOTE. In particularly extreme cases, admins should semi-protect the page as they sometimes do now. That's far better than the current proposal which throws the baby out with the bathwater. −−− Cactus Jack 🌵 05:11, 11 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

While I appreciate the argument on principle, I don't know if being an encyclopedia that anyone can edit is the same as being "the encyclopedia that anyone can edit, and anyone can jump into the behind-the-encyclopedia technical processes without spending time learning about them first". As for WP:BEFORE, I don't necessarily disagree; don't you think that requiring more experience would make it more likely that someone is familiar with (and follows) that guidance? — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 23:52, 13 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

We need to remember that AFD is just one of our deletion processes, if we were to restrict people from filing AFDs we shouldn't be surprised if they tag more articles for Speedy deletion or simply draftify them. That said I'm OK with the idea that we restrict some people from deletion generally. Over the years I have seen a number of editors who didn't realise they were overly deletionist until they ran an RFA and had their deletion tagging checked and criticised. So I would be OK with 6 month bans from the deletion process where people were only allowed to participate in the deletion process re articles that they had started. I really really don't like the idea of restricting people from a deletion debate where it is their work that we are considering deleting. So restrict the people who have been making mistakes in their deletion tagging, not a blanket restriction on new or newish editors. Ϣere SpielChequers 13:32, 11 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know how we've escalated past the early suggestions of SP for participation to ECP, which is seriously, seriously OTT. While their average edit quality is certainly worse, I've seen many legitimate !votes from editors in that group. Shifting to talk page for all of them brings multiple issues: that's fiddly to spot, so some just won't note to participate there (that is, they'll know the TP exists, but not that they'll be read) & also massively drops that chances that every person in the AfD will read the !votes or comments, which disrupts and weights the discussion inappropriately. We also should be using the least disruptive method, and disrupted AfDs are relatively rare. We aren't implementing a "have more experienced participation" restriction. Nosebagbear (talk) 14:49, 11 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
AfD is infested with socks. You can see it with old AfDs (a few years back) and seeing how many participants have a strike-through (with that userscript installed). They get busted eventually, somewhere else, and leave behind fossil evidence. I would support reasonable moves to address this problem. -- GreenC 16:51, 11 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, there is a problem, but it is only a problem with a very small percentage of AfD discussions. Far more discussions have the problem of a lack of participation, which this proposal would only exacerbate. Maybe we need to encourage people to be less tolerant of canvassing, or of other abuses of this process, but I don't think this is the right way to go about it. I remember that my very first logged-in edit to Wikipedia 13 years ago was made to an AfD discussion in response to canvassing on another site, but it was not supportive of the canvasser. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:50, 11 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I wonder how typical my own experience is. I began editing in any serious way in 2013. I think it was late 2017 or early 2018 before I even knew AfD existed. Once I discovered it I spent many weeks just observing it before I commented. It was months before I put my first article up for deletion. How many people in this discussion have a completely different experience? I simply don’t assume good faith for ‘new’ editors who show up and are busily nominating articles for deletion in the first couple of weeks. There are all kinds of productive ways new editors can contribute to the project but sitting on your hands for a while before you start nominating articles for deletion seems entirely appropriate. Mccapra (talk) 20:02, 11 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Mccapra: I had a similar experience. My first participation in a AfD was in AfD/Jamaal Anderson in 2007, only after having made hundreds of contributions over the years. AfDs—or any Wikipedia backroom bureaucracy—are almost naturally intimidating to the uninitiated, due to the various cryptic acronyms that are casually thrown around by the regulars. Unfamiliar with these, inexperienced or canvassed editors tend to copy-paste these acronyms in AfDs without actually understanding them, which makes them easy to spot for the trained admin eye. To his credit, creffett immediately spotted the unusual frequency of WP:BASIC citations in AfD/Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman. --bender235 (talk) 20:37, 11 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

A couple of points worth mentioning here. Other language wikis It would be great to both explicitly encourage editors to look at other language wikipedias for sources and to encourage editors from other language wikis to participate in AfD's, especially in situations where there is the likelihood of sources being in non-English languages. Draft namespace Draft namespace is relatively new compared to AfD and moving good-faith contributions to draft to enable relatively slow-moving editing to occur should be encouraged, particularly for topical subjects. SPAs and paid editing my feeling is that a large numbers of the SPAs involved in articles that end up at AfD are undeclared paid editors. This is a larger issue than AfD, but it may be worth thinking about what can be done in this specific context. The best I can think of is a bot that creates a table on the talk page listing all the AfD participants and editors involved in the article and gives edit counts, how many are related to the issue at hand, and also scans for their names in sockpuppet investigations and other administrative actions. Stuartyeates (talk) 21:21, 11 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I am very against default ECP. I'm open to reasonable suggestions for how to resolve the identified problems, but ECP is not one of those. To comment on Rhododendrite's questions: (1) I think this is reasonable. We have technical restrictions on who can move pages, so I think it's reasonable to have slightly more stringent requirements to nominate for deletion. (2) I'm not a fan, but am open to it. I would prefer the first option and see how that goes before default protection. Perhaps more practical is expanding the protection policy to allow protecting AFD discussions for sock/meatpuppetry or obvious canvassing. (3) I think just encouraging use of the talk page by everyone would work, but why have newbies go to talk just to be ignored? We're basically telling them to send their emails to /dev/null. — Wug·a·po·des 23:31, 11 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
2. Should deletion discussions be semi-protected by default? Can I suggest some alternatives?
- Grouped edit notice for Template:Editnotices/Group/WIkipedia:Articles for Deletion
- Some type of edit filter warning for non-(auto)confirmed users
- Something similar to Wikipedia:GettingStarted, but it pops up when you enter WIkipedia:Articles for Deletion/***** for the first time; if for non-(auto)confirmed users, it pops up something similar to {{Not a ballot}}.

If the above aren't going to work in any circumstances, okay then go ahead and semi- protect it and hope those SPAa and canvassed users don't gets 10 edits after 4 days. This will prevent new users from participating, but 99.999% of the time, they think it's a ballot. Nobody uses the AfD talk pages, so let's direct them there. With that comes with more very complicated ideas, like moving policy based votes into the actual AfD by experienced AfDers, and considering if the talk page will be additionally used to addresss the consensus outcome. {{reply to|Can I Log In}}'s talk page! 05:34, 12 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I'm certainly not against less restrictive interventions like these; I'm just pessimistic they would be helpful. I've seen {{notavote}} added to lots of AfDs, and [just based on anecdote of course] I've not really seen it help much. Call me cynical, but when I add it, I'm really just trying to signal to other experienced editors (and the closer) that there may be canvassing/SPAs going on here. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 23:52, 13 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for starting this, Rhododendrites. Something that deletion discussions and move requests have in common is that, because they have a mandatory period and appear to readers, they can do damage when bad ones are launched. For move requests, we're trying to help by making the notice less prominent, but for deletions, it needs to be prominent. I wish there was a way we could signal to readers "this article is currently nominated for deletion, but it's very unlikely to pass", but we can't exactly just have it display the running !vote total (either technically or editorially). Still, there might be some changes we could make to Template:Article for deletion to help make it clearer what being up for deletion actually means. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 08:06, 12 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

We already have strict requirements for starting an AfD: WP:BEFORE. The problem is that they are not enforced. From what Uncle G has said, AfD was deliberately made rather difficult as a barrier to frivolous nominations. The tool Twinkle has subverted this to make a deletion nomination much easier than other, more productive actions such as searching for sources, working on the article or starting a discussion on its talk page.

Another problem is that the readership tends to be excluded from these discussions. An article may be read hundreds or thousands of times while it is at AfD but we rarely see these readers joining the discussion. I myself got started on Wikipedia when I saw a deletion notice on an article that I had been reading. Perhaps I have more aptitude for the Wikipedia interface than the average reader but if there had been greater barriers in place, then I too might not be here now and the hundreds of articles that I have started might not have been written. Wikipedia is the encyclopedia that anyone can edit and so we should freely accept comments rather than engaging in voter suppression by restricting discussions to a dwindling number of incumbents and insiders.

Andrew🐉(talk) 11:01, 12 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It strikes me as odd that we have concluded that the project is best served by creating some filters around article creation for new editors (I don’t know, maybe that’s still controversial?) but we continue to treat AfD as a free for all. It’s true that the best barrier we have is WP:BEFORE but I guess we’re having this discussion because it doesn’t seem as effective as it once was. Mccapra (talk) 11:15, 12 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- Agreed. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 23:52, 13 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Quite frankly, I think concerns over this matter are completely overblown. People have constantly been predicting doom and gloom over small problems, but it seems to me that AfD is more sturdy and capable of dealing with sockpuppeteering and canvassing than many give it credit for. New editors do not find AfD and immediately start making bad edits. It takes a lot of time for the average editor to even build up the confidence to start making proper edits, never mind contributing to AfD. There are really only two ways in which a new editor will even get exposed to AfD, either an article they created was nominated, or they were canvassed there. The former is an important learning experience, and being able to contribute gives a new editor valuable insight into how the process works. Stopping these editors from contributing will just further the image of Wikipedia as a bureaucratic nightmare where decisions are made by elitists in ivory towers. In the second case, such instances are isolated and so painfully obvious that dealing with it really does not require pre-emptive punitive measures. This sort of goes without saying, but default ECP is a terrible idea and I am opposed to it in the strongest possible terms. Devonian Wombat (talk) 05:02, 13 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- Not doom and gloom. More about tons of wasted time, harassment, and possible external influence on our process (whether in good or bad faith). One of my original points was that we're typically able to deal with this, but there's so little benefit in forcing good faith participants to do so. Lots of wasted time, lots of attempts to influence the outcome. I don't disagree that the article creators/editors themselves should be allowed to participate, though. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 23:52, 13 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Follow-up - apologies to start this thread and only come back a few days later. Several good points here. If these were actual proposals, it seems like were firmly in "no consensus" territory here, at this point. One thing that I think would make sense for me (or someone else) to do if formally proposing these measures would be to gather some data. My perception is that, putting aside the article creators/contributors themselves, new users almost never make valuable, policy-based contributions to AfD. That applies to nominations especially, and !votes slightly less. But I appreciate that not everyone may have the same perception. One open question for me is how to allow article creators/contributors to participate while preventing other new users? Maybe the only way is to direct them to the talk page, and to rework the notifications to be very clear about how to do so (i.e. to do everything we can to encourage participating there). Not sure. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 23:58, 13 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
As somebody said above (or elsewhere, I do not remember), there are only three categories of IP / new users taking part in AfD discussions: (i) they have been affected (created or significantly contributed to an article being discussed, typically by getting a template on their talk page); (ii) they have been externally canvassed to the discussion; (iii) they evade a block. If this correct (and research probably could be made about this - canvassing is difficult to detect but it must be visible by clusterization of new votes in the same discussion), then these issues probably should be separated -canvassing is not just about new users, and we certainly want creators of the articles participate in the AfD on the articles they created.--Ymblanter (talk) 09:15, 14 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I strongly support reforms to streamline the AfD process. In my time I have closed well over a thousand XfD discussions, and have observed two key patterns of sockpuppet manipulation. The first is where novices desperate to keep an article create numerous obvious sockpuppet accounts; the second is more sophisticated, typically connected to paid advertising, where the sockpuppet accounts are crafted with a veneer of legitimacy through the creation of nominal user space pages and through perhaps commenting on a handful of other AfDs or making a handful of other minor edits before engaging in the AfD of concern. Nevertheless, it should not be possible for an account created after the initiation of an XfD to participate in that XfD. I don't think that this is at all problematic for new users, who should expect that some time and experience is required to obtain certain rights. This should also not be a problem with respect to editors creating new pages. Quite frankly, editors should not be able to create new pages at all until they meet some minimal threshold of activity, so the ability to comment in XfDs should coincide with the ability to create new pages at all. BD2412 T 19:00, 14 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
These concerns raised seem pretty well addressed by WP:AFD, WP:AFDEQ, and WP:DISCUSSAFD in that legitimate AfD debate cannot be drowned out by obvious manipulation (sock-puppeting) or poor quality commentary, as AfDs are not a poll (consensus is not based on a tally of votes, but on reasonable, logical, policy-based arguments) and those processing the AfD are required to adhere to this (and if they do wrong, the article does not disappear, and can be recalled through the deletion review process WP:DRV). It also appears some of the generalisations about new users (who may or may not be new, given some new registered users have previously been editing Wikipedia for years as non-registered users) has some undertones not in keeping with the spirit that Jimmy Wales had for Wikipedia (that the value of an editor was not in how long their registered account had been in use, or even how many edits they had made, but in the quality of their contributions to Wikipedia, which may come from registered editors both new and old). Some form of artificial class system based on seniority/tenure/clique would seem contrary to that - even the auto-confirmed class (which has been deliberately set at the low threshold of just a few days) isn’t really such a class system. Like Devonian Wombat stated, New editors do not find AfD and immediately start making bad edits... There are really only two ways in which a new editor will even get exposed to AfD, either an article they created was nominated, or they were canvassed there. Therefore, there does not appear to be an issue with the current framework for AfDs that requires re-invention in my view. Kangaresearch 08:16, 18 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
What Dennis Brown said: AfD is one part of WP that really works well, participation at AfD is down, newcomers who are there are apt to be defending pieces they personally have a stake in, there is no better way to learn the notability standards than to actually participate in deletion debatese, there would be nothing gained and much risked by tightening standards for participation there. Carrite (talk) 14:08, 18 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps all that's needed is a guideline that says that it's acceptable for an experienced editor to move the banner to the talk page in cases where it doesn't seem likely the AFD will pass. Or perhaps BLP shouldn't have the banner at all? It's not hard to see how it can be percieved as an officialy endorsed slight against the BLP subject. ApLundell (talk) 15:02, 18 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Remove AfD from Twinkle. You used to have to go and create the deletion page yourself and copy and paste the correct templates in. This was fine. Some things shouldn't be made easier. It takes two separate people turning two separate keys to launch a nuclear misslile. This could be streamlined, but would that be an improvement? I haven't seen any evidence that either way that adding AfD to Twinkle was a net improvement. It's not helping, so end it. Herostratus (talk) 02:22, 22 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
1. Should there be stricter requirements to start a deletion discussion? What kinds of requirements? At a glance, imposing more requirements would just make it so some deletion-worthy articles remain on the wiki. A lot of stuff can't go through PROD, and isn't eligible for the strict CSD criteria, but is clearly deletion-worthy and should go to AfD. I don't see stricter requirements helping the process.

2. Should deletion discussions be semi-protected by default? Canvassing is a problem, but I've seen less active Wikipedia users contribute helpfully to AfDs before, particularly AfDs that would benefit from more niche knowledge, particularly AfDs for some non-Western topics. I don't know if making discussions semi-protected would help in that sense. An experienced closer can deal with arguments from SPAs and effects due to canvassing, but the process does not benefit from suppressed views of the kinds of users I mentioned.

AfD has problems, but I'm not sure these are solutions. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 17:16, 23 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Stricter requirements: Yes. Notification of the article creator and any other editors who have edited the article significantly should be required, not recommended, in the instructions. Some people don't use their watchlists, some have watchlists so long that an AfD can slip by, some are inactive but have preferences set to notify them of edits to their user talk page, and it is a basic courtesy that also increases the chance of participation by people who know the topic. I'm not sure how it would be enforced, but WP:BEFORE should be required. Deletion nominations by editors who don't know the topic and haven't looked to discover it is, in fact, a topic, or who simply don't like the topic, are an increasing problem as the number of articles grows and participation at AfD dwindles. They waste other editors' time and risk our losing useful articles. Restricting participation, for example by semi-protection: No. Apart from the principle of minimizing barriers to participation by unregistered editors, on which I am firm—they include not only potential new editors but also experienced editors whose wisdom and knowledge we should value, and it's their own business if they choose not to register an account—many people are first drawn into the discussion and collaboration aspect of Wikipedia editing through AfD. I saw an AfD on recent changes and was able to provide the rescuing source, and hadn't realized till then that such discussions, where we might lose a valid article because someone didn't have access to a book, were happening. And that is indeed the venue where most of us learn the ropes of notability. In any case, COI editors would be far more likely able to bypass restrictions than good faith newbies, including subject-matter experts. So attempting to restrict AfD participation would do more harm than good. Yngvadottir (talk) 00:58, 6 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Just noting yet another brand new account nominating yet another biography of a woman for deletion. Created an account, made exactly enough edits to be autoconfirmed, then came back a few days later and nominated here: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sarafina Nance. Like the examples that immediately preceded my opening this section, and like the many other new accounts nominating/proposing articles by Jesswade88 and others, it's awfully hard to see this as something other than harassment by deletion process and demonstration of how easy our very low bar for creating these nominations is to game. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 18:31, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

RFC:DOY change to pending changes reviewer instructions

The proposal failed. While there was strong support for it from editors involved in DOY articles, the community in general felt that problematic editing on these articles was not at a sufficiently serious level to justify special rules for them. Several editors pointed out that the proposal went significantly outside the established boundaries of PC patrolling. Some even felt that the very principle of rejecting edits solely because they lacked an inline cite was not constructive. SpinningSpark 11:20, 12 July 2020 (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.

Should the following change be added to the reviewing pending change process? PackMecEng (talk) 15:19, 13 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Reviewers should note that all new entries added to days of the year articles require a direct citation per WP:DOYCITE.

Background (DOY change to pending changes reviewer instructions)

In October 2017, a discussion at WP:WikiProject Days of the year reached consensus that day-of-the-year articles are not exempt from WP:V and that Any material lacking a reliable source directly supporting it may be removed and should not be restored without an inline citation to a reliable source. WP:DOYCITE and WP:DOYSTYLE were updated to include that language.

In July 2019, the language Please note that when reviewing days of the year pages, all new additions require a direct citation per WP:DOYCITE. was added to WP:RPC.

There has been an objection to the addition of this language on the grounds that it contradicts WP:RPC, specifically It is not necessary for you to ensure compliance with the content policies on neutral point of view, verifiability and original research before accepting.

Opinions (DOY change to pending changes reviewer instructions)

No - For a number of reasons. While verifiability is important, it is outside scope of pending change in general.

For example the purpose of protecting a pages with pending change is persistent vandalism, BLP violations, and copyright violations. In fact reviewing pending changes says It is not necessary for you to ensure compliance with the content policies on neutral point of view, verifiability and original research before accepting, but of course you are free to uphold them as you would normally with any edit you happen to notice. For example, in case of additions for which you can find no reference in the article but estimate unlikely to be vandalism, treat them as you would treat any such edit: do nothing, tag as needing citation, provide an appropriate citation, or revert – depending on the situation at hand. Reviewing pending changes is not to curate content or check sources which this new directive would require lest you have your review rights striped.

We could also look at pending changes The process of reviewing is intended as a quick check to ensure edits don't contain vandalism, violations of the policy on living people, copyright violations, or other obviously inappropriate content and Acceptance of an edit by a reviewer is not an endorsement of the edit. It merely indicates that the edit has been checked for obvious problems as listed above which if reviewers are required to verify sources and content this would be a problem.

