*:We do have links to the help desk, from internal pages like [[WP:Questions]], [[Template:Wikipedia help pages]], [[Template:Noticeboard links]], etc. The proposal isn't to scrap all those links. It's just to replace it on the Main Page specifically, from where it's more likely we'll be getting newcomer clicks rather than anything else. [[User:ProcrastinatingReader|ProcrastinatingReader]] ([[User talk:ProcrastinatingReader|talk]]) 15:32, 25 April 2021 (UTC)
*:We do have links to the help desk, from internal pages like [[WP:Questions]], [[Template:Wikipedia help pages]], [[Template:Noticeboard links]], etc. The proposal isn't to scrap all those links. It's just to replace it on the Main Page specifically, from where it's more likely we'll be getting newcomer clicks rather than anything else. [[User:ProcrastinatingReader|ProcrastinatingReader]] ([[User talk:ProcrastinatingReader|talk]]) 15:32, 25 April 2021 (UTC)
*'''Link to both''' but put the Teahouse above the Help Desk. Adding another line won't damage the layout, but it will allow more people to get the assistance they need. —[[User:Naddruf|<u>Naddruf</u>]] ([[User talk:Naddruf|''talk'']] ~ [[Special:Contributions/Naddruf|'''contribs''']]) 17:11, 25 April 2021 (UTC)
*'''Link to both''' but put the Teahouse above the Help Desk. Adding another line won't damage the layout, but it will allow more people to get the assistance they need. —[[User:Naddruf|<u>Naddruf</u>]] ([[User talk:Naddruf|''talk'']] ~ [[Special:Contributions/Naddruf|'''contribs''']]) 17:11, 25 April 2021 (UTC)
*'''Further comment on Main page wording''' I'm uncertain what words are best if the Teahouse goes ''above'' the Help desk on the Main page links. I've racked my brain, and this is the best I can come up with:
*::*'''[[Wikipedia:Teahouse|Teahouse]]''' - A help desk for novice editors. A friendly space to ask about editing Wikipedia.
*::*'''[[Wikipedia:Help desk|Help desk]]''' – Ask questions about using Wikipedia. Aimed mostly at those with some editing experience already.
*:: (or perhaps...*'''[[Wikipedia:Help desk|Help desk]]''' – Ask questions about using Wikipedia. Less friendly, more curt and tons of abbreviations!) [[User:Nick Moyes|Nick Moyes]] ([[User talk:Nick Moyes|talk]]) 00:19, 26 April 2021 (UTC)
Convert all English variant notices to editnotices
This proposal arises from an ongoing discussion at the idea lab about how to reduce the clutter of excessive talk page banners, a phenomenon that leads to banner blindness, overwhelming and confusing new editors and reducing the visibility of the more important notices.
One idea I put out that seems to have gotten particular traction is that there is no need to have English variant notices (e.g. {{British English}}) appear on the talk page, rather than just as an editnotice that appears in the edit window while one is editing the article. The primary rationale is that no one is policing the English variety used on talk pages, so the only place this is needed is the editnotice. I'm therefore proposing here that we convert all existing English variant notices on talk pages to editnotices on the corresponding page. This would be done via a bot task, and once completed Module:English variant notice would be configured so that it produces an error notice if placed on an article talk page. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 14:34, 10 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Survey (English varieties)
Support as nominator. To address two potential concerns: (1) In the rare instance that there's a talk page discussion about changing the variant, it's easy for the proposer to provide the context. I can't think of any other situation in which people on the talk page need to pay attention to the variant. (2) Modifying editnotices currently requires advanced permissions; my understanding is that this is for technical reasons rather than because of any editorial consensus. This is an issue that ought to be addressed on its own at some point, but I don't think it's an insurmountable impediment here, as most pages developed enough to be tagged with a variant notice are monitored by editors able to modify it, and if not, they will be prompted to create an edit request, which is quite straightforward. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 14:34, 10 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support This is a good idea and should be implemented, provided any technical issues are addressed eventually (new permission?). GenQuest"scribble" 15:34, 10 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support there's a dual benefit as it simultaneously improves both the talk page (by reducing clutter) and the edit screen (by displaying relevant info), a win-win. --Paul ❬talk❭ 16:55, 10 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose The proposal seems half-baked because it doesn't address the use of templates like {{Use British English}} which are what I see most often. For talk pages, we could use something like an infobox which would contain key pieces of information about the article such as its size and quality rating. The dialect would fit best in such a summary of the article's properties. Andrew🐉(talk) 17:26, 10 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding the "use" templates, this wouldn't affect them one way or another; they'll continue being available for when it's desirable to designate a variant but there's not enough erroneous editing for there to be a need for a notice. We could discuss down the line how often to have something visible vs. invisible, but for now I think getting all the visible notices into editnotice format is the best first step.
Regarding your idea for a hypothetical talk page infobox, I'd suggest proposing that at the broader idea lab discussion. I could support it if it's implemented well, but it's beyond the scope of the more narrow change I'm trying to achieve here. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 19:12, 10 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Excellent idea. I suspect if editnotices had existed when these templates started this problem would not have arisen. ϢereSpielChequers 18:50, 10 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support if implemented, this would be huge for reducing talk page clutter, and actually making the english variety notices effective. As I said at the idea lab, the people who are disregarding or ignoring an established English variety aren't going to be on the talk page and see it there. As such, I'm convinced that the current position on the talk page is basically worthless. Aza24 (talk) 21:03, 10 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support this seems like a way to make the information more effective and reduce talk-page clutter at the same time. Thryduulf (talk) 22:06, 10 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support we do this for a few Canadian articles already...like Template:Editnotices/Page/Canada....still not seen in mobile view :-( --Moxy🍁 01:06, 11 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Arguments below convince me this is not a great idea. I think that it's better to use the "silent" {{Use American English}} etc and at worst let gnomes fix the problems. — Wug·a·po·des 23:07, 16 March 2021 (UTC) Support great idea. One added benefit is that it reduces ownership of articles by preventing new users from posting useless engvar tags. Since only admins, template editors, and page movers can add these if we make them edit notices, it also gives template editors and page movers something to do. — Wug·a·po·des 02:54, 11 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I also like the idea of removing them altogether. — Wug·a·po·des 21:45, 13 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Template editors and page movers may not want something else to do. It seems simple enough to write a bot with the necessary permissions to do this. ChromaNebula(talk) 23:20, 26 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support for all of this genre of notices (engvar, date formats etc.), but -- perhaps heretically -- I would support all top-of-the-page cleanup notices going into editnotices as well, so people who just want to consult an article for information aren't bothered with them. Beyond My Ken (talk) 03:17, 11 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Beyond My Ken, by top-of-the-page cleanup notices are you referring to things like {{NPOV}} or {{Original research}}? I think those notices are pretty necessary from a reader perspective, since readers deserve to know when an article has significant problems so that they can read it with due caution and skepticism (yes, people should always be doing that, but they trust us enough they de facto often don't). That's more true for some notices than others, though; I could see a case for many of the yellow style ones like {{Cleanup bare URLs}} to be converted to be shown to editors only. The question at that point becomes whether we're wasting an opportunity to convert readers to editors by offering them an easy task. All this is tangential to the current discussion, so maybe take it elsewhere if you want to develop it further, but I hope my comment is food for thought. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 11:05, 11 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
No, you are correct, I was referring to the "yellow style" ones which primarily concern editors only. Beyond My Ken (talk) 21:26, 11 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I would argue that a fair number of the yellow banners are useful to readers (eg Template:Overcoloured letting colourblind users know that they may not interpret something on the page correctly, or Template:Essay-like). Further, as I've been editing even the ones which non-editor readers may not find useful now inform how I read. For example, seeing Template:Debate wouldn't have changed how I read something in the past, but now it suggests to me that people may have POV forked, there may not be great usage of reviews/meta-analyses (in the case of scientific articles), or its editing may have been a series of unconnected additions. They're also useful for the purpose of editing - I will detour from doing other tasks to correct an article if I notice some kinds of banners, including when I wasn't intending to edit it. --Xurizuri (talk) 10:55, 12 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
SupportGreat idea, this banner contributes to creep and I hope that this reduces needless conflict, as many well intentioned edits from new and IP editors are related to ENGVAR. --Tom (LT) (talk) 03:20, 11 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Having read through some comments below I have come to change my mind. As pointed out below this is likely to result in a large amount of editnotices that is likely to frustrate and deter editors. Tom (LT) (talk) 10:56, 6 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support not useful on talk pages, useful when editing which shows on editnotice. No need for new permission, nor should editing editnotices be available to all, PMR & TPE can do this. If the TPER queue becomes too long, we can get a bot with TPE to carry over additions from the talk page into the editnotice. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 09:21, 11 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Striking in favour of using hidden templates such as {{Use British English}} on the article prose, as said by Whatamidoing, and removing all the editnotices and talk page banners and converting them into hidden templates such as {{Use British English}}. Alternatively, a {{article standards}} template, as described in the thread by Levivich. Arguments by Levivich & L235 are compelling imo. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 15:15, 5 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support – reducing talk page template bloat and helping new editors understand Engvar at the same time sounds like a clear win-win to me. AngryHarpytalk 12:47, 11 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I think I oppose for sympathetic reasons. 2 reasons: 1) I do not think this is technically feasible. It asks to make an edit notice for essentially 6 million pages. That's an awful lot of infrastructure. (Someone tell me I'm wrong.) 2) I do think the correct remedy is removing these in their entirety from talk pages. We do not need them present in both their canonical place as article tags as well as talk pages. (Replace as needed on the article proper.) --Izno (talk) 14:41, 11 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Trivial or not, a very different figure to 6 mil. --Paul ❬talk❭ 21:14, 11 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Creation is "trivial for a bot". Maintenance and filtering through the noise in the template namespace looking for anything but edit notices? Yeah, not so much. --Izno (talk) 01:39, 12 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support This seems like a good idea worth pursuing. --Jayron32 18:16, 11 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support Reducing talk page clutter is a good idea. Remagoxer (talk) 20:51, 11 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support. It'd be more useful as an edit notice - I know I never check first, and it's a pain to have to open the talk page in a new tab (especially as I have ADHD and sometimes forget the variant as soon as I close said tab). Ideally, similar notices about the style of writing in a given article would also be great to have as edit notices. However, a concern would be that by reducing talk page clutter, we need to not just relocate the clutter (sweeping it under the carpet, so to speak). --Xurizuri (talk) 10:55, 12 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support, but what about protected pages? There might be an increase of (incorrect) ENVAR edit request, I guess you would also add a en-varent message on the talk page too? (please ping) DarthFlappy 18:53, 12 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@DarthFlappy: I would expect that the vast majority of edit requests come from people trying to edit a protected page (that they don't meet the requirements of), clicking the button to request an edit and filling in the form. You might have noticed many are blank—this is because people don't read what's on their screen and just click the big blue "Submit" (maybe thinking that they're requesting permission for them to be given edit access). But anyway, I wouldn't think the talk page banner would really make a difference on edit request content. — Bilorv (talk) 23:49, 14 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support but not at scale, and only as a pilot. As I understand this could affect millions of articles, so please try it first as a pilot for 100s of articles. Big changes like this are best done with test cases, time passing, multiple requests for comment, and documentation. This already has my general support and also I anticipate supporting again in the future, but the proposal as it is has no limits. The scale and pace of the changes matters to me. I am only expecting volunteer-level documentation and not the best and most complete, and I encourage the pilot. I recognize the existence of the problem and feel that it will only grow. There are various possible solutions, and perhaps we have to use several solutions at once to address this issue. Please develop this one solution first. Blue Rasberry (talk) 20:51, 12 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose editnotice banners are far more annoying than talk page notices. They slow down editing. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 22:18, 12 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose — Enwiki has got to be the only publication in the world that writes a single work using multiple varieties of English. Engvar isn't important enough to have talk page banners for, I agree, but the solution is to remove them altogether. Moving them to the edit notice will create edit notice blindness instead of talk page banner blindness, and that's even worse, because in theory, edit notices have the really important stuff, even moreso than talk page headers. Creating thousands or millions of edit notices is a huge overhead and maintenance increase. Edit notices are annoying and largely ignored anyway. They don't show at all for mobile users. In all, I think this moves the problem to a worse place rather than alleviating it. Levivichharass/hound 04:53, 13 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This is a fair point. I was thinking the notice should be trimmed down, literally into a bullet point like: “* This article uses British English.”. Alternatively, we can have a single “Article conventions” talk page template which is highly trimmed down and signifies standards like the variety of English used — this assumes that there are other types of standards other than English and date variety that could possibly apply. A bit like {{article standards|lang=British|dates=dmy}}. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 09:16, 13 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
An article conventions template sounds like a very good idea. There are probably others besides engvar and usedmy, but those two are good examples. I would find iconography to be the most efficient way of communicating these sorts of things, but I'm not sure if everyone would be on board for that. So like a little British flag somewhere if it was use BrEng, a US flag for AmEng, something like that. Levivichharass/hound 17:27, 13 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that the notices should be kept unobtrusive and concise. Regarding the "just remove them entirely" point, we already have the e.g. {{Use British English}} family of templates, which set the standard without displaying anything, just as you describe. I'm undecided about whether/when we should use that compared to {{British English}}, but I think that, in circumstances where it is important enough to warrant a banner, that banner should be proximate to the place it actually applies, which means putting it in the edit notice next to the article rather than the talk banners next to the talk. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 00:06, 14 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose We should save banners for the truly important stuff like BLP, rather than spelling. (t · c) buidhe 18:35, 13 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per Graeme Bartlett and CaptainEek. ~ HAL333 22:19, 13 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support: seems like a no-brainer. Banner blindness on a talk page is already a massive issue, and ENGVAR isn't relevant to reading the talk page, it's relevant to editing the page, so it should be where it's relevant. Sceptre (talk) 23:33, 14 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose: it's absolutely a reasonable proposal, but I'd prefer removal of these banners from the talk page instead. I just don't buy that language variant is important enough to warrant this kind of attention, and instead it will just cause reader blindness wherever it appears. I understand that it's very frustrating to be reverting the same good-faith spelling changes over and over again (I've lost count of the number of times I've had to revert "installment" back to "instalment" on the BritEng Black Mirror series of articles), but I've found that most unregistered editors will not see an editnotice, a wikicode template or a hidden comment in the middle of a word that keeps being changed (I don't know why the last doesn't work, but it doesn't), or possibly just willfully ignore them all. So I believe that this proposal, though it seems like the common sense logical position to move the template to, would just create blindness and have little-to-no effect on averting editing redundancies. — Bilorv (talk) 23:40, 14 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Bilorv: Your point about having to correct the same word over and over gives me a thought: what if we had an edit filter so that e.g. anyone trying to introduce "installment" to an article tagged with British English would get a big caution notice when they try to publish? {{u|Sdkb}}talk 01:58, 15 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I think it is unreasonable for new/IP users to have no way of knowing this info before editing. Yes, they most likely won't read the notice, but "there's a notice that you ignored" is much better than "there's a policy hidden in our arcane (to new users) WP namespace that you don't even know about". And given that the varieties of English are largely identical, it's sometimes difficult to tell what variant the article is in; the notice is a nice reminder. - NovovTC 07:57, 15 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
To Sdkb, that's possibly something I could support, but I really don't like edit filters targeted at newbies because it's one more barrier to entry. If there was a way to say "literally the only changes in this edit are a bad spelling changes" then that would be ideal. I know that's asking a lot. To Mir Novov, many good faith edits I see by new/IP users that I have to revert are something I couldn't reasonably expect them to understand. There's been a discussion on the talk page? The lead doesn't mention this because of due weight? This source is unreliable even though it's a newspaper one million people read per day? It's wrong to call a section "Controversy" even though you've seen 1000 other articles with that bad heading? If anything it seems to me that "this article uses Australian English because it's about an Australian show" is so much easier to explain than most common mistakes made. — Bilorv (talk) 09:37, 15 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Bilorv, in my idealized 2030 version of Wikipedia, the way that filter would work is that someone would go in and try to make a bad switch to another variant within an otherwise fine edit, and when they click publish, a notice would pop up saying "Hey, you switched 'instalment' to 'installment', which appears to go against the British English used for this article. Would you like to (a) publish, but keep British English? [works in one click], or (b) publish anyways?"
Even with that, though, I agree with Novov that, for pages where switches are common (which is the group we're discussing here), it's better not to make someone do all the work before giving them the alert. And it's not just newcomers—I didn't know that "installment" was one of the words that differed until you mentioned it above, so I could easily see myself making that error. Whereas if there's an editnotice that (again, thinking futuristically) automatically detects that "instalment" is used a lot on that page and therefore includes it in the examples, that'll let me know not to touch anything. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 13:05, 15 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support - This information is most useful for actually editing pages, not discussions. Logically, it should belong there, and such a relocation would be useful to the IP editors that have "corrected" spelling . Yes, some other info is on the talk page that should be read, but a lot of people don't read that, and wishful thinking won't make that fact go away. - NovovTC 07:57, 15 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Instruction creep, overly intrusive and will just lead to more edit notice blindness. Neutralitytalk 19:43, 15 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per Neutrality. Personally, I dislike edit notices and more edit notices that would intrude on the editing interface is something that I would not want. Perhaps something similar to the Template:Use mdy dates template would be better. A whole host of edit notices on the national varities of English (sometimes where editnotices are already in place) would be worse than talk page banner blindness for content creators hoow would have to scroll past the edit notice every time they edit. Plus, the national varities of English really isn't that important and as such, this is why we should keep them on talk pages. P,TO 19104 (talk) (contribs) 23:08, 15 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per Graeme Bartlett and CaptainEek. Cavalryman (talk) 03:14, 16 January 2021 (UTC).[reply]
Oppose. Varieties of English are not important enough to warrant placement as an editnotice. Just try and notice what variety the article is using and emulate that; if you get it wrong, someone will help you fix it. In my view, the talk page banner exists only to attempt to avert edit wars over this stuff, with one side being able to point to the banner. The rest of the time it's not useful, whether on the talk page or as an editnotice. KevinL (aka L235·t·c) 20:07, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Further to this, there are some truly important editnotices (e.g. DS notices that create blockable offenses), and the more editnotices we add the more banner blindness we get. Talk page notices are already ignored; let's not consign editnotices to the same fate. KevinL (aka L235·t·c) 20:09, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Whilst I see your argument, to be fair, the editnotice format already exists right now and is placed arbitrarily; admins/TE/PMRs will place it themselves or on request for other editors, also in line with the current documentation for these templates. The pages that only have a talk notice are usually arbitrary. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 20:12, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
There's an editnotice already? That's awful. Let's delete it. KevinL (aka L235·t·c) 20:22, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, see doc of {{British English}}. It’s done using a parameter, but the idea is (I think) to use both. To clarify, my point isn’t that we should enshrine a pattern that may not make sense, but if we don’t want language editnotices we should remove them entirely rather than the arbitrary system currently.Personally I think either trim it down to literally a bullet point not a hefty notice, or create a {{article standards}} for talk pages. Each option has a different purposes of course: the former is intended to alert editors writing to tailor their language, the latter to help copyeditors ‘fix’ errors. Personally, I don’t know other varieties of English so I make my ‘errors’ and let someone else copyedit their fixes if they care, so possibly the latter is smarter. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 20:26, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The current editnotice should be terminated with prejudice. KevinL (aka L235·t·c) 20:52, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I think I have used that edit notice. But the idea is to only insert the notice if it really needs to be noticed, ie there is a chronic problem with numerous edits on the page. So in general it should not be added in my opinion. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 23:59, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - editnotices should be reserved for important article- and page-specific instructions, and should be used as minimally as we can manage. Opening editnotices to general advisories about article styles will lead to clutter and significantly diminish the usefulness of editnotices for those article- and page-specific notices. See also this discussion from a couple years back about this exact thing which led to consensus that style notices shouldn't be used this way without evidence of disruption. In the same discussion, several users smarter than me also suggested that doing this would pollute the database with a few hundred thousand new pages and increase the loading time of articles, for no particularly important reason. Ivanvector's squirrel (trees/nuts) 01:04, 20 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Furthermore, we still haven't solved the issue that editnotices aren't visible to mobile editors, so they're not well suited to editorial advisories anyway. Ivanvector's squirrel (trees/nuts) 01:06, 20 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose as this proposal appears to ignore the fact that editnotices don’t show on mobile. SK2242 (talk) 06:41, 20 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Neither do talk notices. Or, well, they're well hidden. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 23:00, 21 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Weak oppose; how many times have you read on AN or ANI a reminder along the lines of, "Dear OP, did you miss the violently orange notice when you posted here?" If they miss that, do we really think that an editnotice will prevent page watchers from having to revert to the correct EngVar? Personally, i think that editnotices should be kept for the very most important things ~ things that if you cross or miss might end up with your privileges restricted. happy days, LindsayHello 14:10, 22 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support but only if there's an option for logged-in editors to turn off the notifications. LugnutsFire Walk with Me 17:23, 22 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose having more edit notices. In the visual editor and the 2017 wikitext editor, you have to click to get past the edit notices every single time you open that page to edit. Also, just as Ivanvector's squirrel says, you stop reading them when they're common. WT:MED has an edit notice that I've clicked past most days for the last several years, and I no longer know what it says. When we need to have notes about the language variant to use, please make them all "invisible" templates that carry the necessary information in the title, such as {{Use British English}}. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:58, 22 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support. As many others have said, very few editors will actually notice talk page banners, especially IPs and newbies. And failure to heed ENGVAR instructions has often led to disruptive, pointless edit wars. Of course, we need to be mindful of not accumulating so many edit notices that people will stop paying attention, but that's a separate discussion of how to condense the edit notices. ChromaNebula(talk) 23:20, 26 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support: Even if people ignore the notice, it won't be worse than it is now. This is a great way to stop people from changing between English varieties unnecessarily. And, also, since more people are seeing the fact that "you can tag articles for types of English?", there'll be more people tagging, which, in turn, leads to more standardisation and organization. Opal|zukor(discuss) 22:10, 29 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support, ideally with the notice stripped down to its bare essentials. Perhaps just This article is written in American English, and this should not be changed without consensus. Learn more. I see using editnotices as an improvement in multiple ways. Talk pages become less cluttered. Newbies who don't know about our approach to English varieties are more likely to learn about it and avoid making unwanted changes. And more experienced users editing articles without strong national ties can quickly see how they should write without having to either check the talk page or scan the article for clues as to the preferred variety. the wub"?!" 23:35, 30 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support - this seems like a good idea. Rollo August (talk) 17:32, 3 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Edit notices make it harder to edit. They should be reserved for important matters. Espresso Addict (talk) 07:54, 11 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Strongly oppose.: Instead, eliminate the editnotice versions. We do not need to browbeat editors, especially new ones, about style trivia every single time they edit the page. If someone gets it wrong, some gnome will fix it later, as with all other style quibbles. MoS is a guideline, not a policy, for a reason. No editor is required to follow it when adding new content; they're not permitted to disruptively and stubbornly change material to be noncompliant after they've been asked to stop doing it. Trying to effectively make following an MoS line-item mandatory to edit the page at all is an end-run around WP:EDITING policy, is WP:BITEy, is WP:CREEP of the highest order, and is also an end-run around nearly two decades of consensus that no style matters aside from some key points about article titling rise to policy level. While we're at it, also just get rid of the talk page banners for this. The "silent" templates like {{Use British English}} at the top of the actual article is entirely sufficient. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 18:01, 13 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Weak support, this is one option to reduce current clutter. These templates already exist as edit-notices, so whether or not they should be needs to be a different discussion. Either way, as a talkpage tag or edit notice, they should be sharply reduced in prominence/space in line with similar comments above, first of all by removing flags/other images per the spirit of WP:FLAGCRUFT. Frankly these notices could be reduced to two words (eg. "British English", "American English") left somewhere consistent on the talkpage/edit notice. CMD (talk) 17:46, 14 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per SMcCandlish. Editnotices should be reserved for important instrctions/information only. --NSH001 (talk) 10:04, 20 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose clutters the editnotice space with hundreds of thousands of pointless editnotices, while making sure editnotices need to be even flashier for users to read them. Ideally, we'd have a standardized location in the editor displaying the English variety - and editnotices are a hacky - and bad - way to somewhat emulate this. Elliot321 (talk | contribs) 01:45, 28 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Elliot321, a standardized location in the editor is an interesting thought. Where would you envision it going? Are there any phab tickets seeing if the WMF could look into adding something? {{u|Sdkb}}talk 07:08, 3 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Elliot321, that looks pretty good to me! Hovering over the word "British" could perhaps provide a tooltip with word examples (ideally tailored to the actual words used on the page). If you go forward and turn the mockup into a more formal proposal, I'd support. My read of this discussion is that there's definitely desire to make the language tag less prominent but just disagreement about how to do it, so I think your solution might have strong support if it can be implemented. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 07:39, 3 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Now, the question is how to set it? Though I suppose the {{Use blah English}} templates do that just fine, and that could probably be detected in the editor. Elliot321 (talk | contribs) 07:43, 3 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support Most users don't bother to look at the talk page unless they want to post a discussion there. A new user might not even know that talk pages are there! This is a very useful proposal. 🐔ChicdatBawk to me! 11:22, 5 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Opppose. I support aggressively cutting talk page clutter, but this notice to an even-more-visible edit notice does not accurately reflect its importance (it's a MoS issue, and I concur with SMcCandlish that we should not bludgeon editors about it, like an edit notice would do). — Goszei (talk) 16:37, 8 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I have long thought that the Variant notice should go on the Article page, and not the Talk Page. Just a simple one line hat note saying something like “This article uses UK spelling and grammar” at the top of the page would be enough. Blueboar (talk) 16:50, 8 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
If this is adopted, how would it be implemented relative to existing editnotices that already incorporate English variety? That is, see Wikipedia:Featured articles/Editnotice templates for a list of all medical featured article editnotices, that already include English variety, incorporating a custom list of words from the article. (Not a techie, please spell this out in Dummy 101 detail.) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:46, 10 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
In the cases where it's already in the edit notice, I think we'd just leave it there and only remove it from the talk page. --Paul ❬talk❭ 17:07, 10 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Shifting banners from talk to the edit notice helps talk but makes it even more unlikely that people will read the edit notice. I would want to see a draft of exactly how this proposal would be implemented (create a million new edit notices? create one central edit notice with magic code to show the language variety?), and exactly how it would appear. Try editing Donald Trump to see what an edit notice can look like. Johnuniq (talk) 22:59, 10 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
You're emphasis of how big of a change this will be is certainly valid, though I don't know if I agree that moving to an edit notice makes it even more unlikely that people will read the edit notice – even just the flag of the UK or US in the edit notice would do more than right now. The only alternative I can see to the current situation or the proposed solution above is to completely remove the english variety, which is a more or less impossible scenario. Aza24 (talk) 00:10, 11 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure how feasible this is in a technical sense, but if an editnotice template is about the formatting (eg date order), language variant, etc, then could those be smaller and all placed together right above the editor? It'd make it less obtrusive, while still being easy to locate all the relevant little pieces of information re writing conventions. Those could alternatively be in an expandable bar, like some of the category lists at the end of articles are. --Xurizuri (talk) 10:22, 12 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Johnuniq, I believe that this will involve creating tens of thousands of edit notices. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:01, 22 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Many old time editors, most newer editors, and virtually all IPs never make it a habit to look at the talk page before editing an article page. English version notices on the talk page are worthless. GenQuest"scribble" 23:30, 10 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Completely agreed, and this proposal should address that appropriately I believe. The current placement of English variety templates are virtually invisible to the intended audience. Aza24 (talk) 00:10, 11 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
As a newer editor, I have never intentionally checked before editing so that's at least some anecdotal evidence for your point. However, I'm not sure if this is a function of the notice on the talk page, but on the visual editor on some articles there's a little prompt right under the title (eg Education in Australia). I'm a big fan of those little prompts. --Xurizuri (talk) 10:22, 12 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The need for an administrator to intervene will force an non-administrator-editor who notices a a change to the English variety is clearly warranted to spend two edit sessions on the page. The first session would be to place a protected edit request. The second would be to actually change the variety. Jc3s5h (talk) 01:02, 11 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Given how infrequently a page's variety of English should be changed this sounds like a benefit to this proposal - ensuring that it only happens when there is a good reason to do so. Thryduulf (talk) 11:12, 11 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I would agree with this. Requiring two edits isn't unreasonable for something that defines how the entire article is written. --Xurizuri (talk) 10:22, 12 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I expect that the opposers on the basis of "we shouldn't have them in the first place" will actually do something about that and propose that we remove them all together (were this proposal not to pass) . Otherwise, you're wasting everyone's time. Aza24 (talk) 06:08, 13 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Opposing a change from the second-best solution (talk page banners) to the third-best solution (edit notices) is not a waste of time, even if one doesn't propose the best solution (no banners). Making a proposal that doesn't have a reasonable chance of success is a waste of time. Oftentimes, "second-best" is status quo because it's the compromise. Levivichharass/hound 06:16, 13 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
You are mistaken if you believe this discussion cannot generate the consensus to remove these from talk pages without replacement. RFCs are not votes.
