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RfC on Wikipedia:Authority Control

The Template:Authority control is currently used on more than 450,000 articles. As described on Help:Authority control, "Authority control enables researchers to search more easily for pertinent information on the subject of an article". Which external sources are acceptable in the template? Fram (talk) 16:47, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Background

The Template:Authority control was created here in June 2009 (it existed already in the German Wikipedia) and moved to its current name in September 2010. Over the years, it got added to more and more articles, more and more sources got added to it, and it got integrated with Wikidata. Discussion over what sources to add was, as far as I can see, mostly limited to the talk page of the template, not to Help:Authority control or Wikipedia:Authority control, and no policy or guideline governing the template seems to exist.

Considering that the template gives the impression of being a list of special, approved sources, and that while the original idea was simply to have unique identifiers for each subject, it has morphed into a kind of reference pointer as well (to use a snippet from the lead of Help:Authority control: "[...]so that the information in the article can be easily cross-referenced[...]"), I think it is time to write down which sources are acceptable in it and which aren't. Fram (talk) 17:04, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Wikidata approved sources

We can't simply rely on Wikidata to only provide pointers to reliable sources. While not included in Authority Control yet, Wikidata offers standard a FindAGrave link for every biography of a no-longer-living person. FindAGrave is considered to be avoided at nearly all costs on enwiki, as it is in general not a reliable source.

However, a similar (though perhaps somewhat better) source from Wikidata is already approved in the template and used on enwiki, even though it is also a wiki: MusicBrainz (which is specifically discussed and approved in the second paragraph of the lead of Help:Authority control). It was this link that caused me to discuss this at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#MusicBrainz and from there to start this RfC.

I don't think it is a good idea to link such specialized wikis (MusicBrainz now, IMDB and others next?) in a quasi-official template like authority control, and I think it should be restricted to some more centrally controlled, truly authoritative sources like national libraries and similar things, for which it was originally conceived. Fram (talk) 17:04, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

  • We already link to IMDb using {{IMDb name}} (and, indeed, to Find a Grave through {{Find a Grave}}). Putting the link inside {{Authority control}} would streamline things, reduce clutter, and reduce editor and template maintainer workload. You refer to "reliable sources"; I think you're under a misapprehension. AC is not providing "sources" in the Wikipedia sense. A closer analogy is "disambiguation". Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:27, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

Discussion

  • I don't understand what you are proposing. To my knowledge, authority control (like persondata) is being removed from biographical articles as that function has been superseded by Wikidata. You propose to reverse this? You seem to complain that Wikidata is recording relationships that the en-wiki consensus opposes. You think this forum should reverse that? I agree, Wikidata's links to Find a Grave and the like are problematic. I think Wikidata is the better solution to both the authority control and persondata templates. I don't know to what degree en-wiki can block inputs by Wikidata that this consensus opposes. Perhaps the better solution is to force a change on Wikidata disallowing those links. Chris Troutman (talk) 17:47, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
    • It can well be that the template is being removed from biographical articles, but as far as I can tell neither of the pages about the template and the authority control mentions this. In fact, Template:Authority control says "this template should be added to all biographies, whether or not there are authority control identifiers in Wikidata already."

      For the sake of this discussion, I don't really care what Wikidata does, apart from the fact that the Findagrave example is quite telling in the difference in standards. What I want to discuss here is which parameters we (enwiki) want to display in our articles, whether fed by Wikidata or added locally is not important. If the solution to what we want is a change at Wikidata, then we will need to discuss our wishes there. But e.g. for MusicBrainz: there are thousands of pages (I think, hard to be sure) where the only authority control displayed through the template is the MusicBrainz ID. We can create a guideline that allows the removal of the template on such pages. We can also look for technical solutions to disable such links on enwiki. And we can discuss it witk wikidata to see what is possible (since they don't only cater to us obviously). Fram (talk) 18:38, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

      • What's being removed are the template parameters on enwiki, not the template itself, because the values that could be managed are better managed at Wikidata. --Izno (talk) 18:48, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
      • The MusicBrainz ID links should not be used as references (and any claims of such should be made in the references sections of articles where methinks few if any do appear). They are valuable as authority control but the content at the links is not necessarily notable nor reliable. The only reason there is any content at the link at all is to help people understand what the term means enough to be able to assign it to content (like our articles and those of others which might be useful as references). 50.126.125.240 (talk) 17:51, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
  • Wikidata and its community don't particularly care which values are displayed here or whether authority control as a template is being used on pages for which it's ill-fit. There may be users in that community who have an opinion, but not the wiki as a whole. --Izno (talk) 18:51, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Template:Authority Control should be restricted to links which actually do Authority Control; i.e. GLAM institutions and related parties with trained professionals making these judgements. Further, national authorities participating in VIAF should be hidden by default if VIAF is present, because the national authorities very, very, rarely provide anything that VIAF doesn't. Stuartyeates (talk) 20:07, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
    • I'd be opposed to anything that removed ORCID iDs from the template (note: I'm Wikipedian in Residence at ORCID]. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:22, 31 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Fail to understand proposal "Authority control" is technical jargon that refers to certain library cataloging systems. On Wikipedia it means that and is coming to mean "connecting any Wikipedia article with an external resource by means of an arbitrary identifier taken from a collection of identifiers provided by an established third party". For both medical conditions and drugs there has been discussion about developing the authority control model. See talk pages at {{Infobox medical condition}} and {{Infobox drug}}. See Gout for a live demonstration of an infobox connected live to Wikidata, which is a related concept, and the creation of a "medical authority control" box at the bottom.
    If anyone wants to advance the concept, then I think medicine might be the place where one would find the most interest and feedback. Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:50, 31 January 2016 (UTC)
    • I'm not sure there is a proposal. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:22, 31 January 2016 (UTC)
      • @Bluerasberry and Pigsonthewing: There is one, but I have hidden it too well apparently: "I don't think it is a good idea to link such specialized wikis (MusicBrainz now, IMDB and others next?) in a quasi-official template like authority control, and I think it should be restricted to some more centrally controlled, truly authoritative sources like national libraries and similar things, for which it was originally conceived." Fram (talk) 07:53, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
Fram I would talk more about this because I am struggling with authority control standards in medicine. There ought to be some standard, but I think you overestimate the integrity of national libraries and under estimate the authority of projects like IMDB. The film and TV industry considers IMDB to be an authoritative source, despite it being crowdsourced and entries being mostly maintained by the people who have what wiki calls COI. Generally a lot more non-traditional databases are appearing and some of them, for example in health, seem superior to traditional information sources in all the ways that people check except for reputation. Find a Grave is another crowdsourced website mentioned here which has mostly good information.
A problem with excluding IMDB, Find a Grave, and others is that they seem to have good information, they are widely known, and any traditionally compiled source is unlikely in the near future to be comparable to their scope and quality unless somehow it certified the data collected in these crowdsourced methods. I might support having different quality rankings on different sources, and I would not want these designated as a RS, but it seems to far to say that Wikipedia should not link to them somehow. Blue Rasberry (talk) 12:41, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
  • I agree with some of the other commenters that authority control is not designed for and should not be confused/conflated with reference sources (and as such need not be particularly notable even). The template is traditionally placed at the end of the article, usually within an "External links" section and not a "References" section, for a reason: they are not references. As another commenter pointed out, authority control is more like disambiguation (in fact many such authority controls are called subjects, terms and/or thesauruses, etc.). Like a dictionary term or index key, it is there to group material and could help you find related material on a subject (perhaps even reliable and notable content that could be used as a reference to substantiate an article's content) but it is linked in an article as much to find related material as to claim itself a part of that subject/group and be found too, e.g., the LCCN "sh85135917" authority control item is on the ketchup article as much to help find other information on ketchup as it is to claim the article is also about that topic. Little of what is at the LCCN will help many understand the history of ketchup (unless one is already are familiar with such under a different name perhaps), however, there are works that do talk about the history of ketchup that are linked to that term (try clicking on "LC Online Catalog" from there where you can eventually find things like Pure ketchup : a history of America's national condiment by Andrew F. Smith). Adding the right description (with good use of English words and terms) to an article, can also help an article be more easily cross-referenced but do we really need a policy on what type of words we use in such a description? Well we do have one. English Wikipedia should use English (which is a living language, changes quickly and is hard to define but we usually can differentiate it from other languages). Think of authority controls as subject-based indexing languages, not references. They are ways to group and connect content but not the content themselves. Linking to multiple such languages is useful in much the same way as our interwiki links are. 50.126.125.240 (talk) 17:42, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
  • This IP understands the situation quite well. The purpose of {{authority control}} is to link an article to the entry for the same subject in various authority files, whether it's the concept of authority control itself, Hilbert spaces, or the Beatles — it provides immediate access to various professionally created databases of information related to the topic (without risk of getting confused with similarly named topics) as well as providing a portal into that topic's place in each database's thesaurus, giving a quick glance at broader, narrower, and related concepts as well as alternate names for the same concept. I don't particularly understand how Wikidata works, so I'm not clear how it fits in, but unless its actions are outright replacing the functionality of {{authority control}} and deprecating it, there's absolutely no reason to get rid of, or seriously restrict the current uses of, this template and the bibliographic integration that it enables. Nyttend (talk) 01:57, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
  • @Nyttend: I don't think that linking to a music wiki is really the same as "bibliographic integration" though. You don't get access to "professionally created databases", you get access to a wiki. Wikipedia wouldn't be accepted as a link in authority control, so why do we accept other comparable (but more specialized) sites? Fram (talk) 07:50, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
  • I've just come across this whole "Authority Control" at KK Null and I can't say I understand it. Nor I understand this proposal much. But I'd agree that a link to MusicBrainz strikes me as inappropriate for WP, considering that MusicBrains rips WP content almost entirely. Seems a bit circular. 46.208.68.251 (talk) 06:56, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

Two edit filter RfCs: Modifying existing filters and enabling the block function

Responding to the request for closure at WP:ANRFC. For the first question, there is consensus in favor of inclusion. However, several editors were convinced by the argument that there are valid methods of testing that do not involve disabling and re-enabling filters. Since nobody attempted to refute this point, it appears that there is also consensus to modify the proposal accordingly. It also goes without saying that WP:IAR may be applied in an emergency, and one editor proposed language explicitly addressing this, so that may be a useful topic for further discussion. The second question is much more straightforward: the degree of support for the proposal is clearly not sufficient for inclusion, with the primary opposing argument being the risk of false positives. Sunrise (talk) 16:43, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

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.

Please share your thoughts on two RfCs regarding updates to the edit filter guideline and enabling the extension's blocking ability. Sam Walton (talk) 18:13, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

RfC: Modifying existing edit filters

The edit filter guideline's recommended uses section currently states that edit filter managers should "generally be tested without any actions specified (simply enabled) until a good number of edits have been logged and checked before being implemented in "warn" or "disallow" modes." One concern that has been raised since the guideline was written is that filters which are set to the stronger settings can still be changed while in these modes; this can be just as damaging as mistakes are easy to make with regex, resulting in the possibility of blocking huge numbers of edits because of something as simple as missing a closing bracket.

Should the Edit filter guideline be changed to include the following text?:

Edit filters with the "disallow" or "throttle" settings enabled should not be modified without first disabling those settings temporarily. The filter should then be monitored for an amount of time deemed appropriate by the edit filter manager before the settings are re-enabled.

I'd like to add that this needn't be a long period of time; for most filters a few minutes to make sure that hundreds of edits aren't suddenly being disabled or something similarly drastic would be sufficient.

This would also apply to the block ability if the below proposal also passes.

Support edit filter guideline modification

  1. Support as proposer. I don't think this is a drastic change but it should help reduce filter accidents. Sam Walton (talk) 18:15, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
    I support a slight change in wording however, given the comments below, that edits should be tested rather than tested specifically via disabling of the filter. We could add a note for the testing methods (temporary disabling, batch testing, second test filter) or something later. Sam Walton (talk) 11:49, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
  2. Support I've seen more mistakes with modifying filters than creating new ones. For me this is one of the more strict clauses of the guideline. Just a side note that the batch testing tool can be a very close friend when it comes to modifying filters :) — MusikAnimal talk 18:54, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
  3. Support Makes perfect sense and, frankly, I'm surprised similar wording isn't already in use. Etamni | ✉ | ✓  18:59, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
  4. Support. I can't think of one good reason why the new language isn't a good idea. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 19:26, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
  5. Support — Ched :  ?  19:39, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
  6. Support reasonable. Keegan (talk) 19:59, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
  7. Support Makes sense. Armbrust The Homunculus 23:55, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
  8. Support, although I grant the strength of the oppose argument: when it's apparently an emergency situation, we should let this thing slide; we ought to add a statement to the end, "Filters may be enabled with these settings untested in an emergency, although editors need to be available immediately, watching for false positives and resolving them." Otherwise, it's a perfect WP:IAR situation (so what's the point of creating a rule when we can envision a good situation for ignoring it?), because when we need a newly created filter on an emergency basis, improving Wikipedia absolutely demands that we throw it in without testing it. But yes, when it's not an emergency creation, we shouldn't permit filters to do anything beyond tagging until they've demonstrated through tagging what they're going to do. Nyttend (talk) 14:27, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
  9. Support No software engineer worth a crap deploys anything without testing it first. NE Ent 22:37, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
  10. Support No software engineer who isn't worth a crap is a real software engineer. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:27, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
  11. Support, for the above obvious reasons. --Carnildo (talk) 02:33, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
  12. Support per above. Kharkiv07 (T) 03:54, 14 January 2016 (UTC)
  13. Support per the proposer. Thryduulf (talk) 23:00, 18 January 2016 (UTC)
  14. Support. Sounds like a great idea. APerson (talk!) 01:08, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Oppose edit filter guideline modification