In the end I think it is not what pending change was setup to do. If a reviewer wishes to follow that guildline and either add a source or revert that is their choice, but it should not be something that reviewers are forced to do. Now I understand what they are going for, and verifiability is something that everyone should strive for but this is not the way to do it. I am also not comfortable making an exception for a specific niche. Generally I am not a fan of slippery slope arguments, but one could be made here. I think it is also telling when that guideline is not required for DOYs sister project WP:YEARS. PackMecEng (talk) 15:23, 13 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. I view the change as requiring minor effort on the part of reviewers in the interest of improving day-of-year articles for readers. Checking for BLP violations or copyright asks more of reviewers than this check, a simple "no citation, don't accept" decision. I don't interpret the language as requiring reviewers to verify the information in the source, just to see that a source is included in the edit. The DOY articles have accumulated a lot of cruft over the years; I added cites to events on a DOY article and had to remove a number of the old entries because the target article didn't support the statement or the target article lacked a reference to support the statement. The effort to make those articles verifiable directly supports WP:5P. Editors are slogging through each of the DOY pages to verify each and every item; it's a slow, tedious process and is made even more difficult when more unsourced content keeps getting added. When a DOY article has pending changes protection, I think it's reasonable to ask that PC reviewers reject an edit that doesn't include a source. Schazjmd (talk) 15:30, 13 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Yes - Normally, when people add a new entry without a citation and are told they should have added a citation, they say "Sorry, I didn't know that". But even with a warning message on each date page, contributors still do it because they haven't noticed the message. Occasionally, however, the response is "But X accepted the change, so it must be all right." When you go to the reviewer and point this out, they also respond "Sorry, I didn't know that." There are two points PackMecEng has made that need to be addressed. One is that the instruction to check for citations in a DOTY article (and other types of article will gradually follow) does not, in my opinion, go against the statement: "It is not necessary for you to ensure compliance with the content policies on neutral point of view, verifiability and original research", which applies to specific policies which are not at issue here. The second is that the reason all DOTY articles have the requirement for review in the first place is to protect them from vandalism, which typically consists of anons adding entries such as "10 July 1963 - my brother's birthday". Or "6 January 1975 - Lil Young Rapper, the greatest singer of all time". This happens every day and sometimes one article will have such an entry repeatedly inserted until the person doing it is blocked. There is little point protecting an article if reviewers decide that there is no need to prevent entries like these. I would have expected that reviewers would be grateful to be reminded about guidelines they hadn't known existed. Deb (talk) 15:38, 13 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
No. - I am inclined to concur with PackMecEng. PC specifically refutes areas like this from reviewers' tasks, and verificability is fairly core to that. I also feel that stating that requiring this source check is just part of vandalism reduction - that's very dubious tying up. Reviewers would prevent edits like "my brother's birthday" etc etc, but filtering out vandalism like that does not require ensuring an inline source, because the categories "vandalism" and "does not have an inline source" only have a minority overlap. Nosebagbear (talk) 15:56, 13 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Yes - Like Deb, I have been a major contributor to the DOY articles and pending changes on them. She's summed it up nicely. There's an additional factor though. Those pages were cesspools of incorrect information without any sources. Publishing incorrect information is about the worst thing we can do here as an encyclopedia. In addition to the vandalism, we're trying to prevent more incorrect information being added while we clean the pages up. Like the vandalism that Deb referred to, hardly a day goes by without me or the other active members of the project finding incorrect, unsourced information being added to these pages. Asking change patrollers to help with this very problematic area is not a heavy lift. Nobody is forcing folks to patrol these pages, but if you do, please keep in mind that this is a known, chronic problem. If you're going to be active on these pages (like accepting pending changes), it would seem wise not to contribute to problem. Toddst1 (talk) 16:54, 13 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
No. When I'm handling pending changes, I'll almost always do my best to verify the changes being made as well, but it shouldn't be a requirement - which is what this is making it. That fundamentally changes the role of pending change-protected articles, as PackMecEng quite rightly points out. There's no reason to make days of the year articles different in this regard to any other article, at least that I can see. Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 17:20, 13 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Collapsing a related dicussion. See the reasoning below. {{reply to|Can I Log In}}'s talk page! 20:17, 17 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

- Just one thing on that - you are not being asked to verify the citation, only to check that there is one. Deb (talk) 08:16, 14 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  - I am not sure I agree with that. The text is require a direct citation per WP:DOYCITE and if we goto DOYCITE it says Any material lacking a reliable source directly supporting it may be removed and should not be restored without an inline citation to a reliable source. So to comply with DOYCITE you are required to have a RS directly supporting it. PackMecEng (talk) 14:29, 14 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    - The section you are quoting from WP:DOYCITE is a warning to the user and is accurate. It doesn't ask the reviewer to do anything so I don't see the relevance here. Deb (talk) 19:40, 14 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
      - The relevence is the section from that you want to add to reviewers is asking them to comply with DOYCITE. To comply with DOYCITE you have to verify the source. Make sense now? PackMecEng (talk) 21:51, 14 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
        No, because that's not what the instruction says. It just asks reviewers to note that a citation is required, rather than accepting something that blatantly goes against DOYCITE because you feel it's too much work to look at the change before accepting it. Deb (talk) 07:24, 15 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
        Again, when it says "require a direct citation" I take that as it requires a direct citation. How do you know if it is a direct citation? You check the citation to see if it supports the info. You said "rather than accepting something that blatantly goes against DOYCITE" well how do you accept something that is not against DOYCITE if you do not check the source? You cannot. PackMecEng (talk) 16:18, 15 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

No and change that guideline to Any material lacking a reliable source directly supporting it or in its article may be removed and should not be restored without an inline citation to a reliable source. As long there is verification somewhere, in the article or the DOY article, we just need to verfy it. That's all. {{reply to|Can I Log In}}'s talk page! 01:05, 14 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Collapsing a huge dicussion I disagree with over my !vote. Even if this RfC is successful, I would be justified by ignore all rules to accept a verified pending change without a direct reference. Again, Revert only when necessary; not having a direct reference is not a reason to revert unless it is not verified with a reliable source anywhere, including the article of the subject itself. {{reply to|Can I Log In}}'s talk page! 20:17, 17 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Counting on the article is not at all acceptable per WP:UGC: In particular, a wikilink is not a reliable source. That's how those pages became such a mess. The DOY project is looking for help on these pages, not opinions lacking any presentation of reasoning or knowledge of guidelines. Toddst1 (talk) 16:15, 14 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia is not a reliable source, yes. But the reliable source in that Wikipedia article can be used. Just accept that DOY pending change if it's verified in that article. If you don't like not having a direct reference, then copy and paste it from the article. {{reply to|Can I Log In}}'s talk page! 18:07, 14 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Can I Log In: I think we may be saying the same thing. All the person who adds the event to the DOY page has to do is use a decent source. It can very easily be the source in the linked article, but it must be present on the DOY page. Toddst1 (talk) 17:34, 15 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Well copying the reference from the linked article is optional, but it can be made a requirement. If it is verified in the linked article by a reliable source, then we just accept the pending change. {{reply to|Can I Log In}}'s talk page! 18:36, 15 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Can I Log In:, in that case, the DOY folks will just go and revert the addition as soon as its noticed being unsourced. Better off not accepting it - which is exactly what we're discussing. Toddst1 (talk) 18:52, 15 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but you seem to be suggesting that reviewers do additional work by going to the linked article to check if there's a reference there. Wouldn't it be easier if you just checked that the new entry has a citation included? Deb (talk) 19:43, 14 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Revert only when necessary, such as when it's not verified. When you revert when it's true as cited by a reliable source in the article, you are taking out true content. Same thing when you are reviewing semi-protected edit request. Before you decline an unsourced edit request, check for reliable sources. If there are, accept it with the source you found; otherwise, decline. {{reply to|Can I Log In}}'s talk page! 21:34, 14 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry, but I don't understand what you are trying to say. It seems to me like you've got the wrong end of the stick. Deb (talk) 07:24, 15 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

...reviewers do additional work by going to the linked article to check if there's a reference there. {{reply to|Can I Log In}}'s talk page! 18:36, 15 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I was right, you have got the wrong end of the stick. You're opposing on the grounds that you are being asked to do something you are specifically not being asked to do.Deb (talk) 11:59, 17 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Up to semi-protection and be done with it seems to be the best solution. Pending changes almost always creates more work and controversy than needed, and I have never once seen a circumstance where it is superior to semi-protection in achieving anything. If these really are as bad as @Toddst1 and Deb: say the solution is semi-protection, not pending changes. The whole point of pending changes was that it would allow good faith contributors to contribute while protecting articles. It doesn't actually do that. It just creates more work for people. If you have non-confirmed user+PC reviewer+person reverting PC reviewer because they don't follow the citation guidelines, you're having three people do the work of one person. That's just idiotic. TonyBallioni (talk) 22:34, 14 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- I totally agree. I'm constantly protecting individual articles for that very reason, but so far I've only gone up to a 3-month protection. Deb (talk) 07:24, 15 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
This does seem like a reasonable solution, if that's what the DOY Wikiproject feels is needed. Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 08:27, 15 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think continual standard SP is needed, but SP that runs for the week before and after (where we get the vast avalanche of twaddle) would avoid most of the issues. Nosebagbear (talk) 12:09, 17 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- You probably haven't seen our always massive semi-protected edit request backlog. About 250 request are answered after 4 days (with about a backlog net change of +/−10 each day), and I think people still answer edit request wrong, and about 500 pending changes are accepted after 6 days, and about 20 of them are DOY, and yet the pending change backlog is fine. What major (dis)avantage does it have? {{reply to|Can I Log In}}'s talk page! 20:17, 17 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  - If you really want to know: it’s a nightmare from a technical angle. It will regularly make it so not even sysops can edit the page due to the way it stores potential edits. To edit in these circumstances you have to use twinkle to revert back to the last edit before it got stuck in pending changes, usually reverting several edits by established users actually improving the article in the process.
    It permanently stores the revision in the live history of the page, which on things like BLPs is an issue (DOY has this problem on recent deaths and birth years.) This may require either revdel or suppression.
    From a non-technical standpoint we give out PCR like candy (my standard for granting is if the person has a pulse), which means that ordinarily the people most active in reviewing are the least familiar with Wikipedia policies and guidelines since it’s functionally the first user right anyone gets because admins don’t care about it since all it does is restore to individuals the ability to answer an edit request. It also is easier to use than semi-protection so instead of getting rid of junk edits you instead create work that ordinarily wouldn’t exist. Anyway, most admins use pending changes rarely because of the issues with it, but if there’s a place where most of the pages are already under PC, they can just be switched to semi-protection. If there’s enough disruption to merit pending changes there’s enough to merit semi. If people don’t think there’s enough to merit semi-protection then PC likely should just be removed since it’s more difficult to deal with than actual live edits. TonyBallioni (talk) 00:57, 19 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
No, the PendingChanges instructions should not be over-complicated by adding advice (not a guideline!) from a single group of editors about a small subset of articles. It might be good advice, but WikiProjects do not get to make up their own rules about what needs to be cited and what doesn't, and then impose their rules on the rest of the community. Unlike DOY's non-binding advice on what needs to be cited, the rule against WikiProjects setting rules for "their" content actually is one of our rules, written down in an actual guideline. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:12, 18 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
No - after reading this discussion, I think it's better if checking for a source were encouraged, but not required, for reviewers. I don't see checking for "a source" as being really helpful. It has to be a reliable source. Who cares if a sentence is unsourced or sourced to a blog? It's functionally the same. In fact, I think sourced to a blog is worse than unsourced, because it gives readers a false sense that the statement is properly sourced. So requiring reviewers to ensure there's a ref tag seems pointless, and requiring reviewers to verify there is an actual reliable source is too much. Hence, I think the best is to encourage, but not require, reviewers to verify sources, not just ensure that there is one. Levivich ^{[dubious – discuss]} 21:14, 18 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
No -- per the KISS principle. Anything much beyond phrases like "Jake from State Farm was born on June 19" is beyond the scope of pending changes in my book. -- Dolotta (talk) 19:00, 19 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
No – Not within the pending change reviewer's remit.-- P-K3 (talk) 23:29, 19 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion (DOY change to pending changes reviewer instructions)

Oh dear, this is my fault. I added that to the page as a newish user after realizing all the edits I accepted were getting reverted, and asking Deb if it would be a good idea to add. A few months on and I realize it's not as simple as that. Some thoughts:
- There's the issue of WP:LOCALCONSENSUS. The consensus that DOY pages require a citation was reached on the DOY wikiproject, not in a forum with a project-wide scope. I read ANI archives sometimes when I'm bored at work, and I believe I saw a case where someone requested a user be sanctioned for repeatedly adding unsourced entries to DOY pages, but the request was declined because WP:DOYCITE was only a local consensus. (Having trouble finding that case now though).
- That said, it's my understanding that the consensus to require a citation (as well as to PC protect the pages) arose in response to a large amount of incorrect entries. While the PC guidelines say It is not necessary for you to ensure compliance with the content policies on... verifiability... before accepting, they also say reviewers should take special consideration of the reason given for protection and attempt to uphold it. We can accept unsourced content, but in this case, should we? Lots of vandals like fiddling with dates, lots of people get their info from dodgy sources that might have the wrong date, and an incorrect date for anything involving a living or recently deceased person is a BLP violation and forbidden by the PC guidelines.
- There are a number of users who patrol DOY pages and revert unsourced entries or add sources if possible. So unsourced entries aren't going to stay there for long regardless, and removing the advice to PC reviewers just passes the work on to a handful of users from WP:DOY when it could have been dealt with right out of the gate.
- Softening the language might be an option. "Required" is probably too strong for something with only local consensus. Perhaps something along the lines of Note that the Days of the Year WikiProject reached a consensus in 2017 that all new entries to days of the year pages should have an inline citation.
These are just some half-formed thoughts, I don't feel strongly enough to weigh in on the actual RfC at the moment. Spicy (talk) 15:53, 13 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
While an optional part added to the "but good if you this etc" would certainly be more preferable, I'm a little concerned at the logical expansion from this. Local consensus (or even project consensus on things like MOS etc) requires quite a few things that could be handled by reviewers, but would start stacking up really heavily. Nosebagbear (talk) 15:58, 13 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I find the resistance a bit disheartening. Rejecting new entries to DOY without a citation (1) asks no extra effort from PCR, (2) is for the benefit of the encyclopedia and the readers, and (3) helps other editors who are working on the daunting task of making DOY articles verifiable. I accepted a number of pending changes on DOY without citations before I noticed the reverts; when I asked for an explanation and learned what the project was attempting to accomplish, I was happy to cooperate because it improves the encyclopedia. WP:NOTBURO, WP:IAR. Schazjmd (talk) 14:41, 18 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Schazjmd, Deb and Toddst1
Since you !voted yes, I want to know your opinion on this. For demonstration purposes, you must pretend everything is true and complies with Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines. For failure to do so, you will not be sued of your life-savings.
This is a DOY article for March 32, and this is a pending change. The page also has the {{DOY page notice}}. The thing about it is, it is true, not false; it doesn't have a direct reference, but if you check the article, it does have a reliable source, so that means it is verified and true. But you are a pending changes reviewer and the editnotice states the follwowing.
* Each addition now requires a direct citation from a reliable source on this page supporting it. Simply providing a wikilink is not sufficient and additions without direct sources will be removed.
The question is, What Would You Do? John Quiñones (talk) for {{reply to|Can I Log In}}'s talk page! 18:15, 18 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

This right here is hell. It's a lot of heated arguments. {{reply to|Can I Log In}}'s talk page! 18:36, 20 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

- Leaving aside the fact that there is no March 32nd, it's quite straightforward. If it's a new entry, I would undo the change with an appropriate edit summary to inform the editor what is wrong with it. Deb (talk) 18:21, 18 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  Again, I say this again, and I say again again becuase none of you get it. There is a "reliable source" in the article's subject, so there is no point in reverting the "pending change". {{reply to|Can I Log In}}'s talk page! 18:24, 18 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Same as Deb. If we weren't asking for inline citations for new entries, I would check that there's an article and that the specific information was cited to a reliable source, so in this example I would still reject the edit because YouTube is not a reliable source. Schazjmd (talk) 18:28, 18 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Schazjmd For demonstration purposes, you must pretend everything is true and complies with Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines. For failure to do so, you will not be sued of your life-savings.

So if it was a reliable source, or there was another reliable source, you would still accept it. {{reply to|Can I Log In}}'s talk page! 18:31, 18 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- John, a wikilink is not a reliable source. I would undo the edit to the DOY page with a note saying the entry needed a direct source. Some of us have gone through and cleaned up existing pages like May 11, but we have so much backlog in the other pages, most of the DOY participants are not cleaning up new additions that lack a source, just reverting them. Toddst1 (talk) 00:25, 19 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  AGAIN, WE GET IT. A wikilink is not a reliable source. Have you noticed that in the wikilink, it contains let's pretend that it'sa reliable source? That means it's a verified statement. Either you could 1) accept the pending game; or 2) copy the reference over. Reverting it is not an option; it's the equivalent of vandalism, removing sourced content. {{reply to|Can I Log In}}'s talk page! 02:29, 19 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  - - I fear that you DON'T get it. If it doesn't cite a source, it is not sourced content. If Napoleon's birth date was sourced in an article on the Duke of Wellington, you would still expect a citation in the Napoleon article, wouldn't you?Deb (talk) 11:31, 19 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
      - Deb is right. Maybe CILI could help clean those pages up instead of whatever s/he is trying to prove. Toddst1 (talk) 12:48, 19 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
No no no you don't get it. This is not a bureaucracy. If you do think so, then start fork of WIkipedia that is a bureaucracy. How many newcomers have you all bitten? A record ammount? It is possible that you have caused us to have less productive editors just by reverting on DOY articles. If there is a problem in a DOY article, then JUST FIX THE PROBLEM IF YOU CAN! * Doing a quick search for sources and adding a citation yourself.
Since apparently Deb wants to be a John Quiñones, fine, I'll do this What Would You Do? scenario. So no citation for Napoleon's birthdate in that article, but there is one in Duke of Wellington. We'll unlike you all who are always on a reverting rampage, I would FIX THE PROBLEM and copy the reference over to Napoleon's article. Problem solved. {{reply to|Can I Log In}}'s talk page! 16:29, 19 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Let me explain this to you in small, manageable steps. Step 1: You agree that, in the circumstances described, the article on Napoleon should have a citation and that it would not be enough to link to another article and expect the reader to go there to check that it is correct. Step 2: You agree that citations should be added to DOTY articles for all entries, i.e. fixing the problem. This is what we are already working on. Step 3: You agree that this is a time-consuming task. Step 4: Can you now see why we would remove any new entries without citations that appear in DOTY articles while we are working on this? Deb (talk) 17:12, 19 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Step 5: I agree that we should not revert unsourced content without checking for sources first. {{reply to|Can I Log In}}'s talk page! 17:24, 19 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Since you utterly fail to grasp WP:BURDEN I’m done with this thread. Toddst1 (talk) 01:06, 20 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Or I do. It is providing a citation on behalf of who ever added it. Also you need a comma after WP:BURDEN. If you went to school, that is house cause and effect sentence strucutres work. And you used one colon too many. {{reply to|Can I Log In}}'s talk page! 18:36, 20 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

With no recent activity perhaps it is time for someone to close this. The archive bot already got it once. PackMecEng (talk) 00:35, 12 July 2020 (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.

Stop InternetArchiveBot from linking books

I see no consensus that IA is a generally unacceptable site to link (might be some license violations but not as a pattern enough to take Precautionary Principle). I also see no consensus support for generally adding these links across the wiki, including multiple oppositions other than license that seem stronger than the laudable goal of assisting readers, especially when converting from some other existing link. Here we have a referrendum on the BAG approval, where there were dissenting voices and part of the eventual approval was based on it seeming noncontroversial. Although the question here is "should the bot stop", the real idea I see is that it is controversial and that there is no longer consensus that it should run (wider discussion superceding WP:BRFA). Therefore the bot should be stopped but its existing edits can stand and no prejudice against future manual additions or removals of IA links by uninvolved editors. DMacks (talk) 16:03, 15 July 2020 (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.

(Forgive me if I'm not doing this in exactly the right place; I'm a long-time editor who has somehow never waded into the Pump yet, to the best of my recollection.)