Secondly, we are not wasting time regardless. We should prefer the best solution, however we get to it. It is a logical fallacy to argue that we also must do things consistent with our position, especially as this is a volunteer mission. (I have no problem being called a hypocrite if you like. :)
Thirdly, this is maybe the least concerning thing on the wiki today. We don't need the polarism on your part. --Izno (talk) 22:09, 13 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Izno, literally no where did I say anything like this discussion cannot generate the consensus to remove these from talk pages without replacement, and I certainly wasn't intentionally trying to generate "polarism"; the misrepresentations are not appreciated. I think I was pretty clear about what would be "wasting time" – a situation where people who oppose on the basis of "we shouldn't have them in the first place", the proposal fails, yet these opposers don't start some proposal to remove English variety banners. Because in a situation where a problem is brought up, consequently unresolved by the introduction of a bigger problem and neither end up being addressed is a waste of time. Aza24 (talk) 22:39, 13 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Obviously, the best solution would be a bot that automatically (and quietly) corrected spelling and usage to whatever variant was designated (assuming that a variant has been designated)... with an edit summary explaining what was done and why. Then editors could simply write, and not worry about whether they were writing in the designated variant. Blueboar (talk) 14:00, 15 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Blueboar: editors that are writing any new content shouldn't be overly concerned with this already - it is really about avoiding refactoring the existing text over and over again. — xaosfluxTalk 11:45, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Xaosflux: Is there evidence that such refactoring has been a significant problem thus far? Because if not then I think that Blueboar's suggestion is correct. Nsk92 (talk) 00:31, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
At the very least, the banners should be reduced and have the flags or other images removed. English varieties don't always neatly follow political boundaries, and at any rate we have WP:FLAGCRUFT for such situations in articles and yet flags are spammed across talk pages. Removing them also helps reduce space and prominence for a template that is probably mostly seen when explicitly being looked for. CMD (talk) 16:47, 17 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that the banners should be trimmed down, but I think the flags are actually quite helpful as a visual shorthand, so they're an element I think we should keep. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 21:15, 14 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
My main concern here is that editnotices only can be edited by page movers, template editors and admins. I get that a bot can do the initial move but how will we go about additions of these in the future? I don't mind if the consequence is that these notices become rarer, but in that case it should be a deliberate choice and not just an oversight. I also don't think it's a good use of time to significantly increase the number of trivial WP:TPERs with changes to engvar notices. --Trialpears (talk) 21:46, 11 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Trialpears, as I mentioned a bit in my !vote, I see this as an underlying problem—there are lots of situations in which anyone autoconfirmed ought to be able to edit a page's editnotice but can't (not because of any editorial consensus, but just because of something about the back-end technical structure of editnotices). That's a problem that we should solve (and if this goes through, it might nudge us toward doing so), but I don't think we should handicap ourselves here and reject this because of it. To do that would both obscure the level of need to resolve the issue and give ourselves more work down the road once it is resolved. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 00:12, 13 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I feel like that would in general be a good idea, but I still see some reasons for the protection. Vandalism at editnotices would likely not be detected most of the time and even if it was detected most editors would probably not be familiar how to solve it. Putting misinformation in them could be significantly worse. I would definitely support enabling it for extended confirmed users though. With regards to implementation the restriction is governed by MediaWiki:Titleblacklist which can easily switch it to requiring autoconfirmed. It should also be possible to use a editfilter instead which could implement an extended confirmed restriction instead. --Trialpears (talk) 21:26, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Sdkb I don't see an issue with keeping editnotices to people who can override the blacklist - needing to edit editnotices is quite niche and they should, in most cases, be using templates which are not on the blacklist and thus can be edited.
As long as edit requests are fulfilled quickly, this is fine. Perhaps more people should apply for page mover? Elliot321 (talk | contribs) 07:29, 3 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I personally feel that to reduce possible banner clutter and the talk page clutter, it should be only visible in the edit source for an article but in perhaps a different more vibrant color so it will be easy to notice and can inform editors without causing any/much clutter. Discount Horde (talk) 18:18, 22 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
RFC: Citation Style 1 parameter naming convention
There is a rough consensus that non-hyphenated parameters should not be deprecated in citation templates (option C). This means that existing hyphenated (e.g. access-date) and non-hyphenated (e.g. accessdate) parameters should both continue to be supported by the templates. Bot removal of non-hyphenated parameters from transclusions, i.e. Monkbot task 18, does not have community consensus.
This RfC presented participants with three options:
Option A: Non-hyphenated parameters should be deprecated and removed; [Monkbot 18] is free to continue its work.
Option B ("status quo"): Non-hyphenated parameters are formally deprecated, but should not be immediately removed. Deprecation can be bundled into genfixes or performed along with other non-cosmetic changes, but (ignoring a possible Cosmetic Bot Day) should not be done on its own by a bot.
Option C: Non-hyphenated parameters should not be deprecated; deprecation should not be continued and bot approval should be revoked.
The head count for these options, considering only "first choice" preferences, is 28 (36%) for option A; 5 (6%) for option B; and 45 (58%) for option C. A number of participants expressed support for option B as a second choice to their preferred option. If we take that into account, the head count is 29 (37%) for option A or B; 46 (59%) for option B or C; and 3 (4%) for just option B.
There was significant discussion about what the "status quo" with regard to these parameters is; whether the RfC statement presented it correctly; which syntax is more human-accessible (if any); and whether those in favour of option C fully understood what 'deprecated' means. However, none of these discussions substantially affect the strength of arguments on either side. Very few participants changed their opinion as a result of them, and the voting trend did not significantly change through the course of the RfC. I therefore don't see any reason to deviating from the head count in closing this discussion.
The question posed by the RfC essentially boiled down to an individual preference for either standardising template syntax (options A) or minimising cosmetic changes (option C). There is little common ground between these two perspectives. It has been suggested that option B could be considered a middle ground. However, given that only a small minority of participants actually preferred option B, and that even accounting for "second choices" the head count is still weighted towards C/B over A/B, this would be a false compromise.
In summary, my reading of this well-attended discussion is that a comfortable, if not overwhelming, majority of participants preferred option C, and there is no compelling reason to not take that at face value. Bearing in mind that we can generally accept a weaker level of agreement to do nothing than we would to do something, option C has the rough consensus. – Joe (talk) 14:24, 15 April 2021 (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 non-hyphenated parameters be fully removed from the CS1/2 family of templates? Primefac (talk) 02:14, 10 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Background (CS1)
In 2014 an RFC determined that all parameter names in Citation Style 1 templates should have an alias which is in lowercase that has separations with hyphens between English words, between (not within) acronyms, or between English words and acronyms. The documentation is to show this lowercase, hyphenated version as the one for "normal use". This meant, for example, that |access-date= would be shown as the preferred parameter while |accessdate= was shown as acceptable but discouraged from use. In the following years there have been various trends and discussions formally deprecating many of the non-hyphenated parameters, from a small handful (2019 example) to the current list which contains over 70 entries. Many of these are the non-hyphenated variants of the preferred/hyphenated versions, which are being removed to decrease the maintenance burden and increase the uniformity between templates (i.e. "ease of use"). Other changes have included having RefToolbar give the hyphenated params and setting AWB's genfixes to replace some parameters.
In October 2020, all non-hyphenated parameters were added to the "current list" linked above. In November 2020, a bot request was submitted ("Monkbot 18") to remove or replace these deprecated parameters so that they could be removed from the base module and simplify the template code further. While acknowledging that this task was largely cosmetic in nature, BAG and other venues (primarily templates for discussion) have historically sided with the idea of a "maintenance burden" as a valid reason for edits such as these; see for example Monkbot 17, which replaced (cosmetically) one parameter for a better-named value for ease of use.
The issue for Monkbot 18 arises from the number of edits it is/was required to make; a conservative estimate would put the number of edits it has made for this task over a two month period (Nov 2020-Jan 2021) at around 1 million edits; as discussed on the task's talk page, this has essentially removed all but five of the non-hyphenated parameters, but another 2-3 million edits taking up to four additional months will still be required to fully "clear out" these parameters. Additionally, those opposed to the bot also expressed concern that the relatively small-scale discussions to deprecate these parameters had not reached a wide enough audience to merit what they felt were sweeping changes.
Proposal (CS1)
There are three main options with regard to the CS1/2 family of templates, and by extension Monkbot 18's task.
Option A: Non-hyphenated parameters should be deprecated and removed; the bot is free to continue its work.
Option B ("status quo"): Non-hyphenated parameters are formally deprecated, but should not be immediately removed. Deprecation can be bundled into genfixes or performed along with other non-cosmetic changes, but (ignoring a possible Cosmetic Bot Day) should not be done on its own by a bot.
Option C: Non-hyphenated parameters should not be deprecated; deprecation should not be continued and bot approval should be revoked. This will also mean that the deprecated parameter list will need to be updated to remove the non-hyphenated parameters.
Please note that this discussion is primarily about the CS1/2 template parameters and whether two full sets of parameters should be kept/maintained. It is not the place to re-litigate the various discussions about Monkbot 18's task; Option B is provided for those who feel the task should not proceed.
Survey (CS1)
First choice A, second choice B. I'd be happy to see AWB's genfixes take on some of this burden, and I'd be happy to see this happen a little more slowly, but it should happen, even though it's occasionally inconvenient for me. Also, when any individual parameter reaches a sufficiently small state (e.g., potentially still thousands of uses, but not hundreds of thousands of articles), the template should be updated to disallow that particular parameter (not merely advise against it in the documentation), so that they won't keep creeping back in, because, hey, it still works, so why should I bother? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:12, 10 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@WhatamIdoing: AWB's genfixes already handles this through WP:AWB/RTP, so manual edits and other bots can help whittle down the list while making other (non-cosmetic) edits. GoingBatty (talk) 04:12, 11 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
GoingBatty, are you sure that |accessdate= will be replaced by |access-date= by editors using the current version of WP:AWB/RTP? I think it was removed. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:33, 11 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Jonesey95: You're right! While the functionality exists (and other parameters are still replaced), editors have removed some hyphenation replacement rules. GoingBatty (talk) 04:59, 11 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option A. I support completing the nearly finished move away from unhyphenated multi-word parameters. See below for more details about this process, which is being questioned now by a very few editors after seven years of work, and when it is more than 90% complete. With any other template, it would have been the work of a few days to standardize on one style of parameter name and convert all of the transclusions. The only reason that the process for CS1/CS2 templates is different is that there are millions of transclusions instead of hundreds. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:33, 11 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option C. This is pointless make work; see extended comment in discussion section. Espresso Addict (talk) 07:08, 11 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option C If it was only confined to a few thousand pages, it wouldn't be a big deal. But when it's upwards of 3 million pages, maybe it should be the other way round - IE no hyphen. Lots of pointless bot cloggage in going through millions of pages for a trivial change. LugnutsFire Walk with Me 08:20, 11 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
B if not C As per comments above; many editors are clearly quite happy with the unhyphenated forms, so why not allow both? Changing is pointless. Lots of other templates allow aliases as parameter names. I fail to see the problem. But we are where we are, so I favour B rather than C. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:04, 11 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option A (second choice B), per Jonesey95. Let's just get everything simplified, as it should be. Get on and finish the job. --NSH001 (talk) 10:18, 11 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Update Add a qualification: I still very much hope that the bot will be allowed to resume, but subject to this condition: only if Monkbot 18 drops its removal of entirely blank lines within citation templates. For the reasoning behind this, see my conversation with Floydian in the discussion section (this is quite an easy change to make to the bot). While I'm here, I'll add a second qualification, also arising from the discussion: the list of articles on which the bot runs should be filtered to remove articles that have already been visited by the bot. This is in order to reduce the alleged problem of "bot spam" objected to by some editors (who says I don't listen to objections?). --NSH001 (talk) 06:52, 12 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option C. It is a totally pointless exercise. The unhyphenated ones are better in my eyes as they do not wrap in the edit window and can be underlined as a typo so are clearly visible in the edit window. Keith D (talk) 13:01, 11 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
C (first choice) or B (second choice). I've read many of the discussions about this issue and I've never yet seen anything the convinces me that deprecation actually benefits the encyclopaedia in any way. Even if we assume for the same of argument that it somehow does, the real and evident disruption caused by the bot so far and the extent of the changes the bot operator notes will be required to complete the task, very clearly and very significantly outweigh that benefit. Thryduulf (talk) 15:20, 11 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option A this change is a bit painful, but better for editing in the long-run. It's better to make this change than to not make it. The best time would've been fifteen years ago - but the second-best is now. Allow the bot to continue its operation, get rid of all the parameters, and once all are removed, start generating cite errors. Elliot321 (talk | contribs) 17:09, 11 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option A. Unfortunately, the visual editor exists... but isn't useful for large editing projects and thus many people still use wikitext editing - condensing to one form (specifically the hyphenated one as it is easier to read for editors) will help ensure consistency between articles at least in the CS1 templates. Obviously this won't make every article easier to edit as there are articles with non CS1 style citations, but it'll help the millions that do use CS1 look the same to editors instead of having a hodge-podge of hyphenated names. I further agree with the bot continuing to run now, and then running maybe once per week or so after this initial run to fix any CS1 non-hyphenated parameter names. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 17:13, 11 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option C. The point of templates and bots is that they should work to make editors' lives easier, not that editors should change the way they do things to make template and bot creators' lives easier. This bot has it completely topsy-turvy, and if the bot-approvals group has approved this then that is a problem with that group, not with a few unhyphenated parameters. I can't help feeling that that group is looking at the interests of a few bot operators rather than of the many more editors and still many more readers. There's no great complexity in having a few synonyms for template parameters, and there's no problem at all with exporting data - if the synonymic parameters point to the same place in code then they can be exported in the same format with no extra effort. I can't believe that forty years after I went into IT we still expect users to be slaves to the systems that are supposed to help them. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:21, 11 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The point of templates and bots is that they should work to make editors' lives easier. Exactly so. That's what this bot is for. It makes the parameter names easier to read (taking them as a whole, not just access-date on its own), reduces the size of the template documentation, makes the parameter names all consistent. All these combine to make learning how to use the cite templates easier. It also makes maintaining the templates easier. a win-win situation. The only reason we're having this discussion is that Mediawiki's watchlist software is so bad at handling bot edits. Otherwise it would be a no-brainer. Some people here seem to be under the mistaken apprehension that this is just to advance the interests of "a few bot operators". Well, I'm quite sure Trappist (the operator of this bot) could do without the stress of planning, writing and running this bot. He does a bloody fantastic job, and deserves a huge amount of credit and appreciation for his work. I can't believe that forty years after I went into IT we still expect users to be slaves to the systems that are supposed to help them. The whole reason for this bot is to make users' life easier. FWIW, I also have experience of IT work more than 40 years ago (seconded for 2 years to work on a (very successful) project - mathematical programming on big data for a life insurance company) and frequently had to liaise with IT people since then. I'm well aware of the problems that can arise when you just allow systems to get more and more complex, so I appreciate Trappist's (and many other people's) efforts to simplify matters. --NSH001 (talk) 23:37, 11 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Clarifying: Re-reading this again this morning, it might appear to readers who don't read carefully that I'm agreeing with Phil Bridger. Nothing could be further from the truth, I still support Option A. Option C makes no sense, for all the reasons set out by SMcCandlish. --NSH001 (talk) 08:35, 12 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
And Phil Bridger's hyperbole stance is fallacious. Option B imposes nothing on anyone. "I don't like option A" does not equate to "only option C can work". Option B is the status quo, and it has broken nothing. I'm rather shocked at how stark obvious this is, yet at least 10 editors don't seem to have noticed. I know that we have a lot of populism running around in the world – a lot of "I would feel very strongly about this, if it were true, and it feels good to pretend its true, so I'm going to pretend it's true" behavior. But that stuff needs to be left at the door. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 04:21, 12 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
No, my stance is not hyperbole or due to populism. The reason I reject option B is the word "immediately". It still leaves current consensus that unhyphenated versions of parameters will be removed, just not immediately, and it is that consensus that should change, however many years it has been stable for. I am happy with simplifying the documentation, but not with removal of the option. Phil Bridger (talk) 09:19, 12 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
As noted above: Deprecation is not synonymous with disabling. You're confusing replacement of the parameters as written in a template transcluded in a page, with removal of the runtogether parameter variant's ability to function in the template. Only option A would do the latter. We have many, many templates that support variant-spelling parameters but do not "advertise" them in the documentation, and it breaks nothing whatsoever to bot-replace them with the canonical version, just as the same bot will replaces calls to a redirect name for the template with the actual page name of the template. I.e., you're having a strong negative reaction to an argument that option B is not actually making. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 17:50, 13 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option B very clearly says "but should not be immediately removed". Either the word "immediately" has some meaning, and this option would lead to removal, but just not immediately, or it has no meaning and has no business being there. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:10, 13 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
SMcCandlish, this was explained in the previous discussion at CS1: ""Deprecation", by the definition used in the context of CS1/CS2, means that if the parameter is used, a red maintenance message will be shown and it will appear in a tracking category. It is a phase before removal of support for a parameter (in which case only an "unsupported parameter" message and optionally a hint on the new parameter will be shown). It is possible to stay in this state for extended periods of time, but the idea is that eventually the functionality will go". So the intention is to error and then remove the functionality of these parameters, not simply not advertise them in the documentation. If you want to propose a variant of option C that removes the parameters from the documentation but still allows them to function, go ahead, but option B is not that. Nikkimaria (talk) 20:09, 13 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
What I want to propose is a variant of Option B that removes the parameters from the documentation before letting some bot go around changing the articles on my watchlist as if the parameters are somehow bad. If the params are really bad, and if there's a consensus to that effect, then Step One is to take them out of the documentation (either by dragging them away in the dark of night, silently, like ninjas, or by transparently mentioning them as being deprecated, so everybody knows what's going on). The first phase of real deprecation is telling people to stop using something. Then you can start throwing up red messages and it's not so damned rude or surprising. — JohnFromPinckney (talk) 21:40, 13 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Sure, I would support that variant, too. Or a variant that kept mention of those versions of the parameters but deprecated them. Whatever gets us closer to having consistency in the actual deployed templates being used in citations. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 04:15, 14 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This stuff should be in a tracking category, if that's what bots and other tools are going to work with. If we don't like the error messages, then we can disable them. This is just template and module code, it's not etched forver into a mountain face like Mt. Rushmore. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 04:15, 14 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option C I agree strongly with Phil Bridger here. In other words, I fail to see what exactly is accomplished by making millions of cosmetic edits and then deliberately breaking things that would otherwise have worked. * Pppery *it has begun... 20:21, 11 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option B breaks nothing. You, et al., are providing an argument against option A, not an actual argument for C, and just ignoring B. Also, a !vote for C is an !vote for overturning a status quo that has been stable for years, in favor of chaos, yet without an actual rationale to do so. The closer should take that into account, per WP:NOTAVOTE. In the event of a "no consensus" result we still end up with the status quo. Things like this are why I keep telling people they need to write RfCs better. "Anything that can be misinterpreted will be." — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 04:21, 12 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
SMcCandlish, option B supports disabling of the non-hyphenated parameters - that is a breaking change. The difference between A and B is speed, not outcome. Your !vote below suggests you want the non-hyphenated variants to remain supported, but of the options provided only option C accomplishes that. Nikkimaria (talk) 16:18, 13 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Nope. See my response to same claim by Phil Bridger, above. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 17:50, 13 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yep - see above. You can also look at what has happened with previously deprecated CS1 parameters such as |authorfirst= - they don't work. Nikkimaria (talk) 20:09, 13 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Which is perfectly fine, given enough time that people stop actually using them. Thus remove them from the template documentation and replace them in deployed template translcusions. Eventually the "monkey see, monkey do" effect of being exposed to deprecated parameter variants goes away, through decreased and eventually zero exposure. I'm mean, come on, that's what the point of deprecation is. It seems to me that you [plural] are coming from a "give me C or give me death" perspective, artificially conflating A and B because you just will not tolerate the idea of any parameter name variants ever going away for any reason. If I'm wrong about that perception, then please explain. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 04:18, 14 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option C per Phil Bridger. Ealdgyth (talk) 21:28, 11 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option C - Commenting here probably falls under my doctors' lists of "things HF shouldn't do while he has a concussion", but I don't want to miss this discussion. While I understand that maintaining the citation templates is not a particularly easy job, in the end, rigidness in the citation template is not desirable. The citation templates should be easy to use, and having a couple aliases for the most common parameters makes it easier to use. And a trout to the bot guild for approving a bot task that was designed to deprecate template parameters with no consensus for that deprecation. Hog FarmTalk 22:15, 11 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
First choice A, second choice B. Wikipedia source text is becoming increasingly complex and difficult to manage making it less accessible, except for the type of experienced editors participating here. Anything we can do to reduce complexity is a win, fewer options the better when plainly redundant. -- GreenC 22:41, 11 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option C per Phil Bridger, personally I prefer non-hyphenated parameters, and I find deprecating them to be an absolutely pointless exercise that breaks things for absolutely no reason other than to satisfy the cosmetic preferences of a few editors. Devonian Wombat (talk) 00:14, 12 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option C. Largely per Hog Farm. Keeping extremely commonly used aliases is helpful for editors using these templates. Nikkimaria (talk) 01:17, 12 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support option C, neutral on option B, strongly oppose option A. My fingers are used to typing many of these parameter names without hyphens. Deprecating them and the accompanying gnomework of replacing them with the un-deprecated versions is already causing me significant hassle, both in trying to remember that really now they should be hyphenated, and in trying to pick out the important changes on my watchlist among all the pointless gnomery. Removing the unhyphenated forms altogether would be worse. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:41, 12 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option C. I'm with Phil Bridger and Hog Farm. I don't know if this is bike shedding or yak shaving, but it's just not productive and a bad look. Alternatives exist because it's simpler than remembering which of two common possibilities are acceptable, rather than forcing one or the other (as the other options do). Discussing efficiency because of a off-row character on the other hand (oh, so we're making this choice based on everyone using QWERTY?) is the kind of ignore-practical-facts reasoning that yield platypus-shaped end results. -- Mikeblas (talk) 01:52, 12 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
A is better in the long run, but B for now, and have the conversion covered by AWB genfixes and similar. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 02:29, 12 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Unfortunately, in this case, leaving it to AWB genfixes alone would be neither effective nor desirable. Because there are likely to be so many of these parms on any given page, the genfixes are likely to swamp the main, intended change, causing understandable annoyance. Much better to leave it to this excellent bot, which is clear and open about what it is doing – no nasty surprises. That's why I prefer option A to option B, but either of these is vastly preferable to option C. --NSH001 (talk) 08:31, 7 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option C per Phil Bridger. SarahSV(talk) 02:51, 12 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option C. This "everything must be hyphenated" approach doesn't work well with the text editor. For some common parameters like |accessdate=, it is simply better being unhyphenated because the source text is quicker and easier for a human to parse because the parameter doesn't word wrap in the editor's textbox. Jason Quinn (talk) 03:09, 12 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option B. We should stop listing the nonhyphenated ones in the documentation at very least, so that between editorial shift and AWB/bot genfixes cleanup, we get more consistent over time. It's too soon for option A, if ever, because the templates serve us, we don't serve the templates. It's perfectly fine for templates to quietly support non-hyphenated variants so they don't just break if people try them. But we should not continue listing those variants in the docs. It's antithetical to the purpose of templating, for us to perpetuate inconsistency (without good reason, like an ENGVAR color vs. colour distinction). And it pointlessly makes the documentation longer and more complex for no gain at all; no one looking for how to specify the Archive.org URL needs to know anything but |archive-date=, and telling them |archivedate= also works is just stuffing pointless trivia into their head. Yes, do continue converting to hyphenated versions in genfixes and other automated edits (when doing something more substantive at the same time). Finally, option C is rather pointless. We've regularly been (gradually) deprecating various old parameter names, and it has worked just fine. Option B will not break anything, and will have (already is having) positive results. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 04:21, 12 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option BOption C. These are all valid aliases, as there is zero confusion between say |access-date= and |accessdate=. The status quo works fine: hyphenated is preferred because it's easier to read, but unhyphenated is acceptable because there is no ambiguity and evidently plenty of people type it that way. Cosmetic changes should adhere to policy. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 05:53, 12 February 2021 (UTC) Changed from B to C as I am opposed to the implications of the "formally deprecated" part of these valid aliases. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 09:26, 12 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option C first choice (B second). Editors should be allowed to use either hyphenated or non-hyphenated versions. Consistency is not better than flexibility here: the only people reading the parameter are editors, so let the editors decide whether or not they want to use a hyphen in their template parameters. I share the general concern about the disconnect between code writers and content writers, and the frustration with some template and bot maintainers imposing decisions on everyone without consensus. Fait accompli editing across millions of edits or transclusions is kind of a big deal. Levivichharass/hound 07:20, 12 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I Like C: I especially echo Levivich, Thryduulf|, and Phil Bridger's comments regarding these perennial, periodic, new surprises where editing articles is concerned. That is disruptive and we should just stop it. C, therefore, will bring the sanity back. GenQuest"scribble" 07:42, 12 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option C. These are templates for use by editors, they have no impact on readers, and it's a complete waste of time making rules and regulations about them and then writing bots to enforce those pointless rules. Not to mention that when AWB goes through "fixing" all these in an article, it can drown out the genuine edits and make it harder for people to track what's going on. Get rid of this ridiculous rule, delete it from AWB, and then maybe we can get on with actually building an encyclopedia. — Amakuru (talk) 09:13, 12 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option C (which is the status quo ante). I just don't see what problem people are trying to fix, so follow WP:NBDF. The hyphenated parameters are useful and improve wikitext legibility, I personally prefer them, but allowing both forms makes things easier for editors. Deprecating them appears pointless, and removing them entirely seems actively harmful. It's created millions of pointless busywork edits clogging up watchlists for no good reason. We don't have a problem with template aliases, so why the concern about parameter aliases? None has been convincingly articulated. Modest Geniustalk 12:10, 12 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Since I have been pinged, neutral all round. I'm have nostalgia for the status quo for some reasons already presented (muscle memory, line breaks), but I recognize that once we pass through the valley of the shadow and emerge into the bright uplands yonder of a cleaner implementation, we'll have forgotten the pain. Mind you, I'll probably be 90 years old and beyond caring. But I have some implementation concerns in the Discussion. David Brooks (talk) 16:54, 12 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option C - Standardization of this sort may be useful to researchers or developers, but not to regular users. Adding citations should be as easy as possible. To that end, I want to minimize the chances that the interface will not know what I'm trying to do, or that I'll get an error because I entered an underscore instead of a hyphen. The rest of the internet is trying to increase flexibility to make user experience easy and intuitive. We do that too in many ways. But here we seem to be doing the opposite: removing flexibility and requiring users to know how we've worded/arranged things. I don't care if there's a bot that goes in an standardizes them afterwards or if someone runs AWB behind me. Again, I get the appeal of standardization. We should just be doing everything we can to make the experience intuitive for regular users. — Rhododendritestalk \\ 23:04, 12 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Alternative: Option D - let the bot and/or AWB standardize, but never disable the parameters. Standardization is good; degrading usability is bad. — Rhododendritestalk \\ 23:12, 12 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I would certainly support your option D if it was on the table, but cannot support anything that says that this functionality should be removed, as option B (despite the illiterate claims above that it doesn't) clearly mandates. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:10, 13 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option A with B as my second choice. Maintaining our complex citation templates is not an easy task, and if the people who are putting in the work want to do this to make their jobs easier, I'm in favor of it. Legoktm (talk) 23:48, 12 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option C with Option B as second choice: Modest Genius makes an excellent comment, as do several others. The community needs to stop wasting its time on this citation formatting nonsense and do the hard labor of introducing citations in articles instead, the place we actually have a front-facing desperate crisis which damages our reputation. I use |accessdate= and I have no intention to stop. I remember very clearly the process I went through of learning citation templates in 2014—they were confusing at first but I never had a single confusion in parsing "accessdate" as the two word phrase "access date", very clearly meaning the date you last accessed a reference. I can see that in theory this would be marginally better for new users, and I can see that in practice some people who don't like the look of "accessdate" are escalating it ("my opinion" becomes "the correct view" becomes "a moral imperative to enforce"), but this just doesn't outweigh the actual genuine pain it will cause editors like me to retrain a years-long developed muscle memory; almost every mainspace edit I make for months will have a disrupted flow (interrupts my thought process, wastes my time re-typing) if this is to change. As for the bot that has been wasting several minutes of my time per day, I strongly opposed it in the first place and have had more than enough of it. (No, I can't ignore it, because if I turn bot edits off I will miss acts of vandalism, unconstructive changes or cleanup tagging that are hidden by a subsequent bot edit.) BRFAs need wider advertisement when their scope is so enormous and their violation of WP:COSMETICBOT so overt. I don't accept that option B reflects past consensus in practice in that I can't remember anyone ever approaching me about my use of |accessdate= or changing it to |access-date= manually. Past local consensus among technical groups who don't work in article space, sure. But enwiki community consensus? No. — Bilorv (talk) 01:07, 13 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Bilorv:if I turn bot edits off I will miss acts of vandalism, unconstructive changes or cleanup tagging that are hidden by a subsequent bot edit -- this always takes me aback. Just curious, but why not enable the "Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent" + "Group changes by page in recent changes and watchlist" settings? I see no bot edits, and they don't cover anything up. — Rhododendritestalk \\ 02:50, 13 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Rhododendrites: appreciate the suggestion! It's never occurred to me that combining those would produce that functionality (there are so many complex combinations of Watchlist filters and Preferences options), but I've enabled those two and kept "Latest revision" on and enabled "Human (not bot)" as the Preference option "Hide bot edits from the watchlist" didn't seem to do that and now I think (small sample size in my watchlist atm) I see the latest change only, including if it's a bot, but only if at least one non-bot edit has been made (which is exactly desirable). — Bilorv (talk) 11:34, 13 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option A with B as my second choice. Maintaining the complex citation templates is not an easy task. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 02:52, 13 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option A on the basis that standardization is good. I don't actually care whether the hyphens are there or not, but it's better one way or the other rather than having a mix. In general I'd rather see us migrate away from using wikitext for reference information, though, it's like doing your finances in a text document. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 18:26, 13 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option A I have always preferred the hyphenated form personally because it allowed the spell checker to verify that there was no typo, whereas the unhyphenated form is always flagged as a typo, although the preview now informs me of errors. I disagree with the contention that humans can parse |accessdate= more quickly than |access-date=; spaces were invented for this reason. I also know the overhead that permitting multiple parameters that mean the same thing in templates entails. I'm aware that this has been cluttering my watchlist with Monkbot edits, but my !vote is to continue. Hawkeye7(discuss) 22:12, 13 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Note that this is mostly an WP:ILIKEIT rationale and dismisses the views of those who indicate that they can parse "accessdate" without issue as wrong without any evidence. It also dismisses the very real disruption caused to others as necessary to reduce overheads, whereas this overhead, even if it is a significant as some claim (for which no convincing evidence has ever been presented) it's still trivial compared to the disruption caused by Monkbot's edits and by the unnecessary disruption to editors using the templates. Thryduulf (talk) 15:29, 14 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
B or C. I've no strong preference between accessdate or access-date, both seem useable, if one is formally preferred then fine. However, the massive ongoing bot spam for something that has literally no effect on readers, and barely any on editors, is unwarranted. In addition to being everywhere on the watchlist, Monkbot makes it much harder to disentangle various series of diffs in the edit history for little benefit. A user making an edit inserting "accessdate" isn't an egregious issue that should cause a bot to come running, and such a bot action then obscures the edit in question from watchlists. CMD (talk) 18:18, 14 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option C. Removing a common way to type parameters in templates reduces ease of use for the end users. Having a bot going around and "fixing" these has a negative impact on the readability of page history and watchlists . No one in this conversation has demonstrated that the maintenance burden on the template is so significant that it would justify all of these downsides. It also seems that the maintenance burden is not something that would be difficult to track like accidental blue links to primary topic articles when non-primary topic articles were intended, since the template code are on the template pages.---- Patar knight - chat/contributions 18:53, 14 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option C. The previous discussions linked above (a six-year-old RFC with seven people participating in it, which specifically promised that nothing would be depreciated, followed by a handwavy argument about maintenance burden), are not remotely sufficient to justify such a sweeping change. Yes, maintenance burden is a pain, but it affects a relatively small handful of bot authors; removing the most widely-used version of a template parameter affects a huge swath of editors, who need to be given deference here on account of being a larger group. And obviously there is not a standing consensus that maintenance burden justifies such changes (at least not one on a scale necessary to justify this), or this discussion wouldn't be so clearly split. Therefore, the unhyphenated version should never have been depreciated, which makes the bot's edits pointless clutter at best and an attempt to push through a controversial change without sufficient consensus via fiat accompli at worst. Furthermore, if maintenance burden is the only concern, obviously the solution is to reverse the 2016 RFC (which, again, had only seven people participating it and agreed merely to create the hyphenated versions as alternatives) and remove the hyphenated version, which currently sees little use and would therefore be far easier and less disruptive to discard. --Aquillion (talk) 22:12, 15 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option B-ish. I think it's reasonable to have the hyphenated forms be the canonical version of the parameter, but I see no reason to make mass-edits to change from one form to another or to change the usual rules about cosmetic bots here. I see no harm in Option C, but implementing Option A will trade current problems for new ones. --AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 02:15, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Support A: standardization for template parameters is important & useful.