  1. Oppose - I think this should not be stronger than making it a consideration when changing the filter, but having a highly abusive editor getting free reign for some time to see whether there are no false positives after the change can be highly disruptive to Wikipedia, possibly resulting in hundreds of edits to be reverted if edit filter manager and culprit are active during different times. I would expect that edit filter managers that do 'break' a filter in a bad way will and should be admonished strongly (including possibly losing the right for some time), and I, for one of the edit filter managers, do expect that to happen to me if I would ever break a filter in such a bad way. --Dirk Beetstra T C 12:12, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
  2. Oppose. The proposed wording feels too strong to me. In the last two months, disallow filters as a group have been edited more than 120 times (on average about 2 times per day). Mostly such edits tweak narrowly focused filters to combat specific persistent vandals. During that time, I'm not aware of any screw-ups causing large scale problems. Such screw-ups do occur occasionally, but as a practical matter they are rare. If an EFM is properly using batch testing prior to saving any changes (and they absolutely should be) then major problems can be avoided. Adding the extra step to disable and reenable the filter before every edit seems unnecessary. Perhaps for some complex edits the extra effort is appropriate, but as a general rule it seems more like a solution seeking a problem. Dragons flight (talk) 20:47, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
    There was one incident in the past two months that I found to be rather bad... and it could have been noticed with batch testing, I believe. So perhaps that should be written as our bare minimum requirement. The other thing is we sometimes have "emergency" filters, for large-scale disruption, where we don't want the filter disabled for any period of time. Batch testing would be most appropriate here as well, and as Xaosflux said, a test filter could be used in parallel if need be.
    There was one other incident that happened in the past 6 months, where anonymous users were inadvertently disallowed from editing talk pages (as ~~~~ was disallowed). That was quite bad, but it didn't show up immediately. It got maybe 10-15 hits over the course of several hours, so batch testing may not have been as telling.
    So I guess overall, it's just a matter of checking your work via the logs. That needs to be obligatory, as the issue I think I'm seeing is not incompetence but overconfidence with edit filter management — MusikAnimal talk 23:34, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
  3. Oppose. I'm all for prudent safeguards but, I don't believe this'd add much. We already point out in the lead and user right sections to exercise care when making adjustments as small mistakes can have a large impact. The interface also already has the syntax check tool to run on an inputted or existing filter's regex. This requirement would mean bloating the change logs/EFM activity levels to at least three entries for every change to these filters. (Incidentally, I wondered if the word "warn" was intended for the proposal rather than "throttle".) –87.115.76.251 (talk) 00:43, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
  4. Oppose this is the wrong way to do it. A better way is to make a test filter (sandbox) and use that for testing the modification.
    All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 18:21, 1 February 2016 (UTC).

Discussion of edit filter guideline modification

Not sure about requiring it to be "disabled" first, for example a parallel filter could be set to log only with the new change as a means of testing. — xaosflux Talk 19:43, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
Good point. I'd expect that most filter changes will be done without creating a test filter though, and this guideline change only says this 'should' be the case; it doesn't prohibit doing what you suggest, and no one's going to chase anyone down for doing it. Sam Walton (talk) 19:48, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
We don't need that bit about disabling, all we need to say is that the change is tested first. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:28, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
That's fair, I think I would still support the wording being that changes should normally be tested in some fashion, whether through a parallel filter, disabling first, or batch testing. Sam Walton (talk) 17:44, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
To the closer: It looks like there is/will be a stronger consensus here for this but with a slight change in the wording; namely that changes should be tested rather than explicitly tested via disabling the filter. Sam Walton (talk) 11:47, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

RfC: Enabling the edit filter's block function

When the edit filter was enabled on the English Wikipedia, the ability for it to block an editor who trips a filter was left disabled (see $wgAbuseFilterAvailableActions here); there were some discussions about the option around then, and there were two discussions (1, 2) prior to this RfC.

Currently the strongest setting for an edit filter on the English Wikipedia is to disallow the edit, where a user is restricted from making an edit if it trips a filter set to disallow. For some LTA users - to give an example - this can then become a game of attempting to navigate around the filter's settings by making a stream of slightly tweaked edits. When the user works out what they have to do to avoid the filter, they'll likely soon be blocked, the filter will be amended to fix the loophole, and they'll move to a new IP and start the process again. It could be extremely beneficial in this example to have the filter set to block the user upon their first attempt at making an edit, such that they have to switch IP before making just their second edit attempt, slowing them down and adding an extra layer of difficulty to the process. This is just one example of where the block option could be useful; there are many filters (for examples see 666, 673, and 674) which successfully (with 100% accuracy) target users who are always eventually blocked by patrolling admins, where this would save administrator time.

For this to be enabled, it seems the following changes should be made to the abuse filter configuration for the English Wikipedia:

  • $wgAbuseFilterAvailableActions[] = 'block' - Enables the block function
  • $wgGroupPermissions['sysop']['abusefilter-modify-restricted'] = true; - Restricts enabling the block function or editing filters where the block action is enabled to administrator edit filter managers
  • $wgAbuseFilterBlockDuration = 'indefinite' - Sets the block length for registered users to indefinite
  • $wgAbuseFilterAnonBlockDuration = '31 hours' - Sets the block length for unregistered users to 31 hours
  • $wgAbuseFilterAvailableActions = array_diff( $wgAbuseFilterAvailableActions, array( 'blockautopromote' ) ); - Disables the 'remove autoconfirmed' option, which is currently a restricted action

Blocks would be made by User:Edit filter (as specified by MediaWiki:Abusefilter-blocker; the account should be created prior to the first block automatically) and, as can be seen on meta, a customisable block description can be set (MediaWiki:Abusefilter-blockreason, which can take a second parameter showing the filter number). Blocked users, in addition to any warnings that are set in the filter, see MediaWiki:Abusefilter-blocked-display upon being blocked, which is again customisable.

The guideline would also need a section on the use of the block function, for which I would propose the following:

"The blocking function is extremely powerful and so may only be enabled for a filter which has received no false positives for the past 30 days or last 100 hits, and should only be used on filters where editors tripping the filter are always currently blocked manually. At least 3 administrators must agree that these requirements have been met, in a public venue such as the edit filter noticeboard prior to the enabling of this option. As with disallowing edits, a public post that a filter is to have the block function enabled is required, and the administrators who enable the setting or alter a filter with the setting enabled are considered responsible for its actions."

Should the edit filter's block function be enabled with the changes above, and should the guideline be expanded as described?

Support enabling block function

  1. Support as proposer. I've long felt that this would be a very helpful feature to have, and am confident it will only affect users we want to block. Sam Walton (talk) 18:15, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
  2. Support. There are certain things that should never be added and which are reliable indicators of users or IPs to block. I doubt we would want to use it much but there will be times when it comes in handy. I am thinking of my own proposal here where it is possible to define strings that have no legitimate use and are reliable indicators of the abuse we wish to stop. Coupled with review by a human to weed out any false positives then I think this is safe and desirable. --DanielRigal (talk) 18:24, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
  3. Support enabling with settings proposed, no opinion on the guideline The "use case" is laid out well and I trust the current EFMs with handling such a tool. I do have a caveat with the guideline which I'll note below.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 18:30, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
  4. Support As I said in the discussions leading up to this RfC, I think adding blocking functionality to the toolset will work wonders toward combating long-term abuse. This will be a major deterrent for persistent sockpuppetry. With it I think we'll see many abusers give up, which means we can disable those filters, and just overall stop wasting our time chasing them down over and over again. The proposed precautions I think will eliminate major concerns. Our regular edit filter managers are quite good and I trust blocks will only be used where appropriate — MusikAnimal talk 18:48, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
  5. Support. I have some concerns (raised below) but in general I feel that this is a good idea. Etamni | ✉ | ✓  19:13, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
  6. Support. In practice, blocking filters should be rare and focused on persistent vandals, but I do think having the option would be useful. Dragons flight (talk) 20:53, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
  7. Support This will help control some kinds of trouble. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:21, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
  8. Support May be useful, but should be used with extreme care. --Dirk Beetstra T C 12:15, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
  9. Support as above. Sounds like a great idea - will save lots of time as well. SQLQuery me! 00:33, 15 January 2016 (UTC)
  10. Support, though I expect this won't now pass. Stifle (talk) 09:17, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Oppose enabling block function

  1. Oppose - I can not support the use of non-human blocking. There are far too many exceptions to rules that "code" can not account for. — Ched :  ?  19:41, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
    Are you aware we have bot blocking already on enwiki? — xaosflux Talk 19:44, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
    No I was not - but I'm not surprised. The fact that it exists does not however, change my view on whether it's proper or not. But thanks for the info. — Ched :  ?  19:47, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
  2. Oppose for the same reason as Ched. I'm aware of the blocking bots, and aside from blocking open proxies, I'd still prefer block to be one of the few features in human hands. Blocks need to be able to be explained or defended by the person that made them if needed. Keegan (talk) 19:58, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
    Per the proposal, admins contributing to the filter are fully responsible for any resulting blocks. A "mistake" with the filter is not an excuse for an inappropriate block, and if the guideline is followed, mistakes should not happen — MusikAnimal talk 20:58, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
    Of course they shouldn't happen, but they can happen. With a project this large and storied, our track record has shown that pretty well :) I'd rather a person make that mistake, 'tis all. Keegan (talk) 06:38, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
  3. Oppose per Ched and Keegan. I also have great doubts that our automated processes are faux-intelligent enough to distinguish between an editor "attempting to navigate around the filter's settings by making a stream of slightly tweaked edits" and a klutzy new editor making a good faith effort to make an edit they believe could be legitimate. The Big Bad Wolfowitz (aka Hullaballoo) (talk) 18:25, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
  4. Oppose Wikipedia explains nothing to new editors now. There is zero reason to create new and improved ways to run them off! (Unless, of course, that is the goal here?!) --MurderByDeletionism"bang!" 18:49, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
    @MurderByDeadcopy: Per the proposed filter guideline text, this would only be used on filters where there is a minute chance of false positives; the examples I gave have all been disallowing edits for over 6 months with exactly zero false positives. Sam Walton (talk) 11:56, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
    But . . . is 6 months enough time to comprehend Wikipedia's bureaucratic bloat? --MurderByDeletionism"bang!" 00:55, 21 January 2016 (UTC)
    @MurderByDeadcopy: What do you mean? Sam Walton (talk) 00:10, 23 January 2016 (UTC)
    New editors are not given any instruction here at all. New editors learn something only after they do something wrong. Half of all new editors never receive a "Welcome." New editors are never told that essays are not rules. So it is possible to edit on Wikipedia for years and not know about or even heard of certain rules. This is why I empathize so much for new editors since they, not only are oftentimes the only ones on Wikipedia who actually do assume good faith, but also get block for innocently going against some obtuse rule that nobody ever told them about! --MurderByDeletionism"bang!" 18:09, 23 January 2016 (UTC)
  5. Oppose. I believe humans need to be blocking accounts, because a specific individual needs to be accountable for doing so. I agree with HW, Keegan and Ched. There's a world of difference between automated blocks of known proxy IP addresses (for which we already get plenty of complaints, and because of which we needed to develop an account creation team), and blocking actual accounts. Risker (talk) 20:16, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
  6. Oppose per Risker (and transitively HW, Keegan and Ched). And especially MurderByDeletionsim. NE Ent 22:36, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
  7. Strong oppose - In a universe with perfect software writers, this might be worth enabling, but I haven't see perfect software writers around here, even on the payroll of the WMF. (Even with perfect software, I would prefer t human review. I certainly don't trust WMF developers, and don't know when I should trust volunteers to write perfect softare.) I won't trust a script to block people, and to require that they request unblock. That's just wrong. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:25, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
  8. Oppose The first example given is 666. For me this says "You may not view details of this filter because it is hidden from public view." The consequence would be people being blocked without the details being clear. The Kww case also indicated that there is inadequate oversight of edit filters and so their power should not be increased. Andrew D. (talk) 12:27, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
    If the exact rules were public, then it would be extremely easy for abusive users to sidestep them. This is part of the problem now - that they can work out what the rules are easily. SQLQuery me! 00:37, 15 January 2016 (UTC)
    @Andrew Davidson: Are you aware that since the Kww case we have introduced an entire new guideline, new noticeboard, and new mailing list to improve the oversight and use of the edit filter? Sam Walton (talk) 11:56, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
  9. Oppose: I've seen too many screwed-up automated processes (see: the endless problems with title blacklist false-positives) to trust this. --Carnildo (talk) 02:32, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
  10. Oppose mistakes happen all too frequently. We need an actual human being behind the block button. I know the proposal makes the filter creators responsible for all blocks, but what if they leave? What if they are on Wikibreak? Particularly for edit filters with some hidden behaviour, unblocks for very innocent false positives may become very tricky. Happy Squirrel (talk) 19:04, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
  11. Oppose I can not support the blocking of any account by an automated process. We need to have a human looking at the edits to see if they warrant blocking. -- GB fan 12:18, 13 January 2016 (UTC)
  12. Oppose I'm not ready for this yet, before a step this large is taken more oversight of the edit filter system is necessary. Kharkiv07 (T) 03:54, 14 January 2016 (UTC)
    @Kharkiv07: What aspects of the edit filter do you think need more oversight, and how could we achieve that? Sam Walton (talk) 00:13, 15 January 2016 (UTC)
  13. Oppose. I'm assuming that User:Edit filter is going to be set up as a bot. Bots malfunction sometimes. Can anyone else see the problem with this? Steel1943 (talk) 00:28, 15 January 2016 (UTC)
    No such user exists at this time. If I understand correctly, it would be a function of MediaWiki - the same function that already disallows the very same edits to the same users. SQLQuery me! 00:39, 15 January 2016 (UTC)
    From what I understand, User:Edit filter would be controlled by the extension and created upon the option being enabled here, not as a normal bot. Sam Walton (talk) 14:39, 15 January 2016 (UTC)
  14. I can see too many failure cases for this, even if it's a legitimate user reporting an edit in violation of such a filter, and getting slapped with an automatic block. Blocks should be imposed by a human admin willing to take responsibility for doing so, not an automated process. Seraphimblade Talk to me 18:36, 23 January 2016 (UTC)
  15. Oppose - given the number of false positives I keep finding on disallow filters, I think we aren't ready to start with block filters. I think the best solution is disallow filters, combined with Mr.Z-bot's functionality (which appears to be down right now). עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 06:15, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Discussion of enabling block function