The InternetArchiveBot, perhaps best known for adding archive links for references, has in recent months been aggressively linking mentions of books to copies of those books stored at the Internet Archive. The Internet Archive is widely viewed within the publishing industry as a pirate site when it comes to under-copyright books, and they are currently facing a lawsuit from several of major book publishers over that fact. If we accept the publishers' claims over rights as at least potentially valid, this puts the bot in violation of WP:COPYVIOEL, which tells us "If there is reason to believe that a website has a copy of a work in violation of its copyright, do not link to it."

Additionally, the bot is linking not just in references, but in the body of text (such as this example, which goes against "Wikipedia articles may include links to web pages outside Wikipedia (external links), but they should not normally be placed in the body of an article." (WP:EL)

I recommend that InternetArchiveBot (talk · contribs) be halted and not allowed to run until it is changed to no longer link under-copyright works, or until such time that the ending of the current case deems it to not be a copyright-infringing site. Cyberpower678 (talk · contribs), who is operating the bot as a paid agent of the Internet Archive, should be requested to undo all the edits that have been inserting such links (which I expect can be done largely on an automated basis.) To the degree that it does link books beyond that, the bot should be restricted to doing so within ref tags or in the external links section.

(And to make any concerns about any conflicts that I have clear, yes, I am both a writer and a publisher. I am not currently involved directly in any lawsuit, but the lawsuit does include publishers who have published my works in the past or who have bought out such publishers and may still hold publishing rights, but not for anything that has generated royalties for me in a long time.) --Nat Gertler (talk) 14:52, 14 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

NatGertler, Please see Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/InternetArchiveBot 3 and subsequent linked discussion demonstrating consensus supporting this task. —CYBERPOWER (Chat) 15:16, 14 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Among the five people involved in that discussion (counting yourself, a paid agent of the IA), I see absolutely zero consideration to the concern raised about how this comports with our policies regarding copyright. Its approval was based on the claim that "this task is uncontroversial", but clearly it is controversial - if not before the lawsuit, then certainly now. --Nat Gertler (talk) 15:38, 14 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion of the legal minutiae can be reserved for Number One Court. This discussion related to how it affects the English Wikipedia. ——Serial^# 20:33, 16 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

Regarding the lawsuit.. it only concerns Controlled Digital Lending which is the lending of a complete book on a 1 to 1 basis. The ability to view limited pages, as being linked here, was settled by Google Books in Authors Guild, Inc. v. Google, Inc.. The publishers lost, and most likely they will loose their case against CDL, also. But it won't be known for many years and in the mean time the legality of CDL is well supported by many reliable legal scholars and institutions. -- GreenC 15:48, 14 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The pages it links to include the link for "This book can be borrowed for 14 days," so yes, it's taking people to a "Controlled Digital Lending" page, even if it's not directly downloading the book immediately. In the meanwhile, I am going to ping the other people who were involved in the approval discussion. (Jo-Jo Eumerus—TheSandDoctor—Galobtter—GreenC) --Nat Gertler (talk) 16:02, 14 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

There is an ongoing legal case about CDL, just as there was an ongoing case against Google, during which time we continued linking to Google Books. -- GreenC 16:26, 14 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Was there substantial discussion about doing so? (I'm honestly asking... although even if so, it's still a bit of a WP:OSE situation.) Should we be rewriting WP:COPYVIOEL so that we're only discouraged from linking to things that have already been proven in court to infringe and yet are still on the web anyway? --Nat Gertler (talk) 16:37, 14 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not aware of anyone arguing to remove Google Book links during the years Authors Guild, Inc. v. Google, Inc. was ongoing (2005-2015). And good thing we didn't or it would have been a huge loss to the community and our readers. Internet Archive is a registered public library operating according to a legal position created by legal scholars. No court or judge has determined CDL is illegal or requested it be taken down while the case is ongoing, Internet Archive owns the books it lends on a 1:1 basis (1 book owned = 1 book lent) just like any library. -- GreenC 16:59, 14 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the IA has lawyers making its case, and did so even when they took actions that they have since pedaled back from. The publishers also have lawyers who have put forth a legal position. We have never, to the best of my knowledge, waited for a court ruling of infringement before removing links to material that looks to be of legitimate concern. The IA does not work "just like any library", no; libraries are generally loaning the actual items that they purchased or licensed, and not reformatted digital editions that they made without permission of relevant rightsholders. You may think that the IA should emerge victorious in this case, but that is not a given. --Nat Gertler (talk) 17:13, 14 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

~~Internet Archive have not "peddled back" CDL .. your thinking of the National Emergency Library (NEL) closing early. NEL is not being challenged by the publishers.~~ IA owns and purchased the physical books in most cases. For the purpose of providing limited page views it is legal to scan books as determined in the Google case and verified by the Supreme Court. The only issue here is CDL and while we may not known the outcome, the question is what should Wikipedia do. Foremost, no judge or court has issued an injunction against Internet Archive despite there being an active case looking at it. Given the precedent of what we did with Google Books during Authors Guild, Inc. v. Google, Inc. we made the right decision [by default] by keeping the links in place, it would have been harmful to Wikipedia to actively remove 100s of thousands of book links only to re-add in the future with all the disruption and errors that would cause plus lack of links to RS helping with V for a lost decade. -- GreenC 18:26, 14 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

NEL is not being challenged by the publishers.??? From the lawsuit: "NATURE OF THE ACTION 1. Plaintiffs Hachette, HarperCollins, Penguin Random House, and Wiley (collectively, “Plaintiffs” or “Publishers”) bring this copyright infringement action against IA in connection with website operations it markets to the public as “Open Library” and/or “National Emergency Library.”" It would be inappropriate to leave the links in place only to have to remove them if and when IA loses this case, having facilitated piracy in the meantime. Links that have been added by bot can be readded by bot, should IA prevail. --Nat Gertler (talk) 18:37, 14 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I was misinformed, struck. It is bad faith to call it piracy the legal interpretation is still open, and it wouldn't be piracy after the fact unless they operated in defiance of the law. Linking to a snippit view is completely legal, you are conflating CDL with snippit view and arguing for total removal of links despite snippit view being legal. Also see the RFC it was decided by the community not "five people". -- GreenC 19:28, 14 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Fair 'nuff; I was citing the discussion you had pointed to earlier, not to this other discussion you now point to. However, I do not see in that discussion the voicing of the concerns I've raised. My calling it "piracy" was specifically in the context of "if and when IA loses this case", i.e., if IA has been judged to have infringed; it may not be the technical legal term, but it is an understood one. I an not conflating "snippit" view with CDL; I am noting that taking them to the snippit page also takes them to the page with a link to follow to download, as it is one and the same page. --Nat Gertler (talk) 19:53, 14 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

CDL requires signing up for an account, logging-in and the book is available on the shelf. This is why we were requested to include |url-access= in citations because of the entry barrier. There is no downloading, it's an in-browser flip-book of a scanned facsimile. -- GreenC 21:06, 14 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, for people who are already logged in, it has a link to take you to the book, and for people who are not already logged in, it has links through the process to get you to the book, encouraged by the statement that "This book can be borrowed for 14 days," --Nat Gertler (talk)

What may have precipitated the court case is that during the pandemic "Controlled Digital Lending" was switched to "Uncontrolled Digital Lending" – one printed copy could be lent out digitally to any number of people simultaneously. In the last few days the control has been restored. The removal of control was justified by IA on ethical grounds (people could not go into libraries to borrow books) and not legal grounds. Their legal ground seems to me very shaky or nonexistent and they can be held liable retrospectively. CDL is another matter.[4] Thincat (talk) 17:44, 14 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Leaving aside for the moment the legalities of this case, do we need online links to references in any case? If anyone is interested enough to look they can look for the cited text online or in a physical library as they please. I have seen many cases where links are provided to Google Books and the references have been removed because the particular page was not linked at the time that the remover looked, as if the reference was to the link rather than the book itself. Wikipedia should aspire to be more that just what is available on the Internet, and part of that is to educate readers that citations to academic books and papers are valid even if they are not freely available online at all times. Phil Bridger (talk) 17:34, 14 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

And if the goal is to allow verification of the existence of the book and such publishing particulars as publication date, author, publisher, etc., there is always the fine service of WorldCat. --Nat Gertler (talk) 17:53, 14 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

You are saying we should force people to use a physical public library by intentionally removing links to online digital books so that they learn a lesson not everything is available online? -- GreenC 18:37, 14 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Removing links to sources that are (currently) available online does not force people who have internet access to go to a physical library. It may force them to do some online research to find the available online copy of the book. BD2412 T 18:52, 14 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Please note that, according to the notice he gives way down the bottom of his user page, User:GreenC is also a paid agent of the Internet Archive. --Nat Gertler (talk) 19:01, 14 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

My name is also on every edit made by the bot. -- GreenC 19:28, 14 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, @GreenC:, your name is there. Given that this discussion is clearly leaning toward disapproval of the bot (particularly among editors not being paid by IA), you should probably pause the bot's activities until when and if a consensus is reach otherwise. --Nat Gertler (talk) 00:39, 15 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I have placed a notice at Wikipedia talk:Bots/Requests for approval#Approval of InternetArchiveBot 3 has been contested that the approval of the bot is being contested. Jc3s5h (talk) 19:09, 14 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

As long as right now the links are not considered illegal (by the unresolved), our act of linking to them is legal. (I suspect if Wikipedia was based in Europe, this would change greatly due to the newer copyright directive there). So now the question is more the morality of linking to something that may or may not be legal, and which has a possible effect on author some who are editors on WP. I would tend to argue that because we avoid links to sites like scribd, academia, researchgate, etc. all which have "questionable" uses of published materials, not yet proven out in any court, we probably should take the same stance here until at least we have a preliminary decision from the District Court. The current page one gets to via the magic linking of ISBN or similar numbers is fine for current purposes until we are satisfied Open Library is working within US law (and yes, assuming its legal which might disappoint authors as the Google cases had as well, we'd still want to use that resource). --Masem (t) 20:17, 14 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Agree with Masem, we already apply the precautionary principle in a number of areas. While the WMF is not going to be held liable in any manner, should a court case go in a certain direction, both editors (who enable the links to the material) and the readers (who follow the links and download the material) could be in for legal troubles. Only in death does duty end (talk) 20:32, 14 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Is VPP really the appropriate place to discuss editors' and readers' potential legal liability related to linking to copyrighted material hosted outside of WMF servers? If we have copyright-related legal questions, we should probably request assistance from WMF legal staff. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:24, 14 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, copyright issues fall under policy. For example, we can't linkj to known copyvios outside WP. That's not saying this is the case now, but it is a concern. --Masem (t) 01:36, 15 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I already refuse to place links to Google Books in citations because they are a commercial service and we should not give them preference over other providers of books such as Amazon. See the fever hospital DYK for a recent example. What this bot is doing seems to be link spam because it is promoting yet another rival book provider. And the fact that we have paid editors here lobbying for this is outrageous. This matter is certainly controversial. Andrew🐉(talk) 22:44, 14 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

~~Perhaps you want to wake up to the fact that IA is also using books that have been scanned by Google, so your refusal there is a bit selective. Eissink (talk) 01:20, 16 June 2020 (UTC).~~[reply]

What is selective about an editor saying that he will link to neither Google Books nor the Internet Archive? This is treating online sources even-handedly. Linking ISBNs, which links to Special:BookSources, was decided on many moons ago as a neutral way of providing people with the ability to check the content of cited books. If the copyright status is deemed acceptable then the Internet Archive can be included as one of the many sources there. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:20, 16 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I apologize, I see now that I have interpreted Andrew incorrect. I totally misread here, thinking that he would only link to IA. I'm sorry. Thanks, Eissink (talk) 22:15, 16 June 2020 (UTC).[reply]

I agree with Masem: while we haven't done anything wrong, we normally err on the side of caution (WP:ELNEVER), and should discontinue the bot linking until the situation is clear. I did raise the issue when the bot run was first approved (as did Masem). I wouldn't be prepared to say whether WMF would be held liable given recent developments in the United States, but this isn't our concern. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 01:11, 15 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Even if we err on the side of caution, there's nothing to err on here - the copyright issue that's being sued over directly relates to the National Emergency Library, not with the actual lending process itself, or the storing of the material digitally. It would make absolutely no sense to stop the bot from linking based on the fact there's a lawsuit pending that's not based on the storage of the material, but rather an action taken by the company during COVID which doesn't change the underlying copyright of the material, but rather would be a violation of the distribution right of the material by the company, which has no impact on us at all. SportingFlyer T·C 01:35, 15 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

That's simply not true. The lawsuit covers the entire "Open Library" project, including the creation and storing of the digital editions ("2. Defendant IA is engaged in willful mass copyright infringement. Without any license or any payment to authors or publishers, IA scans print books, uploads these illegally scanned books to its servers, and distributes verbatim digital copies of the books in whole via public-facing websites. ") --Nat Gertler (talk) 01:46, 15 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

IANAL but am a person with interest in how law and the Internet interest, and did read through the suit. Keeping in mind Authors Guild v Google , "uploading scans of books to their servers" is considered a possible fair use (though I beleive this suit is outside the Second Circuit so its not clear if that ruling might apply or not), but the complication is the argument that because they have physical copies of those books, they have the right to share a DRM-tied electronic copy of those scans in a lending manner. Part of he suit does content that if you use the web-based interface for your loan, you can then make screencaps of the webbrowser and effectively make a copy of the book that way. The lawsuit documentation is set up to make assertions they believe are truthful (in what OL is doing wrong) but the judge make strike some of those statements. So just because the suit claims it is illegal doesn't mean it is illegal, yet. --Masem (t) 02:33, 15 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It's a Second Circuit case, the new one. I'm satisfied the Google case holds until otherwise shown fair use doesn't apply. (As a tangent, if I go to the library and check a book out, I can photocopy or scan the physical copy. And if I scan a physical copy of a book, someone has purchased it at some point in time.) SportingFlyer T·C 03:54, 15 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Well, keep in mind: with the Google Books, part of the fair use determine was the display of snippet view as a key feature; further in the secondary case that followed with HathiTrust, it was also adding cases of making the whole OCR'd text available to people with disabilities (accessibility) , and for giving copies to academic faculty within the libraries systems that lost their old work but could prove they owned it at one point. The test of whether first sale doctrine applied to fair use is the big question here. --Masem (t) 04:03, 15 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

If SportingFlyer scans an entire library book then that's an elementary breach of copyright as the entire point of copyright is stop wholesale copying of this kind. Google got away with it because they are using the copies to provide an indexing and search service and the settlement decided that this was fair use. Google does not provide the complete text of the books, if they are in copyright, otherwise no-one would ever need to buy a book again. Andrew🐉(talk) 22:56, 16 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The bot should continue linking. All of the concerns raised here appear to be speculative. We shouldn't link to known copyvio, but that's not the case here. I do not work for Internet Archive. Levivich ^{[dubious – discuss]} 01:41, 15 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
An important thing to consider is that it's not so much about protecting ourselves (or protecting the writers and publishers) as protecting our downstream users. We can basically defend quite well against any lawsuit that might arise -- we're rich. Our downstream users aren't, and its for that reason that they're possible targets for any unpleasantness.

We basically pledge "You may use our material in your own work, with confidence that you won't be called out for violating anyone's copyrights -- most of the material is either public domain or under a free license, and that that isn't conforms to accepted allowance under fair use; at least, we aim for this and expend much effort on ensuring that it's true". So I mean if there's a question, if there's active litigation... I don't see how we can make that promise and stand behind it, if we include this material. In theory at least we could be endangering our trusting downstream users. Definitely want to be conservative on that account. Herostratus (talk) 01:58, 15 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

That's why I want to stress that right now the choice if we keep linking should be a moral/ethical one - we know authors don't like that site and some are editors on here, and they've asked us to stop, nicely (no legal threat here). Should we stop? That's the consideration here. --Masem (t) 02:36, 15 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, absolutely. The moral/ethical angle is paramount in any decision, in Wikipedia no less than real life.

So... about the authors (and publishers). I mean, I'm not a huge copyright fan, but... sending an e-mail (or text) is so different, so easier, than writing and addressing and stamping and sending a physical letter that they are different things. If you're talking to a colleague and she says "I'll send you Finster's phone number as soon as I get to the office", wouldn't you be surprised to get it in the mail three days later? They're different; they just are, is all.

Similarly, is not possible that going to a website and clicking a button to download a copy of a book is a lot easier than requesting an inter-library loan (for most books), and waiting for the book to be available and shipped to your library, and slogging down to the library, and reading it there or checking it out (and slogging back to return it later)? So much easier that maybe -- maybe -- they are different things? We know that libraries lending physical books is not something that disrupts the author-publisher-bookseller ecosystem to to the degree where that system can't handle it. Can we be certain that an online version of the library paradigm won't?

If the complaints and lawsuits are frivolous, or maliciously self-serving, that's one thing. Are they? Or are authors and publishers feeling real pain, or have reasonable cause to see a realistic prospect of feeling real pain down the road if we continue down this path? They seem to be saying they are. To prove they're wrong you'd have to see the future. Can you? I can't, and I don't want us to be a party to this until we are a lot more sure that we're on the right side here. Herostratus (talk) 09:59, 15 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Short version: No they are not frivolous, but they are by no means completely valid either. The argument they are a library had some weight when they were lending books out one at a time. Likewise the argument that as brick and mortar libraries are closed, they need to suspend the one-at-a-time process is a decent excuse as far as it goes. Whats going to be telling is what happens once libraries are open again. Will they go back to one-at-a-time? Will they wait for the court cases to be over? They have used the covid situation to justify their current practices, but the key point of that is they are using the current situation to justify a practice that they know wouldnt fly in ordinary circumstances. Otherwise they would have done it that way all along. This is very much a fishing expedition on their part, and publishers and authors *have* to fight it, lest they be accused of approving of it by not contesting it. Only in death does duty end (talk) 10:16, 15 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Extremely Strong oppose As someone who actually knows a lot about copyright and specializes in keeping Wikipedia free of copyrighted text, the Internet Archive; ESPICALLY the books and websites they host, is essential to keeping the copyrights of poorer, less known people safe. The offsite campaign to slander them is Clout chasing nonsense under the guise of "making sure writers/publishers get their money" and should be completely ignored- although I do not fault people for being tricked into supporting this terrible campaign. Moneytrees🌴^{Talk🌲Help out at CCI!} 02:59, 15 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Got it - let's just ignore writers, publishers, and their concerns about their rights being violated. They (or in my case, we) can't possibly know what they're talking about or what they're going through here; let's just ignore Wikipedia guidelines to stick it to 'em. <sigh> --Nat Gertler (talk) 05:55, 16 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I have raised concerns about the mass removal of Google Books links in favor of Internet Archive in February, initially only because Google Books is so much easier to navigate (just scroll). And in the case that brought it to my attention, the book linked to on IA was a copy (a ripoff?) of the book scanned by Google! (Compare this book on Google to this book on IA.) It's a shame that If it ain't broke, don't fix it isn't official policy, because that could stop such nonsens immediately. Nevertheless, I decided to ask what was going on, but to my utter horror, I engaged a terrible attitude of the – paid – bot operator. I have summarized things, short, on Wikipedia_talk:Google_Books_and_Wikipedia#Unbalanced_opinion_and_faulty_arguments, where you'll find more complaints. You will also find my remarks on an IA bot on Wikimedia Commons, performing very questionable edits. And if you think this is all: it isn't. I just saw on the Dutch Wikipedia the discussion on an also very questionable IA bot that replaces working links by the dozens and tagging them as dead while replacing them for an IA link – that bot has been stopped earlier today. For those of you that think WMF might play a roll in resolving possible legal issues surrounding the linking the IA: I don't want to not AGF, but I cannot find any reason for the massive paid edits by IA bots other than that some institution is paying IA for their services, because I think they would otherwise use their resources on different things than on saving Flickr pages, the images of which have already been downloaded to Commons (and of course have the license checked already) – could it be that there is some sort of contract between WMF and IA? If so, it might be in good faith, but things seem to get rather messy at the moment. Greeting, Eissink (talk) 02:07, 16 June 2020 (UTC).[reply]
Very Strong oppose per Moneytrees. Signed,The4lines |||| ^{(You Asked?) (What I have Done.)} 02:32, 16 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
comment - it's difficult to know everything about copyright - but I don't see how this effects Wikipedia at all. I can't see how we would need to do anything until a verdict was reached. It does seem like the case of "I support this lawsuit (and it potentially effects me off wiki if I'm reading right), so Wikipedia should also support this." Let me know if I'm way off the mark here. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 07:18, 16 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Specifically: Wikipedia has a policy (WP:COPYLINK) which prohibits linking to material which is being made available in violation of copyright. The situation with the current 'library/not a library' court case is that publishers and authors are asserting the archive is hosting (and sharing freely) their books digitally in violation of copyright. The argument above is that some editors think as a precaution we shouldnt link to material that is currently being disputed in court until its settled, and other editors think we dont need to worry and should. There is also the added issue that in any situation involving copyright, there is a third group (often the more extreme end of the 'Free knowledge' activists) who think even if it does violate copyright we should do it anyway. Only in death does duty end (talk) 07:40, 16 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Do we actually have a policy on if we should change our policies due to something being in litigation? Surely we shouldn't touch it until a result is levied? Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 08:10, 16 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