Mild Support B: the # of |accessdate= per page is too damn high (much of the time), so much so as to interfere with checking regular WP:GenFixes (i.e. many single-screen diffs become many-screen diffs) — I would Strong Support B IIF Monkbot was allowed to continue & hyphenate at least this parameter.
To whom is standardization for template parameters important & useful? Phil Bridger (talk) 20:39, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
How and why is standardisation more important and useful than editors being able to improve the encyclopaedia without needing to know the exact format of parameter names and deal with watchlists and page histories full of cosmetic edits? Thryduulf (talk) 20:45, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Are y'all suggesting we bring back all deprecated parameters, and adding more so that every user may choose to use the parameter names that are most comfortable/understandable/intuitive to them? I'm ok with soft-deprecation - allowing both but discouraging/converting one, in bulk once via bot, then gradually/passively via WP:GenFixes & other tools, but that is not one of the options. Re: "watchlists": may be configured to ignore bots until it's done. Re: "histories full of cosmetic edits": the bot only requires 1 edit; hardly "full of"; regardless, there is community consensus for WP:CBD. ~Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 12:16, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I am suggesting that all the two-word parameters should accept hyphenated and non-hyphenated varieties. It's fine for one to be preferred over the other in documentation but both should work and continue to work as this is by far the least disruptive to editors and allows them to spend their time producing/maintaining content rather than worrying about finicky syntax. I don't have massively strong objections to general fixes substituting one for the other when making non-cosmetic changes to the page, but I wouldn't actively encourage it as it will clutter diffs for no benefit. I strongly oppose bulk bot runs and making one option non-functional in the future. Thryduulf (talk) 15:29, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Re "Are y'all suggesting we bring back all deprecated parameters" - yep, that's spot on. They should never have been deprecated in the first place. This is a template, which sits in the background, and exists for editor convenience, nothing more. Deprecating parameters reduces that convenience. And it's well-established that bots and editors shouldn't be running through making cosmetic changes to wikitext that do nothing to alter the page, so those need to stop as well. — Amakuru (talk) 12:48, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option C, I guess, as I've not been persuaded as to the marginal utility of the hyphenated versions. Without that clarity, we shouldn't be doing these kinds of changes. (And if we had consensus, then B, but with documentation changes as the first step.) — JohnFromPinckney (talk) 01:48, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option C If it works don't fix it. Andrew🐉(talk) 13:01, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option A, strongly oppose option C: anybody working regularly on templates or modules will appreciate the value of settling on a single style for issues like parameter names. I don't care what the agreed style is, as long as it's consistent, and the argument about whether it should be hyphenated, underscored, camel-case or run-on has been settled with hyphenated as the preferred style. It is then nonsensical to fail to implement that style, and I'd prefer it was done as soon as possible. This whole debate is reminiscent of the date-linking wars where strong objections were made to unlinking dates, yet within a few months of a binding decision being reached to delink dates, everyone had moved on, and nobody today would even consider linking dates. Once we have standardised on hyphenated parameters, future editors will look back and think how lame and time-wasting this sort of debate is. --RexxS (talk) 19:46, 19 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
A or B but not C per Scott, Hawkeye, and RexxS. Usingahyphenismoreuserfriendly, andwhilethereissomeupfrontworkonourparttomaketheswitch, itisbetterinthelongruntohavesomedelimiterbetweenwordsinsteadofrunningthemtogether. Just like we stopped linking dates and no longer SmashWordsTogether, this is worth the temporary inconvenience. — Wug·a·po·des 00:46, 20 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
...is what your comment would look like if we allowed people to use whichever method worked for them and still made it work. If we turn off those parameters, your comment wouldn't have appeared. If we allow people to use whatever works and use a bot to clean it up afterwards, your comment would look just like everyone else's after some period of time (during which your comment would still be functional, even if pairs of words were sometimes combined). :) — Rhododendritestalk \\ 20:15, 22 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option A for all the arguments already made at length in the CS1/CS2 talk pages over the years and the good arguments brought forward above. Definitely not Option C. --Matthiaspaul (talk) 02:06, 20 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option C. Such an absurd waste of time and energy and an enormous source of watchlist spam, all to achieve something that will make editing more difficult. Toohool (talk) 02:26, 22 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option A as standardizing is better in the long term. Let the bot continue its work. If people have a problem with their watchlist getting spammed, they have the option to filter out bot edits. AVSmalnad77 talk 05:59, 23 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option C if not B While I love consistency, I'm struggling to see what the actual issue is here. I guess they can be gradually changed by the bot along with other more useful changes, but this is just cosmetic to the code and clutters edit histories. Reywas92Talk 06:21, 24 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option C. Benefits for bot or template builders don't outweigh the inconvenience for other editors. Fram (talk) 08:13, 24 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
C. I don't see the argument for mandating hyphens. Just let people use both, consistency on this does not matter. Fences&Windows 17:00, 24 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - my default is Option D... I refuse to use citation templates, and format my citations by hand. It means that I can ignore all the silly debates about parameters and what not. Blueboar (talk) 17:49, 24 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah and we can instantly clear the WP:PHAB backlog by writing articles with paper and pen. We can solve many technological problems by abandoning technology. Levivichharass/hound 00:52, 25 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option C. Bots do some useful work but their code can be changed as needed. Here I am much more concerned about regular editors who use citation templates when making manual edits. These are live human beings and there are many more of them than bots. Making the template syntax too rigid will make their life much more unpleasant. Extra flexibility is both useful and helpful for regular editors. Nsk92 (talk) 02:26, 25 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option C. I've been typing accessdate for the last 15 or so years, sometimes while reaching for my drink with my other hand (Qwerty keyboard). Why wreck my muscle memory and deprive me of a sip of tea?-gadfium 04:04, 25 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option C, stop the craziness hitting watchlists (although most of that damage is already done). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:58, 2 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
C sounds best, followed by B. Removing parameters that were widely used in the past will break old revisions of articles for very little practical advantage. —Kusma (t·c) 11:44, 2 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option C. Others have already hit on why – watchlist spam, waste of time and energy for no genuine benefit, unnecessary imposition on editors, etc. I'm increasingly warming to the idea of writing out citations manually (as someone else here mentioned), just to avoid the constant tinkering around that seems to take place with these templates. JG66 (talk) 11:51, 2 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
A or B This seems like a choice between having unnecessarily having several different ways to write a given parameter, and between standardizing after the fact with a lot of minor edits. Many of the arguments in favour of C appear to presuppose that editors will land in trouble for writing the unhyphenated parameters, but I don't see evidence of that. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 10:30, 4 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option A. From real world experience, I understand how difficult it is to maintain code without occasional deprecation. Opponents' fears of unacceptable disruption and inconvenience don't match what I encountered when the bot was running, and typing the hyphen quickly became second nature. --Worldbruce (talk) 05:07, 7 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
You may not personally have encountered disruption and inconvenience, but I did and there are a great many other editors in this and other discussions that have reported unacceptable disruption and explained exactly why the inconvenience is not justified. Thryduulf (talk) 20:29, 7 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option A. Long term benefit is worth the short-term disruption. There is too much inconsistency in templates that causes me to waste far more time (e.g. is it "image=" or "Image=" or "photo=" in this particular template); we should move towards more consistency. I would support keeping the parameters functional for a few years (but undocumented and with a warning) for those who really are troubled by typing the hyphen, knowing the bot will come by and change them. MB 15:23, 7 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The better solution to "is it "image=" or "Image=" or "photo=" " is simply to support all of them. That way there is no need for any disruption, short-term or otherwise. Thryduulf (talk) 20:31, 7 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option A—standardization helps simplify code maintenance, and that means more time can be devoted to future improvements. Imzadi 1979→ 17:34, 7 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The question before us is: Should non-hyphenated parameters be fully removed from the CS1/2 family of templates? Yes, absolutely, for most if not all of the reasons enumerated above. Consistent parameter naming should have been implemented c. 2007 when the various, independently-developed, cs1|2 templates were converted to use {{citation/core}} as the common citation rendering engine. In early 2013, en.wiki migrated to the Module:Citation/CS1 suite. Since then, approximately 180 other-language MediaWiki wikis plus some number of non-MediaWiki wikis have also migrated to the module suite. In the time since en.wiki switched to the module suite, we have added new parameter names to support new functionality while at the same time, we have pared away quite a few parameter names because of redundancy, peculiar name-style, non-use, and other reasons. This reduction includes most of the nonhyphenated multiword parameter names so that today, the only remaining nonhyphenated parameter names are |accessdate=, |archivedate=, |archiveurl=, |authorlink= (and its two enumerated forms), and |origyear= (there are 263 basic parameter names and 77 enumerated parameter names). The worldwide adoption of the cs1|2 module suite has caused us to add support for internationalization. Non-English wikis employing the cs1|2 module suite should retain all of the English parameter names because, very often, articles developed at en.wiki are exported and translated to those other languages. That means that a fully implemented module suite at a non-English wiki must support the 340 English parameter names plus 340 local parameter names. It is best, I think, to have a single consistent style for multiword parameter names so that translating editors don't have to learn about or deal with redundant parameter names (this same applies to beginner editors at en.wiki). The cs1|2 templates are complex enough, we don't need to add to that complexity by maintaining lists of synonymous parameter names that don't have semantic meaning (for example, |chapter=, |article=, |entry=, |section=, etc, are treated by cs1|2 as synonyms but, to editors, convey different meanings – the inclusion or omission of a hyphen conveys no meaningful distinction). So yeah, non-hyphenated parameters [should] be fully removed from the CS1/2 family of templates and since we can't go back to 2007 to do what we should have done then, we should do it now, we should do it quickly, and we should get it done. A is my preferred option but, if needs must, then (sigh) B; never that other option. —Trappist the monk (talk) 00:50, 8 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for weighing in, Trappist; I just wish you had done it a month ago. Your explanation is persuasive, but I still think Option A is silly if we don't at least simultaneously change the documentation to tell users, "don't use that parameter anymore". Having the bots fight against the human editors is silly and inefficient and possibly even dangerous. — JohnFromPinckney (talk) 02:03, 8 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
So to summarise Trappist's arguments: It's much easier for developers to only have a few names so we should disrupt editors and thus the wiki to make their lives easier, regardless of the costs (it's been explained at length previously how having two names do the same thing is not at all a problem for editors). Sorry, but that is not persuasive in the slightest: templates exist to support editors not the other way around. Thryduulf (talk) 03:06, 8 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
No. Trappist said no such thing. He helpfully explained why this change is necessary. With the possible exception of watchlists, this change does not seriously "disrupt editors" (there's no way having to type in one extra character can be said to be a problem of that magnitude); on the contrary, in the long run it makes life easier for editors, because there is only one simple, easy-to-remember rule: all muti-word parameters use a hyphen to separate the words. On watchlists, see #Worth noting below, which seems to be a promising solution. And if the worst comes to the worst and that solution doesn't work for you, then I sympathise, but at least the "disruption" is only temporary until the bot is finished. --NSH001 (talk) 10:05, 8 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
No, the disruption is not temporary. Not only are people likely to continue using the "old" parameters, but removing support for these parameters from the templates means that millions of old revisions will have errors in them instead of simply displaying the references like they used to. Creating errors in the references of old versions of countless pages, so that you only have to maintain 340 instead of 349 parameters (well, not even that, 340 parameters + 9 synonyms)? That seems like a lot of disruption for little gain. Fram (talk) 11:13, 8 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Doesn't really matter, it's relatively uncommon to cite old versions of pages, and the error messsages can safely be ignored – only the latest page matters. They also suffer from deleted templates (which can be much more serious for the page as actually displayed to the user) and wikilinks which have gone red because the target page has been deleted. No doubt other things I haven't thought of yet. One just accepts these imperfections. Doesn't seriously "disrupt" anything. --NSH001 (talk) 14:05, 8 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
A redlink because the target doesn't exist isn't an issue (it is even an improvement). The others are problems, and knowingly adding much, much more of the same is a serious issue. A version of Salvador Dalí from 5 years ago now already has 10 or so errors: the lang text ones are the most annoying. But the planned defenestration of e.g. accessdate will suddenly add 24 extra errors here. Basically, every edit that MonkBot does for these, will mean one or more errors in every history revision, or millions upon millions of old versions which will become worse, and no current of future versions which will become better. Fram (talk) 14:33, 8 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
"Basically, every edit that MonkBot does for these, will mean one or more errors in every history revision, or millions upon millions of old versions which will become worse". That's false. Monkbot 18's edits make no difference whatsoever to the display of error messages; in fact it will reduce (drastically) the number of error messages that are eventually displayed when and if the remaining are formally deprecated, where "formally deprecated" means changing the CS1/1 module suite to actually generate the error messages. --NSH001 (talk) 09:37, 11 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Not false, just shorthand. One can see the number of errors that will exist by looking at the number of edits that Monkbot does for this. No, Monkbot doesn't cause the errors directly, the deprecation does; but the two belong together. If option C is chosen, then there will be no "when and if", the remaining will not be formally deprecated, and no error messages will be generated, not in historic versions, not in live versions. None. Fram (talk) 10:56, 11 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
"One can see the number of errors that will exist by looking at the number of edits that Monkbot does for this." That's very misleading. The number of edits by the bot has nothing whatsoever to do with the errors displayed in the live version (except that, as I've already explained, it reduces them). You're trying to mislead readers here by implying that every single edit by the bot causes an error message, when in fact it only does so for historic versions. Error messages in historic versions don't matter. --NSH001 (talk) 12:00, 11 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
No, that's not misleading if one reads the actual conversation, which is about historic versions. "removing support for these parameters from the templates means that millions of old revisions will have errors in them instead of simply displaying the references like they used to." and "Basically, every edit that MonkBot does for these, will mean one or more errors in every history revision, or millions upon millions of old versions which will become worse, and no current of future versions which will become better." That's what you replied to, and which we are still discussing. We can disagree whether errors in old revisions are a problem or not, or whether the maintenance cost of keeping a few synonyms alive is negligible or significant; but please don't start accusing people of "trying to mislead readers" (a bit rich coming from someone claiming that "access-date" is easier to use and more meaningful than "accessdate"). Fram (talk) 12:12, 11 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option C And this issue is largely why I am of the current position BAG is not suitable for purpose and needs nuking from orbit. Only in death does duty end (talk) 15:31, 8 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The BAG has a few functions. It does a good job of some of them - notably it's pretty good at ensuring bots do only what their authors intend them to do before they are unleashed. The main issue is with ensuring that only tasks with consensus to be done and consensus for a bot to do the job get approved - I can't recall an instance when it failed to approve something that should be approved, and it does stop the truly egregiously bad ideas from proceeding, but there are multiple instances (including this one) where bar for consensus has been set too low and a small local consensus has allowed a bot without wide community approval to operate. If we have bots then we do need some sort of approvals process, so don't nuke the one we have without coming up with something better first. Thryduulf (talk) 16:54, 8 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
"only what their authors intend them to do before they are unleashed." On a technical level this is correct - what BAG doesnt do is any sort of even half-decent job of confirming that bots *continue* to only do the tasks they were initially approved for, or that that approval in the first place has consensus amongst those editors who it will *affect* that the task is wanted or needed, or that there is a clear benefit to those effected by it. The problem with automated editing is rarely the technical aspect, its the business case for it. If we did a review of current active bot tasks (and editors using automated editing to perform mass edits) do you genuinely think they will all be able to point to a discussion that shows a level of consensus proportionate to their effect on the wider editing populace, rather than the walled garden (and the term I would actually prefer to use here as its more accurate is circle-jerk) of 5 or 6 data & machine readable obsessed editors who want it? Only in death does duty end (talk) 08:30, 11 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
On the technical vs business-case aspect, I agree, that was much of the point I was trying to make. I also agree that a regular review of bot and automated editing tasks should be undertaken. There are some that I'm sure still have community consensus (e.g. the anti-vandal bots) but I can't say that will hold true for every task. I also agree that there must be an active consensus of editors that will be affected before a task goes ahead - in the case of monkbot almost all affected editors were entirely unaware that it was even proposed. Thryduulf (talk) 14:20, 11 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option B - I can easily see both sides of this debate. As someone who works in IT, I fully agree that IT should serve the needs of users first wherever possible, rather than simply making life easier for the people who maintain the systems. I see far too many systems that make life harder than the non-digital alternative, which is just ridiculous. There are of course times when things need to be deprecated because they're either incompatible with other things, have security holes, or take up too much development time to maintain. This case is one of the latter, although I'm not sure what extra burden the deprecated (non-hyphenated) paramaters actually add. I would recommend that we formally deprecate the unhyphenated parameters and clean them up with AWB genfixes but I can't support continuing to run Monkbot 18 given the strength of feeling here against such a task. Personally I do not care about 'watchlist spam', but clearly many people do, and we cannot simply dismiss their opinion because "it'd make life easier for us techs". ƒirefly ( t · c ) 07:42, 10 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
As I understand it, there's a framework for supporting parameter aliases, which are configured in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration. As there are many other aliases supported, the framework would remain in place. isaacl (talk) 15:23, 10 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option A, strongly oppose Option C. Hyphens should be standard and we should discourage them. I do not mind continuing to support the non-hyphenated version per B, but B also implies the bot isn't free to do its job, so A it is. SportingFlyerT·C 12:57, 11 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Why should one version over the other be discouraged? What benefit to the encyclopaedia does it bring that outweighs the disruption that removing support for a long-standing and well-used feature causes? Why should the bot be free to continue to do a job it didn't have consensus for? Thryduulf (talk) 14:22, 11 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
We're trying to gain consensus here, right? I support standardising the reference tags, and I don't think the opponents have good counter-arguments. I'd appreciate if you just let me (and others) have our opinions without the need for commenting - you're not "correct" and we're not "wrong." SportingFlyerT·C 15:01, 11 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not trying to stop people having opinions. I'm trying to get people to explain them and to actually counter arguments left explaining preferences different to their own. Why is standardising reference tags more important than the disruption standardisation causes? Why is a desire to avoid this disruption "not a good counter-argument"? I may or may not be "correct" but unless you can explain why forcing standardisation against the wishes of a very significant number of editors (who will not see any benefit from such standardisation but will experience significant ongoing disruption due to it) is somehow desirable then there is no hope of getting consensus for your views. Thryduulf (talk) 16:02, 11 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
You're chiding me for not countering your argument, even though your argument above is simply "I don't see the point." We've been working on this for awhile, it's been discussed on talk pages, it makes it easier to maintain the encyclopaedia, and it's a good idea to finish the project as opposed to having it held back by users who don't like it. I also thought I was just !voting here, I think this is obvious and I don't want to be drawn into a long argument about this, so not only did I not appreciate your response, I'd appreciate it if you left this conversation alone going forward. SportingFlyerT·C 16:49, 11 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
As with many of these types of questions, the conclusion each person draws depends a lot on the weighting they give on the relative priorities of different factors. We lay out our lines of reasoning with the tradeoffs, and others can use it as they wish to figure out what tradeoffs they would like to make. isaacl (talk) 17:13, 11 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option C Unless there is an issue with bots having to read accessdate and access-date as the same thing (and there doesn't appear to be a problem from what has been described, as bots can do this) then I'm not convinced that forcing users who already write accessdate to make an error when they continue to do so after its use is stopped that bots will then flag up for humans to solve is going to be a useful thing to do. Creating a situation which is going to frustrate and demotivate volunteers for no valid reason other than "conformity" doesn't sound like a good plan. Indeed, it was stressed in the original 2014 RfC that "Establishing this uniform parameter name convention does not preclude the existence of any other alias for a parameter, merely that a lowercase, hyphenated version will exist for each parameter." And some of those supporting did so because: "This will significantly reduce editor confusion. They don't have to think about: "Is this the parameter where the words are mushed together, or is it one where they are separated by an '_' ?" Hopefully this will make the templates easier to use." - User:Makyen. What we should be looking at is making bots read the varying ways that users may write a word or phrase in a template. I hate it when, for example, I use a capital letter by mistake, and the template doesn't work, and I have to work out what the problem is. I don't follow how frustrating, demotivating and alienating volunteers by changing how a template works and so creating problems for them will "decrease the maintenance burden" on those users. It is sometimes things like functionality being changed, that drives users away. SilkTork (talk) 01:09, 12 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option C. I haven't checked whether this move was done under a six-year old RFC with seven people, or under a seven-year old RFC with six people. But no one disputed that it was an at least six years old RFC involving at most seven people. Now, it seems that there are a large number of users who disagree. Perhaps telling them they "don't see the larger picture" will be enough to silence the dissenters. Maybe the "Visual Editor reception" will happen again. Who knows the future? Pldx1 (talk) 15:07, 12 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option A. I do not see any real argument for why citation templates should be a mish-mash of two different parameter names. It's an eyesore, it's a pain in the ass, and it brings zero utility. There are a couple ways of fixing it: for the new parameter names to be integrated into every tool, and every adjacent task, and every automated editing tool, and then maybe in ten years 90% of them will be gone (but the remaining 10% will be scattered willy-nilly across the entire project and impossible to hunt down). Or we could just have there be one short run and be done with it. I, for one, would be glad for the issue to be concluded. jp×g 05:33, 15 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Have you actually ready any of the comments left by others? There are at least half a dozen different reasons given for the utility of multiple forms of parameteres. Even if option A is selected, disruption will not be short term but will continue for years for the reasons explained multiple times elsewhere on this page. Thryduulf (talk) 12:27, 15 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option A. Over time, we evolve different conventions. Once we have done so, we need to clean up the uses of the old conventions. Option B will be too slow and leave this issue dragging on for many more years. So, firstly ensure that all documentation is unambiguous about using only the new names. Secondly, make sure that all editing tools use only the correct parameter names and all genfix rules are up to date. Wait for the bot to complete a full pass and then treat the old parameter names as solid errors — GhostInTheMachinetalk to me 15:36, 15 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option C. The encyclopedia should be run for the benefit of readers, and subject to that, for the benefit of editors. Creating busywork and random conventions for the sake of it is not useful. Stifle (talk) 10:19, 16 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: The argument made here and elsewhere about how much easier things would be for template- and module-writers under Option A, is a completely misguided and arrogant one. It seeks to benefit a small subgroup who are neither the consumers of the encyclopedia, nor its principal creators. Namely, it calls for optimizing ease of work and convenience for the very small number of template/module writers, rather than optimizing for (the much larger number of) article editors. The trade-off must benefit the largest number; if you make it harder for editors, then the article readers will suffer, and they are the largest group of all and the reason the encyclopedia exists. This should be axiomatic, but the encyclopedia isn't here for the convenience of template and module writers. Personally, I'm happy writing and improving templates and breaking my head against squirrely, confusing, and sometimes infuriating template problems, just to make things slightly easier for editors. If it's too inconvenient or too much work for template/module-writers, then they should abstain from "helping", and just improve article content, rather than seek to make their own lives easier. Mathglot (talk) 23:42, 20 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thryduulf said it better (and briefer) than I, here: "Those who do care about template mechanics should always be acting in ways that actively put readers first, editors second and programmers third." Precisely. Mathglot (talk) 00:04, 21 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option C (preferred) or Option B (seoncd choice) -Beyond My Ken (talk) 03:06, 23 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Strongest possible option C Per WP:KISS and WP:IFITAINTBROKE. If it ain't broken, don't fix it, and don't waste our time with meaningless bot tasks. We should be making templates easy to use. Having different aliases for the same parameter is helpful. Insisting on one particular format because of some concept about what is correct and what is not is WP:CREEP, and generally to be discouraged. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 01:59, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option C. If we were starting today, and writing brand new template to handle citations, I would strongly advocate using one consistent format for parameter names. But we aren't. Many thousands of editors are used to using the no-hyphen versions of those parameters, and I see no reason to disrupt their editing lives in order to (allegedly) make life easier for a handful of template editors. The system we have now works fine, I see no reason at all to waste anybody's time changing it. Chuntuk (talk) 20:41, 30 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This argument, and those like it, would be more persuasive if dozens of unhyphenated multi-word parameters had not already been deprecated and removed from the CS1 citation templates over the past seven years with a minimum of drama. We are talking here about removing the final six, which would make the whole parameter system consistent instead of the current situation, in which nearly all multi-word parameters are hyphen-only, and six have unhyphenated options. Option C proposes to halt seven years of work when it is about 90% complete. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:59, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
There has been discussion at Help Talk:CS1 prior to the deprecation of each multiword parameter over the past seven years, and then further discussion at the same page prior to the removal of support for those parameters. Millions of page changes have been performed over those seven years to remove the deprecated parameters from pages in affected namespaces. Until this last round of edits by Monkbot, I have been unable to find significant objection to these edits. All of that is very different from a fait accompli: the actions are not justified by having been carried out, they are justified by being repeatedly discussed at the relevant talk page and documented accordingly. Again, the only difference between this parameter standardization work and that done for hundreds of other templates is the scale. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:30, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Funny you should mention scale. This is the first large-scale discussion I'm aware of on this topic; as already noted, there are far more participants supporting option C here than have supported deprecation in any previous discussion. This suggests that, to the extent that consensus for these deprecations could ever have been said to exist, it was an extremely limited one - certainly not one strong enough to support millions of changes. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:25, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option A. Having done a fair bit of work with CS1 templates, I support the option that ensures the greatest consistency and ease of use among articles. While inter-article consistency is indeed not fully realized, with various articles having different ways to write dates or citations, I think, at the very least, disabling |accessdate= in favor of |access-date=, et al., would make it easier to search of instances of strings without the need to use regular expressions or two separate searches to get everything. In addition, the line breaks in the editing window make things easier to look at. It's nothing too major, but I think ultimately that moving everything to the hyphenated formats will do us much more good in the long run. -BRAINULATOR9 (TALK) 19:18, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option A now that the tasks have got this far. Regardless of personal naming preferences, standardization is far preferable to the alternative of having to maintain and support multiple template options indefinitely, which is what it boils down to. MichaelMaggs (talk) 13:04, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option C, though I don't think the proposal is completely accurate as MonkBot has been removing accessdate which is not officially deprecated, which is a problem on its own. Based on this discussion and the CBD proposal, there clearly is not unanimous consensus that a) non-hyphenated parameters should be deprecated and b) that millions of cosmetic edits are fine, but somehow both were approved with no opposition. I get the impression that the bot approvals group (or whomever makes these decisions) does not accurately represent the wider community. For now, these decisions which do not have consensus should be revoked. -M.Nelson (talk) 10:02, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option A. Template and module maintainers do a lot of work behind the scenes to ensure the rest of us have a smooth experience as possible. This often requires vast amounts of code with many edge cases. This in turn, makes maintaining big modules harder and more difficult as times goes on. For the editor experience, having a consistent style on any article they edit is always a benefit. I've spent many times looking at templates, trying to figure out what the correct parameter should be because of the existence of parameter aliases. I'm sure newer editors that find it harder navigating template documentation find it even more frustrating. Removing this burden would benefit both groups of editors and maintainers. The downside of having a watchlist "spammed" is very minimal and has a page should only have one edit (by this bot), that means that a watcher will view it once. The amount of editors that watch many pages and will be annoyed by it is extremely minimal that it is frankly absured that it is even a consideration. --Gonnym (talk) 12:52, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Discussion (CS1)
Some suggestions regarding the options:
Pedantry: "Non-hyphenated parameters" should read "Non-hyphenated multi-word parameters" in all three options. Parameters that contain only a single word or acronym do not need a hyphen.
In Option C, there is no point in suggesting that "the deprecated parameter list will need to be updated to remove the non-hyphenated parameters"; there are no instances of those deprecated parameters left in the affected namespaces, so support for them will be removed shortly, just as support has been removed for dozens of unhyphenated multi-word parameters already.