As an addendum to the proposal, there has been discussion here about automatic pinging of administrators involved in an edit filter with the block function enabled that makes a block, though those discussions are ongoing and not vital to the above proposals. Sam Walton (talk) 18:13, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

  • Putting my caveat about the proposed guideline here: One needs to consider the damage from not enabling a block function, including users being driven away by the troublemaker that is the filter's target. The guideline is a bit too focused on "false positive" blocks, which are the most important consideration/limitation in any blocking filter but not the only one.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 18:30, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
    • @Jo-Jo Eumerus: I'm not sure I follow what you mean, could you elaborate? Sam Walton (talk) 19:17, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
      • The issue I have is that the guideline does not seem to consider the possibility at all that sometimes, blocking based on a filter with some false positives is necessary to avert bigger damage. I don't know if such things have ever happened here on Wikipedia but I have some offsite experience with aggressive vandals that engaged in wikistalking and attacking other editors to such a degree that some "collateral damage" was considered to be necessary to get rid of these vandals.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 19:25, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
  • (edit conflict) While I support the concept, I have a concern about auto-confirmed users possibly being blocked for an indefinite term for triggering one of the selected filters. Just because everyone who has previously triggered a particular filter is eventually blocked, doesn't mean that everyone who ever triggers it will be. Take, for instance, a LTA case where a user continuously attempts to insert his/her own (uncommon) name into articles. The filter is created and the edits get blocked. Now we start blocking those accounts. And someone with that identical name becomes an international news figure. Dozens or perhaps hundreds (or more?) editors see a news story, type the name into Wikipedia and see there is no article (or they see a previously deleted article). They then create an article and try to save it, only to become blocked for their effort. This needs to be considered -- I'd rather just block the edit than have legitimate editors indef-blocked by accident, even where there are procedures for appealing. Etamni | ✉ | ✓  19:30, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
    My recommendation would be (in this specific case) not to filter-block - it doesn't look like a serious case of disruption anyway. Beyond that, I already recommended that admins and editors regularly check the Abuse Filter block log to catch any false positives; perhaps this could mitigate/alleviate the issue.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 19:37, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
Filter 673 was one of the filters used above as an example, and was in mind as I wrote the above comment. There is no way to know, at the time a filter is created, how common usage of the filtered term might change in the future. To indef-block auto-confirmed users for accidentally hitting such a filter is problematic to me. Other than that possibility, I'm fine with turning on the blocking options. Etamni | ✉ | ✓  20:13, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
We do need monitoring of the filters to see what happens. Unblocks should be able to happen in under 31 hours, which could be the time otherwise selected for IPs. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 23:57, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
Generally speaking, if you block a user too early int heir career, they're probably gone by the time the unblock happens. Adam Cuerden (talk) 19:07, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Question Err, hypothetically, what happens if this tool is enabled and someone goes full rouge? HiDrNick! 15:19, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
    • Approximately the same amount of damage as can be done currently with the administrator toolset. Sam Walton (talk) 15:43, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
      • But much faster and more efficiently. --Carnildo (talk) 01:46, 13 January 2016 (UTC)
        • Not necessarily. If an admin wanted to cause damage to the encyclopedia they could do just as much without the edit filter's block function. At any rate, this seems like a line of argument that could be used to remove any of the administrator capabilities. Sam Walton (talk) 11:51, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Should raster graphic be maintained when a vector graphic exists?

Is there a policy regarding what should be done with a raster graphic when it is no longer used on any page because a vector graphic had been made to replace it? Is the raster graphic saved for posterity and for future use even when the vector graphic is the superior option? Evan.oltmanns (talk) 13:33, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

Is the file housed here at Wikipedia or is it over at Wikimedia Commons? Because each site has it's own policies for image hosting, though images in use at Wikipedia may be housed at either location. WP:CSD#F1 indicates that lower-quality redundant images at Wikipedia may be deleted through the speedy deletion process. There is also the Wikipedia:Files for discussion process where deletion of such images can be discussed. I have no idea what Commons policy on this is; it may be different. --Jayron32 16:34, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
It also depends on the licensing (a policy concern). Regarding deletion outcomes on en.wp and commons, high quality rasters are sometimes kept because they might be useful/used internally for creating other derivatives, or because they've been around a long time and are popular at off-wiki sites (we're not just here for ourselves:), or because the layout/color/etc choices are slightly different that make it fit a different context. That is, if it's useful but not currently used, that might suffice to keep it. If you have a specific example in mind, let us know and maybe someone can give some informal feedback rather than firing up a formal deletion-discussion process. DMacks (talk) 13:57, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
@DMacks: The graphics in question are File:Navy Cross ribbon.svg and File:NavCrossRib.gif (I nominated for deletion). I am starting a project to improve such graphics and it seems that there will be many cases of this as I work my way through the list. Evan.oltmanns (talk) 14:38, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
For those playing along at home, at least this example is on commons, so I'll answer wearing my "commons" hat... A small gif that has been replaced by a public-domain svg is a pretty clear-cut "delete" on commons (fails commons:COM:SCOPE, the reasons I mentioned above). From a process perspective, might be easier to replace a bunch of them and then do a bulk DR rather than separate DR for each one. That's a pretty common approach for some other sets of icon/logo-like files, leading to deletion without much ado, lately. DMacks (talk) 21:43, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
Forgot to mention: "thanks for doing this push for upgraded quality!" DMacks (talk) 21:44, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
WP:CSD#F1 indicates that lower-quality redundant images at Wikipedia may be deleted through the speedy deletion process.
That criterion "applies to unused duplicates or lower-quality/resolution copies of another Wikipedia file having the same file format" (emphasis added). It never applies to the type of situation cited (involving two different file formats).
CSD F5 applies when a non-free vector graphic replaces all transclusions of a non-free raster graphic, leaving the latter orphaned for more than seven days. In that case, however, the vector/raster distinction isn't directly relevant. —David Levy 23:01, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
If the raster image is at Commons and has one of the usual licenses, it doesn't make sense to delete it because a vector version is also there. Each of the two has its own strengths and appropriate uses beyond Wikipedia.—Anne Delong (talk) 00:22, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
Feel free to indicate your use-case or other "keep" rationale at the discussion on commons for the file mentioned (here we are only having a metadiscussion that has no impact on the actual COM:DR process). DMacks (talk) 02:17, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
What can be said about the fact that selecting a resolution for a SVG actually renders it as a PNG? For those who might not know what I'm saying, if you look at the SVG page on commons and select one of the resolutions, you are presented with a PNG version instead of just a "magnified" vector graphic. Evan.oltmanns (talk) 03:41, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
The PNG that is generated from the SVG is often very far from optimised. For example, a grey-scale image is still rendered as full RGB, making it around three times larger than an optimised palleted or grey-scale PNG for no benefit. In the case of a large image, that can be a quite large increase in file size, sometimes dwarfing the number of bytes of the rest of the article in which it appears. If we wish to ensure that we make our articles accessible to readers with low bandwidth or expensive internet connections, there is a good argument for uploading and using an optimised PNG at the size required for the article directly, rather than relying on the Wikimedia software to re-render a SVG. --RexxS (talk) 21:22, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

Guideline duplication (the potential for conflict)

See ongoing discussion at Wikipedia talk:Article titles#Question about various "naming conventions" pages.

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.

I would like to raise the following guideline pages for discussion and community consensus:

What really concerns me is that these two guidelines cover essentially the same ground. Having two guidelines address the same issues is never a good idea... the potential for conflict is high. So... what should we do? Merge the NC page with its MOS counterpart? Depreciate one in favor of the other (if so, which one)? Something else? Please discuss. Blueboar (talk) 18:35, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

The MoS page does not deal with article titles, whereas the NCCAPS page deals only with article titles. This division of content has always existed, which is why we have a WP:MOS and the WP:AT policy. Regardless, this discussion is a duplicate of one already occurring, so I will close it and provide a link to that one. RGloucester — ☎ 19:09, 7 February 2016 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
No problem discussing this at WT:AT... those who would have responded here are encouraged to go there and respond. Blueboar (talk) 20:19, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

Proposal for the film manual of style

Hi I've been trying to get a draft going to implement a change in wording of the production section in the film:MOS for awhile now. I put up a Request for Comment a couple days ago but so far only two people have commented on it. I would be interested in if you all would take a look and vote. The discussion can be found here Thank You. --Deathawk (talk) 05:43, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

Userspace drafts that later come into mainspace

What should be done with userspace drafts that later (or con-currently) exist in mainspace? According to my reading of WP:UP#COPIES, they should be deleted if they aren't merged (as which point a redirect/history merge is sufficient). There's a number of discussions at WP:MFD going on where the argument is, regarding users who either created their own version of drafts that later came into mainspace or simply copied mainspace articles for their personal use, that they should be redirected to the mainspace one so that if the editor returns, they can still see a contribution and the redirect to the mainspace version rather than MFD and deletion. I'm opposed to that because (a) there's no CSD criteria for this so the editor is informed on their talk page about the MFD discussion which provides an actual explanation of what happened rather than them possibly scrolling through their contributions and (b) for editors that are creating their own versions of pages, this just adds to the amount of things to watch over because those editors could return simply to restore their POV version. I used to handle this with the longevity articles where we found dozens of people's personal opinion pages of List of oldest people and the like and if you tried blanking or redirecting those, it would just be restored and continued on until they were finally deleted. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 22:39, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

I thought you suggested that we discuss this at WT:UP because there were already so many discussions?
WP:UP#COPIES does not refer to early drafts that predate later better mainspace articles. Redundant notes in userspace are best left alone. There are no firm boundaries to when userspace notes are useful, redundant, or useless, and community analysis to decide is a waste of volunteer time. Deferring to nominators without review is very dangerous, as many deletion nominators are not very discerning. Old notes are best left alone, or if there is a slightest of issue just blanked (with a polite explanatory edit summary) without telling the whole community about them.
Where UP:#COPIES refers to material copied to userspace, such as for short term sandboxing before making higher quality edits in mainspace, when these pages become old, they should be speediable. I thought we were agreeing on proposing a new CSD#U criterion? Copies of mainspace content that are not soon deleted quickly become attribution hazards, as the content may be edited in two places in parallel. Also, the copied material is usually copied without good practice attribution.
Cases of "POV versions" are very rarely seen at MfD. If there is any evidence of editor behavioral problem leading to bad content even in userspace, do take it to MfD. This is a good use of MfD.
I think you exaggerate the frequency of old editors returning to revert blanking or redirecting of very old and redundant drafts. Do please provide examples. I think you underestimate the rudeness to old returning editors when they find their userpages perfunctorily deleted. I think you also underestimate the volunteer cost of asking community review of so many old and harmless things. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:04, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

Should we move full-length movies from article space to Commons?

See also: User talk:Jimbo Wales § Debbie Does Dallas

Something that's occurred to me during discussions at Talk:Debbie Does Dallas (because of an ANI report): Why are we hosting full-length public domain movies in some articles when we have Wikimedia Commons for that and when WP:NOTREPOSITORY is a policy? It is, in effect, akin to hosting a whole book. I can start to see the argument "but the book takes up more article space than a windowed movie," but I'm pretty sure we have the capacity to do a windowed streaming book (akin to archive.org or plenty of other sites, if perhaps after a update). It's really not a technical issue (the code is out there), but a matter of focus. You don't need the whole movie to identify the movie, just a description, and if possible select stills or hopefully the trailer.