WP:COPYLINK is our policy on it (WP:ELNEVER is also a relevant guideline). As to the wider question of 'should we do something when its status is in doubt'. No we dont have a firm policy on it. Many adhere to the Precautionary principle. Many do not. Some people like myself adhere to the precautionary principle dependant on the risk and the liability. Here the risk is if a court case goes in a particular way, and we have been deliberately linking to illegally copyrighted materials, we could be held responsible for Contributory copyright infringement - this is mentioned in ELNEVER. The key part of this though, and personally why I favour the precautionary principle, is that the WMF is protected against legal liability in almost every situation under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Individual editors are not. And in fact the WMF is required, and has done in the past, provide details of its users/editors in order that they can be held liable in a court. If it was a case of 'oh we can do it until the court case is settled' and it would be the WMF who would be sued, then I would say fuck it, they have enough money to hire expensive lawyers. As it stands, I am not willing to potentially throw another editor under the bus because of a third party website's ambiguous legal nature. Only in death does duty end (talk) 08:22, 16 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Only in death: (edit conflict) Even assuming the maximum, that both CDL and NEL are found illegal after final appeal, it's incredibly unlikely that they'd go after an individual Wikipedia editor who added links to IA in good faith. This would be a PR nightmare. There is no way that will happen. Large corps like JSTOR show deference to Wikipedia and its editors for their volunteer work... there's just no way that they'd sue any one of us for actions taken before the resolution of the suit. Psiĥedelisto (talk • contribs) ^{please always ping!} 08:33, 16 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

See my below comment. I agree they would be unlikely to go after individual random editors, however they may decide to go after individuals who have been paid. RE JSTOR - you are barking up the wrong tree with that one if you dont think they will seek legal redress if you start sharing their materials illegally. Only in death does duty end (talk) 08:42, 16 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I am indeed familiar with the tragedy of Aaron Schwartz. All I meant to imply is that JSTOR allows our editors to access its materials for free with proper verification. So, given the public relations challenge of lodging cases against volunteers for linking to works they own before it was unquestionably illegal, other publishers are very likely to show amnesty in the same way. Psiĥedelisto (talk • contribs) ^{please always ping!} 08:51, 16 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Although to be fair, even in a worst case scenario, the editors pursued would be paid editors of the archive in question who is alleged to be violating copyright. So I wont massively lose any sleep over it. Only in death does duty end (talk) 08:30, 16 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Our policy on linking to copyrighted works says "However, if you know or reasonably suspect that an external Web site is carrying a work in violation of the creator's copyright, do not link to that copy of the work." (Emphasis mine.) That's the realm we're in, reasonable suspicion... and that's the realm we're almost always removing such links in. We are not waiting for some legal proof of it; if we see a link to a scan of a book that isn't on the author's or publisher's website, that's reasonably suspect. (Indeed, if we waited until the results of court cases, we'd rarely have to, since the infringing copy should be removed as a result of the ruling.) That's the realm that we are in here, very reasonable suspicion - not only is IA not the authors' or publishers' website, but the publishers of a large portion of the books on the site are saying via their lawsuit that this is an infringment, a stance that many authors have echoed. So we don't even need to reach conclusions over any concern regarding whether editors can be sued; we have the basic question of "are these links within policy?"--Nat Gertler (talk) 12:33, 16 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose Is this really within the scope of the community's self-regulatory power, to decide a legal question like this, on how likely this lawsuit is to affect the WMF? Certainly if the WMF thought that this bot, and links to IA books, was a danger to the project, they would invoke their authority and block the bot and inform ArbCom of their decision? I suppose that as the community conceded to the bot, the community can withdraw its consent, but I don't know that it's helpful to try to get that withdrawal by appealing to the WMF, who seems content to allow the situation to continue. Have you tried requesting their intervention? Until then, I find the bot's edits useful, and think it likely that the IA will not face legal consequence from CDL. Psiĥedelisto (talk • contribs) ^{please always ping!} 08:20, 16 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per all the above. Our linking is not violating copyright nor policy, so it would put an unnecessary burden on the reader for no net gain for Wikipedia or the readers. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 17:53, 16 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per Dennis Brown above, who put it succinctly. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:44, 16 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Do I understand correctly, that this bot basically forces all our articles to replace Google books' links? If that's the case, shut it off until there is an affirmative consensus (widely adverted) that Wikipedia is to be mechanically and universally replacing the links that the article authors (contributors) have provided. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 21:32, 16 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Shut it off. I have commented above, but not "voted" yet. Now I am. I'm not impressed by the "oppose" arguments which mostly seem to come down to variations of "we won't be hurt by doing this, and who cares about anybody else?" or else self-serving analysis that leads to "naw, nobody's hurt if we do this." I don't believe it, and arguments like that me less, rather than more, inclined to wish to join with the people making them. Herostratus (talk) 00:12, 17 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Pinging a WMF legal member - @Jrogers (WMF): - just an FYI about this discussion on whether linking to a potentially problematic copyright issue is of note here and if Legal has any opinion, or is happy to leave it to the Community to decide (at least as things stand). Nosebagbear (talk) 12:19, 17 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I should have raised earlier that is that these pages that this paid-for-by-IA-bot is linking to are sales pages. IA bought out a major used book source last year, and these pages that they are linking to include a purchase link on them. To some degree, the bot is turning Wikipedia into a sales catalog for their bookstore. --Nat Gertler (talk) 15:39, 17 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- If true, this is worrisome, as is the conduct of IA bot operators and the edits of their bots on different projects as I have said earlier (see above). Eissink (talk) 19:57, 17 June 2020 (UTC).[reply]
  - You don't have to trust me on this. Here's an edit by the bot. Click on the link it added, and see the Purchase button right next to Log In And Borrow button. --Nat Gertler (talk) 20:07, 17 June 2020 (UTC) Oh, and when looking for a reference for IA's purchase of Better World Books, it got worse. To quote the Library Journal on the purchase, IA founder and digital librarian Brewster Kahle told LJ’s Lisa Peet that the acquisition—and its pipeline of titles for digitization—would also facilitate broader ongoing efforts at IA to link internet content with relevant, reliable source material. “What we’re trying to do is weave books into the Internet itself, starting with Wikipedia,” Kahle said. [...] "We now have over 120,000 Wikipedia citations pointing to over 40,000 books, but we want to get to millions of links going to millions of books. The way we’re going to get there is by working really closely with Better World Books.” That's pretty blatant. --Nat Gertler (talk) 20:14, 17 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    - [I hadn't seen the latter part of the above comment when giving this answer:]] Gee, a link to Better World Books... A few years ago, BWB was a very good place to find a quality book for a bargain or even less, but recently it has changed completely, it's one of the more expensive booksellers and I guess now I know why: "On November 6, 2019, Better World Books was acquired by Better World Libraries, a mission-aligned, not-for-profit organization that is affiliated with longtime partner, the Internet Archive.". Not-for-profit, yeah, right. Eissink (talk) 20:23, 17 June 2020 (UTC).[reply]
While the discussion is split, there looks to me to be enough objection that we cannot say that the Bot has consensus to continue making such edits. Shall we turn the bot off from making further edits until consensus is achieved? We can discuss whether to undo the existing edits separately. --Nat Gertler (talk) 15:54, 18 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
That isn't how consensus works. If there isn't a consensus, then the status quo is maintained. This is true for all consensus based discussion here, and literally every consensus based community on the planet. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 17:50, 18 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, and the "status quo" is the existing edit. Every new edit this bot makes is a change, not status quo. Reverting the exist edits would be against status quo, thought it's something that should be done. --Nat Gertler (talk) 18:04, 18 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Does this need to be escalated to the WMF? I think there needs to be a set of allegations that are investigated and found to be either true or not. What my reading of the situation is, is that (a) that the IA has unilaterally ignored copyright, (b) they have commissioned a bot to replace the current Google Books links, and (c) their links have purchasing options on them. If true this is worrying and the bot should be halted whilst this is investigated further. - Master Of Ninja (talk) 16:45, 18 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per Levivich, Moneytrees, etc. The WMF has a legal team to investigate any potential legal liability, we shouldn't make decisions based on speculative amateur lawyering. The Internet Archive is a legal entity in the same country - the same city even! - as Wikipedia's (for legal purposes) governing organization, so they are governed by the same rules. As long as they are legally open for business, there is no issue here that demands action, much less a profoundly silly one which would make the work we do that much harder. Gamaliel (talk) 16:27, 19 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per most of the above, as far as IA goes, as the copyright debates are a problem for WMF Legal and until or unless they rule, it's a matter of WP policy if this is a legitimate site to which we link, and it is. "Linking to copyrighted materials" is a red herring argument, that occurs every time we link to a newspaper or any other work under copyright that can be read online. GreenC's note that the same issue occurred with Google is well-taken. We can't make the legal decision on that stuff, it's the courts' job to do so. At most, it's WMF's problem, not ours. In general, having bots that can update links to IA, Google Books, Hathi Trust or any of the other services that scan and make books available is very helpful and assists the eternal battle against linkrot. I was appalled to see one editor above say do we need online links to references? The answer, my friend is HELL YES! In general, the issue of linking is critical. "Just look it up" is a time sink, particularly for historic topics. Even if the link is to only an abstract of a journal or a snippet view of a book one has to buy to read in full, LINKS ARE CRITICAL. If you've ever worked on a major featured article with hundreds of sources, (the biggest I ever stuck a toe into was Richard Nixon), it is very difficult to find some types of works, you can't just "google it." Having a link to what might be online is extremely helpful, particularly where there are multiple possible locations. Montanabw^(talk) 20:44, 19 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I have some sympathies with Nat Gertler here. I don't think that the national emergency library is defensible and in effect did amount to mass copyright infringement, but that is over now so it is a moot point. Controlled digital lending is a different issue which I can see arguments for and against, and it is up to the courts to decide their legality. I think linking to old but still technically in copyright books from the early to mid 20th century are fine, but I can see why Nat has issues with linking to more contemporary works where real revenue for authors is at stake. Hemiauchenia (talk) 21:36, 19 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support per the precautionary principle and the principle of least harm; I also have concerns about the effect of this on authors and small/independent booksellers.— Preceding unsigned comment added by CactusJack (talk • contribs) 22:21, 19 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per Levivich and others. We aren't linking to (c) violations; we shouldn't act on unresolved legal challenges (not to mention weak ones); and as Denis notes it would put an extra burden on readers for no net gain. – SJ + 02:10, 20 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support halting linking to copyrighted works. WP:COPYVIOEL is very clear, I haven't seen a good argument for why it should be waived for IA. The quote about IA using Wikipedia to drive traffic to Better World Books is concerning. -M.Nelson (talk) 20:07, 22 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I'd like to stress that the decision we should be making here should not be based whether or not OL is a copyright violation or not, but ethical/moral aspect of linking to a site that we do know that many authors (some as editors on WP) believe harms their livelihood. I fully agree that until the suit is resolved, we should presume there are no legal copyright issues but that does not prevent us from asking if we should do the right thing from an ethics standpoint until the case affirms (if it does) that OL is in the clear. --Masem (t) 20:30, 22 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- Why should we presume there are no legal copyright issues? That seems an aggressive assumption, and not one needed under our policies, which call for us not to link if we reasonably suspect a violation. If a publisher came on Wikipedia and requested that we remove a link because it is to an unauthorized copy of their material, we'd take that as a reason to be at least reasonably suspicious of the site we linked to. With the publishers suing IA, reasonable suspicion seems a fair description of the status. (And even if that were not an issue, we have the understanding now that this bot is intended to integrate Wikipedia with BetterWorldBooks. Would we at all accept if Amazon hired someone to write a bot linking our articles to their sales pages?) --Nat Gertler (talk) 22:29, 22 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  - In part to avoid this request sounding like a "legal threat" by asserting that the Open Library is "violating copyright" when nothing yet proves they do (as reason why most editors are opposing). --Masem (t) 00:27, 25 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    - That would seem to be reason not to presume there are legal issues, rather than to presume that there are not. Indeed, it would seem foolish to presume that there are not copyright issues when they are being sued in that very regard. And our standards are built around that uncertainty, which is why we avoid links if we reasonably suspect issues, rather than requiring presumption in one direction or another. --Nat Gertler (talk) 19:24, 29 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- Wikipedia's mission harms *many* people's livelihoods. For example, stage magicians are often very angry that Wikipedia has made well-sourced information on classic tricks easy to find. ApLundell (talk) 23:34, 24 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  - Indeed, we don't make other content decisions based on claims that they would harm or benefit certain businesses financially. What's more, the harm that removing all these links would cause to Wikipedia and its readers is very concrete and direct, whereas the financial benefit that the proposer and his industry would derive is indirect and unproven. Regards, HaeB (talk) 08:55, 28 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Support per precautionary principle, I think there is a decent chance that IA is violating authors' copyright and we shouldn't be promoting their links. In order to be maximally verifiable links should usually go through the page numbers and link directly to the relevant material (|p=[url #]) Even without the copyright issues, the IA links block potentially useful links to Wikipedia articles about notable books. When I examined the case of The Business of Genocide, most of the backlinks were blocked by IA links, reducing the amount of in-wiki linking that could be done. b uidhe 03:31, 28 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support I am finding loads of instances where IAbot has changed what was previously a Google Books url and the replacement is less accessible that the original, While Google Books isn't great and has its own issues re: data harvesting etc, I'd rather be in control of what I link to and certainly do not want to see my watchlist lit up yet again if ever we have to revert this stuff. Indeed, would it be easily reversible by a(nother) bot? IA seems to be a commercial operation to me, so while it operates on a different model to Google, it isn't "better" unless the content it links to is actually free to read. - Sitush (talk) 05:11, 10 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support stopping, and reverting previous additions by the bot.
We should not bot-add external links like this to citations, and certainly not allow an external entity to conduct paid bot editing to privilege their service over other services. Whether or where to link a citation should be a call for the editors actually working on an article, and it should be subject to human judgement. IA also has a very dubious record on copyright (they practice the juvenile "nah nah nah I didn't hear that" stance: if they don't make any effort to discover copyvio, then copyvio doesn't exist; even before this "emergency library" nonsense) that is actively incompatible with Wikipedia's copyright policies (think ELNEVER and NFCC: linking as contributory copyright infringement may be a questionable doctrine in a purely legal sense, but in a moral and ethical sense it is disingenuous to claim we have such strict policies and then just link to a site that doesn't follow similar policies). And IAs bibliographic metadata is utter crap with zero interest in improving it (which problem I tried to raise with Cyberpower in the interest of discussing ways to improve their metadata, with literally no response, so this "relationship" is very obviously a one-way relationship: we promote their service and in return we get to promote their service).
Also note that Cyberpower is not actually participating in this discussion. That does not suggest a great interest in addressing concerns, which is pretty, ahem, concerning for someone proposing to essentially add links to a website that paid them to do so to all 5+ million articles on the project. One can agree or disagree on levels of risk or what are acceptable tradeoffs, but no one can credibly claim that the concerns raised are not valid ones that should at the very least be addressed in some fashion. --Xover (talk) 08:26, 10 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Xover, I just want to let you know that I am actively watching and will implement any changes to the bot provided there is community consensus to do so. —CYBERPOWER (Chat) 18:01, 10 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Cyberpower678: But you have no input or comments on the copyright issues raised by the thread starter, or the other concerns raised in this thread? --Xover (talk) 18:23, 10 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support stopping, and, per Xover, support reverting edits to date. I couldn't get worked up over the copyright issue when this RFC was first posted, but I am certainly very uncomfortable with this being done as a paid service by an outside agency. I believe I have seen this bot overwrite links to other repositories such as gbooks which really isn't on. I also think that if page editors have chosen to provide links to online copies only through the ISBN link, then that should be respected. Also, I don't much care for the clutter this is causing both in edit views and watchlists. SpinningSpark 21:13, 12 July 2020 (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.

Past images in articles

I would like to discuss what the policy is, or should be, on images that were once used in articles but no longer are. To my mind, such images should be retained, either here or on Commons, because they form part of the history of the page. Deleting old images breaks old versions of the page. It also removes some of the attribution, which becomes a licensing and legal problem for any reusers of old versions of the page relying on hyperlinks for attribution. In my view, we should also retain images used as part of talk page discussions. Sometimes, the discussion makes no sense without the image.