Some history and a status update, for those here on VPP unfamiliar with the long history of updates and changes to the Citation Style 1 templates ({{cite web}} and its siblings): As far as I can tell, there are only six unhyphenated multi-word parameters left – |accessdate=, |airdate=, |archivedate=, |archiveurl=, |authorlink=, and |origyear= – out of an original population of many dozens. So far, through the work of scores of editors and bots over the seven years since we standardized on hyphenation of multi-word parameters, we have deprecated, removed from pages in affected namespaces, and then removed from the CS1 templates themselves (as WhatamIdoing suggests above), many dozens of different unhyphenated multi-word parameters in CS1/CS2 templates. All new multi-word parameters during that time have been introduced using only a hyphenated form. This RFC is essentially asking: should we finish the job, or leave it at over 90% done, in a sort of limbo state, with six parameters as exceptions to the overall pattern, just because those parameters are used in a lot of articles? – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:38, 11 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Problem with "Option B": Option B is not the status quo. If it were, I'd be much happier. Since it's not, I don't know whether to !vote for A or B. The documentation at Cite web, for example, makes no mention of accessdate being deprecated. This means that users will be quite justified in blissfully adding and readding templates with accessdate, even after the bot has come through already and changed accessdate to access-date in 20 places. Each iteration tends to address fewer instances, but each run is a separate entry in my watchlist. Watchlist entries seem to be part of the complaint against this kind of work, so the first step should be turning off the faucet at the source, before spending energy to, um, bail out the boat. — JohnFromPinckney (talk) 06:37, 11 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The first sentence is true; all but six of the unhyphenated multi-word parameters have been formally deprecated and removed. As for "turning off the faucet at the source", that would be Option A, but in the past, when we have made red error messages appear in large numbers of articles as a first step in standardizing the citation templates and noting errors in them, there has been significant pushback. In order to avoid that pushback, the bot was acting to fix 90+% of the non-standard parameters before turning on the error messages, but that work has been stopped as well. Option A will allow that work to be completed. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:09, 11 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I feel we are not understanding each other. "Deprecation" involves communication as a first step; removal is a second, later step. If we are going to have a bot changing pages (e.g., accessdate to access-date), causing some distress to the populace (and this is the status quo), then we should at least change the documentation to say that accessdate is deprecated, and is not a usable alias. I am strongly against a bot going around to change parameters to the "good" names when we don't ever tell the humans they shouldn't use the "bad" ones. That's just an endless cycle of watchlist-cluttering edits causing great irritation. If you want to avoid pushback, tell the people not to use the unhyphenated versions, then run the bot, then remove support some time later. — JohnFromPinckney (talk) 15:41, 11 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Deprecate in terms of the CS1 templates means to emit a red error message indicating deprecation. When we emit any red error messages for parameters in CS1 that are used often (or lack thereof for parameters that should be used more often), a lot of people get very irate. We do not change the documentation to indicate deprecation until after the module begins telling people inline about deprecation. So yes, you are not understanding each other, but it's a question of terms of art. --Izno (talk) 16:44, 11 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Why do people get irate? Because suddenly millions of readers go from nothing being wrong to seeing a load of red error messages all over hundreds of thousands of articles (and you couldn't seriously expect someone to debug a CS1 error as their first contribution). These citation templates aren't for us. They're for the reader and they need to be functional with low rate of error messaging 24/7 with no exception, because even small amounts of downtime have significant reputational damage. — Bilorv (talk) 02:54, 15 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
That "we" (who is that, some class of super-techies whose opinions count for much more than those of us "normal" editors?) get significant pushback when creating error messages is simply a demonstration that the wider community does not agree with what "we" have decided. The answer is to stop doing what you are doing, not to do it more stealthily. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:37, 11 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
You are welcome to participate at Help talk:CS1, the same as any other editor. Decisions are made by consensus there, inline with how consensus is practiced everywhere else on wiki. Don't like a decision "we" made? Get involved. --Izno (talk) 18:42, 11 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I saw absolutely no discussion of the removal of the freetext editors field on the talk page. Where did that happen? I don't think it's coincidence that all the editors whose names I know well from content creation/editing are voting B/C and all the editors voting A are those I don't recognise at all. Espresso Addict (talk) 20:08, 11 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The difference is between those people who think this is an encyclopedia and those who think that it's a playground for techies. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:43, 11 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Your ad hominem has no welcome here. Move along if that's the best you can offer to the discussion. --Izno (talk) 20:47, 11 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
That is just the kind of reply that people who are here to create an encyclopedia tend to get from the techies. No response to genuine concerns but just an order to "move along". I have no wish to monitor whatever pages are used to ignore end users, but I have a right to expect that any decisions taken will respect the interests of everyone, not just a self-appointed clique of people who "know" what is right. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:53, 15 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
It's the kind of reply to people who needlessly create category A and category B and then line themselves up in one or the other categories. If you (specific/personal) don't want to monitor whatever pages, that's your prerogative. Do know that it is your choice and you are responsible for that choice, and choices have consequences. Changes are always announced ahead of time and consensus is sought for non-obvious changes (and even obvious changes with non-obvious implementations), so you have no excuse not to tune in at least once every couple months when the regular "Shit is Changing" post gets made. Secondarily, the scare quotes are not indicated by this discussion, nor any prior discussion that I can see, whatsoever. I have not seen any such 'clique' nor any of the users who would prospectively be in such a 'clique' claim they "know" what is right. As I said, if you have nothing to contribute but smears and attacks and divisiveness, move on. --Izno (talk) 20:22, 15 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
As for I don't think it's coincidence that all the editors whose names I know well from content creation/editing are voting B/C and all the editors voting A are those I don't recognise at all., I invite you the same as I invited Phil Bridger. You may watch and edit Help talk:CS1 at any time, the same as me. "I don't recognize these people" is a trash association to make and is the same kind of ad hominem that I have asked Phil so kindly to stop employing. It is certainly not sufficient cause to say "I don't like this change". --Izno (talk) 20:49, 11 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I think there's a genuine problem here that there's a disconnect between the editors maintaining the citation templates and the editors employing them to write and maintain articles. I didn't make the decision to abandon years of using citation templates (CS2 actually, but the same parameter changes are happening there too, even less announced) lightly. Espresso Addict (talk) 21:35, 11 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The disconnect is real and significant. Someone whose skills and interest lie in writing or maintaining article content shouldn't need to care about what happens at pages like Help talk:CS1 (and how on earth is a new editor even meant to know that page exists?), let alone have to pay attention to discussions there. Those who do care about template mechanics should always be acting in ways that actively put readers first, editors second and programmers third. The only time there should ever be breaking changes or a need for cosmetic edits is when after detailed examination there are literally no alternatives available. We've ended up here because that hasn't been happening and a local consensus has ignored the needs of end users. Thryduulf (talk) 01:38, 12 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I almost commented last night, and then put that version into a text file and went to bed. Now I have been spurred by a comment above to reply here. The editors using these templates to write and maintain articles are the same as the editors maintaining the citation templates. Get that through your head. If we prioritize different qualities versus this other supposed separate group, it's because we have the experience to do so. If you don't, let me reiterate, get involved. Come and say "I don't like this" or "this is a painful interaction" or X, Y, and Z, and provide a suggested fix. That's how consensus starts forming, like every other page or process on this website. Others will say "I don't want this to work like that suggested fix because A, B, and C". Then you discuss the tradeoffs and make a decision. If you're unwilling to step up and discuss the paper cuts, then we end up having mass RFCs or AN drama or what have you over what would otherwise be small issues or ones that could have been discussed informally with the ordinary "let's figure it out" consensus view of the world. That's a disconnect too, and blaming editors interested in one page versus those apparently disinterested is not the right way to move forward. Want something to be better? Ask. Propose. Cajole. Make the effort to put forth the minorest of social interactions required to start a discussion in the one place where everything about that thing is discussed. We're all volunteers and our heart is in just a right a place as yours, but if we should have disagreements, then we talk to each other and find out how to fix the problem or agree to disagree on the points of interest. Not have constant complaints of "they didn't listen to me". Consensus is not unanimity.
The only time there should ever be breaking changes or a need for cosmetic edits is when after detailed examination there are literally no alternatives available. This is quite frankly an opinion lacking any community consensus whatsoever. We've recently approved an RFC allowing cosmetic edits on a regular basis and from what I could see in that discussion (and murmurings elsewhere), cosmetic edits might be closer to having consensus than not, it's just inertia that leaves us not performing them regularly. Moreover, hundreds of templates, and certainly all those which go through WP:TFD, have a process applied which causes breaking changes or which results in more-or-less cosmetic edits. Are you claiming that TFD does not have consensus as a process? That templates which are being cleaned up because of a talk page discussion on that template's talk page should be stopped? You want your cake (to not care about how things work) and eat it too (have all of your opinions and claims listened to, when they aren't even articulated in the first place). Get real. --Izno (talk) 20:22, 15 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I fear this just demonstrates the truth of what Thryduulf writes. "The editors using these templates to write and maintain articles are the same as the editors maintaining the citation templates. Get that through your head." is self-evidently false, as well as impolite. Speaking only for myself, what I actually want is to be able to get on with writing & improving articles, rather than having long side discussions on matters that aren't directly relevant. Espresso Addict (talk) 00:10, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
get on with writing & improving articles Then do that. No-one is stopping you from not caring. I am just calling you hypocritical for raising a fuss when you don't and then changes happen elsewhere that affect you. Don't like it? Change your behavior. (I won't reply to you again.) --Izno (talk) 00:34, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The editors using these templates to write and maintain articles are the same as the editors maintaining the citation templates. Get that through your head. Both uncivil and not even close to correct. While it is possible that some, maybe even many, of the editors maintaining templates also write and maintain articles there are literally hundreds of editors writing and maintaining articles who have never been near a discussion about the template code, let alone written any code. Writing encyclopaedic prose and writing computer code are very different skills; nobody is or should be required to do both. However given that the purpose of this project is to write an encyclopaedia everything that is not writing an encyclopaedia should be done for the benefit of (first and foremost) readers of the encyclopaedia and (secondly) those who write and maintain the encyclopaedia. The convenience of those dealing with tools is least important. Thryduulf (talk) 00:23, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Writing encyclopaedic prose and writing computer code is a false dichotomy and a blatant misrepresentation of what the two paragraphs I had to say. I did not ask you to do both. Nor do I serve you (general) in your supposed role as an article writer. There are no (formal) hierarchies on this encyclopedia, and even considering yourself as supposedly above me or my efforts is the actual uncivil statement. Lastly, I place myself fully in both supposed groups given the thousands of articles where I have bettered their citations. (And as I said to Espresso, I will not reply in this section again.) --Izno (talk) 00:34, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
My role here is not as an article writer (I do very little of that), I spend the majority of my time on the project trying to ensure that readers can find the content they are looking for and those that do write and improve articles without needing to worry about nonsense like this that will needlessly make their job harder. There might not be a formal hierarchy but their should be: (1) Readers are head-and-shoulders above anyone else. (2) Those who write and maintain the encyclopaedia a short way above (3) Those who support those write and maintain the encyclopaedia are a long way above (4) Those who hinder any of the above. I place myself in the third category alongside many of those who maintain templates. Thryduulf (talk) 21:02, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. What is the merit of citation templates? Let alone the increasing creep to make them more and more rigid and harder and harder to use? The only reason I can see is to make it easier to export and sell data. No-one ever seems to give a thought to those who type citations manually; it is far harder to type "access-date" (which requires two hands and a hand movement) than "accessdate" (one hand, no move). I don't understand what the benefit of this change is at all. In fact, broadening this discussion, I don't understand why the freetext editors field was suddenly withdrawn this January. Personally I've decided to meet the latter change by reverting to writing out references by hand, which is easier, more flexible, and seems to have no downsides. Espresso Addict (talk) 07:04, 11 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Citation templates make standardizing citation style and look much easier. They can, for example, automatically standardize date display. Machine-readability is also a good thing, imo. I suppose access-date is slightly harder to type - but editors editing wikitext manually would probably not mind. Otherwise, tools for inserting these citations exist. Elliot321 (talk | contribs) 17:12, 11 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
It's not slightly harder to type, it's a great deal harder to type for a touch typist. And here's an editor editing wikitext manually who does mind, enough to bother responding here. There's no tool I know of that creates citation template code in the form I prefer for ease of wikitext editing afterwards; they all make code soup that takes longer to fix than retype. Espresso Addict (talk) 20:08, 11 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
A bit slower, yes, but I personally don't find it a great deal harder—touch typists generally have practised it a lot while learning. Nonetheless, I don't think ease of typing by some metric is the primary issue. isaacl (talk) 20:40, 11 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Speaking as one of those touch-typists, and as a person who learned to type on an actual typewriter, I don't find the hyphenated version any harder to type, and I do recall my typing teacher saying that it was faster and easier to type words that were split evenly between hands, instead of all in one hand. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:49, 11 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, personally I imagine it has a greater effect for a hunt-and-peck typist. When I said a bit slower, I was thinking compared with a word of equal length that consisted only of letters. Of course, in this case, the hyphenated name has one more character which would comprise most of the difference for me. isaacl (talk) 23:02, 11 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
For me, not an issue on a regular keyboard, but a bit of a pain on a tablet. Then again, so much is a bit of a pain on a tablet... · · · Peter Southwood(talk): 05:39, 2 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I use citation templates myself, but I respect the wishes of those who prefer not to use them. It is precisely the fact that I use them that leads me to the opinion that obvious synonyms for parameters should not be removed, as proposed here. What on Earth is the problem with allowing both hyphenated or unhyphenated forms? All it means is a few extra bytes of storage, and no extra code if it is done properly. And the work has already been done, but this proposal is to undo it. Do we still live in the days when I started in IT working for one of the world's leading business information companies whose UK operations were all run from a computer with 1MB of memory and where all online programs were limited to 12KB? I thought we had moved on from there. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:34, 11 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I am reminded of a story about a lady, who (decades ago) bought a large supply of personalized stationery and then discovered that the post office was renaming her street. She convinced the local postmaster into letting her continue to use the old address until her stationery was used up. This saved her some money and effort, but it had external costs. For many years to come, every mail carrier had to learn that "123 Main Street" wasn't on Main Street and wasn't number 123, but instead had to be delivered to the other side of town.
Aliases are often low-cost in storage and computational terms, but they are not actually free. "Not free" can add up to a quite significant cost when it is repeated a million times. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:56, 11 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Although I sympathize with the desire for all templates to align with one standard (from a user's perspective, I would personally find it easier), I just don't think it's feasible at this point in time. In which case, I sympathize with those who think computers should make our lives easier, and just accept both formats. On the third hand, from an implementer's perspective, I appreciate that it adds a lot of noise to template syntax, if not implemented with a Lua module. Since the CS1-based templates are implemented with Lua, the overhead can be minimized, and so I think both formats should continue to be supported. I don't feel there is much advantage to converting en masse, by any mechanism. isaacl (talk) 20:40, 11 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the ping, I was indeed unaware of this discussion. Modest Geniustalk 12:16, 12 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Does anyone have any evidence that having alias for parameters makes things harder for end users? In my experience as a trainer and long-time user, having multiple ways to achieve the same ends allows editors to spend their time and energy working on content rather than puzzling over making sure that the template parameters are named in exactly the right way. I've never met anybody who was comfortable enough to be dealing with templates in the first place who was not completely comfortable with the idea that "you can write it as either access-date or accessdate, it doesn't make a difference." (or similar). Speaking personally, I don't want to have to learn whether it is "accessdate", "access-date", "access_date" or "access date", I just want them all to be accepted so that whichever I input the template works and I can worry about more important things. Thryduulf (talk) 01:29, 12 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The inconsistency across all templates does make things harder. Users have to either remember which templates only support one form and which one, or look it up each time. I appreciate though that there is extra complexity in trying to support lots of aliases, particularly for ones that aren't implemented with a Lua module (either each use is going to become more elaborate and verbose, or the template could delegate the detailed implementation to a helper template, with the top-level one only doing parameter normalization), so personally I wouldn't want to require that every template must support aliasing. Thus I think we're kind of stuck with inconsistency. isaacl (talk) 02:12, 12 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This inconsistency should be tolerated. Some, particularly high-use, templates having aliases is important for the great number of people who use these templates. They don't have to remember was it |access-date= or |accessdate=. If it doesn't work on some other template, well fine. But eliminating aliases and simply making the computer say no on all templates makes things a lot harder for the vast majority of users. That inconvenience is far greater than the fact that a few lesser-used templates don't support aliases and you might need to take a look at the documentation sometimes. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 06:05, 12 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, as I said in another comment, I feel both forms should continue to be supported for the CS1-based templates. I'm pretty sure the vast majority of templates don't support both hyphenated and non-hyphenated parameters—for example, from what I can tell from the code and a quick test, {{Infobox}} doesn't. That's just the way it goes when trying to make as many aspects of Wikipedia markup accessible to as many editors as possible: standardization won't always happen, and often simpler markup will be preferred by more editors than more complex markup, even if it would add more functionality for users. isaacl (talk) 22:22, 12 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
In Option C, there is no point in suggesting that "the deprecated parameter list will need to be updated to remove the non-hyphenated parameters"; there are no instances of those deprecated parameters left in the affected namespaces, so support for them will be removed shortly, just as support has been removed for dozens of unhyphenated multi-word parameters already. This argument directly goes against WP:FAITACCOMPLI. Also, stop referring to them as "depreciated" - it is clear that there was insufficient consensus to declare them depreciated in the first place. I can understand that it's frustrating to have something you thought was decided fall apart like this, but it is extremely important that sweeping changes get more discussion before being implemented; the only way we can reasonably encourage that is by refusing to allow things like Monkbot's use here to determine policy, ie. it is necessary to make the work it did moot, or people will have a constant incentive to take the easy route and avoid bothering with time-consuming, often-frustrating, and unpredictable (but necessary) discussions before a change of this magnitude. That means, yes, allowing and even encouraging people to resume using non-hyphenated parameters even though you thought you were finally done with them; if you want to avoid that happening next time, seek larger-scale discussions first before making large-scale changes to avoid unexpected blowback if it turns out you don't have the consensus you thought you did. No matter how well-intentioned this was, we absolutely cannot risk rewarding the use of a tool to make a wide-spread change without sufficient consensus - which means, yes, as painful as it is, very deliberately taking the wrench to the kneecaps of the intended improvement this change was meant to establish, and intentionally ruining it even after the "cost' has been paid. It's not ideal, but it shows why it's so important to have broad discussions involving many users before making wide-spread changes; having policy effectively set by bots performing mass edits and establishing things as fait accompli is just not acceptable. I can sympathize with the amount of work that went into this that will be wasted as a result, but reaching a clear, unequivocal consensus involving a large number of editors should have been the first step for something of this magnitude, so you wouldn't suddenly run headlong into an RFC like this and find the consensus wasn't what you thought it was. --Aquillion (talk) 10:07, 4 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Arbitrary break 1
Thanks to Nikkimaria for the ping based on my earlier involvement. I'm appallingly neutral (or torn) on the main topic but I earlier did some analysis that gives me concern about impacts on Template space in particular, if deprecation goes ahead fully. Here I'll use |authorlink= as a proxy for all six, because I personally type it more often. There are three areas that concern me: templates that indirectly invoke CS1, those that transclude CS1-invoking templates, and clones. I'm concerned about where and when red error messages appear, and documentation, in which I include both /doc and TemplateData.
There are many CS1-friendly templates that invoke one of the canonical templates; {{Cite encyclopedia}} is often used for example. Some use parameter rewriting, converting |authorlink= to |author-link= before passing it on.
Does their documentation always give precedence to |author-link=? I think we caught them all during the earlier discussion, but I can't guarantee the quality of the search.
Because the CS1 code never sees the deprecated parameter, should this template emit a red error itself during the substitution? Or maybe just forget about the mapping and have CS1 do it? And how hard is it to find templates with the parameter substitution code?
If |authorlink= ever moves from deprecated to invalid, then all those mappings and documentation need to be trimmed in one fell swoop. Well, I guess the mappings can stay in place although they could trip up inattentive longtime users.
There are templates that simply transclude a pre-filled CS1-style template: for example embedding {{Cite book}} as a citation to a specific volume that is relevant to any use of this template. Have they all been fixed? If not, their user will see a red error message (correct?) that has nothing to do with their own usage.
There may be templates that are modeled on CS1 but roll their own expansion, although I don't know of any such. If they happen to use |authorlink=, should they also be brought in line?
Two final comments: there are more than six, if you consider variants like |author1link= and |authorlink1=. And in principle the arguments above apply to any page outside Template space that gets transcluded by someone, although I know that feature is rarely used. David Brooks (talk) 16:51, 12 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Shoulda said: the above applies to A and to some extent B but you can probably figure that out. David Brooks (talk) 16:57, 12 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
DavidBrooks: There is a tiny army of editors at the ready to fix these templates. As far as I know, there are no transcludable templates that pass |authorlink=, your example, to any CS1 templates, so using those templates would not generate an error message. |accessdate= and the two or three remaining unhyphenated parameters being passed from template transclusions to CS1 templates were being processed by the bot before the bot was paused to hold this discussion. Once this discussion is closed, the bot will be able to resume that work, with human assistance, if the closure is a reasonable one. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:13, 21 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Jonesey95: I just addressed a related issue in Help talk:Citation Style 1, where by modifying the example given I found 3 templates that use |authorlink= in a CS1-style template that's used to reference a specific source: {{Barmakids family tree}}, {{Citeer web}}, {{Alox2}}. But this less restrictive query shows a few more (ignore the "DYK" archive, I think). Not sure if you meant this type of usage in your comment; I may be missing the context. David Brooks (talk) 05:05, 22 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Jonesey95: OK, looks like you fixed {{Alox2}}. {{Barmakids family tree}} and {{Citeer web}} still need to be fixed (I'll do them later today). The documentation of "Cite book (short)" in {{Quicktemplates}} lists the not-incorrect |authorlink=, so that comes under the "prefer the hyphen forms in documentation" rule. I didn't look for |authorlink2= or |author2link= because they are unlikely to appear alone. David Brooks (talk) 19:17, 22 February 2021 (UTC) ... Y, also {{Bach's compositions (sources)}}, which indeed had |author2link =. David Brooks (talk) 21:42, 22 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I would like to clarify what I meant when I originally wrote the options, since there is some confusion. My intention with "removal" was to refer only to removal of usage of nonhyphenated parameters by transclusions of the template, not removal from the implementation of the template itself (I will call this "disabling the parameter"). This is also distinct from deprecation, which is designating something in documentation and warning messages as discouraged. Remember that the original reason for this RfC is to clarify whether we should have a bot going through the article space removing the parameter usage as its sole action. A, B, and C are respectively continue removing now, remove only as part of other non-cosmetic edits or in a situation where cosmetic-only edits are allowed, or do not remove. In case of A or B, I did not intend for them to make a statement about whether we should disable the parameter when this is done. This is an important question, but orthogonal to whether the parameter usage is removed now or later. — The Earwig alt ⟨talk⟩ 22:11, 13 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for clarifying (except the part where you formulated the options). Unfortunately, it now means I'm missing the option: Non-hyphenated parameters should be deprecated now and removed later. The actual status quo seems to be: Non-hyphenated parameters should be removed now and deprecated later, and the removal can occur by bot which does nothing else on the page (cosmetic only), but will revisit the page as often as necessary to re-remove the non-deprecated params that keep getting added. — JohnFromPinckney (talk) 23:01, 13 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
For context, this is how I originally phrased it; note B and C are swapped. Isn’t what you’re desiring exactly option B (in the current formulation)? It seems describing B as the "status quo" is confusing. Instead, view A as what the bot was doing before it was stopped, and B as what is currently happening with the bot stopped, but with clear, formal deprecation. — The Earwig alt ⟨talk⟩ 00:19, 14 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Mmm, maybe, and in any case I'm very grateful for your link to the pre-RfC coordination at Primefac's Talk. And I can say that your original formulation was clearer than the formulation we're now using for the RfC proper. However:
There appears to be no consensus for the removal of non-hyphenated multiword parameters. The 2014 RfC determined only that the hyphenated version must exist, and the close explicitly allowed for non-hyphenates.
If this RfC is intended to determine whether non-hyphenates should be deprecated, it's poorly formulated to the extent that it mentions the current bot activities.
I can't view Option A as what the bot was doing before it was stopped, because the parameter has not been deprecated. (The statement by Nikkimaria that deprecation "in the context of CS1/CS2" means a red maintenance message will be shown is not something I can accept, as any reasonable software provider knows that advance notice is the first part of deprecation. Unfortunately, I don't usually work "in the context of CS1/CS2", so haven't argued before against this unhappy definition.)
Option B, as written on this page, is a garbled mess, not only because of the "status quo" mention, but also because of the "Deprecation can be bundled into genfixes..." bit. Deprecation, as above, is (first) a documentation task, followed by a (presumably small) step to cause red messages to be generated (I'm not sure what's involved here). I don't see what would need to be "bundled into genfixes". I had the feeling that many !voting here saw "removal" as meaning elimination of usages, but maybe that's due to my own confusion. Your Option C (and your original formulations in general) were much clearer.
There should never have been any bot activities, because (a) there's no consensus, yet, to deprecate non-hyphenates, (b) the params are not yet deprecated, and (c) the bots' edits have been largely accessdate => access-date only, so violate WP:COSMETICBOT. So I guess I'll be !voting for B, although I'd much rather choose your original Option C. This RfC as written has been too unclear (at least for me). — JohnFromPinckney (talk) 11:20, 14 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Re The 2014 RfC determined only that the hyphenated version must exist: As called out in the proposal, it also said The documentation is to show this lowercase, hyphenated version as the one for "normal use". Hence my comment above: some of us recently tweaked the documentation of a few high-use templates to make the hyphenated version the privileged one, but I can't guarantee we got both /doc and TemplateData for every template that indirectly uses CS1/2. If we end up with both hyphen and no-hyphen equally valid (is that C?), then tweaking the documentation will be the only change visible to current editors. SHould there be a more valiant effort to track them all down? David Brooks (talk) 19:45, 14 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
If the consensus is for Option C, then nobody has to track down anything; we can leave the documentation as it is. BTW, the claim written there, This will also mean that the deprecated parameter list will need to be updated to remove the non-hyphenated parameters is another red herring and would, it seems, not apply at all (as accessdate isn't even listed there yet).
If we chose Options A or B, then yes, the documentation should be immediately changed. I can't believe it will take too much valor to find the Template:Cite web documentation, as it doesn't seem terrible exotic, but it should be included in the tweaking in those cases. — JohnFromPinckney (talk) 20:07, 14 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The 2014 RFC had a participation of only seven people and was six or seven years ago. It is patiently absurd to update documentation with such a sweeping change based on that alone, and any such changes ought to be reverted pending the outcome of a more clear RFC. Furthermore, the 2014 RFC specifically indicated that nothing would be depreciated, so if you are relying on it as a justification for any changes then obviously no non-hyphenated versions can be depreciated until / unless a new RFC overturns it. --Aquillion (talk) 22:19, 15 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Please read the summary at the top of this Discussion section. Here's the summary of that summary: Dozens of unhyphenated multi-word parameters have been deprecated, removed from pages, and then removed from the Citation Style 1 templates over the last seven years. There are only six left. During those seven years, many new, hyphenated multi-word parameters have been introduced, without unhyphenated aliases. At present, the situation is that unhyphenated multi-word parameters are the standard, and there is just a bit more work to do to remove the final six outliers. Unfortunately, it appears that many editors have not enabled the useful settings "Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent" and "Group changes by page in recent changes and watchlist" so that bot edits can be hidden without losing visibility of bad human edits, so people are complaining about a bot "clogging" their watchlists. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:59, 15 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
None of that is however relevant to Aquillion's comment in the slightest. That a flimsy consensus (at best) has been used to justify removing functionality in the past does not mean that that removal was a good thing or that the bot edits (which clog both watchlists and page histories with unnecessary edits, whether they hide other edits or not) should continue. Indeed, I strongly suspect there would be support for re-enabling the parameters already removed. Thryduulf (talk) 00:27, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Please note, folks, that this bot is a one-off; it may be processing some 2 or 3 million pages, but it's still a one-off, that is (unless reverted) it will only ever appear ONCE in any article history. So the idea that it's "clogging up" page histories is a big red herring. If you're bothered about it "clogging up" your watchlist, then please set the options recommended by Jonesey95 and others. So that objection falls by the wayside too. Please also note that this bot finishes the job. Once it's done, that's it – no more bots making this sort of change. To the charge that this bot is "disruptive" or that it's somehow "removing functionality", I can't do better than copy Rexx's observation above: "Once we have standardised on hyphenated parameters, future editors will look back and think how lame and time-wasting this sort of debate is." --NSH001 (talk) 19:30, 21 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I don't ordinarily block bot edits from my watchlist because I want to know what's going on with "my" articles, and the bots generally do useful and interesting work. It's just that the (to me) sudden and unforeseen flurry of multitudinous edits (doing, it appears, nothing which really interests me) was quite irritating. The repetition on List of University of Pennsylvania people really got my blood pressure up, and that's not far off from "disruptive" to me. — JohnFromPinckney (talk) 21:15, 21 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm... The October edit is Monkbot 17 (not 18), so doesn't fall into the scope of this RfC. The edit on 28 December is the main application of this bot. That leaves 5 (mostly quite small) unexpected additional edits by the bot. They are all caused by editors adding parms that don't conform to the canonical standard. So yes, I should have qualified my statement by allowing for that possibility, sorry for that. Understandable that this should happen in the absence of a clear deprecation (so far) of the unhyphenated form. Perhaps the editors concerned are using some cite-generating tool that doesn't generate the canonical form, in which case the tool should be updated. Whatever, that strengthens the case for deprecating the non-canonical forms ASAP, and for moving forward as fast as possible with the main task. It's late now, and I will be going to bed shortly. Will comment on Phil Bidger's intemperate remark below in the morning. --NSH001 (talk) 00:06, 22 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Naw, the editor concerned is/was just copying/pasting whatever they found in whatever articles they were looking at. (The user also hasn't learned that refs go after punctuation, or that a named ref copied from another article might not be declared on the target page, or that Wikipedia has a Preview function to allow checking for errors. Not that I'm bitter.) Agreed, without actual deprecation, nobody knows what they're supposed to use or not use, so watchlists get plagued with unnecessary repetition. And I can't point such a user to the deprecation or consensus not to use the non-hyphenated forms, because there aren't any yet. — JohnFromPinckney (talk) 00:21, 22 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for that. If it is the case that editors on that page are simply copy-pasting cites from the original wiki bios, then that's good news – the problem will go away if the bot is simply allowed to continue and fix the problem in the source articles. I don't think it's true that there is no consensus for this change: the desired style was settled in an RfC several years ago, and has been 90% implemented in the years since, with no substantial objection. So there is an effective consensus, and it makes no sense not to carry the task through to its logical conclusion. The objections here amount to a dislike of large numbers of bot edits appearing on watchlists, not on the actual merits of the case. --NSH001 (talk) 07:34, 22 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The RfC in question only had seven supports, and only concerned making sure a hyphenated version existed and was presented first in the documentation. I don't know how that could be read as effective consensus for deprecating a parameter that, prior to the bot run, seems to have been more commonly used than the hyphenated variant - and even if it could, it would be a limited one. The objection to the bot is not just that it edits a lot, but that it "fixes" something that isn't a problem. Nikkimaria (talk) 14:01, 22 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Nikkimaria, the first fallacy in your argument is that you are assuming the wider community, if it participated in the original RfC, would disagree with its conclusion. That isn't (quite) the case – I'm pretty sure that, out of the various choices available for multi-word parameters (runon, camelCase, under_score, hyphenation, etc), hyphenation would still be chosen, simply because it is the easiest to read in wikitext. Possibly underscore might be better (it won't line-wrap) but most people, apart perhaps from those with a programming background, will be much more comfortable with the hyphen, so that RfC came to a very sensible conclusion. The detail of its implementation is another matter, though. The second fallacy in your argument concerns the reason for the objection to the bot. Firstly, the observable fact is that some editors are now kicking up a huge time-wasting fuss about this bot, but said nothing about the many other bot runs for all the other CS1/2 parameters doing exactly the same thing. Secondly, and I see this repeatedly in other RfCs as well, that editors tend to focus solely on a perceived short-term problem, without taking account of the bigger picture and the wider context. That context has already been well described in the introduction to this RfC, and in the links given there. It's astonishing to me that people don't see that that the whole point of this work is to make the citation templates simpler and easier to use. Part of that process is to make the parameter names more meaningful and consistent. It's ridiculous to leave the mess inherited from the early days of citation templates, with these few remaining parameters sticking out like sore thumbs. --NSH001 (talk) 08:25, 25 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Please explain how allowing e.g. "accessdate" is less meaningful, is less simple, is harder to use for regular editors. That is the bigger picture, the wider coontext: the benefits are actually only for a small group of people, who have every right to present their case and ask if their life can be made easier, but should not be astonished when it turns out that in some cases, their preferred solution is not supported by the larger group of people who don't do (or not as regularly) the template and bot stuff. Putting error messages on thousands of pages for things which are not an error but something which a few people decided is no longer allowed at all is losing sight of the bigger picture as well. Fram (talk) 09:24, 25 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
you are assuming the wider community, if it participated in the original RfC, would disagree with its conclusion. I don't know that, and neither do you, because the wider community was never consulted. We can be reasonably sure that the discussion would have been far less one-sided, based on subsequent commentary. As to the second half of your point, as Fram notes, it's not at all clear why deprecating widely-used aliases would make the templates easier to use for the average editor. Nikkimaria (talk) 13:33, 25 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
(replying to both). Yes, that's easy. There's a very simple rule for all the CS1/2 citation templates: all multi-word parameters use a hyphen to separate the words. That's it. Dead easy to remember. Moreover, it's already implemented for the vast majority of the parameters (only 5 are left to do). I don't buy the argument that having to type ONE extra character is an insufferable burden. The only valid objection I can see is that the bot may flood watchlists, but that is temporary until the bot run is finished. So my sympathies to those who feel irritated (I don't – I have over 6,000 pages on my watchlist, and bot spam doesn't bother me), but the irritation will be temporary. If it really does bother you, others have mentioned a way to configure your watchlist to avoid the problem. --NSH001 (talk) 07:35, 8 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'm glad you personally are not irritated by this change - but others are, and others have explained why hiding the problem is not solving it. No one is proposing removing the hyphenated variation, simply supporting the (often more widely used) aliases. It's not appropriate to justify a change on the basis of it being mostly carried out. Nikkimaria (talk) 02:49, 12 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
On watchlists, see #Worth noting below for a possible way of reducing the "disruption". I forgot to reply to Fram's point about the wider context: I was thinking about the overall naming convention, and why the bot makes it easier, but Trappist's latest contribution to the survey section explains also the wider consideration that we need to consider all the non-English Wikipedias that have borrowed our CS1 templates/modules. --NSH001 (talk) 10:40, 8 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
So the solution to a bot editing against consensus is for those who object to stop watching it? You couldn't make this stuff up. Once again, this is a fucking encyclopedia, not a place for techies to dictate to editors. Find a playground elsewhere, or get a real job and you will find out that people can only get paid to write programs if thay do what their users want them to. Phil Bridger (talk) 21:27, 21 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Phil, your first sentence is false. This bot was approved by consensus, following standard procedures. Indeed its operator went to extraordinary lengths to shout from the rooftops that it is a "cosmetic" bot. I'll ignore your intemperate and baseless personal attack. Finally, on the question of bot edits and watchlists, I refer you to Bilorv's conribution at 11:34, 13 February above, which looks like a good solution (I'll just add the caveat that I haven't tested it yet). --NSH001 (talk) 08:25, 25 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Reading some of the above comments, I'm sorely tempted to add a new proposal here: every editor who deliberately makes a change which adds an error message to at least 10,000 pages is stripped from their template editor right. Excluding hidden cats of course, these aren't a problem; but no depreciation of any parameter justifies such mainspace disruption for readers. Fram (talk) 08:30, 24 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Three responses: First of all, the error messages displayed by CS1 templates are displayed by consensus, not by a single editor. Second, the error messages, such as those displayed in articles within Category:CS1 errors: unsupported parameter, are shown not because a single editor changed a template, but because individual editors made errors when they used CS1 templates. Third, the objection to error messages being splashed across article space is why the bot was operating before the deprecation error messages were displayed. People hate the display of hundreds of thousands of minor error messages, so the bot was fixing the articles before the CS1 modules were changed to display deprecated-parameter errors.