I'm not so much proposing that any new policy, but seeing what the consensus is on whether WP:NOTREPOSITORY means that we should replace full-length films from articles with a link to their location on Wikimedia Commons, and if not why. Such an arrangement could be useful for users with precarious bandwidth situations, like touch screen phones with limited data plans (no accidentally tapping the movie while scrolling and losing your internet for the rest of the month). Ian.thomson (talk) 16:02, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

  • I assume you mean "include video files" rather than "host"? We can't "host" any kind of video in article namespace, only in the File: namespace.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 16:09, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
Yes, I meant "showing the videos in the article," without regards to where the file is actually stored. Ian.thomson (talk) 16:41, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
  • In the general case (regardless of the content of the film as long as it has fallen into the PD or available under proper license terms), this is arguably what should be at Wikisource, as we would do for PD text information. en.wiki would use snippets and can interlink to Wikisource for the film in full. Now, Wikisource would probably have Commons be the one to host the full file, but I don't know if that's appropriate or not; this is almost where we'd want a resource like Archive.org , which prides itself on the dissemination of full, public-domain material, for that. I would say that en.wiki should avoid including full movies (anything more than a few minutes) in articles and instead provide links for full material, though proper use of short clips would be appropriately in scope to support the text. --MASEM (t) 16:14, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
  • The files are not in article space. The files are on Commons (whether they are embedded in the artciles or not). If a user inadvertently starts the movie playing, they can easily stop it or leave the page. Right Hand Drive (talk) 16:34, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
Why would movies be exempt from WP:NOTREPOSITORY? Ian.thomson (talk) 16:39, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
Because there is nothing in that applies here? Perhaps you can explain which part of WP:NOTREPOSITORY is dircetly relevant. Bear in mind that the files are not in article space. Right Hand Drive (talk) 16:46, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
Wow, you're really good at focusing on stuff you've read into what I said instead of what I actually said. We do not include source documents in other articles, and you've provided no explanation for why movies should be treated any differently than any other source document. Ian.thomson (talk) 16:49, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
If you could elborate on what part of that policy section applies to the situation at hand, I will consider your points. Right Hand Drive (talk) 16:55, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
What Ian.thomson is getting at is that, if we took the case of a number of free-license/PD images that are all at Commons all relating to the same topic, it would be a violation of NOTREPOSITORY to stick them all in a gallery on a WP article page. A handful, yes, plus a link to the Commons category to help the reader find more, but we'd not want to be the photo album. In the same manner, judicious use of one or two snippets or frames from a full film would be better than directly inserting the full film clip, though we'd still link the full clip somewhere. --MASEM (t) 16:56, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
As I have repeatedly explained to Ian.thompson is that there is no difference between embedding a "snippet" and embedding the entire movie. Unless and until the reader chooses to play the movie, all they see is a single frame. And in this case, no one is suggesting that there is a gallery of anything, just a single embedded movie. Right Hand Drive (talk) 17:03, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
Technically you are correct, there is no difference practically between embedding a snippet and embedding the feature. But we're talking from more presentation and relevance context. Just because one can include the entire movie doesn't mean that helps the reader if our article is discussing a specific scene. Instead, we should embed the clip of that scene so that the reader doesn't have to spend time searching for that scene. We can still provide the link to the full movie in the article's endnotes, but there's little practical use for our readers to embedded an entire movie. Its the same logic with the gallery example. --MASEM (t) 17:16, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
Yes, if we were talking about a specific case of an article discussing a single scene, it would be helpful to have a clip of that scene rather than the whole film. That is not what we are talking about. In this case, we are talking about an overview article on a movie. It might be useful to clarify whether thsi discussion would also apply to clips or just full movies. Right Hand Drive (talk) 17:24, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
Including the full movie is still distracting if you aren't speaking to any specific part of it but just including it. We don't for example include all of the text of PD novels on articles about those novels, but do include relative snippets and the link to either Wikisource or Project Guntenburg. Same with audio recordings in the PD. That should be the same here as we are an encyclopedia, not a content repository, but noting other Wikimedia sister sites are meant as content repositories. --MASEM (t) 17:32, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
Audio: We do include PD audio recordings, and I greatly enjoyed listening to Goldberg Variations and The Well-Tempered Clavier whilst reading about them. I don't think audio is a good comparison.
Distraction: I understand the nuance you're intending (that of an abundance of material, which ends up sidetracking or diverting the attention of the reader), but the ambiguity of the word makes it problematic (a thumbnail for a video could also be considered less distracting than an animated gif, if the thumbnail doesn't contain shocking material).
Repository: A good example is a PDF. It is stored at the Commons repository, but it might be embedded in a Wikipedia article, e.g. United Airlines Flight 175#Calls. We embed material when relevant, with a boundary somewhat based on quantity (which I think is generally related to extensive image galleries, which are a problem for page-layout and section-over-emphasis reasons).
Non-controversial video: For The General (1926 film), and One Week (1920 film), and hundreds of other great articles with Public Domain (long and short) video content, we need a solution that is better than a plain {{Commons}} box. Most readers won't realize that a full film is available behind that link, and will find Wikipedia less useful and less enticing as a result.
Controversial video: I don't have a good suggestion for how to handle these, beyond following Wikipedia:Offensive material and linked policies/guidelines, and improving those as necessary. I fear that the specific article/content used at the start in this thread, is colouring the input, and could end up damaging how we handle non-controversial content. HTH. Quiddity (talk) 20:40, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
As a note, the UA175 report is not embedded; you have to click to get to the full readable version, with only the front image embedded in the article. Further, that file is stored at Commons. Further, that report is still a link in the EL. So really, there's no issue with repository there. --MASEM (t) 23:10, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
  • In the same way that still images are helpful to the reader, movies are helpful to the reader. If we have an article on a movie which is in the public domain and available on Commons, it is desireable to embed the movie right in the article. The reader may or may not wish to play the movie, but that choice is left to them. Making the reader go to a different site (Commons) to see the movie is both an unecessary step for the reader but also takes them away from Wikipedia. This is not a god thing. Right Hand Drive (talk) 17:01, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
Embeded films are a distraction; why would we want to encourage our readers to deviate away from the very pages which we spend so much of our time on? I suggest we stick to encyclopedia stuff and let YouTube deal with the videos. CassiantoTalk 18:14, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
Being helpful to the reader is not the same as providing encyclopedic coverage. The goal on Wikipedia is to provide encyclopedic coverage via secondary sources. Primary sources—which the film is—are only generally relied on up to the point that encyclopedic coverage depends on them. Obviously if we have an article about a particular work and are in a position to provide free direct access to the work then it is helpful to link to it, and that is precisely what the "external links" section is for. Wikipedia's own guidelines instructs that we should provide the link in the external links section, stating "An article about a book, a musical score, or some other media should link to a site hosting a legally distributed copy of the work". Betty Logan (talk) 20:41, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
If we have an article about a work of visual art, we almost always include an image in the article, don't we? Are you suggesting that we should abandon this practice, remove the images, and provide links instead? Right Hand Drive (talk) 22:59, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
It's about how much information you are giving the reader. An entirety of a single work of art is very easy to take in as an embedded image; it's easy to reference in the text to highlight specific areas to the reader to help their understanding. With larger works, like books or films, it's far too much information to throw at the level of the article, though as an EL for those interested, they can view it as needed. We want them to focus on the sections that have received attention by secondary sources and that's best done not by giving them the entire work but the appropriate snippets. --MASEM (t) 23:07, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
  • I don't see how WP:NOTREPOSITORY compels us to remove useful and directly relevant video files. They are hosted on Commons, they can be added to articles unobtrusively, and they compliment our mission of the distribution of free knowledge. Per Quiddity, we can't hide them behind a Commons link and expect people to know they are there, or expect that merely offering a link is fulfilling our mission. Gamaliel (talk) 21:30, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
Have you actually seen the link at Debbie_Does_Dallas#External_links? "Full film available at Wikimedia Commons" isn't exactly hiding the link and nobody has suggested we remove that. This is what people are objecting to. Betty Logan (talk) 21:57, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
I know what people are objecting to, but I don't think we should strip all movies out of the encyclopedia on dubious grounds on the basis of objections in a single article. Develop a consensus for a rule based on WP:ASTONISH for cases like these if you want. Gamaliel (talk) 22:31, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
A consensus was developed for this particular case at Talk:Debbie_Does_Dallas#Censorship_of_article. Maybe those who wish to challenge the existing consensus should file an RFC or something rather than simply edit-warring? Betty Logan (talk) 23:05, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
  • I think both the video and link should be posted for the DDD page. The video is fitting not only as source but also how and why it fell into public domain. The link goes to a page that offers more options to view or download for example. This should also apply at similar pages where the video has more than one reason to be posted such as court action and history, again like the DDD story/video. ContentEditman (talk) 22:03, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
  • As an aside, the supposed source used in the article for DDD being in the public domain actually says that VCX still claims copyright over it and is suing 113 anonymous pirates for infringing its copyright on Debbie Does Dallas by sharing the film on BitTorrent, and that it will take a further court case to determine its public domain status. Just saying. ‑ Iridescent 22:13, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
  • It seems like this is an issue for a Commons deletion discussion then. Gamaliel (talk) 22:24, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
VCX may own the copyright in countries where it is still under copyright and are perfectly within their rights to sue anybody illegally distributing film in those cases, but there is no doubt about its public domain status in the United States since a judge ruled that it was in the public domain. To assert their copyright claim in the US they would surely have to appeal that decision. Betty Logan (talk) 23:05, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
VCX were certainly still suing people in the US for copyright infringement well over two decades over the 1987 "thrust the film irretrievably into the public domain" ruling. IANAL but this is patently not a clear-cut case. ‑ Iridescent 23:37, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
In what way is it not clear cut? There is a court ruling that the film is in the US public domain. For the film to not be in the US public domain would require a fresh ruling. That is law 101. If you read VCX's court filing that is linked in the article they are suing people who are torrenting the film precisely because it is a worldwide distribution mechanism i.e. the illegal distribution of the film in territories where the film is under copyright is an integral part of the distribution network. Where it is not clrea-cut is Deep Throat: that film is more than likely in the US public domain too, but as yet there has been no courting ruling to establish it. Betty Logan (talk) 23:53, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
It's a lower court ruling; in fact, a ruling of the lowest level of courts that could hear the case. It's not actually binding outside of the court district in which it's applied; in this case, Eastern Michigan, or pushing harder, the Sixth Circuit. Sixth Circuit decisions are notorious for being overturned by the US Supreme Court. The Detroit decision isn't binding on the entire US, let alone anywhere else. Risker (talk) 04:43, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
This is a pretty straightforward case: both Deep Throat and Debbie Does Dallas were released without copyright notices, and both failed to address the problem within five years as required by copyright law. This would usually be enough for us to host the files on Commons. In addition to that though, the 1987 case was brought against VCX by a producer of DDD because they refused to pay him royalties: VCX's defence was that it was in the public domain in the US, and the judge ruled in their favor. This isn't a controversial ruling and I doubt you will find any legal opinion that will come to the conclusion that the film is not in the US public domain. The fact that VCX talks a lot about suing is neither here nor there. Betty Logan (talk) 06:20, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
The most obvious concern would be a Stewart v. Abend type ruling. If the films contain any say non original music or other copyrightable elements you would also need to track down the copyright on those as well.©Geni (talk) 02:27, 13 February 2016 (UTC)
  • To take a cleaner example, A Trip to the Moon is in the PD due to age, no question on that. The article uses 2 video clips of versions of that film, primarily to point out differences, and does have plenty of screencaps (all at commons) to help enunciate the encyclopedic nature of the text, and finally it includes a link to the movie at the Internet Archive (though it does look like there's full versions too at Commons). As such, there is no need to include an embedded version of the full film as it does not directly aid in the encyclopedic understanding of the importance of the film and its legacy. (eg I have never read War and Peace but I can read our article on it to have an understanding of why it is such a critical classical work) The link to the full video is a convenience link to help those who want to see it in full find a way to do so. This is an example that we should be following for any type of article about a work that is in the PD/CC-BY, regardless of it being text, audio, or visual. This is the importance of NOTREPOSITORY here. --MASEM (t) 22:58, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
I think you will find that there are not one but three complete versions of the movie embedded in that article (black and white, colorized, and a remake). If we follow this article as the example, we would embed the full movie in Debbie Does Dallas. Right Hand Drive (talk) 23:17, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
I was not considering the remake clip, but you are right they are otherwise full versions of the film; the captions suggested they were clips. And knowing that, I would argue that the full versions aren't helping there. The still images as given of the original and recolored (at the same scene otherwise) show the difference that is encyclopedic, and the full movies are more distraction and diffusing the information. --MASEM (t) 23:39, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
  • NOTREPOSITORY is a truly ridiculous argument for one to make to try and remove a single file. Sorry Ian, but your interpretation would offer carte blanche for someone to remove ANY file they dislike - be it an image, an animated gif, a short audio clip or a full-length movie. All should be treated equally simply as a file, and their merit judged exclusively on encyclopedic value. Even though I think you are well meaning in this case, I must categorically oppose your interpretation of this subsection of the WP:NOT policy. I also take issue with a separate argument made by others stating there is a (local) consensus to use only a link. My read of that debate is that the consensus was to use at least a link. From my POV, embedding the full file would be just as much in compliance as using an EL would be. Now, that being said, the fact that we can embed the entire video is not itself an argument that we should. Given we have the entire source available to us, we can freely use screenshots to convey important aspects of the film that are relevant to the article prose. That is something I would encourage an editor to consider, as the current offering of no images from the film is jarring, given how decidedly unusual that is when we have PD source material to work with. In that vein, if our options are the full video or nothing, I will favour the full video. Resolute 00:19, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
    • I think this actually is more along my lines of thinking, though I would still justify it under NOTREPOSITORY. With inline media in prose, we don't want just to drop pretty pictures or more information than what helps the reader connect to the topic, even if it is freely usable in the PD. A screenshot may be much more poignant than entire movie in context of the text it is presented with. We should still provide a link, somewhere to the full PD work, but we should be careful of what's put into running prose. --MASEM (t) 00:46, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
  • Porn films should not be hosted on Wikipedia article space. Wikipedia is not a porn site and should not be hosting porn films. They can stay on Commons if they need to stay somewhere. By the way, this discussion regarding Debbie Does Dallas obviously needs a site-wide RfC, not a non-binding discussion with a misleading thread title hidden away on the Village pump. Please notify me on my talk page when such an RfC is begun. Softlavender (talk) 00:42, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
  • "Per the Foundation, controversial images should follow the principle of 'least astonishment' " WP:GRATUITOUS. I don't see any reason to limit films or videos or any other media beyond this. Is text really always preferred for an encyclopedia?
I'll note that WP:GRATUITOUS has gone against me in a couple of cases. On postcards, I've inserted a French postcard in the article and people objected. Also at Batting (baseball), the following classic was removed File:Animation of top row of Plate 279, Baseball; batting (4057432207) faster.gif. If those can be removed, I'd think DDD would likely also be removed. Smallbones(smalltalk) 01:19, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
I hope you can see why people objected in the cases you mention. I also hope that you can see why an article about a pornographic movie is different from an article about batting. Readers looking at an article about a pornographic movie should not be astonished to see pornography. Right Hand Drive (talk) 04:28, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
In the interests of transparency, Right Hand Drive (talk · contribs) was created on 14 September 2015 and has a total of 31 edits, all concerned with adding the film to the article. ContentEditman (talk · contribs) was created on 4 February 2016 and has a total of 5 edits, all supporting adding the film. Johnuniq (talk) 04:41, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
Yes and from September 14 until yesterday, there was no issue with the movie being embedded in the article. Incidentally, I'm told that this discussion is not about Debbie Does Dallas, but about a general issue with embedding movies in articles. This discussion has nothing to do with any concerns about the content of that specific movie. Apparently. Right Hand Drive (talk) 05:00, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
Well, then if we discount the recent SPAs, we don't have much a consensus to host the film or any porn film on WP, even in the non-binding non-public non-RfC threads with misleading titles. Softlavender (talk) 05:20, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
  • I'm sure a lot of things got mixed up here in an unhealthy way:
    1. First the DDD movie is hosted at Commons no matter how, thus "moving" the full-length movie from article space to Commons (as the title of this discussion section suggests) is utter nonsense. It's only what kind of clickable link is used: one that takes you from the mainspace page to a page on a sister project in order to view the movie, or one that displays a thumbnail (and would take you to another page depending on browser functionality). Basicly it is about whether or not a thumbnail is displayed in mainspace.
    2. Second "without shoving porn in readers' faces" (an argument used in the discussion at Talk:Debbie Does Dallas#Link to full film on Commons) is not helped by the WP:NOTREPOSITORY reasonings that recommend to only show snippets of key scenes, so for instance (from the 7th paragraph of Debbie Does Dallas#Plot) "Lisa offers Tony "anything" and she begins to fellate him, then Tammy joins in, and he ejaculates on Tammy's breasts." would reasonably be such snippet illustrating a key scene. No, WP:NOTREPOSITORY is not the way to go for the "without shoving porn in readers' faces" argument.
    3. In fact the WP:NOTREPOSITORY policy and guidance is quite unrelated to this discussion: in both options the file is hosted at Commons; in both options there is a single link to the file.
In general I'd rather support to have a "thumbnail" link in this instance, like for instance we do the {{listen}} link at the start of the Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565#Structure section, or the multi-page PDF (containing the entire primary source) as second media file in The Well-Tempered Clavier#Reception.
That being said, I think the Debbie Does Dallas article (the text content of the article) needs some work: for instance, one of the most remarkable "reception" topics of the film is about how it got in the public domain somewhat over a decade after its release: the info on that is rather sparse. --Francis Schonken (talk) 06:54, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
Bear in mind that this discussion is thoeretically about removing all full length movies from
  • Comment have to agree with Francis Schonken that this whole discussion is very confusing. I already pointed out in the ANI thread before this discussion started that AFAIK no one is suggesting we host it here on en.wikipedia. Amongst other things, there is no reason to when it's on commons. I guess it's possible there may be a porn movie which can't be hosted on commons due to not being public domain in the country of origin but which can be hosted here due to being public domain in the US and then we will have to debate whether to host such movies, but I don't think this is what people are talking about here. And has been pointed out by multiple people even if we do host one here, it's literally impossible with the current software to host a porn movie in article space, it will be hosted in file space. What seems to be most disputed is whether to embed the movie which is hosted at commons in article space. If that's what people care about, it would be good if they are clear that;s what they are opposed to. If people are opposed to even a link to the porn movie on commons then this is another thing and again people should be clear on that. If people feel that way but are fine with linking to it on somewhere besides commons (or conversely don't want any links), they should be clear on that as well. Nil Einne (talk) 07:17, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
I think some of the terminology is getting mixed up. Certainly the debate at DDD is strictly about whether the film is embedded in the article or just linked to. Either way the film is still hosted at Commons, and people are confusing embedding with hosting. Since nobody is suggesting we physically host the file over here I think we can assume that people mean "embed" when they write "host". Betty Logan (talk) 10:22, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
Yes, it should be pretty obvious that it doesn't make a damn bit of difference where the actual file is located, just where it displays. Ian.thomson (talk) 10:32, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
Actually for a lot of stuff it does. In fact, it was already pointed in the previous discussions that depending precisely on any filtering software, the software may or may not stop such movies being displayed if they limit all commons content. (To give an example outside wikipedia, if I embed a Youtube or whatever video on a website I run, and someone asks me to take it down I'll probably stop embedding or linking to it. However unless I uploaded it to Youtube, I have no way to take it down. In fact, if I lived in the US I might be willing to just tell the person to deal with Youtube and otherwise ignore the request.)