Some background; I deprodded around one thousand images back in May that had been mass proposed for deletion on the grounds that they were not used in any article (although the vast majority of them had once been so used) and the "poor quality" made them unsuitable for Commons. These deprods went largely unchallenged, but there is still a steady stream of simmilar cases turning up in CAT:PROD and the deprod sometimes gets challenged at Files for discussion, the latest case being Wikipedia:Files for discussion/2020 June 21#File:Null-balance voltmeter.png. SpinningSpark 10:37, 21 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I dunno, how important is it for images to display in old versions of the page? In practice it may also be difficult to know about a file's past usage. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 11:42, 21 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The importance of old images is exactly the same as importance of old text for precisely the same reasons (which are in my opening statement). If you think this is unimportant you need a better rationale than "dunno". As for "difficult to know", on the contrary, in the vast majority of cases it is very easy to find out. One has only to check the edit history of the uploader; the image is often used in an article in the very next edit. Not checking this is just pure laziness on the part of the nominator. SpinningSpark 13:08, 21 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure I understand why old images need to be deleted. If the image was good enough for an article at some point, then it should be moved across to Commons. If the quality is seen as poor, then tag it somehow as "needing a better version". If the image is re-used and somebody is motivated by the poor quality, then a new version will happen. — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 12:39, 21 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I'm assuming this is about fair-use images? One of the fair use conditions is for images to be used on pages. We can't be an image gallery for copyrighted materials. If items are free, they should be moved across to commons anyway, so I'm not sure what the policy change here is being proposed? Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 13:18, 21 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

No, this is not about fair use. The images being discussed here were all nominated for quality reasons. They were all uploaded with a free license, usually self-created. SpinningSpark 13:38, 21 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Depends on WHY the old image was removed. If it was simply because editors thought that a new image was better, then we have no problem with maintaining the old image somewhere (such as commons). However, if the old image was removed for cause (such as violating copyright), then we MUST purge it completely. Case by case situation. Blueboar (talk) 13:30, 21 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed, of course, we should not keep copyrighted images. You say "we" have no problem keeping but the ~~NFF~~ FFD page is absolutely causing such a problem. Its reasons for nominating include orphaned, obsolete, low quality, and unencyclopedic, all without any reference to policy or guidelines. All of these can include files that appear in article histories. And on the last criterion, I have created files in the past to clarify a talk page discussion. These are clearly unusable in an article but are open to deletion (some have been) under these criteria. SpinningSpark 13:47, 21 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I believe that how we handle files is outside the rest of all parts of the other contributions to the history of a article page, and thus retention of older, unused files is not necessary, though we retain the file: space history aspects related to that file that relate to who had uploaded the file and the source/other details. All of our disclaimers to users, and our upload notifications all suggests that the hosting of images (and other AV file types) is wholly separate contributions from mainspace contributions, and while you are still agreeing to make your contribution to the project, it is not being tracked as part of the contribution of the article it will belong to. When looking at contributions to an article, it is not the image that we look at as the contribution, but the text/code that puts the image in place as the contribution, since that image can change independently after that text is added to the article (by a file update). A reuser of an article that is taking images would be required (if they are following the letter) to point to the histories of both the article and all used images to track contributions. So no, I don't think we're required to keep old images. That said, obviously we delete unused NFC, but I see no reason why we need to delete unused free images unless its clear they are completely unusable or otherwise clearly violate other policies (eg: graphic nudity beyond what's necessary for articles on human anatomy). Poor but not unusable is not a good reason to delete a free image --Masem (t) 13:57, 21 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- The argument is not that old images are needed for attribution, it is that old images allow inspection of previous versions of an article, including meaningful diffs. We don't purge revisions with unused text on the basis of "orphan" or "unnecessary". That's because it can be useful to view old revisions, for example, if wondering why a certain section is the way it is—has an edit from long ago accidentally damaged or omitted an important point? Johnuniq (talk) 04:00, 22 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  - But we do have to reconcile that we are required to delete unused non-free images from a copyright and WMF standpoint. When the unusued image is free (for the stuff that can't go to Commons) I fully agree, lets keep it to help with previous revisions of articles, but my point is that if the old image was a proper non-free but since replaced, the file: page should be present that a user checking an old revision can see from the source on the file: page to get an idea of what it is (and even if that's not the case, the description should be sufficient to get an idea, this is why we have this information). We need to delete the "pixels" from the File: page and while we need to "delete" the non-free file page to remove that from being included in scope in article scope, we shouldn't purge the deleted text revisions on the file: for this reason. --Masem (t) 15:53, 22 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Images not currently in use that are of lower quality than others that do not have any other (offsetting) added educational value are not in scope for commons. A recent dicussion on commons concluded that "image was formerly in use in a wikipedia article" was not a reasonable basis for keeping an image tagged for deletion. One of the reasons mentioned there is an important one unrelated to images directly...we routinely make widescale changes that make previous revisions of a page no longer "as they were at the time" when viewed in article-history. A simple example is a change to a template that makes some formerly-used field no longer visible (same effect as if an image in use at the time were deleted). Images solely for discussion of wikipedia issues and brainstorming (no encyclopediac or educational content) obviously aren't in scope for commmons...they should be tagged {{Keep local}} with some rationale so others will be less likely to mis-handle them. DMacks (talk) 14:13, 21 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I also note that WP:CSD F1 and F8 have existed for a looooong time. Some deletion...speedy, not even discussed, of some free images that were once in use, making the old revisions of articles that once had them no-longer-render-as-they-did, is currently a policy. DMacks (talk) 02:36, 22 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@DMacks: F1 and F8 apply to duplicated images, the former on Wikipedia, the latter on Commons, and what "unused" means is here is open to interpretation. Virtually none of the thousand files I deprodded was a duplicate — that's why they weren't speedied. Of files that are duplicated on Commons, the vast majority are moved there with the same name as Wikipedia. There is thus only a speedy problem with a tiny minority of a tiny minority of files, and in any case, they are probably an oversight of the original policy draft. The original proposal for F8 is here. This was clearly controversial as the proposal had failed multiple times previously. Part of the agreed compromise says "If the image is available on Commons under a different name than locally, it must not be used on any local page whatsoever." In other words, don't delete the local copy if our article uses a different name from Commons. I also note that the original version of F8 – then I9 says "bit-for-bit identical", in line with the original version of F1. It got changed in this edit as a result of this discussion with poor participation. I don't think any of this shows consensus for these deletions. In fact it shows that we have got where we are largely through undiscussed scope creep. SpinningSpark 14:00, 22 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
It's a policy that supports deletion of currently-unused files in a way that breaks layout of old revisions of an article. DMacks (talk) 15:15, 22 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
We strongly discourage (if even recommend against) image placement layout on articles ("pixel perfect placement") over placing images at relevant text in the document with minimal hints guiding sizing and location. That deletion of images causes these "layouts" to be broken that are not supported by policy is not something we should be worried about. --Masem (t) 15:26, 22 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
That is entirely not the issue in hand. SpinningSpark 15:40, 22 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps "layout" was an imprecise term on my part. Better would be "display" or "content" (whether the image is present at all) let alone the pixel positioning of objects. DMacks (talk) 15:59, 22 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Deleting old images because anyone can prod is ridiculous. It makes looking at old article revisions very hard; it does not save space; it does not save anything; it's a waste of time. Sure, put some energy into deleting old dick pics and similar because discouraging people from using Wikipedia for non-encyclopedic self gratification is useful. However, File:Null-balance voltmeter.png is part of the history of an encyclopedic article. If that should be deleted, why not permanently delete old revisions of text that are no longer used? Johnuniq (talk) 00:10, 22 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Response from FFD nominator: User:Spinningspark says they deprodded a thousand images in May. I believe that I have nominated two of those and File:Null-balance voltmeter.png from June at Wikipedia:Files for discussion. I believe that it might be useful for other editors to see more than this one cherry-picked example of what they think is valuable to keep. I notice that while at least two people from this discussion have !voted on the image mentioned above, nobody appears to have found reason to !vote on File:Roodog2k-roo1.jpg that is also being discussed currently.
Wikipedia:Files for discussion/heading was created more than 10 years ago (and I believe that something similar was in use before that, but ten+ years is a lot around here) and listed "Obsolete, Orphan, Unencyclopedic, and Low quality" as four of the five common reasons for nomination, which are still the first four in the header today. At some point in the last few years, images were added to the Proposed Deletion process (at a time when I was less active). There are a few of us who look through the orphaned images from fifteen years ago and try to process them; If they have reasonable source and license and a chance at reuse, we move them to commons; Occasionally, we find one that we can reuse in an article immediately; A lot of them are things that may or may not have ever been used in an article and we make a decision on whether or not we think it will be reused.
We could leave it behind and hope that when someday someone decides to create Null-balnce voltmeter, they will look back at a 15-year old version of voltmeter and see the perfect image instead of creating a new one themselves, but most of us who do the work have been around here long enough to doubt that will happen. The other problems with leaving the image behind are (a) that it will sit in the swamp of orphaned images that we slog through and we will have to look at it each time we pass through and make the same decision repeatedly and (b) that the various ways to look for orphaned images will not actually display all 75000, but only the oldest ones. If any of you hearty souls who feel that these old images really belong over at Commons would like to help out with moving old orphaned images to Commons, I would love to have the help.
As long as WP:FFD continues to describe many of these ancient images as common reasons for nomination, I will continue to nominate them through whatever process avails itself. ★ Bigr Tex 23:07, 23 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

You will notice that (a) I have not voted for keeping the roodog image, even though was aware of the nomination, and (b) it has not actually ever been used in an article so is irrelevant to this discussion. It is easy enough to template images that have been reviewed once so that they need not be looked at again. That's a really poor jsutification for mass deleting images. SpinningSpark 23:33, 23 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The policy justification for these deletions is WP:NOTWEBHOST. Images with no potential to be used in article or project space in the present or the future (for reasons including "obsolete, unencyclopedic, low quality") don't need to be here, even if they have been used in articles in the past. Being orphaned is not enough. The text of Template:Orphan image puts it well, I think. (Full disclosure, I placed a handful of those PROD tags, and I've made delete votes based on this reasoning at FFD.) Wikiacc (¶) 01:44, 24 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

This. I've previously PROD'd such files as well. The choice to use PROD over FFD was deliberate; if someone *really* wants to maintain old page histories, then I'm not going to stop them, the file may be restored without fuss. But IME, this is neither a common want nor need. -FASTILY 00:04, 25 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal on images in page histories

So let's make a definite proposal to focus this and bring it to a conclusion. I'm deliberately not proposing a definite wording to guidelines so we don't get bogged down in the minutia and address the principle, but the pages that might need editing if this passes include, but are not limited to;

I'll make a separate proposal for article and talk pages as I suspect there will be a difference in attitude to the two. Note that the example I raised at the beginning is heading for keep at FFD, so there is prima facie evidence that this has consensus for at least some images. SpinningSpark 11:45, 26 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Jo-Jo Eumerus, GhostInTheMachine, Lee Vilenski, Blueboar, Masem, Johnuniq, DMacks, BigrTex, Wikiacc, and Fastily: pinging previous participants in this discussion to try and finally get some consensus on this. SpinningSpark 10:25, 10 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree with your proposal, but have spent the last two weeks declining to participate because there was no discussion (which implied to me that there is not great interest or support for your proposal) and because there are no instructions for how to participate. ★ Bigr Tex 15:16, 10 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

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Should files be retained so that the appearance of a historical page can be preserved? 17:56, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

Proposal on retention of images in article histories

Proposal: That images that have appeared in past versions of an article should generally be retained. SpinningSpark 11:45, 26 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Support. Images that were used in articles should be retained unless there is a specific reason to delete them. I'd make an exception for images that were exclusively used for vandalism, but that's the sort of thing that can be worked out when we get to the detail stage. Thryduulf (talk) 13:04, 10 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support as nom. SpinningSpark 13:08, 10 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose because there's usually an alternative or other reason. If an image has novel educational value, it should be moved to commons. That's what happened with the image that started this discussion (Wikipedia:Files for discussion/2020 June 21#File:Null-balance voltmeter.png), so there is no precedent created for "keep because was formerly used" (more than half of the !votes for some sort of keep did not mention that as a basis). Commons is a collection of realistically-educationally-useful images even if they are not in current use, and they get lots of categories there to help future editors find existing images for new article content (maybe another language has been looking for an image of something we already have?). That's true equally if the image is a novel aspect of an article-topic that isn't covered in enough detail to merit an image, or got removed because of NOTGALLERY concerns. However, if an image is simply poorer than an alternative (someone makes an illustration in higher resolution, fixes a typo or other factual mistake, etc) at an alternate filename, then the original file does not have value except for article-historical reasons and I would delete. If it were moved to commons, it would likely be deleted there. Having images of lower-than-alternatives quality or with mistakes makes it harder to find the good stuff to write as best we can. If an image is wrong, then it's too easy for someone not to know that and reuse it (especially external users), in which case we fail our WP:V role.

We routinely make changes that cause "old revisions" of large swaths of articles to no longer look the way they did at the time, including being completely broken, content missing, etc, especially in the world of templates, and the site-wide CSS and rendering engine itself. Now that we have section-transclusion and pulling content from wikidata (and have always had embedding of images from commons), there even are tons of "regular edits" (not just widespread things) that make looking at an old revision of page not the same at a later date (or even looking at the current version of a page). Therefore, I don't accept "to see how it was" as a generally valid reason to keep. DMacks (talk) 15:37, 10 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
There is WP:NODEADLINE. If old images should be moved to Commons, then why not actually do so before deleting them locally, instead of leaving a redlink behind? If you can't be bothered to do that, then you shouldn't be cleaning up unused local files. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 18:22, 12 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The question is "should we keep", which I assume because we're here on enwiki means keep on enwiki. That's why I opposed the question as written based on giving alternatives such as moving to commons. DMacks (talk) 03:53, 14 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Importing another thought I mentioned in the previous discussion but forgot to include here in the formal RFC... "delete enwiki images, leading to redlinks in previous revisions" is a fundamental effect of CSD#F8 when commons has a different name for it and of CSD#F1 in general. That's a consensus policy for speedy without discussion, so the proposed policy-change here (keep if formerly used in good faith) seems like it would require abolishing those criteria. That policy talkpage should be alerted. DMacks (talk) 04:03, 14 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - I find the supposed need to be able to see exactly what a page used to look like doesn't match the history of how page history is primarily used (for crediting edits toward the existing version, and for tracking editing problems), nor with how we treat anything else here. There are a number of things we do that make looking at an historic (say, 2010) edit different from seeing it exactly as it appeared at the time (for example, we don't subst every template, so the templates all have their modern appearance when we look at the historic edit.) And the upshot of such a policy would be to incentivize putting in pointless photos, because any picture you once put into an article stays on forever, relevant or not. --Nat Gertler (talk) 16:26, 10 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support if they are free images, with some clear encyclopedic value (no random pics of people's genitalia for example). If they can be moved to commons, they should be. If not, kept on WP. But considerations should be made for when improvements have been made and otherwise keeping an equivalent image (eg say a line-and-text drawing at 300x300px is reuploaded at 2400x2400 for better resolution, the 300x300 version is clearly not needed). Oppose for any non-free unused image as per the WMF resolution, we simply can't do that. Comment that I don't see the need to distinguish between image use on mainspace or talk space, because this is near impossible to track when starting from the image page, and would make for an admin nightmare. --Masem (t) 16:42, 10 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support strongly per m:keep history. MediaWiki was designed as an improvement over UseModWiki, and one of the main features was keeping all history, not just some. It's important that we keep our history in a useable state because editors may want to go back to find images to re-use, figure out how a page's appearance has changed over time, or revert to a previous stub. There's little value in deleting free images, and a potential for harm. Having been used (and stable) in an article should be a sufficient reason to keep a file. — Wug·a·po·des 20:51, 10 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Keeping history is important. Deletion does not save space and only wastes time and energy in pointless discussions. It is useful to delete images uploaded for non-encyclopedic reasons in order to discourage self-gratification. That does not apply to images that were useful in articles and which might have some detail that would throw light on article wording. Johnuniq (talk) 23:47, 10 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support (for free images) as long as the image has remained in the article for a significant time (say, at least a month). Storage is cheap, and having an old revision look as close to it used to is very helpful to editors who want to compare an article throughout its history. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 00:19, 11 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per DMacks globally, and oppose for non-free images per Masem. --Izno (talk) 17:53, 12 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Images that were part of an article and still meet the tests in WP:MTC should be moved to Commons so that the article history is preserved. (Otherwise, why not just purge old article versions as well??). — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 20:35, 12 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - As others have said, there are already a variety of changes that make pages in the history distinct from how they were at the time. Images form a relatively small proportion of this perceptual gap; the logic that deleting images "breaks" old versions of the pages is incorrect - they are already "broken". I also don't see any convincing reason why images should be retained, apart from "it's part of the history", which in my opinion isn't a convincing reason on its own. Many sites like the Internet Archive already retain a lot of these images anyway. - Axisixa T C 01:03, 14 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose We should move to commons any image has proper source and licensing information and a possibility of future encyclopedic use, here or elsewhere. If it doesn't, we've listed that we are not a File Storage area for more than 10 years and it should be deleted. We have existing processes in place to determine into which of those categories an image belongs and some of which have been in place for even longer. I also find arguments about other history-breaking changes compelling. ★ Bigr Tex 03:38, 14 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support for free images. Keeping a non-free image is problematic as per minimal use. Whether it is on commons or en.Wikipedia makes not difference. But commons really doesnot care to keep this old stuff for en.Wikipedia, so if deleted off commons it should be restored back here. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 04:46, 14 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per DMacks' excellent analysis above. To underline a few additional points: we are not a hosting service. When files get deleted, it happens for a reason. The purpose of revision histories is not to serve as facsimiles of how pages used to appear. We delete unused/deprecated templates as well. Orphaned pages would be nothing more than a maintenance (and watch) burden. But above all: images deemed realistically useful not just in the past but for the future should, can, and are habitually transferred to Commons under current policy. If a need truly arises to see a deleted image in a revision history, you can always ask an admin and a copy will be provided to you. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 20:38, 15 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - Images are deleted for a reason. "We used it before" is not a sufficient rationale for countering our deletion reasons. -Indy beetle (talk) 02:45, 16 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- @Indy beetle: this proposal will not override other deletion criteria such as licensing. It is for when "unused" is the only deletion rationale. That is why the proposal says "generally" and not "always". In other words, images previously used should not be considered "unused" but can still be deleted for other reasons. SpinningSpark 07:15, 16 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal on retention of images in talk page histories

Proposal: That images that formed part of a meaningful talk page discussion (in any namespace) should generally be retained. SpinningSpark 11:45, 26 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Support. If an image has been used on a talk page in any meaningful way then it should be retained unless there is a specific reason to delete it. Thryduulf (talk) 13:05, 10 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support as nom. SpinningSpark 13:09, 10 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support. If the loss of images makes a discussion in a talk page archive unintelligible, it may be necessary to hold the discussion all over again, which is likely to be a waste of everyone's time. If an editor who provided a useful image in the past is no longer a participant, the results of the redundant discussion may be inferior to the result of original discussion. Jc3s5h (talk) 13:14, 10 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Semi-support as long as two tagging processes are used:
- An image whose discussion reveals a mistake gets clearly tagged as having a mistake (comparable to c:Template:Disputed diagram) to alert anyone who stumbles across the image (for example, looking at an older version of an article!).
- An image that is incorrect, clearly lower quality than alternatives, or created solely for discussion and workshopping gets tagged {{Do not move to Commons}}. License-compliant images are generally moved to commons for benefit of all, but if there's no benefit for anyone else to have or it's not in their scope, they will just delete it and we'll have lost what we wanted to have.

And this is all predicated on discussion/image itself being in good faith and seeing the image likewise being useful (per one of Nat Gertler's concerns in previous section). We routinely remove talkpage content for NOTSOAPBOX or spam purposes, so a discussion of such an image might be valid but the image itself in bad faith (bad-faith content even of images should be removed). DMacks (talk) 15:46, 10 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose only because from the file: space standpoint, we cannot easily tell when images have been used elsewhere after they have been removed. It doesn't make sense to create distinctly different policies here. --Masem (t) 16:43, 10 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support per above. If a discussion centers around an image, deleting it removes the context of the discussion and makes it more difficult to understand if not completely useless. — Wug·a·po·des 20:53, 10 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support It is sometime necessary to dive into history to understand why an article is the way it is, and what might be done to improve the article. Deletion does not save space and only wastes time and energy in pointless discussions. Johnuniq (talk) 23:49, 10 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Images used on talk pages are often central to the conversation, which cannot be easily understood otherwise. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 00:21, 11 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per DMacks globally above, and oppose per Masem specifically for talk pages. --Izno (talk) 17:54, 12 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Images that are part of a meaningful talk page discussion and meet the tests in WP:MTC should be moved to Commons so that the talk page history is preserved. (Otherwise, why not just purge all talk archives??). — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 20:35, 12 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose An image that is in use on a talk page or it's archive is not what is being discussed here. We are talking about an image that was used on a talk page but at some point in time was removed from that talk page. In either case, we have deletion processes that allow for review and movement to Commons for images with valid source and licensing information. The idea that an editor is going to find a deleted discussion in the history of a talk page to save time from repeating that discussion without understanding how to obtain access to the deleted image or mention it to someone who might feels somewhat far-fetched to me.