Fram's feedback offer give something to think about, however; if the logical options A or B are chosen here so that the last 10% of the hyphenation of multi-word CS1 parameters can be completed, perhaps we should not display deprecated-parameter error messages (except maybe in preview mode) in articles until the vast majority of parameter name replacements are complete. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:29, 24 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, but remember Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive313#Is there a semi-automated tool that could fix these annoying "Cite Web" errors? from 1 1/2 year ago? There also was "consensus" for that change, among a tiny group of editors, but disregarding the wider community. I hoped that that episode would have learned some of the people most active at these templates that, when they propose a change affecting many pages (and certainly when they propose a change adding error messages to many pages), they should get a much wider consensus first. Still, I see in the above discussion people arguing to activate the red error messages for this (most error messages we get now are either on very few pages or for actual errors, e.g. impossible dates), which isn't an error but something some bot operators and template builders don't like. Fram (talk) 17:06, 24 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Three responses: First of all, the error messages displayed by CS1 templates are displayed by consensus, not by a single editor. One thing that this discussion has made crystal-clear, I think, is that many of the "consensuses" used to make sweeping changes like this are not remotely sufficient in terms of scale per WP:LOCALCONSENSUS; again, if they were, we wouldn't be having this conversation. If you want to make a change that significantly affects hundreds of thousands of pages, you should need a consensus involving a very large number of users, and it should be properly broadcast on high-traffic boards - a seven-person "consensus" is patiently insufficient for a change at this scale, and turning around and using bots or template messages to then try to enforce it amounts to WP:FAITACCOMPLI. --Aquillion (talk) 10:03, 4 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I wish that people would stop repeating this "seven-person consensus" canard; it is a weak platform on which to base an argument. The consensus about hyphenated parameters has been in place for seven years, and has been reinforced by multiple discussions about deprecation of dozens of individual multi-word parameters during those seven years. The discussion page on which every single one of those discussions has occurred, Help talk:Citation Style 1, has 396 page watchers. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:48, 11 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This page has ten times that, and I'm willing to bet there are more people opposing deprecation here than there are who supported it in the discussions you mention put together. Repeating a local consensus for less used parameters != an appropriate level of consensus to get rid of other parameters from literally millions of articles. Not to mention that the consensus that was supposedly established seven years ago wasn't even for deprecation, just prioritization. Nikkimaria (talk) 02:49, 12 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I wish that people would stop repeating this "seven-person consensus" canard; it is a weak platform on which to base an argument. The consensus about hyphenated parameters has been in place for seven years To be clear, the consensus of that RFC was that non-hyphenated parameters are allowed, subject to the unambiguous restriction that no parameters can be depreciated. The RFC specifically did not favor non-hyphenated parameters over hyphenated ones, and the statement at its start specifically promised that no parameters would be depreciated as a result. There has never been any sort of consensus (not even a weak, highly-local one) to depreciate hyphenated parameters; nor, as a result, have any depreciations made on those grounds ever been valid. And it is clear from this discussion that such consensus would never have been reached if it had been sought (which it was not.) A discussion among a tiny number of people, without an RFC, which directly violated the very RFC they tried to use to justify their actions, with no further RFCs or any effort to get consensus from or even inform the wider community of what they were doing, is not a "consensus" in any way, shape, or form - longstanding consensuses get their weight from the large number of people who have seen and accepted them, and in this case the longstanding consensus is (and remains) to retain hyphenated parameters. --Aquillion (talk) 10:31, 16 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This is uh, not a good idea. In some cases many templates are used in error, though they previously did not detect such errors. Detecting and fixing such errors is a good thing. IAR is policy, and if someone is breaking tons of things, sure, remove their rights, but simply displaying error messages isn't a clear-cut issue.
As for non-silent parameter deprecation, yeah, replace first then deprecate. I don't think anyone disagrees with this. Elliot321 (talk | contribs) 20:30, 3 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I certainly disagree (and have, several times, on this page already). If there's consensus to do away with certain parameters, then the very first thing to do is deprecate them, that is, tell everybody not to use them anymore, next, run the bots to replace the usage, then, eventually, show the red messages and, ultimately, completely remove support for the deprecated params. Any other path is crazy. — JohnFromPinckney (talk) 03:54, 4 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
One of the objections I raised with Monkbot18 which is not being addressed whatsoever in the "status quo" (option A) argument is that the bot also make other changes, including the removal of whitespace and line breaks from citation templates. This is unacceptable per MOS:STYLERET. In my mind, the time I have spent undoing these changes to the articles I focus on has been a far bigger burden than the lack or presence of a hyphen in a parameter. If this bot is tasked with swapping parameters, it should ONLY be changing "accessdate" to "access-date" (and vis a vis similar parameter hyphenations), and absolutely nothing outside of that. Option A should not be construed as approval of the bot code as currently written, but the task for which it was meant to be accomplishing. - Floydianτ¢ 18:33, 7 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Well, that's very odd, because Monkbot18 is very careful to preserve whitespace (with one very reasonable exception), so I don't see how it's going against STYLERET. It's true that it does remove empty/blank parameters, but that's a good thing, as it reduces clutter in the wikitext. It does a few other good things as well, see User:Monkbot/task_18: cosmetic cs1 template cleanup. Can you give specific examples of edits you think it's doing wrong, please? --NSH001 (talk) 19:13, 7 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
There's a nice list of reversions if you look at my edits for January 17, but here is an example. - Floydianτ¢ 06:27, 8 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
In that case, Your Mileage May Vary, and STYLERET applies. The blank lines make it easier to pick out citations from text, and scroll bars overcome the "valuable space" argument. I tried to ask that behaviour to be removed. I was met with (*paraphrased) "bot code was approved, proceeding". So I just blocked the damn bot from the 300 articles I work on. Now if someone is that concerned about a hyphen in a parameter, they can go manually change it. Simple as that.
Or, you know, the bot could stick to making the changes to parameters that it is supposed to. I shouldn't need to ask, it's not part of the bot's mandate, remove it. - Floydianτ¢ 15:43, 8 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
First, you say I tried to ask that behaviour to be removed. I was met with (*paraphrased) "bot code was approved, proceeding". That is surprising, as I would expect Trappist to be amenable to such a request (it's important to get this job done, so a small change like this one to avoid pushback is worth making). Can you point me to the conversation where you made this request, and received that reply, please?
(later) - ah, don't bother – found it myself User talk:Trappist the monk/Archive 17#Task 18 taking out reference spacing. Looks like you didn't explain yourself very well to Trappist. FWIW, I can see the rationale for the blank line for in-line cites within the article body, if it stops people from turning it into the (horrible) horizontal format. I touch on this again below, but I agree with you that Monkbot18 shouldn't be removing the blank line. (I hope Trappist is reading this). But the rest of the changes it's making are good, and should stay.(Actually, to be strictly correct, Monkbot should remove it within LDR or biblio listings, but not within the main body. For simplicity, I'd say simply don't bother trying to remove it.)
Secondly, Or, you know, the bot could stick to making the changes to parameters that it is supposed to. That statement is false. The bot was approved to carry out the tasks listed at the link I've already given: User:Monkbot/task_18: cosmetic cs1 template cleanup, and that's exactly what the bot has been doing. Apart from the blank line issue, the other changes are good, and valuable, and will reduce the need for more bot runs in the future. One of the reasons I like this bot so much.
The next bit is very interesting (to me) but is wandering mostly off-topic, so I'm putting it in small text. If you'd like to take it further, feel free to discuss it on my talk page. The problem of citation clutter in the main body of Wikipedia articles has been annoying me for years, and especially the huge problems caused by long, horizontally-formatted citation templates, which in my opinion make wikitext difficult or impossible to read and to edit. This is all set out on a very long "thread" (it isn't really a thread any longer): on my talk page. It is talking about a way of setting out citation templates that I call "ETVP" for "easy to visually parse", which is similar in many ways to the citations in your example, but also differs in some respects. The interesting point to mention here is that I had a difficult and bruising experience trying to introduce ETVP-formatted citations into article bodies. The excuse offered for reverting me was mostly "it takes up too many lines" in the edit box (hence "the one very reasoable exception" above), so in the end I gave up on that, and focused mainly on other solutions (ETVP within WP:LDR or ETVP within biblio listings using short-form referencing) which in most cases are actually a better solution anyway. It's a fascinating paradox that you seem to have gotten away with it by using more lines, not fewer, combined with a lavish use of white space – the exact opposite of what one would expect. So I am now thinking of adding a similar option to my ETVP script – and thank you for prompting that thought. Will need some thought, though.
The blank lines is the only issue I'm having / pointing out here. I have no problem with updating deprecated parameters, I have no problem with my watchlist having a litany of bot edits. I do have a problem with going through 250 articles that have an average of 50 citations, to reinsert a blank line in each. This is not one of the 6 tasks listed at User:Monkbot/task_18: cosmetic cs1 template cleanup. There are also some automated tools that do similar nonsense that I revert on sight (e.g. Regex Citation Formatter). - Floydianτ¢ 15:49, 10 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
We appear to be in agreement here, specifically that you support option A, but only if Monkbot 18 drops its removal of entirely blank lines within citation templates. If you could confirm that my understanding is correct, that would be very helpful. Thanks. --NSH001 (talk) 10:00, 11 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
You would be correct good sir! - Floydianτ¢ 15:36, 11 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Worth noting
Trappist has kindly set out, very clearly, a suggestion on how to configure your watchlist to avoid the problems of large numbers of bot edits in watchlists. I copy it here, in case it is helpful to anybody:
check Advanced options → Group changes by page in recent changes and watchlist
Note that I haven't (yet) tried this myself, since I'm already satisfied with the way my watchlist is set up. --NSH001 (talk) 09:09, 8 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Note to RFC closer: the above instructions are a remedy for all of the people supporting Option C because of "watchlist clogging" and the alleged problems that the bot's edits cause for editors who watch for vandalism. As far as I can tell, no editor using the above settings is objecting to the bot's changes based on watchlist issues. Unless a valid objection is raised, I propose that all Option C support citing watchlist problems be discounted and guided to the above recommendation. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:30, 8 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This is a workaround that (a) should not be necessary, (b) doesn't work for everybody, e.g. those who want to see bot edits (I do for example) and (c) doesn't fix the problem only a symptom. It is additionally highly inappropriate to suggest that large numbers of editor's valid and rationally expressed preferences are discounted. Thryduulf (talk) 17:41, 8 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I've been trialing this workaround for the last day or so. Back in December I cleared out my watchlist and took a two and half month wikibreak while the bot ran. I've just come back to Wiki and discovered that the bot has been stopped, but thought I'd try Trappist's suggestion. So far so good, it's a bit different but at least it makes the watchlist saner than during the bot attack! Martin of Sheffield (talk) 20:23, 8 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I've always been puzzled that (some) editors get so triggered by large numbers of bot edits. I have more than 6,000 pages on my watchlist (which I have set to show bot edits), and bot spam has never bothered me. I even welcome it, as they sometimes remind me of articles I did a lot of work on perhaps 7 or 10 years ago, and which I really ought to look at again. That said, I do understand the problems of editors who want to deal with vandalism, so this new setting looks to be very valuable, and should indeed remove many (but probably not all) of the "watchlist spam" objections. --NSH001 (talk) 10:40, 9 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
And on the subject of editors like me who aren't bothered by bot spam, has anyone considered the silent majority who either aren't bothered by the "spam" or who, if they are, aren't concerned enough to come to this RfC to complain about it? Perhaps they ought to be weighed somehow in the balance when considering "consensus"? --NSH001 (talk) 10:51, 9 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Well given that most of them will not know that this discussion exists and will just be getting on with adding the parameters, with and without hyphens, as they always have done I don't think was can say one way or the other what their opinion is - especially given that the bot has not been spamming its unnecessary changes for quite a while now (the discussion has been open a month tomorrow, and I think it was stopped a day or so before then, and more than a few editors are of the opinion that arguing against bots/bot operators is pointless). Instead of grasping at straws to discredit or dismiss the opinions you disagree with, perhaps you could instead try listening to why they disagree with the changes, not just the manner of the changes. I also note that you have completely ignored my explanation of why this will not actually solve the problem for everybody and ignored that there is no reason why the problem should need to be solved in the first place. Thryduulf (talk) 11:49, 9 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
None of this changes the fact that there is no consensus to depreciate non-hyphenated parameters, nor has any such consensus ever existed. Rather than trying to convince the RFC closer, you should be planning how you're going to get that consensus, if you intend to keep doubling down on that. --Aquillion (talk) 10:35, 16 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment It's easier for authors if every possible format is accommodated, and recognized as a synonym. There's no reason to delete any unless they;re actually confusing. DGG ( talk ) 05:59, 21 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option A, then B, Strongly Oppose C. Citations should be standardized across the encyclopedia. Having a bot do these automated tasks does not spam watch lists, and if that was a concern then the solution is to ignore bots from watch lists, instead of stopping encyclopedia improving projects too many people are saying " watch list ".JackFromReedsburg (talk | contribs) 18:36, 5 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Why should citation parameter names be standardised? How does it improve the encyclopaedia? Why is your opinion that the many bot edits are "not spam" more valid than the experiences of those who have explained why they experience them that way? What is your response to those who have explained that they do not support these changes for reasons other than watchlist spam and/or have reasons why they do not want to ignore all bot edits? Thryduulf (talk) 19:50, 5 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
There seem to be many people responding to the "spamming watchlists" aspect of this. That is certainly not my objection. The problem is that we have lots of editors who for over a decade have been using the non-hyphenated parameters but if this is deprecated will get an error message when doing so. Everyone would say on seeing that that they know what they meant, so why on Earth remove the functionality that deals with the situation automatically? People are proposing very complicated artificial intelligence techniques in other areas, but are resisting synonyms for parameters that were considered simple even in the early days of computing. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:26, 5 April 2021 (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.
MJL's close
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.
To be honest, I wasn't sure how this was going to go. I decided that it was best for me to sit this discussion out just to see how things turned out. There are a lot of moving parts to this conversation, so I am going to break it down as easily as I can.
For the most part, this is an Option B close with some severe caveats.
Discouraged
The first major aspect of this discussion was whether or not non-hyphenated parameters are still deprecated for the CS1/2 family of templates. Consensus can change, and the RFC establishing uniform template parameters happened more than five years ago.
On Wikipedia, "Deprecated" has come to mean something is basically disallowed for the future. If a template parameter is deprecated, it generally means it is onset to be phased out entirely and support for it replaced with an error message. Compare this process to what's outlined in Wikipedia:Deprecated sources.
Therefore, are non-hyphenated parameters deprecated? From what I can tell, the answer is no in the following cases: |accessdate=, |archivedate=, |archiveurl=, |authorlink=, and |origyear= (also like |author1link= etc. and whatever). These parameters fall into a state I think most could easily call developer discouraged.
As such, these parameters should not be advertised in documentation, hidden maintenance categories added (and etc.) while still remaining available for use by long time editors. The five or so grandfathered parameters should only ever turned off following a later discussion which receives wide attention and clear consensus. In the meantime, any editor should feel free to manually or semi-automatically change unhyphenated parameters into their hyphenated forms while they're doing something else on a page (like so).
Monkbot 18
As I said, this is basically an Option B close with extra steps. Therefore, the Monkbot 18 should not be run solely to replace the discouraged non-hyphenated parameters. Whether it could be run on pages to replace the remaining deprecated templates I do not see a consensus for either way (ie. no consensus).
The issue of watchlist clogging was widely discussed. With so many objections to execution of the "hyphenate cs1|2 parameter names" section of Monkbot 18, it's hard to say there is consensus to enact it except if it was bundled with non-cosmetic changes or occurred on a CBD.
I also don't know what to say about the rest of Monkbot 18 since it wasn't discussed.
That's really all there is for me to say on the matter. If there are any questions about this close, please refer them to either my talk page, Help talk:Citation Style 1, or some other appropriate venue. –MJL‐Talk‐☖ 21:03, 5 April 2021 (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.
I undid MJL's close based on the discussion above. It is preserved for the record in the section above. – Joe (talk) 11:02, 14 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
While MJL's RFC closure was fearless and difficult, it was unclear in its prose and left a number of implementation-related questions unanswered. I was involved with the RFC and with the implementation of its first closure, so I asked a number of those questions. I am willing to assist a potential closer with drafting a closure, not to put my spin on it, but to ensure that it answers questions that might arise from it and contains grammatical prose. Feel free to ping me. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:34, 14 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
It is a very bad idea to get someone who was seriously involved in the RfC to "assist a potential close", and I hope no one pings you over this. The closure has not been overturned because of unclear or ungrammatical prose, suggesting this already disqualifies you from having any involvement with a new close. If the closers have questions, they can post them here, for everyone, without pings to one party or another. Please don't try to unduly influence the outcome, and please stop replacing these parameters while the RfC is still open. Fram (talk) 07:32, 15 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Fram is correct that nobody involved with the RfC, whatever their preference is regarding it, should be "assisting" the closer - we should not be part of the closure process at all. Additionally, I would say that those closely involved with implementing one of the options, regardless of which option, should also not be part of the closure for the same reasons, namely it is extremely important that the close reflects only the opinions expressed in the RFC without bias. Finally, nobody should be taking any action based on this RfC or which would prejudice the outcome of this RfC until it is closed in a manner consistent with the consensus of it. That means nobody should be changing any parameters, nor making any changes that suggest one style or other is or is not preferred, deprecated, will be removed in future, etc. Thryduulf (talk) 10:36, 15 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
As I said, I have no intention of influencing the outcome of the closure. I maintain my offer to provide grammatical and technical feedback on a draft closure in a public forum. Don't we want the best, most reliable closure possible, instead of the somewhat muddied one that resulted from a single person with limited subject-matter experience trying to answer this complex issue? Wasn't the primary complaint about the closure, and the reason for it to be overturned that it didn't [reflect] only the opinions expressed in the RFC without bias? I try to limit my involvement in WP drama like this because it seems to be so suboptimally run, but without at least a little input from people who understand the technicalities and how to construct a grammatical sentence, RFC closures can end up making things worse instead of better (cf. developer discouraged, a adjectival phrase from the initial closure that was both wholly invented and missing a hyphen). It seems like this RFC, if it is to be reclosed as described immediately above, should be evaluated by a group of editors who can give each other feedback, ask questions of editors with relevant subject-matter knowledge, and check each other's work so that we don't end up in this situation again. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:57, 15 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, having a group of editors (admins?) evaluate a complicated RFC and work together to create a clear closure is a good idea. HOWEVER, an involved editor should not be part of that group. I am sure your intentions are for the best, but “appearances” matter just as much as intentions. Blueboar (talk) 16:28, 15 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
When discussion has ended, remove this tag and it will be removed from the list. If this page is on additional lists, they will be noted below.
Question: Should the minor edit functionality be limited to a group of users (such as autoconfirmed or extended-confirmed users)?
Option 0 (status quo): Limit minor edits to registered users.
Option A: Limit minor edits to autoconfirmed (or confirmed) users.