Anyway I think Betty Logan has further proven my point. It was clear from the start that the issue was about embedding vs link vs whether commons should host such films at all (which ultimately we have no influence over here on wikipedia) vs whether wikipedia should host such films (as mentioned, in most cases they will be hosted in commons but you can come up with scenarios where would be allowed to host them but commons policy would forbid them copyright related reasons and we could decide not to host them because they are pornographic films whatever commons decides to do).

For some reason, despite this being clear, people keep talking about hosting films in article space which is literally impossible and very confusing. Unfortunately this confusion over what people are referring to risks seriously damaging this RFC (because it isn't clear precisely what people want to stop), despite the fact to repeat for one more time, it should have been clear before it started since multiple people had already pointed it out the issue was never about hosting films in article space. Most people who are talking about hosting in article space probably mean they are opposed to embedding the movie in article space, but it's difficult to be sure, perhaps they meant they don't want commons to host such movies at all (despite us not having an influence over that) or perhaps they meant they don't want wikipedia to host such movies. Probably they're fine with linking to the commons movie but this isn't totally clear either.

And it isn't just "hosting" either. Just as bad are discussions about "including". At least showing seems to imply people are referring to embedding (although in the absence of the word "whole" or something similar it's also confusing since showing could also refer to simply showing clips or screenshots, you can't actually show the whole movie in an article you can simply embed it and people can play it). Including could mean a person is opposed to embedding the movie, or it could mean the person is opposed to linking to the movies on commons (or probably anywhere else).

Note that my original statement wasn't made in isolation, I've read comments suggesting some people don't want us to link to such movies on commons. In some cases a careful reading of what the person has said may enable any closer to understand what they want to do but I wouldn't be sure about all cases. This is why clarity on what you are referring to is always helpful, particularly when there are simple and accurate ways to refer to precisely what you want.

Ultimately unless people are clear on precisely what they want and don't want to do, this discussion isn't going anywhere useful. And I'm sorry for the long post but I don't see any way to make this clearer since this is the third time I've posted about it. (And as said, one time was before this thread had started.)

Nil Einne (talk) 17:11, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

  • This discussion is a hopeless jumble of misunderstandings of policy and technical details. It has predictably become a proxy war over the Debbe Does Dallas movie. Can I suggest that it be closed and the question reformulated sensibly (and without regard to pornographic movies)? Right Hand Drive (talk) 15:26, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
  • I agree this is nonsense. Having a picture display in an article doesn't mean the picture has been copied to Wikipedia! I agree we should close this -- and suggest that readers make their opinions about censorship heard at the Talk:Debbie Does Dallas. Wnt (talk) 19:24, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
    • I have no comment specifically on the censorship here (though I have my own ideas on how that should be handled in the specific case) but there is a separate idea that for any PD work of appreciable length (more than a minute or so) that is hosted on either en.wiki or commons, do we embed the work fully in the article, or do we embed relevant clips/sections and provide links to the full work as ELs? There are both technical and content reasons to consider here, separate from what the actual nature of the work is. That's a policy level discussion that should be had. --MASEM (t) 20:17, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
@Masem: I don't see why or how to split such works into featured clips. I mean, to present one part as more important than the rest is in spirit a sort of original research; the dubious advantage it gives of flipping the reader directly to the good part is more than counteracted by the inconvenience of getting the rest. In this case, of course, featuring a clip of just "the good parts" would be, IMHO, abusing the censorship lobby a bit more than they properly deserve. Even if we want to direct readers to the good parts, it would better be done by text in the caption saying where they are in hours/minutes. If there is one single image (or a few) that has attracted sourced commentary, then that image of course can be included as a separate file in the article, independent of the video. Wnt (talk) 02:19, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
It's not OR to use clips or screenshots that are directly the subject of discussion in the article itself. For example, I gave the example of "A Voyager to the Moon" , and here, it would make sense to use a representative shot of the infamous "face on the moon", and shots comparing the original black-and-white to the colorized version, all the subject of discussion, but you dont need the entire film. If there is no specific discussion of any scene or the like, that's a good sign that we actually don't need to show any clips from the movie in the article, though screenshots (free) to help make the article look visually interesting is useful. It's free media so we absolutely don't have to be as careful as NFCC would require, but the same thought and considerations should be made before adding video/audio if it is really helping. We have to remember that the reader does not always have access to video or audio players, but image viewers are near-enough universal to be reliable. --MASEM (t) 02:30, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
@Masem: I looked up this example, and believe this edit to be beneficial. Readers of an article about an old movie probably want to know, early and definitively, that they can watch it - it makes their reading of the commentary more immediate, more likely for them to engage with it. However, there is a technical problem I would like to see an answer to: is there a way to set the display for the embedding I just did, so that when you look at it on the page before pressing Play Media, you are looking at the title page that was up before I made this edit? That way there would really be nothing at all lost by making this edit. Wnt (talk) 11:58, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
I don't know with how the MediaWiki software works if this is possible (I know other programs can set the key frame to display in lieu of video). This would help; I would also think it should help to include the time length of the prose-embedded movie file as that would also alert a reader if this is a short clip or a long feature. --MASEM (t) 14:59, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
  • Comment I'm glad to see so much discussion of this difficult issue—I've added full-length videos to articles in the past, but have never felt sure such additions were really relevant to what Wikipedia is trying to do. In the case of old silent films like A Trip to the Moon, I think there are a couple other issues to consider as well:
  • Almost every silent film ever made was intended to be experienced with a musical score. Versions of such films on Wikipedia Commons are necessarily silent (for lack of a public-domain recording of a score for the film), so to call any of them "the complete film" is a bit deceptive: it's not the full experience which the filmmaker intended, and which you can get from any reputable home-video release of the film.
  • Preparing films, especially old films, for home-video releases is a complicated process that often involves all of the following steps: working with numerous public and private collections to determine what fragments/versions of the film survive; combining incomplete prints to reconstruct a complete version, often simply "as close to complete as possible"; restoring tints, tones, and/or hand-coloring missing from the prints in question; removing scratches and other film damage, using chemicals or digital tools or both; recreating title cards missing from the film; researching how fast the film was meant to be projected (i.e. how many frames per second); and compiling all this work into a DVD- or Blu-Ray-ready format. Much of this might be written off as sweat of the brow work, but can we really just rip a painstaking restoration from a DVD and write it off as public-domain? I honestly don't know. I wish there were a clearer policy at Commons about this.
Here's hoping the community can come to a good policy-based consensus about handling these kinds of video files.--Lemuellio (talk) 12:48, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
  • I guess so, yeah. Just answering the question in the section title ("Should we move full-length movies from article space to Commons?"). Here're my reasoning. (First of all, I'm assuming that moving a movie from the article to Commons also entails moving its position in the article from somewhere within the body of the article to the External Links section; that matters, to me, more than where the actual bits of the actual file are hosted).
  1. Doesn't WP:ARTICLESIZE come into play here? Anything that's in the middle of the article is part of the article. We don't really have a tag for "Here's a section of this article that's actually optional, you don't need go through it to fully understand the subject to the level appropriate for an encyclopedia article." We don't hide galleries of images or text using the {{hidden begin}} template and so forth, I don't think. So if it's in the body of the artgicle the assumption is "It's part of the article, you need to read/view/listen to it unless you'r OK with a partial article", whereas External Links implies "Here's some extra stuff, if you want to read/view/listen it for extra enrichment, go ahead". But making an encyclopedia article that takes 2 hours or whatever to get through -- that's a bit much, n'est-ce pas? I don't think WP:ARTICLESIZE exactly addressed this, but I think WP:ARTICLESIZE would start puking frogs if we told it we were making articles that took two hours to get through.
  2. But my real reason for opposing it is because I don't want us to host pornographic movies. Sorry, but porno trolls is why we can't have nice things. Maybe it would be OK have movies in articles, I dunno. But if we have movies in articles, we're going to have to have pornographic movies -- and I'm sure it can get way way way worse than Debbie Does Dallas -- and I don't think that's really a good idea. In an ideal world, editors of maturity and intelligence would be able to discriminate between appropriate and inappropriate media for a general-purpose encyclopedia used by the general public to host. But, as I'm sure everyone knows, trolls out for LULZ (or to embarrass and damage the encyclopedia) and their useful idiot friends hold the whip hand on that matter. So, no movies please, and if that means you can't include a useful and appropriate movie in your article, take it up with the trolls and their enablers, not me. Herostratus (talk) 16:50, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
Only commenting on your ARTICLESIZE point: embedded media (audio or video clips) do not contribute or count towards page size beyond the single image used to indicate that it is an embedded work (only until you click it does the actual media "load" and contribute to the number of bytes the reader uses). And to that end, the only advice starts to become to avoid using too many images or embedded media to overwhelm the bandwidth to the reader. As to the time to take to view the work if one is understand the article, that's a very valid point though not something ARTICLESIZE really gets into much; it supports the notion to use the most relevant clips rather than full length films to augment the text, with links to the full works if the reader needs to see it in full. It is the same concept why articles on classic works of literature don't require the reader to read the full work to understand the article. --MASEM (t) 17:25, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
Readers are not required to play embedded movies or video clips. Nor are they required to watch or listen to the entire thing. They can stop the file playing just by clicking on it again. The suggestion that all readers are obligated to play media files is ridiculous. Readers can decide for themselves whether or not to play media files. I suspect that most readers do not even read all of the text in any given article. Right Hand Drive (talk) 22:40, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
That second point might be the worst argument in favour of censorship that I have ever seen made on this project. Resolute 22:49, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
I think we're hearing a lot from people who think that really, providing information is a bad thing most of the time. Giving people access to public domain movies, whatever their provenance, abuses the sweat of the brow put in by commercial movie-makers, because the public needs to have firmly in their mind that video is inherently something they have to pay for... no matter what. Court decisions are inherently made for the benefit of owners, not the public. And better to defeat a thousand attempts to access content than to allow one that might cause someone to criticize, because after all, providing access to something someone thinks is bad is infinitely bad, but providing information people merely want is inherently worthless. A person, in general, needs to be redefined away from some religious woo-woo conception of free will and such, and considered rather as a substandard predecessor to AI that really only needs specific training for its particular job designation, so long as it has it, then be recycled because of course it can never be repaired or renovated. I am just tired, so tired, of people who only see in content the opportunity for control. Wnt (talk) 23:58, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
  • Close this as an incoherent mess. However to address the various issues: (1) Anyone objecting to content as somehow "offensive" need to take their argument to the WP:NOTCENSORED policy page and request THAT be rewritten. Those arguments do not belong anywhere else. (2) It doesn't much matter if the file is technically stored at EnWiki or Commons, that has not direct effect on how the article is displayed. (3) There is no way in hell we are going to re-write the Muhammad article to hide images of Muhammad in some External-Links section pointing to Commons, just because some people the content offensive. Anyone who agrees with that, and still wants to do it at some other article, is offering nothing but their personal opinion on which "offensive" content they would or would not like to censor. (4) WP:NOTREPOSITORY does not apply to images or audio or video included within a relevant article. When relevant and not a copyright infringement, a full image of a painting, a full audio file of a song, or a full video, can and should be directly included in an article when useful and relevant to the article topic. Alsee (talk) 16:39, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

How many articles would be affected by a change in practice?