If an image has a possibility of future encyclopedic use, here or elsewhere, we should move it to commons. If it doesn't, we've listed that we are not a File Storage area for more than 10 years. ★ Bigr Tex 03:04, 14 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose per my comment in the above section and Masem's comment in this. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 20:38, 15 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Philanthropy as a peacock term

There appears to be a huge number of BLP articles that use the word 'philanthropy' to describe a bit of charitable giving. Is this arising because folk don't appreciate the distinction, or because they are engaging in puffery? Is it something that needs to be addressed or should this misunderstanding be allowed to slide? Acousmana (talk) 12:44, 23 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

What is the distinction between the two, and why do you think 'philanthropy' is an example of puffery? --{{u|Mark viking}} {Talk} 13:03, 23 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Mark viking, Here's an example from the new pages feed: Rabby Bray. Vexations (talk) 15:03, 23 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

And for xample Viktar Babaryka, Alexander Sergeevich Klishin. Vexations (talk) 15:04, 23 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

"Philanthropy" tends to suggest at least some scale, with some definitions requiring it to be "generous giving". Almost everyone gives some money to some charity at some point, so labeling someone a "philanthropist" just using some giving as a source is meaningless... and a tactic often used by people editing BLPs with promotional intent. I always set as a minimum standard that some reliable third party source uses that as a descriptive term for the person involved. This isn't hard to do for, say, Bill Gates, who donated billions of dollars and is involved in the running of a large charity, but it separates out Joe Sportsguy who once gave his old bottle cap collection to a museum. --Nat Gertler (talk) 14:28, 23 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The word philanthropy is inherently vague. I think we can use the term if its use seems adequately supported by sources. Bus stop (talk) 14:52, 23 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

well, distinction has to do with scale, and not that I generally quote wikipedia on anything but this definition kinda sums it up: "Philanthropy is different from charity, though there is some overlap. Charity aims to relieve the pain of a particular social problem, whereas philanthropy attempts to address the root cause of the problem." So, arguably, one addresses symptoms, the other causes - with the latter generally requiring substantial financial input. In terms of puffery, per the examples Nat offers above, I agree with this view, you'll see celebrity pages where various "philanthropic" endeavors are listed in a PR-like fashion. Acousmana (talk) 15:25, 23 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

You say you'll see celebrity pages where various "philanthropic" endeavors are listed in a PR-like fashion. If they are listed I think that alleviates the problem, because then the reader can judge for themselves. The vague, unspecified "philanthropy" poses the more problematic edit. Bus stop (talk) 15:49, 23 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

sorry I should clarify, I am taking primarily about sub-sections using the heading 'philanthropy,' here's an instance of a recent edit I feel is a good example. I don't believe PewDiePie's charity efforts can rightfully be called "philanthropy." Acousmana (talk) 15:56, 23 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

"philanthropy" (and its derivatives) need to come from secondary sourcing and cannot be used as seemingly synonymous terms for "charity" by WP editors. It definitely does have an implication of long-term and "largeness" in that charity, not just a single-time event or the like, and so we should rely on secondary source for a BLP or BIO to determine when the term is appropriate to use. --Masem (t) 16:24, 23 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I fully agree with Masem. The term is subject to inflation of its true value. If a celebrity gives a dollar to a beggar, they can technically call that philanthropy, but it would be misleading for them to go around and brag that they engage in philanthropy. I have worked on "Philanthropy" sections in some articles, but only where the subject has given very large amounts over a long period, and has been involved in structuring charitable work beyond just making donations (for example, musicians organizing benefit concerts). I would support a standard requiring description of the work as "philanthropy" in reliable sources, and some level of activity beyond just giving money to label activity as such, even if it is technically correct. BD2412 T 16:31, 23 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds kind of creepy to me. Philanthropy is just a word in the English language, to be used properly or improperly. We have to exercise our own judgement. If some examples are given of the alleged philanthropy and some sources characterize it as philanthropic or by related terms, we should be allowed to pass that on to the reader. Philanthropists need not fit a stereotype. The word of course means love of humanity. I think the more pertinent question is whether a hateful person can be considered a philanthropist. Bus stop (talk) 16:40, 23 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

"Philanthropy" and other terms like "savant" and "protégé" can all be taken as synonyms of other common words (say like charity, expert, and student, respectively) but they all have nuanced implications that wikipedia editors should not introduce themselves as it can be taken as original research. As long as secondary sources are using the specific term, that's fine, but even if they are talking large amounts and over long periods of time but never call it "philanthropy" we should not call it that, we can just write the factual details as closely as possible to imply that. --Masem (t) 16:55, 23 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Masem, I agree. S Philbrick (Talk) 22:34, 25 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

A philanthropist is someone who reliable sources call a philanthropist. If they don't use that term, then we shouldn't, either. How much they gave, over what period of time, to whom, and in what form... are all irrelevant. That guy that gave his bottle cap collection to the museum is a philanthropist if the sources say he is, regardless of what we editors think about it. We summarize secondary sources; the only thing that matters is whether the secondary sources use that term or not. I believe this "rule" ("follow the sources") is true for any word used to describe anything in any article. If the sources use the word, we use the word. If the sources don't use the word, we don't use the word. Levivich ^{[dubious – discuss]} 17:00, 23 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- Though as a caution, this should be evaluated based on a survey of sources reporting on the person (as for any type of label or subjective term). Say 10 reliable sources talk of this celeb donating his bottle cap collection to charity, and only one source uses the word "philanthropy" (or derivative), every other source just calls it a donation , that would not be enough for us to call it that. If all ten call it "philanthrophy" then we're fine to use it. If its 3-4 of those ten say it, then we may need to use attribution. I'm throwing rough numbers here, just that following the sources does require surveying those sources to determine to what degree they agree, and not just finding one source and claiming "there we go". --Masem (t) 17:23, 23 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  That's true and an important point: we should use a word if the consensus of reliable sources is to use that word, not just if one or a few RSes use the word. Levivich ^{[dubious – discuss]} 17:37, 23 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

i agree re:rationale with regard sourcing on the matter, but how did we arrive at a situation where it seems to be common practice now to use the word 'philanthropy' as a sub-section heading for bits and bobs about charitable work/contributions? It just leads me to assume certain folk think this sounds more significant - puffed up - than the alternative. Acousmana (talk) 17:45, 23 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

In fact, I believe that is exactly the intent of many of these edits and the creation of these sections: to puff up the subject's status as a benefactor of all humankind. The most shameless one has been the article on Michael Milken, whose PR machinery, including lawyers, have been trying for years to force Wikipedia to treat Milken as a philanthropist who once worked on Wall Street and made a few mistakes, rather than as a man best known as a Wall Street vulture, self-described "predator" and convicted criminal who now gives away some of his money. --Orange Mike | Talk 18:08, 23 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Then the guidance language merely needs to say Use the term "philanthropy" or related terms cautiously, favoring actual instances of philanthropy as supported by reliable sources. One should be cautious about using the term philanthropy as a section heading. This must be substantially supported by reliable sources". Bus stop (talk) 18:10, 23 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I think having sections dedicated to charity work in biographies should be exceedingly rare. Levivich ^{[dubious – discuss]} 00:47, 24 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Why should they be exceedingly rare? Bus stop (talk) 01:57, 24 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Presumably we are within policy to challenge and remove any unsourced or only self sourced assertions of philanthropy from BLPs? Ϣere SpielChequers 19:01, 23 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

in terms of challenging sourcing, covered, but I'm still curious how we arrived at this naming convention for sub-sections on charity stuff, and is something explicit required in the naming guidelines to counter this? Acousmana (talk) 19:23, 23 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The term "philanthropist" is horrible and basically goes into the bio of every millionaire (because every rich person donates). At some point, RS will stop using the term (it's just puffery), but unfortunately until then, it seems like our hands are tied. That said, there's an upside to the "philanthropist" term: it's a good way to identify pages with serious COI problems (pages that are written like ads) that need cleaning-up. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 20:27, 23 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

As a note for anyone using this term as a way to identify puffery, equivalent South Asian subjects are usually described as "social workers", a term that has a very different meaning in my native British English. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:56, 23 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

For the record, not too long ago I changed the header in Michael Jordan from "Charity" to "Philanthropy", because his activities in this arena go well beyond writing checks to charities, and to match the "Philanthropy" header in the Kobe Bryant article. I think there's a distinction between describing a set of activities as "Philanthropy" and describing an individual as a "Philanthropist". By the way, where do we fall on "Humanitarian"? BD2412 T 02:23, 24 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Masem sums it up best; we have to go with what the consensus of reliable sources are saying. Of course, we have to bear in mind that the richer someone is, the more power and influence they are likely to have, and even generally reliable sources may be more inclined to describe their good deeds and charitable giving as "philanthropy". I have edited extensively on BLPs of billionaires, and have removed "philanthropist" from the lead of many where there is simply not enough elsewhere in the article to support it. In the same vein, I have often changed "entrepreneur" (another peacock term) to "businessman/woman" in the lead. Edwardx (talk) 11:29, 24 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

You mention the lede. Inclusion in the lede requires even more substantial support in sources than the use of the term in a section heading. Bus stop (talk) 15:09, 24 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

"humanitarian," is that thrown about loosely now too? Acousmana (talk) 21:08, 24 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Well, apparently, Tehrah is "a known philanthropist and humanitarian". BD2412 T 02:26, 25 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

This is not a matter of policy; it's just a matter of English usage. "Philanthropist" is a conventional word for a person who gives to charity and other such words would naturally have similar connotations – altruist; benefactor; donor; patron; &c. I consider this the mot juste for people such as Leonard G. Montefiore and so would oppose any attempt to stigmatize the usage per WP:CREEP. Andrew🐉(talk) 10:56, 25 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

"it's just a matter of English usage" - you mean a matter of appropriate, and properly sourced, usage of an English word that is subject to misuse as a section heading. There are folk who give bucket loads to charity but it's nothing more than a tax hack to them. So let's not be naive here, puffery is at play, that's the reality of the word's usage in a great many instances. Acousmana (talk) 12:16, 25 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Obervation: As with many things Wiki, context matters. Not everything that impacts BLPs as promotional has an equivalent in the past. This discussion seems to be missing historical context focusing too narrowly on recency. For hundreds of years women were not allowed to work in the public sphere except in benevolent or charitable capacities. Removing the ability to write about their philanthropic endeavors in effect would erase the history of half of the population and skew the totality of our world view. By all means, follow what the sources say, but requiring a majority of the sources to spell out that their community work was philanthropic or charitable is absurd. They weren't paid for it, it was wholly voluntary, and undertaken to improve the lives of others in a time when there were few government safety nets. Dismissing philanthropy as a "peacock" term, simply on the basis that it now generally equates to monetary support, is not a good idea. I can see it leading to lots of edits erasing women's contributions. SusunW (talk) 16:39, 25 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The distinction I would personally make is that "philanthropist" is an occupation, so in order to qualify as one, someone needs to devote a significant portion of their time to their giving (which normally entails a greater degree of involvement with dictating where their money is spent), whereas someone who just throws a bunch of money at something would not qualify. I'm not sure if that's the dictionary definition, though. I agree with others above saying we are tied by what reliable sources say, and also that we ought to apply a strict standard — e.g. one source using the word is not enough to demonstrate that it is the consensus of all reliable sources. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 19:52, 25 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
It depends on the usage/context, and whether or not it is back by reliable third party sources. Dark knight 2149 20:54, 25 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Requiring sources describing someone as a "philanthropist" (or their activities as "philanthropy") should suffice. BD2412 T 21:12, 25 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
+1 to what SusunW said. I mainly create biographies about pre-20th-century women. Back then, women philanthropists didn't get paid to be philanthropists. It wasn't an "occupation". It was a calling. So context matters. --Rosiestep (talk) 22:50, 25 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

agree that context is important, but so to is critical and fair assessment of the word's usage across Wikipedia, donor-advised fund utilising tax dodgers cannot be fairly described as "philanthropists" - unless of course RS's describe the subject as such. Acousmana (talk) 12:16, 26 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The Giving Pledge has a 50% threshold, which is quite generous. Perhaps a 10% threshold would keep fake philanthropists away. --NaBUru38 (talk) 21:17, 27 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Not all philanthropy involves giving money, though. A celebrity spending time visiting sick children in the hospital is bypassing more profitable uses of that time, which can not easily be calculated. BD2412 T 01:36, 6 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

RfC: Make Biting Newcomers A Blockable Offense

I've noticed that on the WP:BLOCK/WP:BAN there is no rationale that allows a user to block another user because of biting. Biting newcomers is just as bad as attacking or harrasing another user, as both can lead to the victim possibly leaving Wikipedia. As said in WP:BITE: "New members are prospective contributors and are therefore Wikipedia's most valuable resource. We must treat newcomers with kindness and patience—nothing scares potentially valuable contributors away faster than hostility." A user that scares away newcomers should not be allowed to continue to do the same to other new users. The point of blocking is to be preventative; this would prevent future attacks. I also suggest that we increase number of levels of warnings for Template:Uw-bite (we could make the template a multiple level template [eg. Template:Uw-bite1, Template:Uw-bite2, etc.]). P,TO 19104 (talk) (contributions) 15:28, 25 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: I don't really see why this needs to be a separate block reason. If someone is doing this to the extent that it merits a block it would fall under harassment or general disruptive editing. Spicy (talk) 15:30, 25 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Do we want to wait until it gets to that point, though? P,TO 19104 (talk) (contributions) 15:38, 25 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

P,TO 19104, do we want to invent a new bureaucracy to beat people over the head with if they are trying to manage abuse? It is trivially easy to see how your proposal would be exploited by trolls, and difficult to see what it adds to existing policy. Guy (help!) 16:08, 25 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: Are we talking about blocking or banning? They're two different things. DonIago (talk) 16:12, 25 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Doniago: Mainly blocking... sorry for the confusion with the title.

Oppose - we already have systems in place for systematic abuse. These things go to ANI or another suitable venue for a block or a topic ban. A three-strikes policy for being poor to new editors isn't helpful, and likely get used to get experienced users in hot water over what could be a declined AfC nomination Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 18:36, 25 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - the last thing Wikipedia needs is even more bureaucracy. −−− Cactus Jack 🌵 18:39, 25 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - indeed, support eliminating BITE entirely. There's no indication we are in need of new editors, and cleaning up after incompetent newcomers who have no desire to learn, or even improve Wikipedia is a significant factor in the burnout of solid competent editors. Most times when I see BITE cited it is by either PAID or SPA editors. We make a product here; this isn't a social club. John from Idegon (talk) 18:57, 25 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I think the proposal is 100% wrongheaded, but I can't let pass There's no indication we are in need of new editors. Everything else you said I completely agree with, but that's just absurd. E Eng 15:18, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- Oh, and just a question for the OP: Am I in your opinion bite-ing you for pointing out that despite your title, this ISN'T an RfC? John from Idegon (talk) 18:57, 25 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - Any offense which would rise to the level of "blockability" for biting the newcomers would fall under patent incivility.--WaltCip-(BLM!Resist The Orange One) 18:57, 25 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per JzG's comment and per WP:CREEP, but with that said note that I already do block users who go out of their way to be uncivil to newcomers. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 18:59, 25 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It is not just those who go out of their way to just be uncivil, it is also the people who show repeated patterns of being harsh or mean to newcomers. P,TO 19104 (talk) (contributions) 22:45, 25 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose obviously; the last thing Wikipedia wants or needs is yet another layer of weaponised bureaucracy. "Biting newcomers" is something alleged a lot more often than it actually occurs, and in most cases translates as "one of those mean admins wouldn't let me insert my favourite conspiracy theory"; on those occasions that it doesn't, we already have perfectly adequate complaints procedures. ‑ Iridescent 19:19, 25 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Rather senseless - If someone is continually biting newbs, it can be handled under existing policy. More policy doesn't reduce a problem, it just adds more bureaucracy. I'm certainly not going to block someone for a single instance of BITE, whether or not policy allows it. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 20:41, 25 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I am not sure that "New members are ... Wikipedia's most valuable resource.", but we need all the new editors that we can get and really do need to treat them as welcome and valuable. In theory, plain good manners should be enough of a rational, but we have WP:AGF and WP:BITE to spell it out. Of course, if any user exhibits regular bad manners, to new editors or anywhere else, then there are already ways to comment and intervene. — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 20:23, 25 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
~~Support~~ Support idea, needs better proposal - I think there is already a consensus that WP:BITE specifically refers to aggression or being unnecessarily rude to newbies who are not evidenced to be acting in bad faith. This is one reason why talk page warnings start off light and begin to escalate in the first place. If we ignored every policy or guideline that users (occasionally even a tag-team of users) are likely to game or deliberately misuse, then there would be no warning templates left. If users start claiming that they are being "bitten" just because someone made a valid reversion, that in itself constitutes a spurious allegation and is already considered bad faith behaviour. I see no issue with creating a user template for WP:BITE, though it is a valid point that it could be seen as ground already covered by pre-existing incivility templates. Though, it is unfortunate how common dishonesty is on Wikipedia, especially on noticeboards like WP:ANI. Dark knight 2149 20:47, 25 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Moral support We should block or topic ban editors who show a pattern of biting good faith newcomers. As others have said, we do not need to change policy to do so, and taking action against newbie biters should be handled by our existing processes. I agree with the spirit, but am opposed to the proposal. If OP or others think more warning levels for biting would be useful, you're free to make them and ask Twinkle devs to add them. — Wug·a·po·des 21:53, 25 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Ehhh While I do think there should be more action against routinely uncivil editors (which it looks like Wikipedia:Arbitration_Committee/Anti-harassment_RfC#7._"Unblockables" will address), there are some content areas where most new editors are by default WP:NOTHERE to help but to WP:RGW right off the bat. If that wasn't the case, discretionary sanctions and WP:ECP wouldn't exist. Some of these areas attract users who only know how to use intellectually dishonest tactics that could appear to be civil if you don't look directly at it but are fundamentally incompatible with a productive environment for an encyclopedia. In some extreme cases, such as QAnon and InfoWars, you have new users who have flown so far beyond the Overton window that they can only assume that anyone who doesn't believe that the Democratic party is running a pedophile ring in the non-existent basement of a DC pizza parlor for the glory of Satan is just pushing a political opinion and we should give their "facts" a fair shot, too. These sort of users do not need a welcome. The only guidance they need is to get off the site until they've rejoined reality. Ian.thomson (talk) 22:23, 25 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I will clarify that this isn't the case for all contentious topics. Even though there's DS for pseudoscience, we have to put up with the RGWs at evolution and creationism related articles because even if the majority of drive-by young earth creationists are simply never going to be productive, they're not peddling anything that's inspired people to shoot up family restaurants. Ian.thomson (talk) 22:53, 25 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Moral support (but opposed to this proposal) We need to do better, but this is not a step along that path.S Philbrick (Talk) 22:30, 25 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I think most biting falls below the level of blocking or banning. Trying to use those tools to counter it would only lead the biter to dig in and ultimately claim vindication. More constructive would be providing feedback: "Hey, maybe you were over-the-top in the way you responded to that new editor." It's easy to reinforce the view that biting is justified because it makes the bad editors go away. It's a lot harder to see the good editors we are losing because they just needed a bit of civility and guidance.--Trystan (talk) 23:27, 25 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose this is like using a sledgehammer to crack a peanut. There are plenty of bad faith newcomers where I edit who would try to weaponise this. Plus WP:CREEP. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 00:24, 26 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, surely this would be covered under WP:CIVIL anyway, and I feel as if this could easily be misinterpreted and result in unjust blocks. Ed6767 talk! 00:36, 26 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support idea, oppose proposal - Yes, biting newcomers should be taken seriously. But in those situations where a block is the right move, one can already be applied under existing policy (civil). Levivich ^{[dubious – discuss]} 06:11, 26 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support idea, oppose proposal. We do need to take biting newcomers more seriously than they do, but this well-intentioned proposal is not going to get achieve that. Bitiness needs to be taken to AN/I sooner than it is and admins there need to act on it more harshly but if blocks are necessary they can already be applied - we just need to be better at doing so. Thryduulf (talk) 13:23, 26 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support idea, oppose proposal, per Thryduulf. The big story of the past year is that we need to take WP:CIVIL more seriously. We're making progress there, but more needs to be done. As Thryduulf and others have pointed out, we've already got the tools, we just need to use them. It's more of an cultural education thing than needing more rules. -- RoySmith (talk) 15:29, 26 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Often you can't tell someone is a newcomer. The ones that aren't really new would use this as a club to promote...whatever they're promoting.Jacona (talk) 15:57, 26 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I definitely agree that we need to take civility more seriously! Jacona (talk) 16:00, 26 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose we need to worry far less about civility and far more about toxicity. That's especially true of new users who, in a significant number of cases, aren't really new,b but are here to cause trouble, promote causes or advertise shit. We need to be kind and pleasant, but sometimes telling them forcefully they're wrong, they're being stupid or their proposal is idiotic is the only way to get through to them that they're, well, wrong, being stupid or their proposal is idiotic. Sugar coating stuff just gets people addicted to the coating. So no, no more bureaucracy. But be nice to other people, or fuck off. Nick (talk) 17:23, 26 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose as the classic solution putting out a small ad for a problem. If someone BITEs so often that we need a policy on it, then, well, we have that already. And if it's not frequent enough to draw attention to it then a policy probably wouldn't address it. And that's before the opportunities for wikilawyering over who qualifies as a newb begin: 6 weeks? 6 months? With less than X-edits? Etc... ——Serial^# 17:25, 26 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose and Nick put it better than I could. It's just going to be weaponised and make it harder to deal with actual problems. The proposal has my moral support, though. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 17:43, 26 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose first-time offenses can be generally admonished without using the block button, and any further incidents can be treated as normal incivility, up to and including an ArbCom case. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 05:52, 29 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, Nick sums up my thoughts exactly. Cavalryman (talk) 08:04, 29 June 2020 (UTC).[reply]
ANI levels only—defined as urgent, chronic or intractable—c'mon, give 'em a break for first or minor offenses. Long-term? Okay that's a CIVILITY issue. I oppose the idea of a 4 level uw for BITE; I rather see something like {{uw-ew}} and {{uw-ewsoft}} where the soft one is for first time or minor offense and the uw-ew, the "hard one", is for ones that would be a general warning or for borderline ANI level biting. {{reply to|Can I Log In}}'s talk page! 20:20, 2 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Despite claims to the contrary this would be a punitive block since there is no way to know how a given editor will treat the next newbie that they come into contact with. If there is an ongoing pattern then a report an AN/I with evidence will lead to a block. MarnetteD|Talk 15:58, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose But biting the newbies is fun, their knees always seem tasty. -Roxy the elfin dog . wooF 16:03, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - We already have WP:Civility for intractable rudeness and I don't want to be sanctioned for occasionally chomping on a new editor who is clearly WP:NOTHERE. -Indy beetle (talk) 01:48, 16 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Make links open in a new tab

Unanimously opposed, but see also Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets. -- RoySmith (talk) 22:38, 2 July 2020 (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.