Option B: Limit minor edits to extended-confirmed users. (No change to bots or admins which currently have this access)
This is a follow-up to this RfC on effectively disabling minor edits. As there was no consensus then, this is to establish clearer consensus regarding an alternative proposal. (This is my first time requesting comment, please let me know if I'm doing anything wrong.) Tol | Talk | Contribs (formerly Twassman) 00:02, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Survey (minor edits)
Question What about the Gordian-knot solution, just get rid of the concept of "minor edit" entirely? Was that considered? --Trovatore (talk) 00:23, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The aforementioned RfC demonstrates fairly clear opposition to removing minor edits entirely. — ⊥ɥǝ Ǝɐɹʍıƃ (ʇɐlʞ) 00:30, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Well, that one says something like "limit by policy to anti-vandalism reverts", which is not really a simplification and adds another layer of things people can and can't do. What I'm talking about is, the whole concept of "minor edit" goes away entirely; it's not that some people can do it and some people can't; it's not that there are rules about when you can do it; it's that it just doesn't exist, period. Even historical edits would no longer distinguish minor vs non-minor. Like it never existed at all. I would support that. --Trovatore (talk) 00:37, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
You are right that the RfC was specifically about restricting minor edits rather than removing entirely, but what I meant is many of the arguments in opposition would apply just as well for a proposal to remove them entirely, so I don't see that reaching consensus. — ⊥ɥǝ Ǝɐɹʍıƃ (ʇɐlʞ) 00:45, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The !voters may not have taken into consideration the advantage of a genuine simplification, for once, given that none was offered. --Trovatore (talk) 00:47, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Given that the title was to "Disable minor edits" I doubt this. Tol | Talk | Contribs (formerly Twassman) 01:03, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support B, then A. As I said in the other RFC, currently it's about as useful as the evil bit. The point of the minor edit checkbox is to say "you can safely ignore this edit"; so long as vandals, spammers, and "what does this button do?" types can use it, "minor" edits still need to be reviewed. For new users, this will be one less thing to worry about, and one less thing to get yelled at for misusing. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 00:34, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Which strikes me as a good reason to remove the concept entirely, rather than to restrict who can use it. --Trovatore (talk) 00:42, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed, I would support that too. But in the other RFC there was significant opposition to this idea, so let's at least remove it for the users most likely to be spammers, vandals, or clueless. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 00:49, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Meh, can't get excited about that. If the concept is useless, remove it. If we're not going to remove it, then since I'm pretty much going to ignore it anyway, I don't really care who can use it. --Trovatore (talk) 00:52, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support B, then AJohnbod (talk) 00:39, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support A, Oppose B per my arguments in the previous RfC. I am not in favor of expanding the scope of EC if it means taking rights away from autoconfirmed users. The threshold for EC is too high for a feature as minor (no pun intended) as this one. — ⊥ɥǝ Ǝɐɹʍıƃ (ʇɐlʞ) 00:53, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option A/B (as requester): minor edits are frequently abused or incorrectly used by new users, and this could limit this feature to users who can be better trusted not to misuse it. Tol | Talk | Contribs (formerly Twassman) 01:09, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support 0, strong oppose B: I'm shocked to find out the VPR discussion, which I'd filed away mentally as "some weird discussion between people with outlier opinions that's probably fizzling out", made its way here, and I at first thought this was an April Fool's RfC that hadn't been tagged properly. I can grudgingly recognize an argument for autoconfirmed (selects away some-but-not-all of the people with actively negative amounts of clue) but overall think that an example of over-bureaucracy at the terror of Spammers And Vandals taking away a minor, useful, and mostly noncontentious function. Limiting it to extended confirmed is beyond parody -- do you know what 500 edits sounds like to someone who isn't Into Wikipedia? We use extended confirmed protection as a last resort for the most massively controversial and abused articles to make sure they're only edited by people who are in too deep to continue it. I do not see the point of restricting something to vested contributors (B) or the patient (A) that can very well be better explained with replacing "This is a [[subtle link|minor edit]]" with "This is a minor edit [[less subtle link|(when to check this box)]]". Vaticidalprophet 01:12, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Also, should this have a watchlist notification? Vaticidalprophet 01:15, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'd see your point if it was a feature that had any direct benefit to the user. But (like autopatrolled) it can only benefit other people. How is the non-extendedconfirmed user harmed by the removal? Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 01:21, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Autopatrolled not benefitting the end user is something I've always found more said than true -- having pages indexed by Google (and by extension around the top of it for most subjects) is indeed a benefit for the page's writer, in that it means their work will be viewed. Similarly, I don't believe minor edits are useful only to other people in either the corest sense of "to the editor, directly, in a void" or the sense of "the editor as they actually are, interacting with other people" (e.g. it is quite meaningful well before the point someone hits extended-confirmed if they have 10% minor edits or 90%). Even in the one-man-is-an-island sense, being able to tag your own edits is helpful for personal categorization and tracking. I'd like to flip the position you're presenting here -- to limit minor edits, especially to limit them only to people with edit counts that sound absolutely insane to people who are not themselves prolific Wikipedia editors, would in my opinion require a far more serious abuse than I've seen either in practice or that you're proposing. "This should only be possible for 0.1375% of the people who have joined Wikipedia" is a proposal that shouldn't happen without major cause. Vaticidalprophet 01:30, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support B/A Support B, but wouldn't mind A. There often are users(often newer) who use minor edit for things they think are minor changes but aren't Wikipedia minor edits. WikiVirusC(talk) 01:48, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Question: What if I don't want to limit minor edits at all? — JohnFromPinckney (talk) 01:50, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Then you would say "Option 0" and set up your own proposal on such a topic, I would think. Aza24 (talk)
Oppose B No real preference on A or 0. — UwU wug's this? 02:21, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support B as first choice, A as second choice. Most uses of minor edits by new users are by newbies exploring Wikipedia for the first time, vandals, spammers and sockpuppets, making the concept useless with respect to non-autoconfirmed users. Since autoconfirmed is so easy to game and it is unlikely a new user will get the point by that point, we should restrict minor edits only to those who understand what they are, and what their purpose is. JavaHurricane 04:03, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Are "most" uses of minor edits malicious? Does it take a month and the 99.8625th percentile of edit count to learn something that can be learned by clicking the link piped from 'minor edit'? Are minor edits as massively contentious as articles about intense global political disputes, our primary use-case for limiting an action to the 99.8625th percentile of editors? Vaticidalprophet 06:47, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Having been doing RCP and counter-LTA activities for quite a while now, I daresay most uses of the minor mark are either malicious, or tests, or rollbacks of tests and vandalism. And yes, it took me that long to get fully the concept of minor edits. JavaHurricane 08:13, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
If you work in the part of the project that deals with the worst edits, you'll pattern-match the worst edits to everything. This does not mean that the majority of minor edits are bad, it means the majority of minor edits you personally encounter are bad. I have not seen any argument in favour of making minor edits more restricted than actual rollback (any autoconfirmed user can install Twinkle), or indeed as restricted as it, that doesn't sound like either "then we should make the link to Help:Minor edits more obvious" or "then you shouldn't filter minor edits in your watchlist". (I personally pay attention to every diff for the watchlist articles I care most about, including Amantio running AWB over it, in case a poor edit is hidden behind them.) Vaticidalprophet 19:58, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option 0. What problem is this even trying to solve? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 14:50, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose B - Editors should become familiar with the edit summary system much before 500 edits. Anyone who is very concerned with missing something because it is marked minor can simply stop filtering those out of their watchlist. — Godsy (TALKCONT) 15:08, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Procedural Oppose to B if that would remove this capability from admins or bots (@Tol: that isn't part of your intent here is it?). — xaosfluxTalk 15:13, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Xaosflux: No, I should have made this more clear. Option B would not remove this capability from admins or bots. I intended to mean removing minor edits from human users who have not been extended-confirmed (bots not being human and admins having been XC at some point). Tol | Talk | Contribs (formerly Twassman) 19:18, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, I noted it above and struck this !vote. — xaosfluxTalk 23:09, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support A or B I have also seen this feature misused by bad actors. The purpose of this feature is to allow minor edits by trusted editors to be less prominent on watchlists, not as a privilege to certain editors. As I see it, adding an activity requirement before it shows up would make this feature more useful to those who review changes. (t · c) buidhe 15:21, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support something between B and A I was originally going to just support B but as stated above by Godsy, Wikipedia editors should become familiar with the edit summary before 500 edits.But becoming autoconfirmed (as far as I know, I'm not completely sure) is easy to do. However I completely oppose Option 0 because any user can register an account and then vandalize an article while marking it as minor. We need to take note that not all vandals are IP editors. So I think if we did something between A and B (maybe semi-autoconfirmed or possibly a separate thing entirely just for minor edits) then it would still make it harder for vandals to do what they do best while not making it too hard for good users to make minor edits. A Wild Wolf has appeared! | Gotta catch 'em all! (talk) 15:29, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support B, then A I personally believe every user uses minor edits differently, but only with WP:ECP users, is there going to even be a discernible pattern. Non ECP users by definition will have fewer than 500 edits anyways Shushugah (talk) 15:41, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support 0 - I vaguely recall participating in the previous RfC, but this is a case where what logically makes sense (either A or B) actually doesn't. One of the best RCP "tells" is mis-use of minor edits. It raises efficiency appreciably, and that alone makes me prefer to keep as-is. Nosebagbear (talk) 16:04, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support 0 with A as a very distant second choice. Despite all the discussion here and in the previous discussion, I've never actually been convinced that there is a problem that needs fixing here or that the proposed changes would actually fix things. The issues people have are one of user behaviour and limiting use of the minor edit feature is not going to solve that. Thryduulf (talk) 16:25, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support 0 As a sock and vandal detector, the minor edits checkbox is a fantastic honeypot. AdmiralEek (talk) 17:03, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support A, second choice 0, weak oppose B. The designation is almost entirely uninformative for very new users. (Contrary to the "honeypot hypothesis", I think it's essentially uncorrelated with vandalism, not reliably anticorrelated to any degree to actually be useful.) Even for the more experienced, there are different standards of what constitutes a minor edit. But it's also basically harmless. Somewhere between 10 and 500 it starts to acquire a small amount of usefulness, but given the choice I'd rather it kick in sooner rather than later. As for the preference for 0 over B, if nothing else it gives IPs one more incentive to register. MarginalCost (talk) 17:21, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The correlation is likely not between "minor edit" and "vandalism" alone. The correlation is between "minor edit & large diff size" and "vandalism". ~ ToBeFree (talk) 17:32, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
In all the years I have edited here, I do not recollect ever before having actually registered a comment in an RfC, only to say that I don't care. But I don't. If you don't want to take "you can safely ignore this edit" for granted, here's a very effective fix: don't. I can see requiring some additional experience before allowing it, but it won't really matter. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:19, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option 0, if we're limited to the options above. I don't see the point in limiting who can use the minor edit checkbox, if the problem is how it's being used. I might consider supporting a proposal that would add a technical limit on how many characters/bytes could be changed and still have the edit marked minor, such that minor edits are effectively limited to spelling corrections in one or two words, or the addition/removal of 3-5 bits of punctuation, but that option is apparently not currently under consideration and I have no idea if it's technically feasible or not. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 19:29, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support 0. The fact that almost anything can be abused by a small minority is not a good reason to ban this feature from the majority that use it responsively. Also, doing it would be counterproductive as Nosebagbear points out. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 19:59, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support 0 - I edit in topics that are subject to frequent vandalism and POV editing... and often the vandals try to “hide” their edits by intentionally misusing the “minor edit” tag. Thus, when I see an edit flagged as a “minor edit” (in these topics), my reaction is the opposite of what is intended... I pay extra attention to the edit. I know this is not the purpose of the flag, but it actually HELPS me discover and correct vandal/POV edits... so I WANT the vandals and POV editors to keep misusing it. Blueboar (talk) 00:49, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support 0 Anon editors are human as well. I don't see why they shouldn't get minor edits. If anything, removing them will almost certainlyy increase bad edits as they allow for small changes and removing that will have severe consequences on the editing process. Swordman97talk to me 01:22, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
First, anonymous (IP) editors already cannot use minor edits; this RfC is to discuss whether the bar should be moved up from registered accounts to autoconfirmed or extended-confirmed accounts. This does not remove their ability to make edits which are minor edits as defined in Help:Minor edit, it only removes their technical ability to mark the edits as such. It has absolutely no impact on what edits they can make. It may help other editors who ignore minor edits, as by preventing these new editors (who may not understand what a minor edit is) from making minor edits, all edits by these new editors will show up on watchlists. Tol | Talk | Contribs (formerly Twassman) 16:35, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose B - While I support the idea of having to request a permission to make minor edits, extended-confirmed is not the right permission to bundle it with. Neutral between the status quo and auto-confirmed; certainly some minor edits by new users are vandalism or incorrectly tagged but it doesn't seem to be disproportionate. User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 01:29, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Support 0 Misusing makes it easier to detect vandals per Blueboar. It also makes it easier to detect sockpuppets, since their previous account(s) likely learned about minor edits. 🐔ChicdatBawk to me! 10:32, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I'm concerned that many editors appear to see the purpose of minor edits as a honeypot to trap editors. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 12:35, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@ProcrastinatingReader:, would you care to elaborate? If you mean what I think you mean, nobody was talking about using minor edits to "trap" good-faith editors. For that matter, minor edits alone cannot trap anyone - they were saying as how minor edits assist them in spotting socks and vandals; but they aren't "busted" for using the minor edit feature, but for socking and vandalising. A good faith editor who is not socking or vandalling can't be wrongly accused of such just for using minor edits Firejuggler86 (talk) 22:02, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option 0 with a strong oppose option B (or removal of minor edits altogether). Editors supporting restrictions don't seem to be balancing the odds right—at least, not if we take their comments at face value. The question at hand is: are sufficiently many minor edits made by non-autoconfirmed/non-EC (a) unconstructive and (b) not caught by standard anti-vandalism procedures (ClueBot, Huggle, watchlisting, RCP) that it is a net negative to the system? From my own experience, I don't see how this could possibly be the case. The vast majority of unconstructive edits are not marked as minor. The proportion of minor edits which are unconstructive is lower than the proportion of major edits. And I think it's clear that anything minor by a new user that says (+2,167) is still likely to be caught by our existing processes (I think users above are saying "m(+2,167)" makes them more likely to read the edit, and it does for me too). The only thing minor edits really do is help someone with a large watchlist find the most important changes first, and I don't think we're doing these people a favour. I am also concerned by the attitude people are showing behind the purpose of marking an edit as minor. I mark an edit as minor if and only if I think "I would be very surprised if an editor wanted to know that this edit had happened (because they might want to discuss it or have some improvement to make on what I've done)". If an editor is repeatedly marking contentious edits as minor then approach them in the first (and maybe second) instance and if they continue and do not reply constructively then report them, because such malicious actions are sanctionable. Literally my first registered edit was minor (marked as such and genuinely such). There's a button saying "This is a minor edit", with an uncontroversially clear meaning. It's not hard for a beginner to use it correctly. — Bilorv (talk) 13:18, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support A Would ensure that editors understand its use. ~ HAL333 17:44, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option 0 I don't get the point of this RfC; status quo is fine. TonyBallioni (talk) 20:32, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Minor edits are effectively worse than evil bits right now because they have an unclear meaning that's basically "hey you don't have to look at this edit"; this is a part of why I don't believe new editors don't use it (sort of vague meaning). At the same time though, restricting it to extended confirmed or autoconfirmed won't change that. Minor spelling and grammar corrections are often disputed as well as layout issues or whatever else; that's why the MOS pages/infoboxes are under discretionary sanctions and why there was endless discussions about the second Star Trek remake's capitalization. Minor edits should be replaced with a more robust tagging system to allow editors to self-tag edits as falling under different categories kind of like the common edit summaries tool. Right now minor edits are supposed to simply just mean "uncontroversial" but the subjects they're applied to can often be very controversial or need review. That or it's just used as a vandalism cover that doesn't work.
A system where editors could tag edits as being grammar/spelling correction, style/layout issues, rv vandalism, wikilinking things, or a few other topics would serve the dual purpose of being a more useful tag for filtering/sorting purposes (maybe you want to see corrections of factual errors but not grammar/spelling corrections on your watchlist) and assist new editors who don't really know how to use edit summaries or the existing system. Said system has a slim to none chance of actually being implemented though (too busy making margins bigger) so I have to go with Option 0 for now. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply)Template:Z181 01:56, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option 0 per WP:BROKE. Strongly oppose Option B. There's virtually no evidence of disruption to demonstrate that limiting minor edits is actually necessary. This is a pointless proposal. OhKayeSierra (talk) 02:02, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option A. Too often I see noobs misusing this (intentionally or not) to semi-hide edits which are quite substantive (and often unconstructive). And too many "brand new editors" are socks of banned users, or other unhelpful parties, so they should not be able to partially disguise what they are doing from the scrutiny of many longer-term editors. It does not hurt us in any way for a brand new legit editor, already unfamiliar with the existence of a "[ ] This is a minor edit" feature, which was not available to them as an anon, will still not have that option until after they've been around long enough that we don't think they're a sock or troll. There's just no down-side to this. However, I think option B is excessive. We don't need to wait that long to permit fairly basic functionality to be available. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 05:39, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option 0 or A From a new editor, it's a warning about half the time, based on the figures below. I and many of us actually use that waring. The change wouldn't remove disruption, but makes it harder to detect. I think it would be even more helpful to give unregistered editors the same ability; DGG ( talk ) 09:28, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support 0, maybe A We're going to inevitably require registration for edits eventually, but I see no point of this current proposal. I can maybe see minor edits for confirmed, though, as that's not too onerous. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 14:15, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support 0 Status quo: because, right now, the minor edit tick (when combined with a new account status), often acts like an indicator of vandalism and bears further scrutiny, especially when used on edits with the addition/removal of a whole paragraph, several sentences, or even several characters. GenQuest"scribble" 16:05, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
O first choice, but if we're doing this A. Limiting it to autoconirmed users as we do with other abilities such as creating or moving pages isn't entirely unreasonable, limiting it to ECP users is a rather large overreaction. Slightly favor status quo per the comments about vandal detection. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:12, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Remove minor edits Honestly, what an editor considers a "minor" edit is based on perspective. A simple spelling change can meet opposition or what is deemed as a spelling correction could lead to a dispute. I've seen it happen before, disputes over trivial things such as spelling change marked as a minor edit. Just get rid of the whole "minor edit" system, even if it were used for a simple grammar correction. Filling out the edit summary will do just fine. If not that, at least have the "minor edit" system stop marking rollbacks and page moves as minor. Jerm (talk) 22:01, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The problem there, as noted in the proposal, is that an RFC to basically do that failed less than two weeks ago with a strong consensus against it. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:05, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
0 It's confusing if the interface changes and we should avoid confusing new users. Andrew🐉(talk) 08:52, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
B This make things simpler for new editors, the concept of minor edits can be introduced to them after they have made 500 edits. ϢereSpielChequers 09:09, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option 0 This seems like pointless bureaucracy. Who cares about a quite literal minor flag on an edit? Leave it be and focus on the stuff that realistically matters. Remagoxer (talk) 12:31, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option 0, plus new filters on the History panel of each page to filter out edits by extended-confirmed and/or autoconfirmed users. Those who want to only review edits by vandals, spammers, and "what does this button do?" types can do so. The current proposal of limiting minor edits does not help people who want to more effectively review problematic edits. feminist (talk) 05:24, 5 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
+1 for better filtering, searching, and colour-coding in History. Is there some underlying technical reason this can be done in Recent Changes but not page history? Pelagic ( messages ) – (17:18 Sun 25, AEDT) 06:18, 25 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option 0 per hardly-a-problem looking for a major solution; also per all the other Option 0ers, who each present cogent arguments. ——Serial 13:14, 5 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Status Quo, Strongly oppose B. While it is true that there are lots of bad faith minor edits, lots of newer user also started up with minor edits. Not all people would be bold and change major things, some people started by minor edits such as fixing punctuation or capitalization, or adding minor facts, or doing minor rewording of sentences. If these new users are presented with "No you can't edit minor stuff because we don't trust you enough" it would be discouraging. Limiting minor edits to extended-autoconfirmed will be useless as vandals wouldn't care anyway. As someone who loves to revert vandalism (and made some bad calls too time to time) what stands out are the content of the vandalism, not whether it is minor edit or major edit. SunDawn (talk) 07:42, 6 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
How would making the "minor edit" checkbox vanish make users less likely to make edits such as fixing punctuation or capitalization? No one ever gets yelled at for failing to check that box when fixing a typo. Plus the newest users won't even know that it ever existed. The interface will just be a bit simpler. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 16:56, 6 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
B 1st choice, A 2nd choice - This makes things simpler for new users (who will not have to worry about the minor flag), and simpler for experienced users (who will know the minor flag is only being used by experienced users). Levivichharass/hound 03:20, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option 0 Pointless. Why limit it to more experienced users if new users will probably not use it anyway? What is there to gain? There's no policy against making a minor edit not minor. ThePlatypusofDoom(talk) 13:49, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
To me the answer to "why" is: so that I can filter out minor edits from my watchlist, and be confident that anyone using the minor flag is an experienced editor, and I'm not missing vandalism that is marked as minor by new vandalism-only accounts. Levivichharass/hound 17:07, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option 0, strong oppose B Minor edits, in my opinion, are an essential part of organizing edits. Also, there's no policy against making a minor edit not minor. EpicPupper 18:03, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option 0. Recent change patrollers always look at every edit, minor or not, so it doesn't really help to hide anything. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 03:15, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option AB+ If this proposal actually passed, then I would filter out minor edits from my watchlist. The reason I don't already is because it feels like a lot of the time those edits are really some form of disruption or vandalism. –MJL‐Talk‐☖ 04:50, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option 0. Solution looking for a problem. Stifle (talk) 10:06, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support B, then A per numerous others. There needs to be a way to mark things that are truly inconsequential, such as fixing broken syntax in a call to a template or removing an extra period, etc. But there is no reason to allow it to be abused. Desertborn (talk) 17:42, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support B first, then A. Should we be allowing brand new users a way to make an edit not appear on watchlists with one click? No... the "solution looking for a problem" group needs to get over themselves; obviously there is an apparent problem to some people, or B and A would have received no support at all. Aza24 (talk) 23:10, 11 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
0 - I'm not clear what the problem is supposed to be. FOARP (talk) 20:22, 12 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose limiting the "minor edit" function to a select group of Wikipedians. I did not even know that the status quo is to limit marking edits as minor to registered users, and would oppose even this, because I think any one who edits Wikipedia should have the right to mark an edit as minor. Marking edits as minor is useful, because when one looks at the history of an article, it makes sense to see what edits have only been corrections of spelling mistakes in a single word or removal of superfluous punctuation marks. Rollo August (talk) 16:55, 18 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option 0 per AdmiralEek and Blueboar. I love it when vandals click "minor edit" on a 2,000kb entry. This feature helps me identify vandals, rather than hiding them. I see no worries with the status quo. Huggums537 (talk) 13:50, 22 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option 0 I generally find the minor edits tag an entirely useless feature (though, in good faith, I try to use it appropriately). This entire debate is a tempest-in-a-teacup, and I see no reason to deviate from the status quo. --Jayron32 13:59, 22 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support B, then A. However noble the intention of minor edits, we should accept that in practice, there's issues, especially with new users. I feel some of the "status quo" votes are akin to https://xkcd.com/1172/ ... I'm sure it's true that some non-smart vandals use "minor" as a clever technique to try to disguise vandalism that may make the vandalism even more obvious to some watchers, but that's very off the beaten path. The intended use is still not working great. I think that being able to mark edits minor at all is still a useful feature, but it's privilege, not a right - there's no real disadvantage to editors who can't use minor edits. So there's essentially no harm in further restrictions, and minor gain in clarity. "Minor" should really mean "said to be minor by a mildly trusted source", there's no use in "said to be minor from an untrusted source." SnowFire (talk) 04:28, 24 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support A, then 0. User:Vaticidalprophet's arguments (and others in the same vein) have convinced me that B is too high a bar. Keeping a feature that some people misunderstand and others intentionally but naïvely abuse just as a honeypot for the latter has moral issues. On the other hand, AC is a very low bar, is there enough volume of non-AC "minor" edits to make it worth the change? Pelagic ( messages ) – (19:07 Sun 25, AEDT) 08:07, 25 April 2021 (UTC) (oops, forgot to sign)[reply]
Quick and dirty answer to my own question: recent changes, human not bot, page edits, main namespace, newcomers, latest 250 (which is approximately an hour and a half). Counted 65 bold m's, about a quarter of total newcomer edits. (I’m not in a position to work through all of them and score true-minor versus false-minor.) Pelagic ( messages ) – (19:19 Sun 25, AEDT) 08:19, 25 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support A, then 0. The thing about minor edits is that people can always ignore the tag if they want to, especially if it comes from an IP, so there's no need to make this so restrictive. Kokopelli7309 (talk) 14:27, 25 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support 0. The minor edit function seems like a simple and non-contentious part of Wikipedia, so restricting it would just cause unneeded restrictions and potentially create larger issues than any problem it's solving. User:Heyoostorm_talk! 14:59, 25 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support B or A as being helpful for admin but it isn't a huge deal. Most real new users aren't going to know what a "minor" edit is until they are autoconfirmed at the earliest, so I don't see how they could miss it, nor how it would affect them negatively. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 17:57, 25 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Data on usage of minor edits
Quickly sorting through the past 100 minor edits to the mainspace by human editors of each of the following categories (specific revisions available here), I have some data. Note IP (unregistered) users cannot use minor edits. I am also erring on the side of assuming an edit to actually be minor.
Registered but not autoconfirmed users: 42% actually minor (many were also vandalism)
Autoconfirmed but not extended-confirmed users: 50% actually minor
Extended-confirmed users: 82% actually minor
I had to remove ClueBot NG edits because apparently even the "Human (not bot)" checkbox doesn't exclude its edits.
Tol | Talk | Contribs (formerly Twassman) 01:22, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I think this is only half the story—where's the control sample? The information I think we need is how many minor edits in each of the categories are vandalism/bad faith/unconstructive and how many major edits in each of the categories are the same. For instance, based on what I see in my watchlist (obviously selectively biased) I would expect more than 58% of registered-and-non-autoconfirmed edits to need reverting wholesale, so that 58% of minor edits that need attention is not necessarily a flaw in the system. — Bilorv (talk) 13:18, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Looking in each category on Recent Changes (new data), and highlighting edits tagged as reverted, 20% of minor edits by registered users were reverted, compared with 1% for autoconfirmed, and none for extended-confirmed. Tol | Talk | Contribs (formerly Twassman) 16:32, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Option C
Apparently it isn't possible so it isn't worth debating. Oh well. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:49, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
An edit filter that detects and informs when very new users are marking edits as minor. Seems like a middle road. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:14, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This seems unnecessary, it's already possible to filter for these on recent changes. See [1]User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 19:17, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This is impossible (with an edit filter); the ability to detect minor edits was removed years ago. However, filter 970 (hist·log) detects new users making large changes with a summary like "fixed typo". Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 19:36, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Pop-up notice
Part of the issue we have with minor edits is that our definition of minor is not intuitive, and this means that we have to assume that people misusing the box are doing so out of ignorance, which makes it very difficult to do enforcement. I propose that, should Option A or Option B be adopted, the first time an editor checks the minor edit box, a notice pop up with a brief definition of what we mean by "minor" (perhaps similar to the wording at {{uw-minor}}) that the editor would have to okay. This would ensure that everyone making a minor edit can be expected to understand what it means. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 16:00, 5 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support as proposer. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 16:00, 5 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Sensible. Also works well with the options that don't make minor edit a possibility until you have been here a while. There is much to learn when you start to edit and a lot of sense in postponing some of that to make things simpler for new editors on their very first edits. ϢereSpielChequers 07:18, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support. To be quite honest, it took me quite a while for me to figure out what constituted a minor edit back when I started, and I believe this would be useful. Sdrqaz (talk) 20:56, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
An extended comment/rebuttal to option 0
I, the proposer of this RFC, have seen rather many confusing option 0 responses; I will counter those here.
Mike Peel, Thryduulf, TonyBallioni, OhKayeSierra, John M Wolfson, ThePlatypusofDoom, and Stifle say there is no obvious problem to be solved. The problem is that many edits marked as minor by new users are not actually minor. Therefore, the option to hide minor edits on watchlists is ineffective, as it may hide edits which are not actually minor. (I probably should have included this in the RFC itself.)
Nosebagbear, CaptainEek, Blueboar, Chicdat, and GenQuest argue that a questionable edit marked as minor is an indicator to recent changes patrollers that the edit may be vandalism (a honeypot). That may be, but the whole point is that these edits are not actually minor. Recent changes patrollers will still check the edit, and this provides tangible benefits to people who use the watchlist and want to filter out minor edits. ProcrastinatingReader also noted this.
Finnusertop and Bilorv believe that most new users use the feature correctly, so it would be unhelpful to remove it from all new users. A quick look at minor edits from new users shows otherwise, as I saw (see my #Data on usage of minor edits). This only removes the feature from new users, who are unlikely to use it correctly.
Andrew Davidson says it would be confusing if the interface changes. I believe, if anything, it would be less confusing, as (for new users) there would no longer be a checkbox with a potentially unclear meaning.
Swordman97 and SunDawn seem to think that this would ban new users from making edits which are minor. (Note the wording.) This does not propose that, rather, it proposes that new users cannot mark edits as minor. They can still make edits which fulfill the minor edit criteria, but they cannot tick the box which marks it as minor.
EpicPupper says two things. First, he or she says that minor edits are an essential part of organizing edits. Sure, but they work poorly because they are frequently misused by new users. He or she also says that there's no policy against making a minor edit not minor. I assume this means making a minor edit, but not ticking the box. As far as I know, people do this all the time, and there is not much of an argument for making everyone tick the box when the edit is minor — all that will happen if one leaves it unticked is that it may show up on more watchlists.
King of Hearts says that recent change patrollers always look at every edit, minor or not. That's not the point, the point is that people who use the watchlist may want to only look at edits which are not minor. This doesn't hurt recent changes patrollers, but it significantly helps those who wish to filter out minor edits from watchlists.
The problem is that many edits marked as minor by new users are not actually minor. I do not consider that a problem. TonyBallioni (talk) 22:28, 11 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@TonyBallioni: As I said, the watchlist function allows users to hide minor edits. With these edits, which are not minor but are marked as such, someone who hides minor edits on his or her watchlist will not see these edits even though he or she wants to. As most of these edits are by new users, I believe restricting the feature to more experienced users (who are more likely to use it correctly) is a good idea. Tol | Talk | Contribs (formerly Twassman) 22:33, 11 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
And I disagree that what you are describing is actually problematic. Maybe it's because I've never hidden minor edits on my watchlist, but if someone makes the choice to hide them, that's on them. There's no reason to restrict it because of that. TonyBallioni (talk) 22:36, 11 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I agree completely with Tony. I don't know why people choose to hide minor edits on their watchlist (the only edits I hide are my own), but that's not the primary function of the flag. As has been said multiple times by multiple people, the solution to what you are seeing as a problem is to teach people how to correctly use the minor edit flag not to remove their ability to use it. Thryduulf (talk) 22:45, 11 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Thryduulf: The reason to hide minor edits would be because one wants to see the substantive edits to the article but skip the minor ones. For teaching people: we do have {{Uw-minor}} for this purpose, and while I've tried to use it as much as possible, there isn't a "new users' minor edits patrol" akin to RCP to teach people about minor edits. I do agree that education on minor edits is definitely preferable to removing it from new users, but I'm not sure how to do that effectively. Now I have an idea for a bot, hmm... Tol | Talk | Contribs (formerly Twassman) 23:00, 11 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Tony and Thryduulf. Also, yes, you should have said this at the start of the RfC. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 07:22, 12 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
While it (to put it coarsely) sucks that many users abuse the "minor edit" functionality, and I wouldn't be opposed to removing it entirely (though nor would I entirely support it), I think it's hardly a reason to impose such an onerous restriction. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 22:30, 11 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't say that most new users use the feature correctly (name any step to editing and most new users do it wrong) and my argument doesn't rest on that fact. Your data remains lacking a control sample (what you replied to my comment with is not a control sample or the data that I said was missing). — Bilorv (talk) 22:37, 11 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Bilorv: Thanks for following up. The control sample would be made of a mixture of all three categories, and I didn't see much of a point in repeating the tedium of sorting edits a fourth time. From the data I already sampled:
Non-AC: 100 edits from 22:03 to 23:59 (1 hr 56 min), so ~0.864 minor edits per minute, weight 9%
AC non-XC: 100 edits from 23:26 to 00:27 (1 hr 1 min), so ~1.64 minor edits per minute, weight 17%
XC: 100 edits from 00:45 to 00:59 (14 min), so ~7.14 minor edits per minute, weight 74%
From this, it is evident that extended-confirmed users make many more minor edits than other groups (around three quarters of minor edits). Weighting the samples with minor edits per minute, the reconstituted "control"-ish sample gets ~73% of total edits are actually minor. Tol | Talk | Contribs (formerly Twassman) 22:54, 11 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Read what I wrote again. The control sample for the factor that is relevant to the argument I make is the proportion of non-minor edits which are reverted per group (which can be compared to the 20%/1%/0% data you give). This still assumes that "reverted" is synonymous to "unconstructive", but I presume you aren't willing to read through 600 edits and assess whether they're constructive or not manually. — Bilorv (talk) 23:02, 11 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Ahh, thanks for the clarification. Based on new RC data, 11% non-AC, 3% AC non-XC, 0% XC (percent of non-minor edits reverted). This indicates that for non-AC, the minor edit may be a flag or honeypot, but for autoconfirmed users minor edits are more likely to be constructive. Tol | Talk | Contribs (formerly Twassman) 23:09, 11 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Your rebuttal to both my and TB's group don't really seem to be convincing to me. Recent Changes Patrollers don't check every edit (if they did, we'd never find vandalism more than 10 minutes old!), prioritisation is key. Nosebagbear (talk) 23:19, 11 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Nosebagbear: Thanks for the reply. I do not think the removal of minor edits from new users will have much impact on recent changes patrol. I certainly take into account a minor edit flag in RCP, but only when it's combined with something else (such as a large byte change size or a questionable or missing edit summary). I believe that the amount of vandalism that would not be reviewed without a minor flag is inconsequential. Tol | Talk | Contribs (formerly Twassman) 23:27, 11 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Well, here's the thing: A user can choose whether or not to hide minor edits on his or her watchlist. I myself never hid minor edits, not to detect vandalism, but because I wanted to see all the edits made to that article on my watchlist. 🐔ChicdatBawk to me! 10:12, 12 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The thing is, a lot of users just aren't getting the point. If we pop up a notice saying, "Are you sure you want to mark this edit as minor? A minor edit is..." then the maliciously intending editors will just skip the notice and mark their edit as minor. If we limit it to autoconfirmed or extended confirmed, then the maliciously intending editors will just make the necessary amount of edits and time, and then go on a disruptive "minor" spree. If we limit the character change of minor edits, then the maliciously intending editors will just change all the 4 letter words on the page to "****" and/or change the 5 letter words on the page to "penis". If, on the other hand, we block the maliciously intending editors before they can go on a disruptive "minor" spree, and keep the status quo, then the maliciously intending editors will never get to edit. Period. 🐔ChicdatBawk to me! 10:12, 12 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment on mobile editing
Note that the mobile web source editor does not have a minor-edit checkbox/toggle. Mobile VE and iOS app editor do.
On mobile, I have sometimes resorted to hand-typing "[minor]" in the edit summary, though you can't filter that from your watchlist.
It suggests that, at the time mobile / Minerva was designed, minor-edit (along with several other features) was deemed unnecessary or too confusing for "typical" mobile users, or too cluttered for smaller screens. But the devs' thinking on that seems to have changed.
I do not believe that any restriction based on numbers of edits is worthwhile. For what it's worth, my approach is that I don't omit minor edits from my watchlist, but usually don't bother to check minor edits by editors who I trust to mark edits appropriately. These are not necessarily the same as editors who I usually agree with, and certainly do not correlate with numbers of edits made. I would expect most people to take a similar approach. For myself I don't believe that I ever mark non-minor edits as minor, but often forget to mark minor edits as such. Whatever system we have apart from removing minor edit functionality completely will always be vulnerable either to editors who don't know what should be tagged or to malicious editors who want to fly under tha radar, and I'm sure there are quite a few extended confirmed editors who fall into those categories, as anything based on numbers of edits is very easy to game. Phil Bridger (talk) 16:26, 25 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
What I would support is a policy that states that minor edits have to be used sensibly. (and repeated offenses made blockable) That's vague, but on Commons I once ran into an admin who had "Mark all edits as minor" enabled in their preferences. (this option doesn't appear to exist on enwiki though) That's obviously disruptive. If use cases can be presented, maybe a proposal could be made to make minor edits a user right that can be revoked. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 16:50, 25 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Redesigning the featured, good, and article assessment icons
This proposal seeks to establish consensus for new icons that appear in the upper right corner of good articles (GAs) and featured content (FC) pages to mark their status, as well as the variant icons of these (candidate, former featured/good, former candidate). For the sake of consistency, it also proposes new assessment (A-B-C-Start-Stub-List-Disambig) icons.
Background: There was recently a Village Pump proposal (here) discussing whether or not to change the FA and GA icons. Main issues brought up were the overly detailed FC icon, which causes it to render poorly as small sizes, as well as the confusing GA icon, as it also is used as a "support vote" icon. In short, Support for the proposal outnumbered opposition, 2-to-1. As such, I have created new icons that I believe alleviate these issues. I've made quite a few variants of these icons, a large number of them that can be found here: File:FA-GA icon proposal.png, but for the sake of streamlining this process, I have chosen what I believe to be the most clear and intuitive ones in the proposal. As opinions come in, we can make new proposal sets of icons.
Proposal 1
New icons, Proposal 1
Side-by-side with old. Note that the default size of the image is such that the individual icons are 45px wide, which is around the size they would be rendered in talk pages.
Key points:
FC icons simplified, with GA icons matching the format of FC.