I think this discussion is a confused mess and a waste of everyone's time, but can anyone tell me how many articles have embedded movies? It would be good to have some idea of how many articles would be affected by a change to the normal practice of embedding public domain movies. Right Hand Drive (talk) 22:50, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

Let's move this to an RfC

See Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not#RfC: amendment to WP:NOTREPOSITORY. Make your !vote there and a (hopefully fairly succinct and cogent) edit in the Discussion section. That way at least where we stand with WP:NOTREPOSITORY, which we've been arguing of the interpretation of and which is important to this issue, can be decided one way or the other.Herostratus (talk) 15:01, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

Other idea, let's promote Wikipedia:Wikipedia is a tertiary source to guideline

When we're tired of hearing what Wikipedia "is not", here's a stable formulation of what Wikipedia "is". I'd not tamper with the WP:NOT policy to insert things in it that are in fact covered better by the WP:NOR policy ("Do not base an entire article on primary sources, and be cautious about basing large passages on them") — but what might be beneficial is a guideline explaining the connection between WP:NOTREPOSITORY and WP:NOR's WP:PRIMARY. --Francis Schonken (talk) 08:13, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

I think it needs a little work on "llustrations and primary source material should not overshadow content based on secondary and tertiary sources" For example, even a stub article on a notable painting should include the image of the painting; I don't think anyone would argue that Wikipedia is improved by changing the thumbnail of the painting to a link to Commons. Adam Cuerden (talk) 13:16, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

RfC about embedded pornographic movie in A Free Ride

A hardcore pornographic movie has been embedded in A Free Ride since 2012. Rather than just remove the movie as was done at Debbie Does Dallas, I have started a request for comment. I assume that the results of that RfC will be useful in guiding actions at Debbie Does Dallas. Right Hand Drive (talk) 04:17, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

RFC on Semi-Protection of Reference Desks

A Request for Comments is currently in progress at Reference Desk talk page concerning the length and reasons for semi-protection of the Reference Desks. The RFC is at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Reference_desk#Concrete_proposal. The primary reason for semi-protection of Reference Desks is trolling. For the information of those who are not familiar with current events at the Reference Desks, trolling (often racist trolling) is common, and there is controversy about how to deal with it, and the RFC is an effort to address the controversy. Please participate in the RFC. Robert McClenon (talk) 15:55, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

Requirement to cite a list item inline?

I've been looking for a guideline on this (I'm quite sure it exists) but can't seem to find it. When maintaining a list article, I've long believed that verifiability is satisfied by the existence of reliable sources in the target article, so it is not necessary to provide an inline citation in the list, other than for the types of material required to be cited where it appears listed at WP:MINREF. For example, in the list at 1650, it is stated that the Harvard Corporation was established on June 9, 1650. In order to verify this, a reader goes to the link and can see in the target article where there is an explanation of the association's founding in 1650, with an inline reference which verifies the date. I believe it is therefore not necessary to repeat the reference in the list, as the information there is already verifiable and repeating the reference does not add anything. Am I wrong? Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 20:49, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

Forget what policies or guidelines might say. Citing in the list maintains the integrity of the list from a verifiability point of view. What if, for example, the linked article is changed and the citation no longer appears or is misrepresented. Do your own research to verify the cite in the article then copy it to the list. Try a few caste-related lists to understand why this is the best approach. - Sitush (talk) 21:10, 8 February 2016 (UTC)
@Ivanvector: I think it depends on the list. I agree with you that items in lists like 1650 should be adequately sourced in their parent articles. However, other types of lists, like List of allegedly haunted places or List of electric bicycle manufacturers or List of wealthiest historical figures should be sourced right in the list. That said, even in articles like 1650, it's a convenience for the reader to cite in the list. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 21:59, 8 February 2016 (UTC)
There are list types where citation is required, this would include anything that involves possibly contentious claims and definitely BLP-related. For example, a list of LGBT people would absolutely need entries sourced, while a list of people from a certain city is far less contentious and likely doesn't. However, citations should be strongly suggested even for non-contentious claim-based lists. --MASEM (t) 22:09, 8 February 2016 (UTC)
The WP:CIRCULAR policy says: "Do not use articles from Wikipedia as sources ... Content from a Wikipedia article is not considered reliable unless it is backed up by citing reliable sources. Confirm that these sources support the content, then use them directly." Given that, if someone challenges an uncited statement, I think it's best to simply take the relevant citation from the related WP article and apply it to the list. AFAIK, citations in the list itself would be expected for an WP:FL.—Bagumba (talk) 22:44, 8 February 2016 (UTC)
BLP cases aside, definitely not. The requirement is verifiability not referenced. Certainly good faith challenges can be answered by copying (and ideally checking) references from the appropriate article, but there is no obligation to do so.
Circular does not apply, because we would not use the list as a source for the article.
All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 13:02, 14 February 2016 (UTC).

More than one account question

I know when someone has more than one registered account (I do not), they have to note that on their user page... What about an IP? I've only just now realised that sometimes I edit from my IP (we're talking less than 50 edits between now and July 2014). It's just whenever I get kicked off after being logged in for 30 days and then edit without noticing. Once I notice, I log in but... do I need to have that IP listed on my user page? Thanks in advance.Cebr1979 (talk) 21:58, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

Considering that there are IPv6 users whose addresses change at least daily, and that is not seen as a problem as long as they don't exploit the changes for bad-faith purposes, my opinion is that you needn't worry about it. Just behave yourself. ―Mandruss ☎ 22:54, 9 February 2016 (UTC)
You may want to read WP:Sock puppetry again. You aren't actually required to link your accounts if you use multiple. It's just strongly recommended because if you don't, it may come across that you are using these multiple accounts inappropriately. Particularly if there's a risk you may interact with the same editors or edit the same articles. (If you don't link your accounts and edit the same articles or get in to problems with the same editors, this is likely to be a problem.) Linking to IPs would follow a similar concept. If you're only editing via IPs is a few times when you accidentally edit logged out you probably shouldn't worry about it (unless perhaps the edit was likely to be particularly controversial or misunderstood), but if you do it regularly, you should consider linking to avoid problems if you don't have privacy concerns. If your IP regularly changes, you could link to IPs in the ranges you normally use. Nil Einne (talk) 17:20, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
See User talk:SMcCandlish/IP for one way to do this. I transclude that user-template in my talk page.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  19:51, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
Well, I think you should go see about WP:Revision deletion, which can hide your IP address as a contributor for those revisions. If you don't know who to turn to, may I suggest you go to CAT:REVDEL? ElectricBurst(Electron firings)(Zaps) 21:23, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
Once upon a time you could "claim" your IP edits, and have them attributed to your account. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 14:00, 14 February 2016 (UTC).

Wikipedia in Galileo's time

This question requires an understanding of history of science as well as of Wikipedia's policies. The page User:Guy Macon states that "If Wikipedia had been available [...] in Galileo's time, it would have reported the view that the sun goes round the earth as a fact, and Galileo's view would have been rejected as 'original research'." Is that true? Wikipedia:No original research "refer[s] to material—such as facts, allegations, and ideas—for which no reliable, published sources exist." Galileo Galilei had already published in his lifetime, and even the Roman Inquisition concluded that it could be supported as a possibility. If someone had written: "There is an alternative view, which is possible, but defies the Bible", or even written an article about that world view, would that really have been 'original research'? --Microsoft User 2016 (talk) 17:49, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

See WP:FRINGE; at that point in time, Galileo's theory was a counterpoint to "established" fact that the sun revolved around the earth, and a minority opinion, so at best it would have had a short section in an an article about an Earth-centric view of the solar system, and expressed as a counter-theory but definitely not as fact. What is fortunate is that Wikipedia is dynamic, and that if popular thinking does change, and "long-established" theories are dismantled when new theories are proven to be more appropriate, we can reflect that. --17:57, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
A fascinating question! Leaving aside the fact that my user page simply quotes WP:FLAT, would we have allowed heliocentrism to be treated as non-fringe? I think not. Depending on exactly when "in Galileo's time" refers to, we could have had reliable sources showing that Galileo himself had recanted.
BTW, if anyone wants to move this to a more appropriate village pump or refdesk and leave a link here, I upport that idea. --Guy Macon (talk) 18:11, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
By the way, since User:Guy Macon refers to WP:FLAT, the idea that in Columbus's time (a little more than a century before Galileo) it was commonly thought that the Earth was flat is not true. The Ptolemaic heliocentric view, held by scholars, included a round Earth that the planets went around (not a rotating spherical dome). The idea, especially in the United States, that Columbus argued with King Ferdinand's wise men about the shape of the Earth, is a literary myth invented by Washington Irving, better known today as an author of ghost stories. Columbus argued with King Ferdinand's professors about the size of the Earth. The professors were right. They said that he would either run out of food and water, because the ocean was too wide, or he would run into unknown land. He ran into unknown land. I have my own theory as to why he thought that the Earth was smaller, but it is original research. Robert McClenon (talk) 22:52, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
It is true that many peasants probably believed that the Earth was flat, but both scholars and sailors knew that it was round. In this case the scholars knew its size and the sailor was wrong. Robert McClenon (talk) 22:52, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Why Wikipedia cannot claim the earth is not flat AKA WP:FLAT is quite specific in saying "If Wikipedia had been available around the sixth century [BCE], it would have reported the view that the Earth is flat as a fact and without qualification." The flat earth was indeed the prevailing view in the sixth century BCE. See our article on Flat Earth. Our article on Myth of the flat Earth covers the modern misconception regarding belief in a flat earth during the 15th century CE. If Wikipedia had been available in the time of Columbus or Galileo, we would have correctly identified the earth as round but would have considered the theory that the earth rotates around the sun as a fringe theory. See our articles on Geocentric model, Tychonic system, and Heliocentrism. --Guy Macon (talk) 03:50, 11 February 2016 (UTC)
Yes. My point exactly. In Galileo's time, Wikipedia would have reported that there was a fringe theory that the Sun was the center. In the sixth century BCE, it might have reported that there was a fringe theory, held mostly by sailors, whom we know tell interesting but untrue stories, that the Earth was round. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:27, 14 February 2016 (UTC)
Now I'm confused. Does "fringe theory" mean it's "original research"? --Microsoft User 2016 (talk) 16:53, 11 February 2016 (UTC)
(E/C)Yes indeed, a very interesting question. I have often thought about this in biological terms with a much more recent example that has occurred in our (well, mine at least!) lifetime. It used to be thought that animals behaved for the benefit of the species. This means that the earliest ideas of the WP:Selfish Gene theory would have been considered "fringe". However, selfish gene theory is now considered as the mainstream scientific. It would have been wonderful to watch this unravel on Wikipedia.DrChrissy (talk) 17:14, 11 February 2016 (UTC)


FRINGE is often used in a way that allows some people to impose their point of view on Wikipedia contrary to the weight of sources. This is an excellent thought experiment, because it shows how the "mainstream" beliefs are sometimes wrong. Wikipedia is NOT a "mainsteam" encyclical, despite some people's assertions to that end. There is an essay called MAINSTREAM, but essays are not policy. I could write an easy that says Wikipedia is a caterpillar. It would be wrong. FRINGE is used too often in contradiction to RS and NPOV in attempts to lawyer toward orthodoxy. This is not good. This is actually very harmful. Good sources are good sources whether they are "mainstream " or not. "Mainstream" is aligned with the establishment power structure, so if we allow Wikipedia to be forced into mainstream alignment, that is an establishment political capture of human knowledge. It's no coincidence that too much of Wikipedia in so called "controversial" topics feels like an Inquisition. It sort of is the imposition of establishment beliefs in the record of human knowledge, and it's a moral crime. SageRad (talk) 18:13, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

Of course not a caterpillar – Wikipedia is obviously a centipede, seeing how policy discussions here often are encumbered by The Centipede's Dilemma. — Sebastian 19:50, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

Of course bunk is bunk and whacked conspiracy theories are whacked conspiracy theories. There are problem editors and there are bad sources. But the safeguards against these dangers have gone too far and have enabled a lockdown of many topics and articles into an establishment agenda point of view. The policies are excellent. The FRINGE guideline has been used like a McCarthyism against whatever certain editors declare is "fringe" and thereby it enables a kind of ideological imposition that contradicts the actual policies. SageRad (talk) 18:19, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