Most usually links are only clicked for a quick reference, and it is unlikely that you're finished reading the Wikipedia article as they're quite long. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.59.152.85 (talk • contribs) 00:48, 27 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

This is bad for accessibility. On mobile you should have an option to open in a new tab by long-pressing and selecting the 'new tab' option; on desktop you should have access to either right-mouse-click and select the same or if you have a mouse with 3 buttons, middle click. It won't be happening for everyone. --Izno (talk) 02:37, 27 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

If your mouse only has two buttons then clicking both together will often function like a middle button (at least on linux). Thryduulf (talk) 12:00, 27 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

You can also hold shift to get a new tab on a left button click. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 08:38, 28 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see how this option is any more relevant to Wikipedia than to web links in general, so it is best left as something for the reader to control in the browser rather than anything that we should be setting on Wikipedia. Phil Bridger (talk) 07:15, 27 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Leave this as a choice for the user at the browser level. Some browsers have an extension that does this. Also, holding down the control key often causes a link to open in a new tab. — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 14:28, 27 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Also, if enough users really do want this feature then we (they / somebody) could write a user script to adjust the page links. — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 14:31, 27 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
No, bad idea. Sites that forcibly open new tabs are actually quite annoying when that wasn't wanted. The back button on most platforms gets you back to where you were before, so its usually a non-issue, and as others have pointed out, opening a new tab is not that difficult. SpinningSpark 18:06, 27 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Registered users have the option "Open external links in a new tab or window" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets. Wikipedia:User scripts/List also has some scripts for new tabs in certain situations. PrimeHunter (talk) 08:52, 28 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

That'd be a serious POLA violation for most ordinary web users. The rest of us, such as Firefox users, can just Ctrl+Click.--WaltCip-(BLM!Resist The Orange One) 15:07, 29 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose: This is a woefully bad idea. It is a non-issue, as most mobile browsers already have back buttons. Besides, if this idea gets implemented, then it will just lead to tab clutter. SuperGoose007 ^(Honk!) 00:43, 2 July 2020 (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.

RfC on tagging BLP with template messages signaling COI and OWN

There is an RfC on the following link: Talk:Boris_Malagurski#RfC_on_Template_messages_and_Article_sections. It concerns dispute over tagging the BLP article with template messages which point to the possible COI and OWN issues that plagues the article for more than a ten years.--౪ Santa ౪^99° 01:40, 5 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure this is really a policy issue, to be notified here. That's an issue for the local talk, for editors there with input from WP:COIN, WP:NPOVN. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 14:29, 6 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

WP:1RR: Who dunnit

It was recently suggested to me that there are possibly different interpretations of WP:1RR affecting different parts of the encyclopedia. Please consider the following scenario that I think might help tease out problems and differences in interpretation. Then answer the question: Who, if anybody, violated 1RR? Assume the content added in diffs 1 and 3 is completely unrelated and that the edit summaries accurately describe what is being done.

12:24, 5 July 2020 ‎ Example A (talk · contribs) . . (157,437 bytes) (+1,228)‎ . . (→Top: add info)
12:38, 5 July 2020‎ Example B (talk · contribs) . . (156,165 bytes) (-972)‎ . . (Undid revision 961210665 by Example A (talk): Partial revert. This is too much detail for the Lead and this info is already in the body. I moved the bit of actually new info to the relevant section in the body)
12:47, 5 July 2020‎ Example A (talk · contribs) . . (158,996 bytes) (+2,831) . .‎ (→‎See also: Add new section )
13:21, 5 July 2020‎ Example B (talk · contribs) . . (156,165 bytes) (-2,831‎) . . (‎Reverted 1 edit by Example A (talk): We try not to do "Trivia" sections on Wikipedia, and the National Enquirer is not a reliable source. )
13:42, 5 July 2020 ‎ Example A (talk · contribs) . . (158,996 bytes) (+2,831) . . (Undid revision 961211487 by Example B (talk): This is obviously relevant.)
13:45, 5 July 2020 ‎ Example A (talk · contribs) . . (159,223 bytes) (+227‎) . . (→‎Trivia: Add another source)
13:46, 5 July 2020 ‎ Example A (talk · contribs) . . (160,172 bytes) (+972‎) . . (Undid revision 961211493 by Example B (talk): This is important and people need to know. )

Please answer A, B, Both, or Neither and feel free to explain or add further comment. ~Awilley (talk) 23:55, 6 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

~~Both~~ A "revert" means any edit ... that reverses the actions of other editors, in whole or in part, whether involving the same or different material (quote from Wikipedia:Edit warring#The three-revert rule) * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 00:05, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Also, is Undid revision 961211487 by User A (talk): This is obviously relevant supposed to be Undid revision 961211487 by Editor B (talk): This is obviously relevant?, since the edit being reverted appears to come from Editor B. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 00:10, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, sorry, typo fixed ~Awilley (talk) 00:14, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I've looked at the history again and now say B, since Editor A's two reverts were consecutive (which I failed to parse earlier). * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 01:44, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I would say B based on my current understanding of policy. However, I would say that A has been on the whole more tendentious throughout this hypothetical scenario, so I would welcome a redefinition that puts more of the blame on A, without destroying the fungibility of consecutive reverts. Probably the main issue is that A did not follow WP:BRD, and continue to insert their edit which has been objected to. I would support a form of 1RR where any edit that disrupts the status quo counts as the first revert. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 03:11, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Editor B broke 1RR because the edits at 12:38 and 13:21 are non-consecutive edits that reverted actions of another editor (in this case A, but it would make no difference if it was two different editors). Editor A only broke 1RR if the edit at 12:47 reintroduced some of what B removed at 12:38, and I guess we are meant to assume that it didn't. I believe that there is no room for another interpretation here. Zero^talk 06:47, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
B broke 1RR. Note that the timestamps here are in the reverse order from what you would normally find on a history page; the bottom revision is the latest, not the top. B broke 1RR when they reverted two of A's edits separately. A's reverts are unwise, but would break 0RR, not 1RR; there's no fundamental difference between plural small reverts and one big consecutive revert. Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 08:48, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: could you have not anonymized this a little better, and not implicated an innocent @Editor B:? Elizium23 (talk) 09:51, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Sure. I've refactored to Example A and Example B. ~Awilley (talk) 14:51, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
B violated 1RR when they made a second revert in 24hrs at 13:21. A has only made one revert, which are the three consecutive edits at 13:42, 13:45, and 13:46. This scenario illustrates well the "first mover advantage" resulting from a 1RR page restriction. Levivich ^{[dubious – discuss]} 18:10, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

A different scenario (1RR)

08:24, 14 April 2020 ‎ Sample user (talk · contribs) . . (157,437 bytes) (+3,228)‎ . . (→See also: Add a new section on Honors and Awards)
10:51, 14 April 2020 ‎ Sample user (talk · contribs) . . (159,929 bytes) (+2,492)‎ . . (→Honors and awards: Expand)
⋮

25-100 intervening edits
⋮
12:38, 5 July 2020‎ Example A (talk · contribs) . . (154,209 bytes) (-5,720)‎ . . (→Honors and awards: remove this)
12:47, 5 July 2020‎ Example B (talk · contribs) . . (159,929 bytes) (+5,720) . .‎ (Reverted 1 edit by Example A (talk): Unexplained blanking)
13:21, 5 July 2020‎ Example A (talk · contribs) . . (154,209 bytes) (-5,720) . . (‎Reverted 1 edit by Example B (talk): This is not a hagiography. )

Two questions on this one:

Did Example A violate 1RR?
Would your answer be different if there had been more or less time and intervening edits before the first removal? (Example: 3 days with 5 intervening edits, or 1 year with 500 intervening edits)

Please respond Yes or No. And thank you for participating. ~Awilley (talk) 15:21, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

1. Yes - The 12:38 edit removes text added by another editor, and thus is a revert, making the 13:21 edit a second revert in 24hrs. 2. Yes - if it were 3 days with 5 intervening edits, that makes it clearer that the first edit is a revert. If it were 1 year and 500 edits, it would be practically impossible for an editor to even know who or what they were reverting. This illustrates well the problem with 1RR, but also, more broadly, the problem with the entire concept of "revert" and why Wikipedia should throw that nonsense overboard. The rule should be that you are not allowed to repeat your own edits more than once every 24hrs, irrespective of whether your own edit is adding content, removing content, or both. If that were the rule, then there would be no 1RR violation here, nor in the scenario above (which is how it should be). Levivich ^{[dubious – discuss]} 18:17, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Levivich, ~~wouldn't Example A still be in violation of that definition, too? Their second edit is a repetition of their first edit.~~ Missed the "more than once" part. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 19:29, 8 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

repeat your own edits Until yesterday, exactly this was how I noobishly thought the word "revert" would be applied in determining RR violations. PJvanMill)talk( 20:58, 8 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, editor A broke 1RR. It would be a 1RR violation even if the time between the two blocks of edits was much greater. Editor A does not need to search the history to know that the 12:38 edit was a revert. However, if we interchanged insertions and deletions so that 12:38 was an insertion, then technically it would be a revert if the stuff had been in the article before and someone had deleted it. From time to time at ANI it has been recognised that it is unreasonable to expect editors to check the history a long way back in such a case, but the absence of a definition of "long way" gives it an unsatisfactory arbitrariness. Levivich's alternative proposal is interesting. Zero^talk 01:27, 8 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Zero0000, thanks for commenting. Just so I understand you correctly, do you endorse the view that wholesale removal of material always counts as a revert because it is undoing the work of some previous editor(s)? Like what if that section had been added to the article 5 years ago and had been modified by other editors along the way? Or what if the deletion at 12:38 had just removed a sentence or two instead of blanking the section? Would that also be a revert? ~Awilley (talk) 21:12, 8 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not Zero, but in my view yes, any removal of content always counts as a revert per the definition: an edit or a series of consecutive edits that undoes other editors' actions—whether in whole or in part—counts as a revert. Removal of content always undoes other editors' actions (note this doesn't say "another editor's actions" singularly). ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 21:42, 8 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

MOS:NUMERO

This appears to be a somewhat controversial policy; see Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2020 January 11#Template:No., which recommended that this should be changed. I personally do not support that side of the discussion, but think it ought to get re-discussed for changing the policy. Clearly the MOS talk page is not the correct place to do it, I hope I posted this in the right place. WT79 ^{(speak to me | editing patterns | what I been doing)} 12:28, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

List of Buddhist members of the United States Congress

I thought there was a policy against doing list articles with religious affliction, should this one be kept or killed? Govvy (talk) 19:18, 8 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

No, there is no policy against it; some browsing around would show that we both categorize and list people by religion. See Category:People by religion, Category:Lists of people by belief, etc. The talk page of the list or of the editor who created the list would be a better place to discuss the merits of this particular list than here. postdlf (talk) 19:29, 8 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Don't get lists and categories confused. There is definitely a consensus against categories that are unrelated intersections of two attributes. Such categories are routinely deleted at CFD. The relevant guideline is WP:OVERCAT, especially WP:TRIVIALCAT, WP:NARROWCAT, and possibly most relevant here WP:OCEGRS. I don't think there is a similar consensus on lists. SpinningSpark 21:53, 8 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, I think I do remember the sports categories regarding listing them by religion so that's where I might of got my wires crossed, saying that, I still feel like this list seems trivial and unnecessary, shall let someone else deal with it. Govvy (talk) 10:59, 9 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

WP:BLPCAT may be applicable, which does also cover lists. WP:AFD is the place to take it if you think it does. SpinningSpark 16:51, 9 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The OP was just about lists of people by religion per se, about which there is no prohibition, just a caution. This particular intersection of religion and position held is a different question, though I'll note that demographics and diversity among members of Congress is certainly a widely covered topic. postdlf (talk) 17:40, 9 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The relevant guideline for this question is WP:LISTN. The issue for a List article (as opposed to a category) is whether the list’s topic (in this case, Buddhists in the US Congress) is notable enough to stand on its own. THAT is determined by sources. If there are reliable sources that discuss this particular intersection of religion and political office (in reasonable depth), then the topic is notable enough for a list article. If not, then the article should be nominated for deletion (or for merger into some related article). Blueboar (talk) 17:57, 9 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- That's one possible analysis for lists, but not always the right one. LISTN makes clear that it's sufficient but not necessary, particularly where we're dealing with lists of X of Y. postdlf (talk) 19:06, 9 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Removal of unreliable sources

About two month ago, there was a discussion about royalark.com on RSN, and it was deprecated. I then noticed that the nominator went on a spree to replace the sources with a {{cn}} template without removing the information it supported. To me, that behaviour seems extremely unethical, like plagiarism. You can't just use a source to add information to Wikipedia and then completely wipe out the source without removing the information it supported, right? Is there any policy to stop people from replacing deprecated sources with "citation needed" template? Regards, TryKid ^{[dubious – discuss]} 04:15, 9 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

You see the same behaviour with the Daily Mail. A better approach is to use {{Better source needed}} or {{Unreliable source?}} but that requires thought, not automation. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 10:24, 9 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed retaining the source but marked as (potentially) bad or improveable is better than removing it as it can help with locating better sources. For example looking for other sources published around the same date can make it easier to narrow down searches, and sometimes the content of the bad article can help locate better ones. After all we deprecate sources because we can't trust that everything in them is correct, not that everything in them is wrong. Thryduulf (talk) 20:13, 10 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I"m afraid I disagree. Particularly when it involves BLPs. If it involves a BLP, I'll probably remove the text as well. If it doesn't, I remove the deprecated source and add a cn tag. Doug Weller talk 13:22, 14 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I'm with Doug Weller on this. In my experience of India stuff, {{Better source needed}} or {{Unreliable source?}} are rarely ever addressed and even {{Cn}} tags tend to lie around for years. Pretty much every source would be reliable for some small statement, somewhere, but ascertaining the reliability in exceptional cases is just not worth the effort: if the point matters, it can be reinstated with a source that is generally accepted as reliable and absence of such a point is often more of an encouragement to source it properly than inclusion of a tag against a source that we know is very dubious for many things. I also do not see why sources such as royalark should continue in External links sections: if we deprecate them as sources then it does the reader a dis-service to suggest they go take a look. - Sitush (talk) 13:30, 14 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I'm with Spinngspark below - either remove the source and text or leave both but mark as needing a better source (with a general preference for the latter unless there is a specific reason to believe the text is incorrect or potentially controversial), however even better would be to replace the source yourself. If you want tags to be dealt with by others quicker, then make it as easy as possible for them to find a better source - my previous comment explains why leaving a potentially unreliable source helps with this in my previous comment. Thryduulf (talk) 11:09, 15 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Of course we do not leave the statement without either source or tag. Equally, we should not now - at this stage in the Wikipedia lifestyle - be tolerating poor sources in any form. Hence, {{cn}} is infinitely better than {{bsn}} etc and, as I tried to explain, the former is more likely to generate a remedial action than the latter. If anyone thinks I don't generally look for sources etc then they would need their head examined - just yesterday there is stuff at here and here, for starters, and the removal of a recently added bsn here because (a) the source is unreliable and (b) the tag should never have been placed anyway as the info is already sourced in the body. What I said above, and which Spinningspark seems to have completely misread, was Pretty much every source would be reliable for some small statement, somewhere, but ascertaining the reliability in exceptional cases is just not worth the effort, eg: even joshuaproject is going to be reliable for some stuff but determining on an article-by-article basis is "just not worth the effort" so bin it. - Sitush (talk) 11:31, 15 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The source, however bad, remains the source of the information. Why would we want to hide the source from readers and other editors? Your claim that you always make a good faith attempt to find another source only makes this worse; prima facie, the cited source is then the only source of the information. Do you have any evidence that {{cn}} is serviced better than {{bsn}}? I can't see why it should be. SpinningSpark 12:09, 15 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Removing the source but leaving the information is a very bad practice. If we doubt the information is accurate then the text should be removed along with the source. If not, leave the source in place and tag it – or find a better one. Don't assert that it is "not worth the effort" of finding a source and at the same time complain that "tags tend to lie around for years". Why shoould anyone else bother to do the work you can't be bothered with? SpinningSpark 14:26, 14 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure if this is intended as a response to me but you do quote me, so perhaps you should re-read what I actually said. - Sitush (talk) 14:29, 14 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Request for comments

Greetings to all,

A Request for comment has been initiated regarding RfC about whether to allow use of honorofic 'Allama' with the names or not?