GA icons changed to silver, as it is a very natural was to color these.
FC/GA former icons have dashed outline of a star, representing that they once held that distinction.
FC/GA candidate and reassessment are represented by the same icon, as they both serve the same purpose – assessing whether or not they should be classified as FC/GA.
FC/GA former candidates have an "x" representing that there were items not satisfied in the FC/GA criteria.
Start and Stub class articles get new icons.
Support (article icons)
Support – As proposer. These icons are simple enough that they will render well as small scales, the new color and matching format for GA makes it clear and obvious that they are related, while FC is clearly a higher distinction, and the new icons have intuition behind them as to what they mean. Pbrks (talk) 21:02, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support with the following reservations I highly doubt that non-editors will know what any of this means, nor necessarily should they. In any event, the interwiki list has (I think) silver for a good article in another language (see James Thompson (surveyor)) and gold for a featured article in another language (see World War II for several examples of this). I think the colors should be brought to those respective standards if not already done so. The former article/former candidate, etc., stuff doesn't belong as a topicon and should instead go to the talkpage, IMO. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 21:16, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see anywhere suggesting that the former stuff would now be put on the article page (that would almost certainly require its own, separate proposal), I would assume their replacement is with their respective icons on the talk page. Aza24 (talk) 21:22, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The former, candidate, etc. are only seen on on talk pages. You will only see the "Promoted" icons at the top right of the page. Pbrks (talk) 22:13, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support in principle Repeating my earlier comment: The icons should be changed to something the average reader is familiar with. The current icons are nice, but they're nice to Wikipedians. The average reader probably has no idea what this means. We should aim to use images which readers will understand. For example: silver star, gold star. A tick / double tick. Or something along those lines. It should be obvious to a reader what it symbolises. I'm not so sure about this specific set, though. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 14:04, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Entirely in agreement with this comment. JBchrch (talk) 19:45, 15 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support per Pbrks and Ivanvector (in the section below). The current icons are terrible at the size they're normally displayed. --Ahecht (TALK PAGE) 03:13, 12 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support per above. EpicPupper 21:38, 12 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support As per above and I prefer uniformity. Saha ❯❯❯ Stay safe 08:41, 14 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose (article icons)
Where exactly is the need to replace the current icons with some hideous Web Whatever.0 design? How have I been running into so many "well, everyone in the tiny discussion on VPR supported it" lately? Why did we have a watchlist notice for the worst, most heat-over-light RfC I've seen in my life and yet no watchlist notices for "people want to restrict minor edits to the 99.8625th percentile of editors" or "people have decided the current quality icons are bad for some unclear reason" that have impact on actually writing an encyclopedia? How many of the thirteen people in the prior discussion are highly involved in the article quality process? Vaticidalprophet 22:27, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Vaticidalprophet: The prior discussion was widely advertised everywhere of relevance short of CENT (including at the article quality forums). I sympathize with the feeling of coming across a discussion I would've wanted to participate in after it's closed, but the rationale behind changing the icons was thoroughly discussed and won clear support, and the process at this point has moved to the next stage. This thread is seeking to figure out how to change the icons, not if we should change them. Let's please not relitigate settled terrain; the whole point of the prior discussion was to resolve that part. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 23:04, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The reaction thus far to this proposal does not sound like "whether to change the icons or not was uncontroversially litigated and everyone who might possibly have been interested decided there was a problem". (There are quite a few prominently missing names in that conversation -- pinging @SandyGeorgia, Ealdgyth, Gog the Mild, Wehwalt, Ian Rose, Casliber, The Rambling Man, Epicgenius, Vami IV, Lee Vilenski, JPxG, Johnbod, and Serial Number 54129 as a small selection of people I might expect to have opinions, and I'm probably missing tons of names.) Vaticidalprophet 23:12, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Never saw the discussion, and don’t see it as having any kind of broad consensus now that I have seen it. People, if you want to keep messing with content review processes at least notify them. This is make work. So while I’m here, Oppose the notion that any change is needed or helpful. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:38, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Nor did I, and mildly alarmed to find myself on the "selection of people I might expect to have opinions"! I seem to have arrived here just in time to see the stern of the ship sinking below the waves, so I'll just say that on a quick look the proposal seemed uncompelling. As Martin Poulter says below, the main problem with our icons is that most readers don't know we have them, nor understand them. Can't see this changing that. Johnbod (talk) 03:05, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
With respect, this seems like a solution in search of a problem. Insofar as, right now, readers see the gold star or the green icon in the top right of an article and know that means the article has been through some kind of peer review (which, anecdotally, I know is a benchmark many non-Wikipedia users use, for better or worse, to assess the veracity of an article), why we would want to change that for the sake of our own design preferences is beyond me. Minor cosmetic changes that keep the basic gold star and green icon for the FA/GA classes are fine, but I strongly oppose changing the green icon to something that is a completely different color. GoPhightins! 22:34, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
As well as thinking these changes are unnecessary, I view the symbols as being no more clear than the current ones, and in the case of the good articles, significantly less clear, as well as visualy unappealing. Nosebagbear (talk) 22:48, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think that the A–Disambig icons need to be changed. Just going to point out that with the change to flat, what about the other 10 icons that will be left with a shadow/3d, nothing quite like inconsistency. The stub/start will probably be harder to differentiate between since the icons are so small. I don't mind the FA/GA but I don't support replacing already acceptable icons. Terasail[✉] 22:51, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The though process was, if we indeed do come to a consensus for the FC/GA icons, then the other icons (A - dab, the other 10 you are referring to) would/should be changed for consistency. No reason we couldn't keep the start/stub icons the way they look now just without the drop shadow stylization. Pbrks (talk) 23:19, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
There was weak to no consensus for the idea the icons needed to change at all (I never saw that discussion), and this has all the same issues I mentioned back in the other discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 174 that was broadly attended. Pretty much, the changes aren’t needed, please go write and review some articles people; better yet, please initiate a badly needed GA sweeps. On the surface, it appears that the proposed icons are obscuring the fact that no other content review process except FAC is a community-wide process, rather one person’s opinion at one time, rarely re-reviwed, and seek to elevate GA to the same plane as FA by demoting the bronze star to a gold something the same as GA’s silver. Misleading. Others ahead of me, in this and both discussions, have explained the problems. Or, as Johnbod said once, Oppose per the Opposers. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:28, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
SandyGeorgia, "go write and review some articles" as a personal directive is absolutely inappropriate. People are allowed and should be encouraged to constructively edit Wikipedia however they like. If that's writing articles, great. If that's anti-vandal work, great. And if that's trying to improve the icons we use, great. Be kind and show some respect. Ed[talk][majestic titan] 14:14, 13 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I think the proposed logos are not only less clear (grey question mark in a circle means "Good Article Candidate" -- really?), but too childlike and less visually appealing. — Goszei (talk) 23:36, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry. Respect the effort you've put into this; I understand design is difficult... but I don't like the new icons, particularly for FA. It's generic and fades into the background at small scales. I don't think there's enough padding between the star and the border. I might support a change to the GA icon, but not sure this is the right one. It's unclear what is being communicated to me by the stub and start icons. The changes to the others are fine, but minor. — The Earwig (talk) 23:37, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know about these. I agree that, overall, the icons used on Wikipedia might benefit from some kind of comprehensive review. For example, the fact that "good article" and "support vote" use the exact same image is a profoundly dogshit situation. Who decided that was a good idea? The distinctions between "FA candidate", "former FA", and "former FA candidate" are also bizarre and non-intuitive (to someone who is not a hardcore Wikipedia editor, these all look like random injured starfish). Moreover, the scale of quality goes magenta, dark green, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, green, yellow. While I agree that some change ought to be made (and there should be an enormous watchlist-pinging WP:CENT about it with several suggestions for icon schemes), I don't think it needs an update, and this one in particular doesn't really spark joy for me. Notably, the "silver" being used to denote GAs is... that doesn't look silver, it looks gray. Also, it removes some good stuff: right now, the jagged former-GA icon very clearly shows that it was a GA and then was "broken", whereas a little dotted star shows nothing. jp×g 23:59, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think the proposed icons improve over the current ones aesthetically, but there are also more serious problems. The use of a question mark is too firmly associated with DYK and should be kept out of FA/GA icons to avoid confusion. Moreover, the proposed FA and GA icons have exactly the same geometric design and are distingished only by colors. IMO that already renders the entire proposal unacceptable. A substantial portion of our readers are color blind. They will face a great difficulty in telling the GA and FA icons apart and some just won't be able to do so. The FA and GA icons need to be clearly geometrically different from each other, and one should not have to rely on the color scheme to tell them apart. Nsk92 (talk) 00:06, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I like the icons myself, but I must oppose the changing of the GA palette to gray. It does not and will not stand out against the default white background of Wikipedia. It must remain green. –♠Vami_IV†♠ 00:17, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Here's an icon for "Rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic": . EEng 03:26, 3 April 2021 (UTC) P.S. Someone's calendar is off. This came a day late for April Fools.[reply]
Oppose the need for a redesign in general, and especially the use of gray to indicate a GA. SounderBruce 05:02, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. "Ain't broke, don't 'fix' it." One obvious problem with the extreme anti-skeuomorphism that is the current trendy fashion in UI (but which is already seeing a lot of pushback and probably won't last long), is that it can't visually represent gold and silver, they just come out as yellow and grey, since adding white and dark highlights to simulate metallic shine is not possible in an anti-skeuomorphic approach. And grey in user-interface design means "disabled, unavailable, or inapplicable". So, FAIL. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 05:30, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose: I do not see a strong enough reason to change the icons. I think Nsk92 raises some very good points about this. Aoba47 (talk) 06:20, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
oppose - some of the individual logos aren't fantastic, but the suggested ones are significantly worse. I'm not here to say that everything we have is perfect, but maybe we should update an image at a time? I agree that the difference between a former featured article, and a failed featured candidate is a bit odd, but then these are generally only used in templates next to where it rights what it means. I do think we would benefit from explaining to users what a good and featured article is (when I first used the site, I got what "stub" and "featured" was, but not much else), but changing the logo designed doesn't help. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski(talk • contribs) 07:26, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Whatever consensus was reached at the previous discussion, the number of opposing opinions here suggests that it is not very strong. The previous discussion should have been advertised better (i.e. at RFC or CENT). – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 08:47, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. I actually like the old ones better (sorry). Cas Liber (talk·contribs) 09:37, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - this seems to be a solution in search of a problem. I'm not entirely sure what changing the icons will accomplish. ƒirefly ( t · c ) 09:41, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose at least for now, I want to see the actual proposed image files (see discussion section below) - looks like we only have a picture of the pictures so far? Also, agree that greyscale icons aren't as useful. — xaosfluxTalk 10:23, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. I am not against changing the icons in principle, although I would want to see much fuller discussion, but the suggested alternatives are hideous. And I agree with the comments that this all seems to be a solution in search of a problem; for example, "the overly detailed FC icon, which causes it to render poorly as small sizes" - I have it at 15px on my user page and it looks fine to me.Gog the Mild (talk) 12:26, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. I don't think that the consensus achieved at that October 2020 thread is very strong, judging by the response here. As for the actual proposed icons, gray does not mean "positive" or "good", that's universally green. Question mark is for help. The proposed stub and start-class symbols are too similar. As an aside, I can't wait for this current trend of over-simplifying symbols to go away soon. RetiredDuke (talk) 13:20, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Opposed (echoed). A consensus of eight is insufficient to change the mechanisms—however superficially—of multiple, highly active projects. Regardless of whether This thread is seeking to figure out how to change the icons, not if we should change them, it looks like you arenow enjoying a consensus to overturn a consensus. Land ahoy! ——Serial 13:30, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose No need for this. Paul August☎ 16:22, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. I didn't want to have to write here, but as it has been reopened I guess I will. I'm not set against the idea of changing the icons, although I equally don't really see a need to do so as I don't really find any of the reasons given particularly convincing (for much the same reasons as the others). However if you do still feel the need for change, work out what your design goals are, talk to the folks at Wikipedia:WikiProject Accessibility and follow their advice about how to make your ideals compatible with best practice. Only then will it be worth getting the pencils out. Thryduulf (talk) 17:46, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Weak opposeI agree with Thryduulf there is no real need to revise most of these. However, in my humble opinion, i think you made fair points that the FA article's icon goes to waste as you cannot see the full details. I'll mention my opinions in detail on what should be done.Blue Pumpkin Pie (talk) 18:07, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose such a big change should come after a well advertised discussion involving a large number of editors. This is not the way to make such changes that affect everyone. Also the proposed new icons are ugly. --Ita140188 (talk) 05:38, 13 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose I'm happy to have the icons improved. But I prefer the current set to the proposed new ones. A system of Gold stars for FAs and silver for GAs would make sense. But the most common hierarchy is gold, silver, bronze, so bronze then silver would be confusing. ϢereSpielChequers 12:03, 15 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose I have no problem with the current icons, but it would be fine if they were modified. However, it's not just to the editors that spent their own time making the icons to have them replaced with logomakr.com stars. Lettlerhello • contribs 01:28, 22 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Alternative proposalI'm also leaning towards keeping the current icons. However, I drafted an alternative proposal using Microsoft Paint, so this could also be taken into consideration. 𝟙𝟤𝟯𝟺𝐪𝑤𝒆𝓇𝟷𝟮𝟥𝟜𝓺𝔴𝕖𝖗𝟰 (𝗍𝗮𝘭𝙠) 21:54, 24 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Discussion (article icons)
@Pbrks: (or anyone) can you make a table of before/after for these - that has been quite helpful in similar discussion about icons. — xaosfluxTalk 21:18, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Pbrks: do you have these as actual files that are already uploaded that can be in a normal table instead of a picture of a table? — xaosfluxTalk 23:45, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that the icons we use need to change and that they don't make much sense to casual users of the site, which is a loss because markers of quality are really important fo a critical engagement with Wikipedia. When I give training, it is almost always completely new information to people that Wikipedia even has a quality scale. I like the "promoted" and "former" icons, since "gold star" and "silver star" seem like a visual metaphor that people can understand from an early age, across a lot of contexts. The Featured buttons could be in a deeper hue to stand out more, but that's not much of a change. That said, the Candidate icons with a question mark in a circle, look like a "Help" or "Info" icon that a user would click on to get help with the user interface. The Former Candidate icons with a cross look a lot like the "Close tab" or "Close application" of some interfaces: buttons that a user would click to make something disappear. I can see what the List icon represents, but it looks an awful lot like the hamburger menu which is a very common navigational feature of web sites, and is the sort of thing that a user would click on to see a list of preferences or options. These potential confusions mean I can't support this iteration of the proposal, but I do think it is going in the right direction. MartinPoulter (talk) 21:26, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The star outlines for former featured/good status are very thin—at small sizes I'd guess these are essentially just empty circles, which is presumably not the intention, right? I'd make them thicker. Even a full border (but hollow interior) would be visually distinct enough from current featured/good. At some point it would be good to play around with the individual image files in a sandbox, which you can't easily do with the icons all as one image, though I understand mass uploading of all the icons could be a bit tedious. — Bilorv (talk) 21:31, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Meta point -- should the bullet points in support/oppose be converted to numbered lists for readability? Vaticidalprophet 00:12, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I don't oppose the concept of people designing new art work, allow editors to edit to their strengths. Just because something is new doesn't mean it's bad. I'm not a fan of the "Start" and "Stub" icons, may want to come up with something a bit different there. I don't see any ships sinking, deck chairs being rearranged, and I certainly wouldn't insult someone for proposing an idea as an April Fool's joke. Perhaps just in an effort to get some sort of "social capital" in the name of humor? But, as they say, YMMV. — Ched (talk) 07:16, 11 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Taking a step back
I started this proposal after a closure request for the previous one decided that the outcome was fairly self evident with support ... editors interested in taking on this work have a mandate to do so. and the request moved forward at the Illustration workshop. It's fine that Prop 1 wasn't held in high regard, but it's just a proposition -- things can be changed, style can be changed. However, it's a bit disheartening and demoralizing to get comments of hideous Web Whatever.0 design and to go write and review some articles instead. I don't understand why people can't just give their opinion without being nasty about it. It's human nature to resist change, I get that, but the fact remains that this renders terribly at 20px and has literally confused people in the past, as it also is used for the "support vote" symbol. Moreover, the subicons for these (particularly the GA icon) don't make much of any sense. The former FC icon has a unsightly, stylistically different "X" through it. The reassessment icon is a broken GA icon? The former GA icon is the same as the former GA candidate icon ? All three of the aforementioned are the same except for color (in which Nsk92 makes a good point about color blindness)? To believe that nothing needs to be changed is beyond me. I don't see much of a reason to move forward with any different kind of proposition given the previous comments. Pbrks (talk) 05:31, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The only argument of the bunch that rings in any way true to me is 's ambiguity, and even that I'm skeptical about -- the only real context I ever see it used to denote support votes is...GAN, where it in fact makes perfect sense. Is hyper-anti-skeuomorphism and a redesign ten people asked for really a better solution than "rename " or just straight up "we have a million support vote symbols, some will overlap"? It's also honestly bizarre to me that the previous proposal was closed as a mandate when it had no participation from the people highly involved in the relevant process, many of who have since come out in strong opposition. Vaticidalprophet 06:17, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
(Addendum: readers interested both in the 'million support vote symbols' comment and in why trying to redesign Wikipedia's house styles for icons is both a huge job and a thankless/anti-thanked one are pointed here.) Vaticidalprophet 06:25, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I participated in the first discussion and I think I'm highly involved in the GA/FA/FL process. — Bilorv (talk) 22:08, 19 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I just responded to the "go write and review some articles" comment. As a personal directive, it's absolutely inappropriate. People can (and should!) constructively edit Wikipedia however they'd like. Ed[talk][majestic titan] 14:19, 13 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I appreciate your efforts in design, Pbrks, even though I don't support the change. The rudeness in this discussion towards you was particularly blatant and unacceptable. — Bilorv (talk) 22:08, 19 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Class icons B, C, Start, and Stub don't need to be revised as their icons aren't visible on the article or talk page. I do think Good Article and Featured Articles are great milestones that need to be highlighted in the article. I like the Gold-Star, Silver-star because they can illustrate to both readers and editors that they are the cream of the crop. Especially with a Silver Star instead of a Green Plus symbol can give editors an indicator that it's almost a Featured article (Gold Star). But the recreated icons don't stand out enough for new readers to notice or for editors to care about. If the icons are going to be revised, they have to be visually appealing and something that readers/editors can approve of.
I googled the words "Quality" and "Icon" and I found a lot of metals with ribbons attached to them. We can have a gold jigsaw puzzle to indicate the Featured article, and a silver jigsaw puzzle to indicate Good Article. I'm just being creative at the moment. So long as these icons shine and stand out positively, then maybe editors may support the proposal more. The dotted line forming a star isn't clear to me, and the Question mark resembles the DYK icon. I think it would be easier to use a magnifying glass over the current icons for representing re/assessment. The current Red X and Broken GA (in my humble opinion) are upsetting and can be discouraging. The red-painted cross over the featured article and the broken GA symbol is just not professional icons in my opinion and even look like there's anger involved.Blue Pumpkin Pie (talk) 20:11, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Licensing
Ideally, any new icons would be licensed as CC0 or PD so that the icons be used unlinked, without the need for the link for attribution. -- WOSlinker (talk) 09:01, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Post-close
It's regrettable that a constructive idea was shot down so quickly (less than a day!) and for such poor reasons. Sometimes it's good to discuss new ideas even if they're not immediately going to fix an urgent problem, we might uncover issues that the early knee-jerk WP:AINTBROKE crowd hadn't thought of. And frankly our FA icon at topicon resolution (where readers normally see it) looks like it was drawn on the back of a napkin with a sharpie and digitized with one of those old hand-held roll scanners, or else shrunk from its original size down to 10px and then scaled up again. Putting this blighted icon on a featured article makes the article less good. I realize it's what readers and editors are used to, but that's not a good enough reason on its own to keep it, and certainly not to shut down a discussion about it after just over 18 hours. Just a plain bordered star in the same colour would be not so much of a departure from the current icon as to be confusing, and would be a fair improvement. But I guess nobody wants to talk about improving the encyclopedia. Ivanvector's squirrel (trees/nuts) 19:22, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I agree. Since the close mentions SNOW, I also want to point out this section of the essay saying: "It can sometimes be better to allow a few extra days even if current discussion seems very clearly to hold one opinion, to be sure that it really will be a snowball and as a courtesy to be sure that no significant input will be excluded if closed very soon." In general, I like the proposed designs for FA and GA (though agree that the good-article-grey is a bad color choice). They read much better at small sizes, are symbolically more clear (an absent star and question mark are a lot more intuitive than the existing symbols), and the style matches the recently redesigned protection icons providing a more unified design. I hope we can give these ideas more serious consideration next time around. — Wug·a·po·des 23:29, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed, though the proposal in its fullest form might be seen a snow close, a lot of opposers offered sympathy for specific improvements. The latter is valuable information that could thoroughly inform future discussions, but has been halted unnaturally. Aza24 (talk) 23:34, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I disagree - this specific proposal was correctly SNOW closed because it was very clearly never going to get a consensus. There is nothing stopping you or anyone else going back a step or two and initiating a discussion to generate a broad consensus for the need for change (which hasn't yet occurred). If there is a consensus for change, then the next step is to workshop multiple designs, implementing the results of feedback received, before presenting a small number of well developed proposals for adoption. Getting more of the same feedback on this proposal and more reminders about the lack of consensus that a need for changes exists is not going to help that. Thryduulf (talk) 17:12, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, how terrible for Wikipedia that someone with an idea wanted to talk about it, but didn't get permission from The Community first. What a sterile, needlessly bureaucratic place this is becoming. Ivanvector's squirrel (trees/nuts) 12:55, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Is there any evidence that any more than a minuscule percentage of our readers understand the current icons, and that any more would understand redesigned icons? In the absence of that this seems like yet another make-work project that imposes change for change's sake on both readers and editors, taking people away from improving the encyclopedia. There seems to be a theme of following the advice of self-appointed experts in both programming and design, but ignoring the people who actually create this encyclopedia. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:01, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
You're probably right that only a minuscule percentage of our readers understand the current icons. I mean, there's a reason why one of the files is called File:Symbol support vote.svg and is usually used for supporting/opposing permission requests/deletion discussions (eg on meta/commons). It's doubtful that this is a carefully thought out icon set that works well in cohesion with other icons, rather than just stuff formed independently over time. This is hence something we might be able to improve.
I dislike the recent themes of trying to create a bit of a "us vs them" (ie "content creators" vs "admins/software developers/designers/whatever else"). Everyone is trying to achieve the same thing here - a decent free resource for information. Some people are better at different things. No doubt the people who have 90 FAs under their belt are great at writing content and valuable contributors. Also no doubt the people that write bots that save hundreds/thousands of hours of repetitive manual labour are also valuable contributors. Similarly, those who have experience with design and user interfaces are more likely to know what makes for a good, intuitive layout. There's no reason to think that those with one type of skill are better than any other type of editor, or are more apt at doing every task than others.
I don't think anyone is ignoring anyone. Pbrks made a proposal based on a prior RfC, and above appears to be trying to work with people to figure out issues and improve. It is unlikely that this proposal is the best possible solution, but it can only be improved with feedback, and if people discuss their issues perhaps Pbrks (and/or others) can adapt the icons based on that. It's impossible to just guess what people want. But at least some of the ideas presented, such as using a question mark to represent a GAR/FAR(C), are broadly good ideas and more intuitive than the current representations.
I dislike the recent themes of trying to create a bit of a "us vs them" I agree strongly with this. The proposal requires literally nothing from Phil (unless he manually draws the FA icon every time we promote an article), yet somehow he seems deeply concerned about the burden this will impose on editors. Seriously? Just say you don't like the design and move on, but don't pretend like you have veto power over how volunteers decide to spend their time. If you want to rail against "self-appointed experts" wait until you find out who writes our content. — Wug·a·po·des 22:25, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Does the foundation have a usability team that supports the software we use and can provide us with recommendations on issues like this? ElKevbo (talk) 21:38, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
There is the Design team, and they seem to do nice work (see mockups at mw:Streamlined Infoboxes for example). No idea how you'd get in touch with them though. Phabricator task maybe, but the backlog on those looks long... Email or IRC perhaps? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 23:51, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure the reopening here will really help. Putting together the prior discussion and this one, my read is that there's substantial discontent with the current icons and weak consensus that they ought to be changed, but also fairly clear consensus that the specific proposal here isn't yet ready to be adopted. I think the best path forward is to take a step back and work on refining the design, and then come back to a prominent venue when that is ready.
A bot should create two redirects for all new Articles for Deletion listings.
For example, if Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Example is created, a bot should create all of the following:
Wikipedia:Articles for Deletion/Example ("D" in "Deletion" capitalised)
Wikipedia:AfD/Example ("Articles for Deletion" abbreviated)
(add nomination number to end of name if necessary)
It would alleviate capitalisation problems (in case of first) and make many links to nominations shorter (in case of the second). What do you think? DePlume (talk) 04:09, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The first thing doesn't seem like much of a problem, but gosh that second thing would be so convenient when pulling up related AfDs.. –MJL‐Talk‐☖ 05:05, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Nicer would be a mediawiki feature allowing a redirect to automatically redirect all subpages accordingly. Elli (talk | contribs) 05:54, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Solving the issue of subpage redirects in the software would be a much cleaner solution, and would also benefit other venues where this is an issue (WP:MFD and WP:SPI come to mind), rather than creating an extra two pages for every AfD nomination. Yesterday there were 98 nominations, creating 98 additional pages. A bot creating the proposed redirects would have created an additional 196. That's not a lot of overhead but it's not zero. Ivanvector's squirrel (trees/nuts) 16:28, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Agree with the above^. ~ HAL333 00:00, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, creating triple the number of pages for this task should only be with a very good reason, I'm not seeing what the overwhelming problem is here. — xaosfluxTalk 16:58, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
User:Enterprisey/search-shortcuts exists that expands "WP:AFD/" in the search box to "WP:Articles for deletion/", which solves part of the problem in navigating to these pages easily. – SD0001 (talk) 15:59, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
How about merging it with the MW interface? --NotReallySoroka (talk) (formerly DePlume) 04:05, 16 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yet another Enterprisey tool that makes life easier - thanks for mentioning this. That being said I agree that this should be trivial to implement in MW a feature to enable automatic expansion of project-defined shortcuts. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 04:08, 16 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Deletion of own user-pages
In my opinion non-sysops should have the right to delete their own user page. DrSalvus 12:47, 11 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
You can request the deletion of a page in your own userspace by CSD by WP:U1 Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski(talk • contribs) 12:51, 11 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Dr Salvus This is a perennial proposal, with good reasons as to why it hasn't been done. See this section. The main reason not to do it is that users could move articles to their user page and then delete it. 331dot (talk) 12:54, 11 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Providing we have some sensible precautions such as excluding pages that have been moved from outside your userspace, this is a sensible suggestion that has got consensus at least once before. The problem is with getting IT resource to make it happen. ϢereSpielChequers 08:08, 15 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Another option: users definitely ARE allowed to BLANK their user pages. By blanking, the page still exists, and removed content is still available through the page’s history (should there ever be a reason to retrieve it)... however it no longer clutters up what is on seen on the page. Blueboar (talk) 12:21, 15 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Dr Salvus: see the note above, for the most part any user may blank their userpage, and in most cases may tag it for speedy deletion. Anything else would require both software changes and community adoption and policies. With this information available, do you still want to go forward with a proposal discussion? — xaosfluxTalk 16:08, 21 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This is a silly idea. Someone could move an article to their userspace and then delete it. There is also no need. TAXIDICAE💰 16:09, 21 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Should IP files an Arbitration cases
Questions have been answered, there is no "proposal" here. Should an IP editor wish to start an arbitration case they can request it via multiple venues, including mailing lists and the clerk's noticeboard at Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Clerks. IP editors are reminded that arbitration is the last step in the dispute resolution process, and that the former steps are generally accessible to them. — xaosfluxTalk 13:29, 16 April 2021 (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.
Hello, i read the Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case. In the article, all arbitration requests was done only by autoconfirmed users, which automatically bans IPs or unregistered users from filling the arbitration requests. In my opinion, this policy should be changed to allow IPs or unregistered users (unless their edits are bad faith) to filing arbitration requests, because there are many good faith IP edits, not assuming all IP edits as bad faith. For all users, should IPs be allowed to filling the request. 36.77.94.191 (talk) 04:21, 13 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Pinging a couple of arbcom clerks (@Liz and Guerillero:) ...will be quicker then reading the arbcom book... - are unregistered users actually barred from initiating arbitration policy wise? If there are technical hurdles can they be overcome by methods such as contacting the clerks to open a request perhaps with a transcluded section (as Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case is SPP)? — xaosfluxTalk 10:10, 13 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know of anywhere in policy where this is prohibited. -- GuerilleroParlez Moi 02:53, 14 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know whether they can, but they generally should not. They should start an ANI thread first, and if arbitration is necessary someone else can file the request. User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 02:56, 14 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The arbitration request pages have been semi-protected for over a decade. That doesn't mean unregistered users can't participate in arbitration (at least, I don't know of anything in either WP:ARBPOL or WP:ARBPROC that says so), it just recognises they're prime targets for vandals and sockpuppets, and that very few unregistered/unconfirmed accounts will have a legitimate reason to edit them. And the small number of long-term unregistered users who have been around long enough to get involved in a dispute requiring arbitration presumably have also been around long enough to know how to make an edit request if they need to. – Joe (talk) 10:34, 14 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
And as some IP editors have dynamic IPs, it could be tricky to be sure if the same person is behind every IP involved. Doug Wellertalk 12:27, 16 April 2021 (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.
@Elli: Done. I was asking for opinion because I feel that NEGOTIATE is too general. But anyway. If someone challenges new page I will redirect him here. --AXONOV(talk)⚑ 10:45, 16 April 2021 (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.