What topic has been locked down to an establishment agenda point of view? Wikipedia is a big place and there will be surely be cases where somone has used FRINGE too enthusiastically. However, there are many more cases where FRINGE has been essential to limit the damage of POV edits that seek to inject FUD into mainstream topics. Johnuniq (talk) 22:26, 11 February 2016 (UTC)
If Wikipedia had been available in Galileo's time, or any other time, its editors would have been put in jail and kept there for ever, simply because they were dangerous divulgators. The Church wanted to keep solid as ever its monopoly on “teaching the truth”. Enlightenment allowed to consider for the first time the idea knowledge may be freely available to everybody. And Enlightenment is not yet believed by all to be a common, positive achievement of humanity. That is to say it was about power not scientific theories. So the question posted by Microsoft User 2016 is quite impracticable. He should have posted ”Galileo in our time”. Would he been written about on Wikipedia now? I would say yes, certainly, because certainly Galileo would have submitted himself to the current scientific method and he would have been granted a major acceptance by the scientific community. And that is our task: not to decide who is in and who is out, but simply to divulge what is currently considered part of accepted science or, in more general sense, facts. Or are there, inside our community, some who believe Wikipedia should become the garbage-collector and fortune-teller of the Internet? Carlotm (talk) 02:00, 13 February 2016 (UTC)
If it wasn't for WP:FRINGE and WP:OR, Wikipedia would constantly be junked up with false conspiracies, rumors, and whispers on the wind, and would not be worth reading. Which is also where WP:V comes into play, seeing as it helps filter out the obviously untrue from the true. Wikipedia's purpose is to reciprocate information from mainstream academia sources. The fact that mainstream academia sources do not report or study fringe theories is not the fault of Wikipedia. Boomer VialHolla 20:23, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Opinions requested

Please take a look at User_talk:Fortdj33#Please_explain. I'd like to hear the opinions of other editors on how MOS:DAB should be applied in a case like this one. Urhixidur (talk) 17:49, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

Knowing how time zones are often abbreviated (e.g. Europe time instead of Central European Time is very frequently used when talking with UK people), it is in my view likely Christmas time is used for the Christmas Island Time zone (CXT) (Although some support would be nice. If this is the case it is likely someone (especially a non native speaker of English) may type in Christmas time in Wikipedia looking for the time zone of the island. It would definitely help the reader to find it on the disambiguation page. In fact, if such usage is not uncommon this is exactly what MOS:DABNOENTRY suggests to do.
In any case the Christmas time disambiguation page is a weird page as it basically is a disambiguation page for the Christmas holiday season - and a zillion song titles that are about the Christmas holiday time. So basically it does not disambiguate as everything is about the holiday season. (the exception to this of course being the time zone). Arnoutf (talk) 18:47, 11 February 2016 (UTC)
I ran into the string "Christmas Time" while browsing the translation of Facebook, which uses "Christmas Time" in the time zone sense. Urhixidur (talk) 17:38, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

A short rant about article problems

This edit sums up the root of many problems I see within Wikipedia. It was clearly added in good faith by someone wanting to improve the article, but it violates several content policies or guidelines (sorry, I can never remember which is which), including MOS:LEAD, WP:NOTNEWS, WP:RECENTISM and WP:V. You've all seen examples of what this leads to if nobody is watching the article; you get a whole load of unreadable chaff like "On 10 September 2010 we did this .... On 24 October 2012 we did that .... On 1 April 2015 we did the other", and so on and so on. But the IP hasn't actually done anything wrong per se other than just demonstrate inexperience with the project, which as we all know is not a crime.

The correct solution is to get a reliable source for the claim (not hard) and move the text to the relevant section in the article (not hard either). However, this action took me about 2 minutes, while hitting the "revert" button takes 10 seconds, including the time to write "rv unsourced" or (even worse) "rvv" in the edit summary - and since fixing up articles is harder work than hitting the "revert" button (or worse, the "block" button), it's small wonder that there aren't enough people around to do it. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 10:13, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

I agree 100%. There has been an influx of "On such and such a date the New York times reported". In some cases articles have turned into chronological timelines of news reports. Mrfrobinson (talk) 10:52, 12 February 2016 (UTC)
FWIW, this is described as WP:PROSELINE. --MASEM (t) 14:45, 12 February 2016 (UTC)
I see it not as a problem but as an opportunity. A more experienced editor who cares may take the time to look up a good source. Or to leave it there in hopes that the next person might find a source, if the added content is not challenged to any particularly urgent reason. BY the by, editors can also make sure that articles are coherent and not collections of cruft, and weed out what seems irrelevant or too much detail. SageRad (talk) 13:54, 12 February 2016 (UTC)
  • If the problem is about it being easier to revert than to look it up & fix here's another example — this one's in the back of my head now for some days (doesn't matter who reverted: FWIW it could have been me). I seem to remember some of the reliable sources put a "probably" there, so the IP might have been correct; I already tried to find it in one of the biographies (couldn't find it yet) and so the time is passing that the IP got the signal he did something wrong, where they might have been doing something right. --Francis Schonken (talk) 14:17, 12 February 2016 (UTC)
The easy solution instead of reverting is to add a "citation needed" tag if the new content is dubious. Then it will be dated and tagged for someone to add a reference or delete it later, and it's tagged for the reader as well. SageRad (talk) 14:19, 12 February 2016 (UTC)
I've yet to add a cn anywhere. If I'm concerned enough to do that, I'm concerned enough to do the legwork to fix it. You're right, it's the easy solution. Nobody said this was going to be easy. :D ―Mandruss ☎ 14:42, 12 February 2016 (UTC)
University of Oklahoma#OU in Arezzo (permalink) is an example of what cn's can for you. The entire section was added several weeks ago by one editor, and, if I had my way, it would have been reverted with a gentle suggestion to learn how to edit Wikipedia. Clearly, since the section remains, and the cn's were added by someone else, I'm in the minority on that. ―Mandruss ☎ 15:20, 12 February 2016 (UTC)
I too am a fan of tagging rather than reverting (for a very useful list of tags, see Wikipedia:Template messages/Sources of articles). However, I make a judgement decision on this. If it is an IP who is adding material which is "unhelpful", I will undo and leave an edit summary such as "Please provide source" - the material rarely returns. At the other end of the scale, on other occasions where I believe the account holder has made a good-faith edit and appears to have promise as a good editor, I may actually open a section on their Talk page to discuss the problems. Simply reverting material for new or experienced editors can easily cause frustration or distress. On the other aspect which the OP discusses i.e. WP is not a newspaper, take a look at the first few days of Killing of Cecil the lion! I am not sure how to stop such editing because people feel so emotional about these subjects, but I'm not sure that applies to piers getting blown down.DrChrissy (talk) 16:40, 12 February 2016 (UTC)
I like removing tags - especially ones that were added before 2012 - as they seem to so often be one editor's opinion that nobody else cares about. I occasionally go to an article that has had [citation needed] machine-gunned over it and just take the tags out; replacing them with sourcing generally or in the worst case putting {{refimprove}} at the top (the idea being that although one general cleanup tag isn't great, it should have the same effect as 25 little ones). This was one such effort. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont)
A good call in that case, where someone has confused verifiability with referenced, and good work where references were added.
In other cases the {{Citation needed}} is supposed to be no more than a temporary reprieve for a contentious statement.
All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 14:12, 14 February 2016 (UTC).
{{Citation needed}} was "supposed to be no more than a temporary reprieve for a contentious statement" back in 2006, and perhaps often was. That is completely untenable now the ratio of articles to editors is so different, there are millions of tags, and no one takes much notice of them. Much perfectly fine and basic material has been tagged for years, and removing material just because it has been so verges on vandalism. Johnbod (talk) 15:06, 14 February 2016 (UTC)
I agree. People going around removing large amounts of content just because it's (1) unsourced or (2) tagged is pretty much "legal vandalism". If it's done with editorial purpose, for clarity or removing actual cruft then it's great. If it's done in revenge against an editor who someone doesn't like, or just as a personal "purging" mission then it's counter-productive. It's bad for the encyclopedia.
Not everything needs to be sourced. Not everything needs to be challenged. If you do think something is doubtful, then challenge it. Don't just tag everything you see that's not sourced. That's against the spirit of the encyclopedia.
I sometimes tag things that seem dubious. I sometimes find sources for existing tags. On a few occasions, i remove very old tags that seemed to be there without good reason. It's a good system. You can give energy when and how you are able to, which is good because this is a volunteer product here.
Sometimes i'll add a cn tag one day, and then when i have more time and energy the next morning, i'll dig up a source and edit the content -- make it sourced and sometimes more right. It works. SageRad (talk) 15:25, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

Issues Involving MFD

In the recent past, Miscellany for Deletion has been the largely invisible XFD process. Articles for Deletion has always had controversial nominations. Every now and then CFD and RFD have provoked discussion. MFD has, in general, just been there, until the past few weeks. It appears that two or three editors have started going through user space and draft space, nominating pages for deletion, and that this has resulted in controversy, basically yet another deletionist-inclusionist quarrel. Two RFCs have been opened. One has been speedily closed, and the other, in my opinion, asks the wrong question. However, I will try to summarize what I think the issues are, and will also try to provide my own comments. I will try to provide a neutral summary of the issues, and I understand that other editors may disagree with my comments. Robert McClenon (talk) 20:07, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

I have tried to summarize what I think are the underlying issues at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Miscellany_for_deletion#Recent_Issues_Involving_MFD. Comments are welcome. Robert McClenon (talk) 20:07, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Citing through correspondence

What would be a proper way of obtaining information about a particular subject through direct communication with a knowledgeable person? Mainly, how could this correspondence be captured in such a way to serve as proof of both the information gathered as well as the nature of the source of information? As a specific example (though one that might not warrant needing proof) would be communicating with a public relations representative to inquire about organizational details such as number of employees, revenue, etc. when the information is not available elsewhere. Evan.oltmanns (talk) 13:33, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Personal correspondence can't serve as proof, since the claim isn't verifiable; if the other person could refer you to a reliable source which makes the same claim, you could link to that. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 06:06, 17 February 2016 (UTC)
That wouldn't be considered published or reliable as there's no way to verify that personal communication. See Wikipedia:Published, Wikipedia talk:Verifiability/FAQ, Wikipedia:Potentially unreliable sources#Personal communication (I wrote that last essay). I tried to add a section to WP:V explaining this four years ago, but those controlling that policy said it was "pointless" and "obvious". Fences&Windows 10:46, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

Internet Explorer 6 and browser disconnection..why?

A few months before this message, I found that I could not access Wikipedia from home or academic computers. For several weeks, I could not figure out the disconnection and blamed my internet connection. Recently, a computer whiz showed me that Wikipedia's HTML pages specifically search for certain browsers and won't connect to unnamed browsers, even if the pages are compatible. This explains the overnight closure of Wikipedia. This is not technical, but policy. Why did and does Wikipedia remove I.E.6 users and compatible browsers users from learning on Wikipedia? Why does Wikipedia take stock in a change that will grow problems larger as time progresses? Why does Wikipedia imitate websites such as "youtube" that have hidden agendas for forcing updates? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Radioliteracy (talk • contribs) 23:10, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

I don't think it's that but it's most likely there's some technical issue in how the webpage is currently set up to appear that doesn't work on older browsers and it's probably just easier to have it do something different when they come. I mean, the entire site is https secured now and I can imagine that there exists some browsers or computer that doesn't work on but there is a line. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 00:32, 20 February 2016 (UTC)
According to Microsoft, as of March 2015, we're talking about 1% of all global users with a insignificant amount in all major countries other than China. It's policy probably but it's also a practical matter. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 00:35, 20 February 2016 (UTC)
its because ie6 only supports ssl3 and not tls 1.0. See http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/wikitech/518635 i think it might be possible to enable tls 1 in your internet options in ie6 but its not on by default (not sure) Bawolff (talk) 04:33, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

Dilemma (BLP and CoI editing vs. reliable sources)

Today I was again confronted with issue that perhaps is very much of our time: social media representatives. I'm not sure what experiences other editors have had with BLP articles and these people, but this is an example that I came across today. The singer Barbara Hannigan has engaged some who manages her 'online affairs' according to this edit. In it, there is a reference to a separation, apparently requested by the artist. I did a quick search both in Dutch and English media outlets, but found no reference to it. Obviously this is a BLP issue and a private matter. I am tempted to blank the Personal Life section for this very reason. However, I am worried that it will cause a edit-war with the CoI editor User:VCM05 on whose page I already left a notice about conflict of interest issues. How have others dealt with this situation? Any advice is appreciated. Karst (talk) 16:22, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

My 2 cents. These edits fall under WP:Paid and possibly under WP:COI. In any case, if so requested a reliable source WP:V should be provided. In this specific case, however, such a source may be lacking.
The source for her marriage is actually very flimsy, as it is just a few word clause in a newspaper report that is not at all about her personal life. Therefore in this specific case removal of the personal life section (basically one line) would solve the whole issue.
The way forward in this specific case may be to point the representative to above guidelines, and invite them to make a case on talk for consideration by other editors. Arnoutf (talk) 18:06, 23 February 2016 (UTC)
Thanks. I will remove the section for the time being and point to the Talk page. Karst (talk) 18:44, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

RfC: How to word first paragraph of WP:PERTINENCE at MOS:IMAGES?