Requesting your comments to formalize the relevant policy @ Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Islam-related articles

Thanks

Bookku (talk) 18:08, 9 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Policy and guidelines icons

I've proposed a change to the checkmark icons/colors used for policies and guidelines at Template talk:Wikipedia policies and guidelines#Colors because the colors, and therefore the identically-shaped checkmark icons, are too hard to distinguish from each other, even for normally-sighted people. I'm hoping the change could be fairly easy to implement (navbox and a couple of other templates used on individual policy and guideline pages, though I haven't dug that far yet). Comments invited. (or should it be discussed here? If so, I'll set pointers there to here.) —[AlanM1 (talk)]— 22:30, 14 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Support either changing the color scheme to something that is easier to distinguish or changing one or both of the icons so that they aren't the same checkmark (I would focus the discussion here, fyi). « Gonzo fan2007 (talk) @ 23:30, 14 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support - the current set up is super inaccessible and an icon change is much needed. Ed6767 talk! 01:11, 15 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Comment if we're going to make a change, let's solve as many problems as possible. A simple change of color from two nearly-indistinguishable-to-many to two distinguishable-to-most-but-not-all isn't enough to make this accessible for people who have low-vision but don't use screen readers. Why not just use G and P instead of a meaningless symbol color-coded in a meaningless way? —valereee (talk) 12:38, 15 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure why icons are needed here at all, but if we are going to have them, have something distinctive and meaningful like (guidelines) and , or simpler (policies). Those examples would need some work to be suitable for a small size, but you get the idea. SpinningSpark 13:10, 15 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Comment How about something like a scroll with a bright green (#008000) "P" on it for policies and two vertical lines with a black G between them for guidelines?
Oppose. The reason we use those checkmarks isn't that they look good on {{Wikipedia policies and guidelines}} but that they look good on {{Policy}} and {{Guideline}} and it makes sense to have only one set. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 20:11, 15 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- @Finnusertop: Are you opposing a change in colors to make them more accessible when viewed together – from to – which is the original complaint, or do you just oppose changing to non-checkmark icons? (Though I don't really get how the checkmarks are representative in these cases.) —[AlanM1 (talk)]— 22:05, 15 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  - @AlanM1: opposing any changes. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 22:22, 15 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
General support, since the blue is definitely too close to the green. But I'd caution that changes to things like this are best done comprehensively, rather than as one-offs, since the design needs to work as a package (I think there's an essay about this, but I can't find it). Are there other symbols that are derived from the current checkmarks, or symbols that use their same coloring? Are any of the color schemes in this area (including also things like the fact that purple is our color for humor) documented anywhere? (Probably not, sigh...) For modifying here, the simplest way to do it would just be to tweak the shade of green and shade of blue to move them farther apart; no need to get fancy. If we do do a more complex redesign, though, start from first principles: the important thing to communicate visually is that both guidelines and policies are vetted norms with some authority, but policies are even stronger than guidelines. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 00:04, 16 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Also, courtesy pinging Awesome Aasim, who has worked before trying to start an effort to standardize Wikipedia's utter mess of project-space graphic design standards. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 00:08, 16 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Question: at the size the icons are currently at, are they quite distinguishable? Because inline on the talk page on the white background, I could not distinguish the color. But when I normally see the policy/guideline checkmarks as they are, I can see them quite fine. I would be opposed to a black checkmark as it would not catch the reader's attention as well. Red and orange would be catchy, but is usually associated with danger. I can't think of any other good colors right now, so maybe we can leave it as it is? Or we could use brighter colors like this green and this blue? I honestly do not know... A a s i m 00:31, 16 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
As mentioned a few times in the past about theses icons - they do not meet accessibility rules for color blind-readers and should be removed all together. Let try and have a mature looking project and start removing all the child like graphics all over. Do we want children editing here or an academic community. --Moxy 🍁 12:45, 16 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I only have a problem with the black because it does not match the aesthetics of the site. Also, black makes it seem very ominous and it can be a bit confusing. We have had the green/blue system for a long time, and while I am not opposed to change, I do not think the colors should be changed just like that. I cannot think of any other good colors to change this to. And the other icons that have been proposed do not look aesthetically pleasing (as if someone won first place in a contest or something like that), which will also cause a bit of confusion. ~~Since I cannot think of anything else, I vote Oppose for this proposal.~~ Also, I think the checkmarks are supposed to provide a level of redundancy to make it easier to identify policies and guidelines, and they are almost never used alone when describing policies and guidelines. The color is kind of relevant, but they can just tell that the thing is a policy/guideline by reading the message box description. Because of this, I do not support this proposal. Oh, and for the extended policy/guideline table, I think it would be good to maybe add a P to one of the checkmarks and a G to another of the checkmarks. Look at what we did with our padlocks. We decided to add letters to them and make them flatter. Why can't we do the same here? A a s i m 18:49, 16 July 2020 (UTC) Change my vote to conditional support. Stronger colors are supposed to catch your attention more. Look at the color of these emoji checkmarks: ✔✅☑ (at least on Windows). One is this sort of bright green, another is this white on green, and another is this blue on green. And that is a pretty strong blue as well. So and may be the way to go. Or and . But we need stronger colors to make them more distinguishable against a purple background. A a s i m 19:10, 16 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Weak support, while I have no difficulty telling the symbols apart, the proposed design is clearer. (I have put the changes in the extended content below) Danski454 (talk) 18:41, 16 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- @Danski454: The green checkmarks in the navbox didn't get changed (though the key below did). —[AlanM1 (talk)]— 19:00, 16 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  - There is something weird going on with c:File:Check-green.svg. The 512x512 px PNG shown on that page when I go to it shows a medium-green (#008000) check. Some of the other size PNG renderings show the same color, while others, like the 240 px show a bright green check (#00FF00). The latter is the color used below in the key for the 15 px "proposed" one at the bottom of the navbox while the 17 px checks shown within the navbox are rendered with the darker green. —[AlanM1 (talk)]— 22:14, 16 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I would not object to a strong blue instead of per Awesome Aasim's comment. —[AlanM1 (talk)]— 19:00, 16 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Extended content

Current

This page documents an English Wikipedia policy.

It describes a widely accepted standard that all editors should normally follow. Changes made to it should reflect consensus.

This page documents an English Wikipedia guideline.

Editors should generally follow it, though exceptions may apply. Substantive edits to this page should reflect consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on the talk page.

[[Category:Wikipedia {{{1}}}s|Village pump (policy)]]

Proposed

This page documents an English Wikipedia policy.

It describes a widely accepted standard that all editors should normally follow. Changes made to it should reflect consensus.

This page documents an English Wikipedia guideline.

It is a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow, though it is best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply. Any substantive edit to this page should reflect consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on the talk page.

[[Category:Wikipedia {{{1}}}s|Village pump (policy)]]

Comment MOS:COLOR very clearly states Ensure that color is not the only method used to convey important information. Especially, do not use colored text or background unless its status is also indicated using another method such as an accessible symbol matched to a legend, or footnote labels. Otherwise, blind users or readers accessing Wikipedia through a printout or device without a color screen will not receive that information.. This discussion needs to go away from just changing colors and move to changing symbols. The checkmark has no underlying meaning towards policies and guidelines. The graphic should be changed to a P and G, which can be differentiated. Then the colors don't have to change. I am sure someone can do better, but see {{Wikipedia policies and guidelines/sandbox2}} for an example. « Gonzo fan2007 (talk) @ 14:50, 17 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

They do have WP:ALTTEXT – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 16:47, 17 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Finnusertop, which works well for people using a text reader, as long as they remember that a green checkmark is for guidelines and blue is for...oh, wait, which one is which again? And of course for people who know there's an alt text. Oh, and for people not using mobile devices that don't render the alt correctly. Let's make this less of a puzzle to remember. There is zero reason not to use a G or P. We can put the checkmark over the G or P if you want to make it pretty, but function is more important than pretty. —valereee (talk) 17:07, 17 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Valereee: In this case, the two alt texts read "Guideline" and "Policy", respectively. We can always find scenarios where any of the accessibility features do not work, so it's about balance. And to find the right balance we look at the guideline. And the guideline does not necessiate anything further than is already implemented now, so I'd say we're already balanced. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 17:31, 17 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Finnusertop, in which case? Everywhere in this discussion I'm seeing alt text that just gives the file name. —valereee (talk) 18:18, 17 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Valereee: {{Wikipedia policies and guidelines}} – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 18:23, 17 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Finnusertop, that's a single template, and how do the checkmarks even provide info? The green checks -- which if there were any reasonable thinking would be at minimum linked to Green for Guideline instead of Green for Policy -- don't get automatically linked that way. What are these checkmarks doing for us other than...I can't actually think what they're doing for us other than cluttering up the page. —valereee (talk) 18:44, 17 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Sigh, this is what you're going to get when you poll preferences instead of what's actually in the policy or guidelines. I prefer the green and blue checkmarks, you prefer a green G and a whatever P. And yes, you can add alt text "Policy" right next to "This page documents an English Wikipedia policy" in {{Policy}} and "Guideline" right next to "This page documents an English Wikipedia guideline" in {{Guideline}}. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 21:08, 17 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Use of "controversial" in the lead and beyond references to people in WP:LABEL. Dispute at the Blanchard's transsexualism typology article.

Opinions are needed on the following matter: Talk:Blanchard's transsexualism typology#"Controversial" in lede. A permalink for it is here. The discussion concerns not only whether or not "controversial" should be used in the first (lead) sentence of the article, but also whether or not "controversial" applies beyond references to people in WP:LABEL. Flyer22 Frozen (talk) 23:13, 15 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Notablity Not Inherited Giving Fuel To A Deletion Storm

This is an issue that few care about, but I would argue is causing real damage to Wikipedia. Amongst its zillions of pages are those of minor royal and aristocrats, which have been laboured over by those with the fascination for the genre. They amount to millions of manhours. Those pages –– created by a small army of editors –– are being successively submitted to Pages For Deletion, where they very often disappear –– for the reason that few of the editors who created them, monitor those pages. It only takes a handful of persons with a grudge against elites -- either for politics or personal reasons -- to succeed in the task. And these editors can be very young: certainly some appear very callow. Yet the information being lost can be highly valuable, particularly for journalists and scholars, who are often stumped when they have to write about a current obscure aristocrat or royal, and have no idea of their familial connections.

In deleting the pages, these small cabals cite a string of Wiki policies, including WP:GNG WP:NOTGENEALOGY, WP:NOTEVERYTHING, and particularly WP:NOTINHERITED. The last is particularly faulty and defies common sense. In the real world, notability is commonly inherited by association. Why is policy defying logic?

I note that Jimmy Wales has said he believes obscure genealogical information can be useful. Well, dur. I believe there needs to be a policy review on this matter, and some leeway given to enable these pages to exist. It's really unfortunate to see so much valuable information being deleted weekly simply due to personal ideology or a personal grudge. And I fear it's going to accelerate. Pages detailing white euro historical elite families are particularly vulnerable in the current climate. And given few care about them, except those who create and edit them, and the journos and scholars who access them, they make easy prey. The policies need to be looked it to make it make harder for those with a vendetta for such pages. ClearBreeze (talk) 18:35, 16 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

(ecx3) There is so much wrong with this comment, I don't know where to begin. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 18:40, 16 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Do you propose a solution other than deletion? Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 18:39, 16 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

This might be a good reason for you to set up a wiki elsewhere for documenting such folks. Nobility is not notability, and if the nobility is inherently worthy of note, then they should be able to meet WP:GNG. The assumption that they must be worth of note because their father was worthy of note because his father was worthy of note because his father was worthy of note because... just falls on its face. --Nat Gertler (talk) 19:19, 16 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

WP:NOTINHERITED is indeed commonly misunderstood and misused. It is part of the essay series "Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions". It only applies to arguments to avoid. Very few people actually make this argument, I have never seen it happen. So long as a topic has sources, this essay does not apply. The essay is saying, you must show sources you can't only rely on its relationship with others. It doesn't mean that children or wives of notable people ca not be notable themselves. Yet, this is how it is applied 99% of the time. -- GreenC 19:21, 16 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you @GreenC. That's useful comment. As that policy page is being grossly misinterpreted, I'd suggest it requires a better executive summary at its head of one sentence stating exactly what you have said. However, there is another problem. Just because some people are inherently notable, doesn't necessarily provide lavish sources. Half the town can turn out for an obscure aristo euro wedding or funeral, but the sources might be three in a lifetime, and local at that! Yet the fact they can draw crowds for these singular events is indicative that they are notable to a great many. Notability by way of birth is an utterly different notability to achievement notability or celebrity notability: it might involve lives of almost total seclusion, but it doesn't mean these people aren't notable, and are unworthy of inclusion in Wikipedia. Just ask the villagers of a french town about the local Duc or Vicomte. They may like him; they may hate him; but he matters! And then you go looking on Wikipedia looking for information on his line, and find it's gone, because a few students in Peoria with chips on their shoulders deemed him unworthy of digital existence. ClearBreeze (talk) 19:58, 16 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It has become a meme. The word "inherit" reinforces it - fitting neatly into Wikipedaia's egalitarian merit-based ethos. It can be appealing to a sense of fairness that many who take part in Wikipedia are seeking. One option is create a counter essay and every time someone posts a link to it, post a counter-link. -- GreenC 20:38, 16 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

GreenC, Thank you for your comment! In my experience, WP:NOTINHERITED is so notoriously misinterpreted as applying to CSD as well as XfD that I actually wrote about it. And it still is occasionally misinterpreted. The way some people have acted, you could be forgiven for thinking that WP:ATD is a figment of my imagination! Adam9007 (talk) 20:47, 16 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

But WP:NOTINHERITED seems to speak quite directly to the argument being made here, not in the manner of "this title is inherited from the father", but in what that piece says about inherent notability. CB seems to be making the argument that the problem with these deletions is that "All viscounts (or whichever title) are notable", and that essay addresses the problems with "All _____ are notable" statements. --Nat Gertler (talk) 20:34, 16 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@NatGertler: Not merely "all viscounts", but all people who would have been vicounts had the title not been legally abolished before they were born. --JBL (talk) 20:45, 16 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Here are the articles that CB is on about: Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia (1944–1977) Countess Donata of Castell-Rüdenhausen Wilhelm, Landgrave of Hesse-Philippsthal-Barchfeld Princess Marie Cécile of Prussia and then also Line of succession to the former Austro-Hungarian throne. --JBL (talk) 20:04, 16 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I hadn't started editing yet in 2007 but this all reminds me of WP:PTEST. --JBL (talk) 20:14, 16 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
In this situation, wouldn't redirects to main articles just turn the topic area into a NOTGENEALOGY state? We already seem to have a lot of tedious genealogical tables sprouting up using some template I've only seen recently. (Perhaps the template has existed for years and someone has just recently discovered it, mind). We're also seeing a lot more coats of arms, which seem sometimes to be dodgy because their sourcing is not clear and likely involves some synthesis. - Sitush (talk) 20:25, 16 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Sitush: Redirecting to main articles would reduce the number of places the genealogy cruft accumulates, but I agree with you that it would require active maintenance of the main articles to prevent excessive genealogical silliness taking over. (Honestly my comment was mostly meant as a joke, as in: Pokemon are fictional creatures, with rules about which ones are stronger and which ones evolve into which other ones or whatever; just like nobility of the Kingdom of Prussia or Austro-Hungary post 1918 are fictional creatures, with rules about which ones have which titles and which ones begat which other ones.) --JBL (talk) 20:42, 16 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) In my experience, we seem to have a lot of articles about minor members of aristocratic families etc that are sourced almost entirely to things like Debretts, Who Was Who and thepeerage.com. Such sourcing leaves them wide open to deletion because those sources are effectively just directory entries. Absent a decent-length obituary in a national newspapers etc, they're going to struggle to be kept. Certainly, genealogical websites won't help them, nor findagrave, nor family histories. - Sitush (talk) 20:05, 16 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- We do? Examples please. I'm always amazed how few articles we have on, for example, English duchesses from the 18th century, when they really were a power in the land. Baronets who just hung around their estates or clubs instead of doing something notable were purged years ago, not long after Pokemon figures with no agent. The current hunting ground is members of, or people married, into former major royal families (Prussia/Germany, Austria etc). We've never had articles on "minor members of aristocratic families" who did nothing else, & it is myth-making to claim otherwise. Johnbod (talk) 02:22, 17 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I assure you I am not making a myth but, equally, I have very little interest in the subject and do not take notes. I will let you know as I find them but a good hunting ground would be Indian royalty from the princely state period. The most recent European example I noticed has been within the last week so I will check my contribution history to see if I edited it, in which case I will be able to point you to that also. - Sitush (talk) 07:03, 17 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Notability means that there are sufficient reliable sources to write an informative article about a person. In most of these cases there aren't. What's particularly bad is when a non-notable person receives press coverage for minor offenses such as DWI or marijuana possession. The best way to handle these subjects is to have articles about their families if they were notable. Beyond that, the fans of former nobility can consider setting up their own project outside Wikipedia. TFD (talk) 20:22, 16 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

As others have pointed out, the problem—if there is one—is not WP:NOTINHERITED, it's the misunderstanding of WP:NOTINHERITED. A proper argument citing that policy would mean that purely being related to an important person does not make the relative important; other evidence of notability is needed. If that other evidence is lacking (WP:GNG sufficient characteristics, for example), then the article needs to be deleted. "Jimmy Wales has said he believes obscure genealogical information can be useful." Ok. I would also find a section on each article of every town listing every available restaurant "useful" , but that doesn't mean it actually belongs in an article. -Indy beetle (talk) 21:04, 16 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Three points. 1. There seems to be a consensus developing in the discussion that misinterpretation of some Wiki policy pages, most especially that of Notability, requires their pages to have better upfront summaries. @GreenC 's on Notability here was a lightbulb moment. 2. @GreenC in his linked essay makes the point: "there is a consensus that a strong connexion with something notable is indeed a credible claim of significance." This actually goes to nub of the problem: if that's the consensus, then a descendant still bearing the title and kudos of the ancestor, and who is perhaps considered *quietly* notable in public life, is not accorded the same respect on Wikipedia. Which brings me to point 3. I noticed when reviewing some of the foreign aristo pages for deletion that the majority weighing in seemed to have zero knowledge of the individuals in question. So pages laboured over by persons often with a great deal of knowledge of the topic, are being deleted by persons with zero knowledge. Yes, that's how Wiki democracy works, but generally most commentators proposing deletion have *some* knowledge of the topic. So specialist pages on obscure personalities are particularly vulnerable to deletion. (Some commentators complained they couldn't find source articles, but appear not have known how to correctly format the foreign title or the positioning of the multiple names to better bring them up in a foreign News search.) And the end point? That the checks and balances for the Deletion of such pages (as per Point 1) need to be stronger. ClearBreeze (talk) 22:26, 16 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding your point 2, the essay is Adam9007's, not GreenC's. It's about claims of significance, which are a consideration of speedy deletion criteria, not about notability. Schazjmd (talk) 22:36, 16 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, yes, ta! ClearBreeze (talk) 22:46, 16 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

In order to consider an article for deletion, editors do not need to have any knowledge of the person beyond what is in the article. If the article provides them with zero knowledge about the subject then it should be deleted. There may well be a lot of people who know a great deal about the subject but unless that information has been published in reliable sources, we can't add it to the article. There are about 50 to 100,000 nobles in France alone today,[5] so maybe a million or so people with claim to some form of hereditary title. TFD (talk) 01:53, 17 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

See WP:BEFORE section D. Check for more sources before nominating. -- GreenC 02:04, 17 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

FWIW: the OP has now been indeffed. --JBL (talk) 12:16, 17 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

RfC on an addition to the Manual of Style

There is a proposal for a new subsection on ecclesiastical titles being conducted at MOS:BIO that editors are encouraged to participate in. --Slugger O'Toole (talk) 20:10, 16 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

RfC - Excerpt

Hello - a seasoned editor and I were talking about a specific article and they stated “That's because some people apparently decided that it's okay to transclude parts of articles into other articles rather than just rewriting it. While this barely makes sense in cases where things are updated regularly, I think it overall causes an issue for editors, but I think that'd need to be taken to an RFC to be ended. Specifically it's transcluded at Electoral results for the district of Goulburn with the template:

No page given

”

An editor reverted my edit back to {{Election box begin no party no change AU | |title = 1861 Goulburn by-election <ref name="Green Goulburn 1861 by-election">

The person I’m speaking with is @Jerodlycett: who can maybe shed more light on this and explain it better. I’m relatively new and have only been working on correcting errors in articles.

Please feel free to correct the title or anything else as I have never done this before.

Thanks, Bakertheacre ^Chat/_{What I Baked} 06:07, 20 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]