In my opinion, to avoid the cases of sock-puppets, users blocked should have the possibility to edit a page if the change is approved by a prending changes reviewer. DrSalvus 21:41, 15 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This is by far the most ridiculous proposal I have seen in my Wiki-career. Blocked means blocked. Want to edit? Don't get blocked. We can deal with sock puppets as they arise. TAXIDICAE💰 21:51, 15 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This is not currently possible. If this was possible and implemented for all blocked editors it would put a massive extra workload on pending changes reviewers for very little benefit as nearly all blocked users are blocked for a good reason and few of them use sock puppets. Phab:27400 (lowest priority) and Phab:T240311 (unprioritised) propose allowing whitelisting of individual pages for individual editors, but that would allow normal editing of the given pages. I cannot find a phab task related to configuring pending changes per user. Thryduulf (talk) 22:01, 15 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
We don't allow blocked users to propose edits on their user talk pages; they shouldn't be allowed to propose them to PC reviewers. If a blocked user wants to edit, they should request unblock. 331dot (talk) 22:06, 15 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Blocked users have already proven their utility, or lack thereof, to the project. That being near 0.0. This proposal makes no sense: the time-sink to create this ability versus the negligible gains are not worth it. ::I want the two minutes it took to comment on this back.:: GenQuest"scribble" 16:07, 17 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
As far as I can see, this won't actually stop anyone making sock puppets though. If their account was found, then it was found, and they will move on onto the next one(s). — HELLKNOWZ ▎TALK 16:34, 17 April 2021 (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.
I don't know exactly what the difference between Teahouse and Help desk is (in this MP discussion other editors raised this point), possibly the former is considered useful for newbies and the latter for experienced editors? Though skimming the Teahouse and HD I don't really get the impression that these are really distinct in terms of questions asked. More importantly, my feeling is that Wikipedia:Editor assistance should probably be redirected somewhere, as that venue is completely inactive and mostly goes back to pre-2011, and WP:EAR should probably be redirected to either Teahouse or the help desk as it doesn't seem to have any distinguishing features from either. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 16:10, 20 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The latter two are mostly or entirely historical AFAIK. The Teahouse is for the newest of the new. The help desk is generally for more complicated questions, but not unwelcoming for people who end up there as opposed to THQ. GMGtalk 16:13, 20 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Broadly speaking, the Teahouse is designed for new users, unfamiliar with Wikipedia, its culture, and its jargon, while the Help Desk is designed for people who are more familiar with Wikipedia in general. Which is not to say that it works out so 100% of the time, but in general that is how it is supposed to work. As a result, a person answering a question at the help desk would feel free using shortcuts, referring people to technical documents, and using wikijargon to answer questions there; however the Teahouse is supposed to presume that the OP would know none of that, and strives to treat users as though they need to have their hands held through the process, and responders should adopt a tone in their response that they are dealing with Wikipedia newbies who wouldn't know how to read a Wikipedia namespace document, what a diff is, or what any of the terms d'art that we use in daily conversation at Wikipedia mean at all. We need both of those two help desks to keep that distinction available. EAR has long been moribund, and I'm actually shocked to see it hasn't since been marked historical. --Jayron32 16:16, 20 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The editor assistance page isn't a venue in itself but a place to find a specific willing helper. I agree though that the help desks are as good a place to find a helpful editor and make a personal connection. isaacl (talk) 16:54, 20 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I agree the last two seem historical. As to the difference between the first two, it's something I also wondered when working on user:Levivich/Help, which is my prototype attempt at consolidating new user help pages. Levivichharass/hound 17:25, 20 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
resolved venue discussion
@ProcrastinatingReader: I'm missing which policy or guideline this is seeking to create or amend - perhaps a different venue would be more appropriate for this. — xaosfluxTalk 17:34, 20 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I think I'd meant to post this at VPR (only just realised it's at the policy pump). I'll move. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 17:37, 20 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Do we have a good mapping of the ingresses to each of these processes that may need adjusting? — xaosfluxTalk 19:08, 20 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I think our helpers are more than capable of determining what level of help to provide to users. I think combining the help desk and the Teahouse could be a useful turn of events. Experienced users shouldn't mind, and new users will be less confused. We have so many possible pages for new users, consolidation is key to accessibility. We really need to be thinking hard on how to make it easier to onboard new users. On a side note, calling it the Teahouse feels confusing to me. I wish it was just called the "help desk", which is self explanatory, but it should retain the cultural norms of the Teahouse. AdmiralEek (talk) 23:29, 20 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Also, advertised this at the TH and HD talk pages. AdmiralEek (talk) 23:33, 20 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Planning to add some more substantive comments later, but people might want to take a look at Morgan, Jonathan T.; Halfaker, Aaron (22 August 2018). "Evaluating the impact of the Wikipedia Teahouse on newcomer socialization and retention". Proceedings of the 14th International Symposium on Open Collaboration: 1–7. doi:10.1145/3233391.3233544.. It has some useful empirical evidence about what the Teahouse does, as well as an explanation of its goals as opposed to the Teahouse. Vahurzpu (talk) 05:54, 21 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I support keeping the Teahouse and the Help desk separate as I have the Help desk watchlisted and occasionally contribute, but I would find it onerous to follow Teahouse guidance and explain every Wikipedia process in my own words rather than linking to the process and answering any follow up questions. The Help desk has a prominent link to the Teahouse and the Teahouse page should probably have a similar link the Help desk. Both links should probably be followed by a request to post queries in one venue rather than both. TSventon (talk) 12:19, 21 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Per TSventon, the Teahouse and Help desk should definitely be kept separate, and are intended to meet the needs of different types of editors, even if there is often some overlap. At WP:TH we strive to communicate in plain English, and in a friendly tone, assuming little or no prior knowledge by the questioner. As has already been said, WP:HD is shorter, more succinct, and often more technical in the tone, both in terms of questions asked, but especially in the answers given. Welcoming new editors and answering their questions in a simple, friendly manner at the Teahouse does make engagement with newcomers much lengthier, but, as has been pointed out by Vahurzpu above, research by Jmorgan (WMF) and colleague showed that the Teahouse makes a significant contribution to new editor retention - and that's what we all want, isn't it? It also continues to provide a testbed for research on editor retention (see this post by Maximilianklein at WT:TH in January 2020).I note that ProcrastinatingReader's question linked to a partly agreed discussion that they closed on agreement to add a link to the Teahouse on the Main Page, and it's there that the distinction on target audiences really ought to be made, though the precise wording would need further attention. I would certainly be in favour of that link being added, and the different active venues made clear. Of course, if a question at WP:THis too technical for the poor Teahouse Hosts to respond too, we do sometimes refer people on, though that would most often be to WP:VPT - or WP:REFDESK for the off-topic ones. (I do, however, wish WP:TH had a better archive naming system, more akin to that at WP:HD as it would make it much easier for a newcomer to find their old, archived post when they're in a dated format.) With regards to any suggestion to merge WP:TH/WP:HD, this comment from Maineartists sums it up: "if it ain't broke, why fix it?". But, as for WP:Editor Assistance - yes, this probably does need marking as historical, and I note that Kudpung suggested precisely that back in 2018. But as I've never been there (who has?), I can't comment further from any personal experience on where would be the best redirect. I'm guessing WP:TH might make the most sense. Nick Moyes (talk) 22:39, 21 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Procrastinating Reader that the help venues ought to be consolidated, and I'm fine with marking the editor assistance forum as historical. One of the things that newcomers most often say about Wikipedia is that the number of back-end pages is overwhelming, so it is not good that editors are encountering potential confusion over where to ask their question in the first place.Regarding the point made about the intended difference between the TH and the HD, that's all fine and dandy, but the key word is intended. There are currently lots of complete newcomers ending up at the HD, and relying on them to read the hatnote and switch to the Teahouse if they want a friendly response is not working. We need to do a better job of pointing to the TH rather than the HD in all newcomer-facing areas, and making the latter a much quieter venue that gets only non-obvious questions from established editors. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 01:41, 23 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I was the main user answering at WP:EAR for a few years. It was one of the principal help venues until the The Tea House opened. My original comment about closing EAR down was in fact in 2013. I'm surprised no one has taken the initiative to deprecate it and close down all the links to it. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:12, 23 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
In a volunteer environment, I think groups interested in an initiative should be free to decide how to organize it, as long as it doesn't impose an undue burden on others. In this context, I think the following questions should be examined regarding any potential burden:
Are questions being asked and answered effectively?
Are responders able to deal with questions effectively?
Regarding the first question, different types of venues appeal to different editors, so it can be useful to have a metaphorical teahouse setting as well as a more terse question-and-answer format. Regarding the second question, as noted by others, different responders may be interested in answering at different levels of detail. Is having multiple venues effective at supporting this, versus the tradeoff of some responders having to monitor several places? Related to both questions, if someone asks a question in one place that, based on the level of detail needed by the questioner, is better suited for another place, is that question still handled effectively (by still answering at the desired level, by smoothly moving it to the other place, or by other means)?
In short, I'd like to hear from the people on the ground: does having two venues hinder your ability to get appropriate responses or to adequately respond to questions? Do we need to have a wider mix of people watching the help desk or teahouse in order to deal with different expectations on level of detail? Is eliminating one going to actually draw more watchers to the other? I'm not enthusiastic about telling volunteers to stop contributing to a productive initiative, even if I think they could equally help another productive initiative. isaacl (talk) 19:46, 24 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I occasionally stop by both the Teahouse and Help Desk, and even answer questions. I wouldn’t call myself highly experienced in either. I do see a lot of overlap (but also much difference). If someone asks a noob question at HD, it’s better to answer them in-place rather than tell them to go off and re-ask at Teahouse. Vice-versa, having some more-clueful questions at Teahouse helps break the monotony there. If we did want to maintain a strong separation, rather than an intent, then we could move discussions from one forum to another, just like this discussion has been moved from VPP to VPR. But moving threads on MediaWiki is a bit more cumbersome than on some other discussion platforms. I do think we're a bit curt with people asking a question in both places: having two fora is potentially confusing and asking for help in more than one place isn't in the same league as forum-shopping across DR–AN–ANI. Both HD and TH are limited by the high volume and rapid archiving, especially Teahouse. I recall one new editor who was quite miffed that the Teahouse is presented as a place to have a friendly chat, but is in practice mostly a rapid-fire Q&A feed. If we were a smaller community, we could have all chat at le Bistro or the Beerhall, rather than compartmentalising it into multiple silos (VP* is a good example). This brings us to a practical limitation. Merging the two would exacerbate the situation with high volume of questions. And there’s also the nature of the questions: the merged Help venue could be overwhelmed with so much repeated "how i make new article for non-notable thing?", "my thing's not showing up in Google", and "why AFC take so long?". Talking about practical as opposed to intended differences, a big difference between Teahouse and Help Desk is the entry points. New users often get a big welcome message directing them to the TH.
IIRC, even some of our level-one warning templates direct them there. – Pelagic ( messages ) – (12:45 Sun 25, AEDT) 01:45, 25 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Proposal: deprecate WP:EA/WP:EAR and close down all active templates or help pages linking to it
Support No point in newcomers being directed to an inactive venue. Pages also needs marking as 'historic'. Pinging ProcrastinatingReader as OP. Nick Moyes (talk) 23:10, 23 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support per comments in section above. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 23:29, 23 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support – very sensible and solid proposal that hopefully begins to address our issues with help venues. Aza24 (talk) 01:37, 24 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support per Nick Moyes. EpicPupper 23:21, 24 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support Assuming we haven't missed anything, this seems like a no-brainer. ElKevbo (talk) 02:56, 25 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Proposal1: Replace Main Page Help Desk link with Teahouse link
Support Whilst we're here: to follow up from this discussion which closed with consensus to add a Teahouse link but wasn't sure on which form it should take. It seems like there's probably a consensus to keep TH and HD separate for now. So I think replacing the Help Desk link on the Main Page with a link to the Teahouse would be better. Editors coming from there are probably newcomers, and it's too confusing/bloaty to have them both listed trying to explain the differences IMO. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 07:46, 24 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Commment Whilst happy to support this, I am slightly concerned about removing the Help Desk link entirely. Wouldn't the following work OK?:
Community portal – Bulletin board, projects, resources and activities covering a wide range of Wikipedia areas.
Teahouse - A help desk for novice editors. A friendly space to ask about editing Wikipedia.
Local embassy – For Wikipedia-related communication in languages other than English.
Reference desk – Serving as virtual librarians, Wikipedia volunteers tackle your questions on a wide range of subjects.
Site news – Announcements, updates, articles and press releases on Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation.
Village pump – For discussions about Wikipedia itself, including areas for technical issues and policies.
I wouldn't want to undermine any attempt at gaining a consensus by offering a formal counter-proposal at this early stage, but do add one if it helps. Nick Moyes (talk) 09:12, 24 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This works for me, although I'd say put the Teahouse above HD in order, and replace the Help desk description with something like "For more experienced editors to ask questions about editing Wikipedia." I still think I prefer replacing the link altogether, as I think the Teahouse does a better job at helping newbies and that giving unnecessary choices is bad UX and adds a slight bit of friction. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 09:44, 24 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support one link. Oppose two links. We don't need and shouldn't have two forums for asking questions (so help desk and teahouse ought to be merged). If we do have two forums, TH should be linked on the main page (so support this proposal). Under no circumstances should both be linked; that will just confuse people. Levivichharass/hound 13:24, 24 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support Teahouse link on Main Page and, if we have both links, putting it above the Help Desk. If we retain both, the Helpdesk blurb line should include something that it is for non-novice editors. I am neutral to removing the Helpdesk from main page and just having Teahouse there. Nosebagbear (talk) 14:02, 24 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I do not support this good-faith, well-intentioned suggestion. I support adding an additional link to the tea house and I have no objections whatsoever to placing that link above the help desk link. But as long as the help desk is open and we want editors to use it then we need to link to it. I strongly recommend a separate discussion focused solely on whether we can and should consolidate these two efforts; I would strongly support such a motion but it seems to be a much larger proposal than what has been put forth here that warrants a separate, dedicated discussion with a clear header so other editors can see what is being proposed. ElKevbo (talk) 02:59, 25 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
We do have links to the help desk, from internal pages like WP:Questions, Template:Wikipedia help pages, Template:Noticeboard links, etc. The proposal isn't to scrap all those links. It's just to replace it on the Main Page specifically, from where it's more likely we'll be getting newcomer clicks rather than anything else. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 15:32, 25 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Link to both but put the Teahouse above the Help Desk. Adding another line won't damage the layout, but it will allow more people to get the assistance they need. —Naddruf (talk ~ contribs) 17:11, 25 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Further comment on Main page wording I'm uncertain what words are best if the Teahouse goes above the Help desk on the Main page links. I've racked my brain, and this is the best I can come up with:
Teahouse - A help desk for novice editors. A friendly space to ask about editing Wikipedia.
Help desk – Ask questions about using Wikipedia. Aimed mostly at those with some editing experience already.
(or perhaps...*Help desk – Ask questions about using Wikipedia. Less friendly, more curt and tons of abbreviations!) Nick Moyes (talk) 00:19, 26 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
What's the point of this? I mean, the archiving bots could be setup to create permanent, dated archives if that were deemed useful (verses the current rolling archives). But there's simply so many reports made I just don't see how it could be useful. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 11:17, 21 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
While protecting a page, an administrator could review other protection requests of the page to determine whether to protect or not. 🐔ChicdatBawk to me! 12:23, 21 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I guess it'd be up to RfPP admins if they'd find that helpful, but if they think yes then it'd probably be better to WP:BOTREQ a bot to reply to RfPPs with links to permalinks of previous protection requests. Even if you did manage to compile all RfPP archives on your page (a very laborious task to do by hand), it'd take so long for that page to load and then to ctrl-f the page title that it just wouldn't be particularly effective. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 12:51, 21 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Probably unnecessary but also probably harmless. Admins (anyone, actually) can already review the protection log of a page to see how recently and how often the page has been protected. Reviewing a log of times that a protection request was declined is (IMO) not really useful in deciding on protection. Ivanvector's squirrel (trees/nuts) 12:54, 21 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
As an admin who used to patrol RFPP a lot (and still drops by from time to time), I would find this functionality useless; I mean if you want to do it because someone else might find it useful, go ahead, I'm just saying it would have no impact on my RFPP work; I base my protection decisions almost entirely on the article history page and protection log, where prior protections are easily visible and can be tracked just fine. So basically, I don't object to it if someone else finds it useful, I just wouldn't. --Jayron32 12:55, 21 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
If this is needed, a bot should do it. — xaosfluxTalk 15:36, 21 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I wrote the code for such a bot a while back, see Wikipedia talk:Requests for page protection#Historical archives. I still have the code, and would be willing to run it if there is consensus to do so, but the bigger problem (as I said in my previous comment) is getting the bot currently archiving RFPP requests to a rolling archive to be compatible with the new system. * Pppery *it has begun... 16:03, 21 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Or we could just shut that bot down. We certainly don't need a rolling archive and a permanent archive. Ivanvector's squirrel (trees/nuts) 13:22, 22 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed, but the same bot is responsible for lots of other non-seperable clerking of bot reports so "just shut it down" isn't as easy as it sounds. I'll give the bot operator a ping, but I don't expect action given that he was first requested to do this in 2019 and never did. * Pppery *it has begun... 21:25, 22 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Pppery, I really need to get back on that request. I'll try to dedicate time to getting that updated this weekend. —CYBERPOWER(Chat) 15:26, 23 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
There is a lot of needed work here at Wikipedia. This is not that. GenQuest"scribble" 17:43, 21 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Can you explain why this is needed, Chicdat? What problem it will solve? --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 13:26, 22 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The page protection log already achieves this, in a handy, easy to use format. CaptainEekEdits Ho Cap'n!⚓ 20:10, 22 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I also just don't get how this helps. To me this is like archiving WP:UAA or WP:AIV. These are boards that receive new reports all, day, every day. Archiving all these requests would create mountains of new pages that would almost certainly be largely unmaintained and basically ignored as old business. I don't see the benefit. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:19, 22 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
While the utility is a little questionable, again it does no harm. And in the absence of that harm, if the editor feels it is either beneficial or enhances transparency then I support them doing so. Nosebagbear (talk) 20:29, 22 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Agree with Jayron32. Seems like a solution in search of a problem. -FASTILY 23:41, 22 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'll add on that I support this (although my comments above imply it to some extent), primarily on the argument of consistency: nearly every other noticeboard is fully archived (including ANI, which gets approximately the same number of edits per day as RFPP), so it seems odd to me not to do it in one case. * Pppery *it has begun... 21:53, 25 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Can we come to a consensus on when it is appropriate to "rescue" live links in an article with IABot?
If you visit the history page of any article, at the top you'll see "Fix dead links". This takes you to a page on https://iabot.toolforge.org where you can use IABot's database to add archive links to the page. There is a box for "Add archives to all non-dead references (Optional)" and it's that little box that I'd like to talk about here.
As I understand it, clicking that box does not archive the page. That has already been done by the bot and stored in an off-wiki database. All it does is copy the archive links that already exist into the article en masse. Many people have taken to just going around to various articles that do not have dead links and "rescuing" all of the live sources.
The reasons why this is good: I think the main reason people think is good is because it archives all the links (i.e. misunderstanding how it works), but there's something to be said for having everything already in the article, just in case IABot goes down, stops being maintained, etc.
The reasons why this is not good: It adds significantly to the size of the page without adding any meaningful functionality. See for example, this diff which was just the most recent on my watchlist and not the largest I've seen. It adds 12k to the page with no dead links rescued. This means the page is larger, of course, but also means anyone using the source editor has to scroll through even larger citation templates. It also throws off the various tools we have to understand authorship of a page. Controversial subject, I know, but sometimes it's useful to take a look at the xtools page statistics in order to see who's been working on an article, which isn't always apparent just by looking at the most recent history. In this case, someone who simply rescued links that didn't need to be rescued is now listed as the primary author of this page. (Apologies to YoungForever, who was just trying to help here. I don't mean to single you out -- there are a lot of people who use the tool this way.) We also know that some Wikipedians are motivated by making large numbers of contributions, and I'd suggest the ability to quickly make these large, semi-automated edits at any article could also be a motivating factor for some (I've seen people, in a long string of edits, go to dozens of articles just to rescue live links).
TL;DR - If it is desirable to have all archive links in the article, a bot should do it, rather than leave it to arbitrary drive-by rescuing of things that don't need rescuing. If it's not desirable, this option either shouldn't be available to users or we should be clearer in the displayed text for that option and allow reverting if used improperly. If it is sometimes desirable to rescue links that aren't dead, what are those cases? — Rhododendritestalk \\ 14:27, 23 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I agree it shouldn't be done arbitrarily. It should be a step for a practice like in the final preparation for a GA/FA and subsequent maintenance once that's been achieved. (eg once 90% of the refs have archive-url's, bot-archiving the rest is not a problem). I can also see it being done for a topic where the bulk of the sourcing does exist only from web pages, such as many current event articles, but that should be some time well after the article is created where the possibility of link-rot may arise - at least if not more than a year out from creation, not in that first year for certain. --Masem (t) 14:43, 23 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Masem: Just to clarify, when you say I can also see it being done where the bulk of the sourcing does exist only from web pages, are you saying that archiving those links is what should be done so that if one dies an archive can be added semi-automatically? Or that all of those links should be added directly to the article preemptively in addition to being archived by IABot off-wiki? IABot is archiving/storing them whether we use that interface or not. The question is when to move the archive links into the article text. — Rhododendritestalk \\ 14:51, 23 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Does the archive bot actually make the archives as it runs, even when you do not check that box? I was under the impression that it did not AManWithNoPlan (talk) 15:02, 23 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'm talking about when they are added to the wikipage. We do want the backgrounding of Archive links to happen regardless, I feel, but adding those to Wikipages is where the problem lies and should only be done for polishing purposes (GA/FA) or if the article is heavily reliant on online sourcing. --Masem (t) 15:04, 23 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
If it is desirable to have all archive links in the article, a bot should do it, rather than leave it to arbitrary drive-by rescuing of things that don't need rescuing.Rhododendrites, I agree with that. And there is another reason to add archive links: WP:EVADEGDPR. By the way, when it comes to the concern of longer wikitext (never really bothered me), this could be reduced significantly by adjusting templates. The citation template on Dutch Wiktionary for example requires no archive date and allows omitting the live URL. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 15:05, 23 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Years ago my proposal to automate the archive-date (based on parsing the archive-url of common archive sites) was rejected. Can't find it in the archives at the moment. I generally support reducing redundancy among fields. However, I don't support removing the url if there is an archive-url, because it makes it more confusing to scan for specific refs or update the ("where the hell is the URL itself? Oh right, it's encoded as part of another URL in a different field."). DMacks (talk) 15:57, 23 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
DMacks, on Dutch Wiktionary it isn't common to omit live URL either and if specified the entered URL will be used. The template just doesn't make a fuss about omitting the URL. I'm not really sure if structurally omitting the live URL would be a good idea, but I wanted to mention that technically it's possible. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 17:36, 23 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for explaining the origin of these edits. The term "rescuing" on my watchlist kept confusing me when links were all live (it's not clear that there is any bad situation that is being remedied). DMacks (talk) 15:29, 23 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
100% agree with OP. I used to make this mistake when I first got here: I went about to articles, checked the optional box and added all the archive links. I thought this was archiving the links. Someone at some point set me straight, and now I realize this adds a lot of unnecessary bloat to articles. It also messes up authorship stats. I am listed as a main author of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Yellow vests movement but it's only because I added like 40k of archive links with one click. That optional checkbox should at least have a warning if not removed or moved somewhere else. Levivichharass/hound 16:57, 23 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I don't really use the IABot that much. I only used it when I come across a canceled TV series that ended already, a miniseries (only 1 season) ended already, dead person, or film that has been out for a while as the urls of the articles may not work or updated with information that may not be relevant to the articles anymore. I didn't think it is a big issue to add archive urls to live links as I seen a lot of veteran editors using the IABot to do that as well. — YoungForever(talk) 19:43, 23 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Assuming the information at WP:EVADEGDPR is true, I support editors (or bots) adding archive links to anything already archived on the Internet Archive (WayBack Machine) website, so long as bots are not doing so without either an editor requesting it for a particular article, or because the bot is rescuing other dead links on the articles. I don't really have an opinion one way or the other about a bot doing so for all pages without being asked to, but I wouldn't necessarily oppose it. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 01:58, 24 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
So perhaps this is due for an RfC. I think it ultimately comes down to:
Option 1 - Turn off the option to "rescue" links that aren't dead in the IABot interface because all links should be accompanied by an archive link, and we should have a bot add these automatically.
Option 2 - Turn off the option to "rescue" links that aren't dead in the IABot interface because IABot already archives all links and we don't need them in the article until the link actually goes dead.
Option 3 - Allow users to "rescue" links that aren't dead but set up rules for when it's allowed. (e.g. certain types of topics, or when actually rescuing a dead link) and add a warning to the interface.
Option 4 - Allow users to "rescue" links that aren't dead on a whimat their own discretion (status quo).
More or less? To be clear, I'm not asking for people to pick one of these here -- I'm making sure these are more or less the correct options to present, acknowledging that #3 would of course require follow up. — Rhododendritestalk \\ 02:19, 24 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I think add an option for "add a warning/advisory to the checkbox" (as opposed to #3's "rules"), and explicitly identify #4 as the status quo (w/more neutral wording). Otherwise looks good and thanks. Levivichharass/hound 02:51, 24 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding "rules" isn't that what we really need, though? Conditions when it's acceptable? Otherwise what would the advisory say? And yeah, I didn't actually intend "on a whim" to make it into an RfC. :) — Rhododendritestalk \\ 13:31, 24 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Is option 2 true? It doesn't seem to prompt IA to archive links; I'm always searching for them manually. Hawkeye7(discuss) 03:07, 24 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Rhododendrites, I would like to remove option 2. This tool is also used outside of enwiki and they have different practices. Amending number 1, disabling that option would be moot if we have IABot add archive automatically. Ultimately, this is a tool that anyone is free to use, but isn't being forced to. If it comes to what is allowed to be used and not, it should be policy centered, not implementing customized restrictions on an external tool. —CYBERPOWER(Around) 14:01, 24 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Cyberpower678:Facepalm thanks for the reminder that the english wikipedia is not the only project that uses these tools (and that I am susceptible to enwikicentrism). The issue with policy centered is our policies don't readily address this. So it seems like this will need to be rethought not in terms of removing the option but perhaps just (a) determining whether we want the bot to add all archives; if not then (b) developing our own rules for it and, if applicable, (c) adding an advisory when the option is selected saying (using general wording about it not being allowed on all projects or pointing to some documentation somewhere). How does that sound? — Rhododendritestalk \\ 14:28, 24 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
As far as cons of archiving live links, does it slow down loading for readers? And are the longer references something readers will find annoying, or will it be potentially helpful if a link dies but is not yet identified as such? Those seem like more important, reader-centric questions to me than authorship percentages (which fundamentally is a fault of the tool's oversimplicity; tools should serve editing, never vice versa) or clogging up the source code (which fundamentally is a UI problem the WMF needs to solve). If we decide they're more annoying than helpful, one option would be to store archive links in the wikitext but not display them to readers so long as |url-status=live. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 04:12, 24 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I imagine an extra 5, 10, 15, or in some cases 40-50k of data per page would have some affect. The WP:Article size guideline addresses page size at WP:CHOKING, where it explains that 32k takes about 5 seconds to load on a dial-up connection and long pages present problems with some mobile devices. I think as with so many things it's worth talking about how much useful it is compared to any costs. And I wouldn't fully discount costs to editors. Some things may "just" be a design issue that WMF or someone should fix, but that doesn't mean it'll actually happen. That's quite a tangent, though, and yes, readers are fundamentally the priority. I do think that storing the archive information in wikitext but not displaying it is the worst of all worlds, though. I've not heard of anyone annoyed by the appearance of archive links. I mean, long-term this is something that should be exported to Wikidata/WikiCite, but we're not there yet. — Rhododendritestalk \\ 13:18, 24 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Templates being a certain size in wikitext has a solution. It's just certain editors don't like that solution. ;)
We have had at least one discussion about 'early' archival before. Please review the archives here or elsewhere.
Between the set, adding archive links is categorically to the better. --Izno (talk) 00:15, 25 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
We are not supposed to worry about *server-side* performance. We can still worry about adding to download and parsing times on the client side ("parsing" refers to any time added by extra parameters to the setting up of data structures that make the mouseover action happen). Fighting link rot by mindlessly adding massive numbers of archive-links doesn't enhance verifiability, when it's helpful to check for better original links (esp. when lost merely due to website reorganization), for availability of more up-to-date sources, and whether sources and text match. I would reserve IABot to, say, one-article-at-a-time usage, for those editors who don't care to learn the extra reference markup (e.g. archive-url, archive-date, url-status). Dhtwiki (talk) 14:53, 25 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Is everybody here saying that it's bad to include archive links when you insert a (live) reference? —Naddruf (talk ~ contribs) 17:12, 25 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
No. We're trying to figure out whether there's consensus to add archive links to live references en masse. I don't think that would affect an individual decision to include an archive link for a particular citation. — Rhododendritestalk \\ 18:21, 25 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Growth Team en-wiki Trial
Hi all,
The Growth Team have proposed a plan for trialling the new Growth Team features to 2% of new accounts to en-wiki, after various successful trials/rollouts on other projects.
MMiller (WMF) is one of the most community responsive WMF product managers we've ever had the fortune to have, so if interested please go and drop any comments in. Nosebagbear (talk) 23:12, 23 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This article is written in American English, and this should not be changed without consensus. Learn more.
, also {{Bach's compositions (sources)}}, which indeed had 
You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2021 April 16 § Category:CS1 maint: discouraged parameter. * Pppery * it has begun... 19:40, 16 April 2021 (UTC)Template:Z48
Current good article icon
Current featured content icon
New icons, Proposal 1
Side-by-side with old. Note that the default size of the image is such that the individual icons are 45px wide, which is around the size they would be rendered in talk pages.
. EEng 03:26, 3 April 2021 (UTC) P.S. Someone's calendar is off. This came a day late for April Fools.
renders terribly at 20px and 
has literally confused people in the past, as it also is used for the "support vote" symbol. Moreover, the subicons for these (particularly the GA icon) don't make much of any sense. The former FC icon 
has a unsightly, stylistically different "X" through it. The reassessment icon 
is a broken GA icon? The former GA icon is the same as the former GA candidate icon 
? All three of the aforementioned are the same except for color (in which Nsk92 makes a good point about color blindness)? To believe that nothing needs to be changed is beyond me. I don't see much of a reason to move forward with any different kind of proposition given the previous comments. Pbrks (talk) 05:31, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
Moved from Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)
Facepalm thanks for the reminder that the english wikipedia is not the only project that uses these tools (and that I am susceptible to enwikicentrism). The issue with policy centered is our policies don't readily address this. So it seems like this will need to be rethought not in terms of removing the option but perhaps just (a) determining whether we want the bot to add all archives; if not then (b) developing our own rules for it and, if applicable, (c) adding an advisory when the option is selected saying (using general wording about it not being allowed on all projects or pointing to some documentation somewhere). How does that sound? — Rhododendrites talk \\ 14:28, 24 April 2021 (UTC)