Opinions are needed on the following matter: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Images#RfC: Which version to go with?. A WP:Permalink for it is here. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 19:34, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

Motion to allow linking to large periods in prehistory and antiquity

Because it's really inconvenient to have to manually look up terms like 8th millennium BC or 5th century in articles about ancient and natural history.--Prisencolin (talk) 04:38, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

It isn't clear what exactly you want to do here. Can you please be more specific? עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 19:52, 23 February 2016 (UTC)
I'd like to add a line in MOS:LINKING that explicitly allows linking to large periods of time (maybe >100 yrs)--Prisencolin (talk) 01:32, 25 February 2016 (UTC)
I'm assuming you want to amend Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Linking#Linking_month-and-day_or_year, I don't think that is to controversial - but suggest you post at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Linking, with the specific change you want to incorporate, then give it a reasonable time for comments before applying the update. — xaosflux Talk 02:41, 25 February 2016 (UTC)
  • Too vague for appraisal. I concur with Xaosflux that this should be raised as a more concrete proposal in MoS talk. While it could be taken to WT:MOSLINK, or perhaps WT:MOSNUM which covers dates, you'll get more input at WT:MOS itself, and most non-trivial changes to MoS pages are discussed there, since the main guideline supersedes its detail pages, and they have to be kept in synch with it.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  10:34, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Standard offer - proposal to make guideline

I've started an RFC on whether or not WP:SO should be made into an actual guideline, considering it is already a de facto one. Please feel free to join in on the discussion at the proposal's talk page. — Coffee // have a cup // beans // 13:04, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

Category:Stale userspace drafts

Why do people care about Category:Stale userspace drafts? Shouldn't drafts be left alone? What happened to so fix it? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 107.72.96.74 (talk) 09:05, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

  • I am wondering why we even have a category for userspace drafts. The point of categorization is to a) help readers navigate Wikipedia and find pages they might want to read, and b) help editors navigate Wikipedia to find pages they might want to edit. However, we don't want readers to read drafts in userspace ... and we don't want editors to edit stuff in another editor's userspace (without permission from the editor who "owns" the page). In other words... no one should be pointed to drafts in userspace (except the user who "owns" the draft, or those who he invites to work with him). So why do we have a category that does this?
Are we perhaps confusing drafts in userspace with potential articles that are in Draftspace (ie drafts that are part of the Articles for Creation process)? Blueboar (talk) 13:08, 3 March 2016 (UTC)
Were you before Articles for Creation and G13 were created? We had the Article Wizard which helped create pages in userspace but there was no systematic mechanism for review abandoned drafts. G13 isn't "ha, you didn't edit this in the specific time period we set up, delete now!" but more like "if this wasn't ready yet and no one has improved it for six months and the AFC reviewers and the deleting admin don't think it's likely to go anywhere and don't care to work on it, it should probably be deleted with the ability to ask for a refund to organize the project." The Wizard pages are located at all the categories within Category:Userspace drafts created via the Article Wizard by month (about 39.4k pages). People also started up Category:Userspace drafts just to see old, old drafts and there's only about 7.4k there. The stale category is a terrible way to actually review those but it is somewhat more accurate than the category that's based entirely on when the draft was created (versus when it was last edited). The point is, without G13, AFC would be flooded with the same volume (thousand of pages a month, the Wizard gets half that and it's not even the main system for new drafts). I think people simply are not realizing the volume of new page creations that exist here. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 19:56, 3 March 2016 (UTC)
See my question at WT:User pages#Why do we even have the WP:STALE provision. I really don't see the point of reviewing "abandoned" drafts? If Wikipedia seems to be missing an article on a notable topic, any active editor can simply create one. Who cares whether some other editor attempted to write one, years ago, and gave up on it? If the topic isn't notable, who cares if there is an aborted draft sitting dormant in userspace... no one is going to see it. Blueboar (talk) 20:24, 3 March 2016 (UTC)
Would you then remove G13? It's the same policy except more explicit for current drafts and not old ones? Have you seen the volume of G13 deletions that happen daily? Do you actually we would be able to function if AFC couldn't get rid of those pages? You're talking about hundreds if not thousands of pages just out there a day. (A) The vast volume of this kind of low-importance, low-maintaince drafts overwhelms people actually interested in working on drafts or finding them. If the argument is "don't do that", fine but there are people interested in, telling them it's all a waste of time repeatedly isn't enjoyable either. (B) There's no reason these pages will be dormant forever and so people are going to end up reviewing and finding the pages for attacks, for images, if there's templates they will be changed, redirects have to be undone, etc. (C) Not all mirrors actually pay attention to the no-index requirement for userspace drafts. There's actually a few that show up in their SEO rankings. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 21:15, 3 March 2016 (UTC)
Depends on how much has been drafted an how well. We have no need to preserve 5-year-old outlines with no content, especially if they're in userspaces of editors who've been inactive for years. By contrast, I have articles I haven't finished yet that I will eventually, that have sources and some well-developed material, but some gaping holes that await finding sources to patch them. Some of these are older than five years. In one case, someone else wrote the article before I got around to it and I merged mine, but most of them are obscure enough that this is unlikely, yet genuinely notable and encyclopedic. We definitely do not need a "one-size fits all" approach to this. There are also going to be cases where a user-space draft of an in active user is already a perfectly valid stub, and should just be mainspaced.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  10:56, 4 March 2016 (UTC)
OK, I can see that userspace pages might need to be reviewed ... but why is the review (and thus the category) being based on STALEness? The age of the userspace page has nothing to do with whether the content of the page is appropriate or not. Blueboar (talk) 12:44, 4 March 2016 (UTC)
It's not. It's the simplest way to dissect the drafts by month to distinguish between drafts of active users and (possibly drafts of inactive users. It's a backlog that requires review. Hell, you could null edit every page and it would empty the category. I could have organized by the project by pulling every month's categories but I thought alphabetical was a better way and it is easier to pull the entire thing from one category. If your objection is to how the project is running (and I do have some issues with it), that's for the drive's talk page. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 00:24, 5 March 2016 (UTC)
  • NOTE - This is being discussed in more detail at WT:User pages... let's consolidate and continue the discussion there. Blueboar (talk) 19:37, 4 March 2016 (UTC)

WP:CITEVAR and policy compliance

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Wikipedia talk:Citing sources#Instruction creep in WP:CITEVAR. The relevance to VPPOL is that some wording in the guideline has been interpreted by some as being non-compliant with, or encouraging behavior non-compliant with, multiple policies. Other editors disagree and believe the language is being misinterpreted in that regard.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  17:09, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

School addresses RfC

Is the physical address of a school a viable parameter? This might also have broader ramifications in regards to using physical addresses for other institutions like businesses and buildings. Trackinfo (talk) 21:35, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

RfC: Proposal to make unnecessary spoiling clearer in the WP:Spoiler guideline

Opinions are needed on the following matter: Wikipedia talk:Spoiler#RfC: Proposal to make unnecessary spoiling clearer in the guideline. A WP:Permalink for it is here. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 19:08, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

Suggested Changes to Wikipedia

  1. Everyone must get at least one warning before their first block.
  2. If a block is for an action specific to one type of article, then the block should not apply to other types of articles.
  3. Wikipedia needs to make its suggestion page easier to find.
  4. There should be software that lets users automatically create a response to a specific edit and put it in that user's talk page that a specified heading that describes the edit.
  5. Create a way where Wikipedia users (who volunteer) or experts on the subject (who volunteer) would check facts on subjects like math for validity before not allowing the facts to be posted on Wikipedia pages.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:2C1:C003:EF7A:4C87:C488:5851:C0EA (talk) 03:17, 4 March 2016 (UTC)

1) Pretty much everyone does get a warning before their first block, unless they're obviously a sockpuppet of a blocked user, or maybe if they're doing something they should know is outright illegal, or it's obvious that they created the account only to troll.
2) Too cumbersome to program and apply. We do have topic bans, which are similar, but require either community consensus or discretionary sanctions and kind of operate on the honor system (though they can be enforced by admins with blocks). Also, this would really belong as the technical village pump.
3) The village pump (which is the closest thing we have to a suggestion page) is linked in the Community Portal, found at the left hand side of the non-mobile version.
4) That's reinventing the wheel. We already have user talk pages (where it's up to the user leaving the message to name the heading) and diffs.
Ian.thomson (talk) 03:34, 4 March 2016 (UTC)
Yes, but it would be very convenient for me and probably a lot of other users if there was a way where it would create a new section with an appropriate title automatically.2601:2C1:C003:EF7A:A1CB:CF40:7068:3225 (talk) 00:35, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
Pros: There would be a button that one could click to add a talk page section with a link to that edit.
Cons: Redundant (simply click "New Section" on someone's talk page and include a WP:DIFF in the message), unnecessary (you already need to leave a message explaining the issue), requires reprogramming the site (not simply to add the button, but deal with section titles with links in them either displaying or linking incorrectly)
Ian.thomson (talk) 01:07, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
  1. It wouldn't work: a block can immediately follow a warning, and if it couldn't that would mean a block-free period, an invitation to some to double down.

    Rather more practical, and necessary, would be the other way around: Everyone with, say, three warnings must get a block. The disinclination of admins to block mischief-makers is a problem mentioned by several people further up this page in WP:Village_pump_(policy)#Is_it_simply_Wild_West.3F, and is my experience. Even if the first block is only for one day it has to happen, otherwise these warnings are toothless.

  3. No. "Blocking is a serious matter", this would make it less serious.
  5. Rather like a suggestion I put recently on my user page.

    6. BalCoder (talk) 14:45, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

Mandatory blocks after X warnings wouldn't work either. If it were automatic in software, that would be wide open for abuse. Otherwise, no admin can be required by the rules of Wikipedia to use their tools in any manner. Admins could and would apply something like jury nullification. BethNaught (talk) 15:04, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

Gendered categories

What is the policy on gendered categories? Say we have categories for "Actors from Ruritania", "Male actors from Ruritania", and "Female actors from Ruritania". Would Matilda von Hentzau appear in both "Actors from Ruritania" and "Female actors from Ruritania"? DuncanHill (talk) 15:34, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

Current guidance is at WP:EGRS. First, you'd need to establish there would be any need for gendered categories "Male actors from Ruritania" and "Female actors from Ruritania"; then you'd need to make sure whether or not the parent "Actors from Ruritania" category would be diffusing or not (WP:FINAL RUNG would exclude it in many cases). See also WP:GENDERID which may be relevant for the example you're mentioning. --Francis Schonken (talk) 15:53, 28 February 2016 (UTC)
Actually, I would reverse that... first I would ask about the parent cat: Is being an "Actor from Ruritania" (regardless of gender) really a defining characteristic (or is it a form of over-categorization)? Certainly being an "actor" is defining... and perhaps being "from Ruritania" is defining (I am less positive about that)... but, I have to question whether the intersection of being an actor and being "from Ruritania" is really defining. The two characteristics do not really have much to do with each other.
That said... Assuming the answer to this preliminary question is "yes, the parent cat is defining"... I would take a common sense approach to the question of creating genderized sub-sub-categorization... I would ask: Are there enough articles in each sub-sub-category that sub-sub-categorization by gender makes sense? If there are very few articles in the broader "Actors from Ruritania" sub-cat, then it makes makes no sense to divide the parent sub-category up into gender based sub-sub-cats. If "Actors from Ruritania" is a very large cat, it may make sense to do so (I say may... because we also need to examine how many articles would end up in each of the resulting gender based sub-sub-categories. If one of the resulting gender-based sub-sub-cats is tiny, it is kind of silly to create a separate gender based sub-sub-cat for them). Blueboar (talk) 16:18, 28 February 2016 (UTC)
Sorry about focussing my answer on the "gendered" aspect (which seemed the gist of the (hypothetical?) question), Blueboar is of course correct that the "from Ruritania" aspect may lead easily to categories rejected for overcategorization too. Yes and indeed there are still a host of other guidelines and policies that are to be reconed with (and which neither Blueboar nor I mentioned thus far) before the actor would be categorized in any of the categories mentioned thus far: WP:BLPCAT, WP:COP, WP:MOSBIO, etc. --Francis Schonken (talk) 16:31, 28 February 2016 (UTC)
Only in the subcategory. See for example Category:American actors, or most sport categories. Prevalence 05:20, 1 March 2016 (UTC)
What about Wikipedia:Gender identity? What if the actor does not identify as either male or female, but as transgender? Do we need a cross sub cat for every gender identity? I suggest that for both NPOV and GI non bias there perhaps should be no sub cats, or even no top cats, by gender in Wikipedia at all ? Or if we do we must sub cat by all GI categories? Food for thought? Aoziwe (talk) 20:48, 3 March 2016 (UTC)
If we need to subcategorize by gender, i.e. sources treat gender as important in that area, then those who identify as neither male nor female can be categorized in the parent category alone. Alternatively, I believe "non-binary" is a neutral term. Fences&Windows 16:18, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

Citing Kindle e-books without "Locations" rather than page numbers?

Hey! Any idea how I can do this? I've been citing my Jewish Study Bible from time to time over the last three months, but I have not yet been able to figure out how to format my references.[1][2] Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 08:29, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

Look here and here. It may also be that someone else has newer hints. Carlotm (talk) 03:41, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

Unexplained abbreviations in articles?

I have noticed today this edit on my watchlist. I reverted it since I did not know what WL means (I also though the edit breaks markup, which it does not). My edit was reverted, with the comment that WL means "World leading". Whereas I am fine when my good faith edits are reverted for cause, I asked the user to add the definition of "WL" to the article. They refused to do it, saying that everybody knows what is this anyway. Now, the question is how should I read MOS: do we need the definition (or at least an active link), or the user is correct, and we should basically not care about the accidental readers who do not know what this is.--Ymblanter (talk) 17:36, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Unless specified in the "Exceptions" section below, an acronym should be written out in full the first time it is used on a page, followed by the abbreviation in parentheses, e.g. Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Common exceptions to this rule are post-nominal initials because writing them out in full would cause clutter. Another exception is when something is most commonly known by its acronym (i.e., it's article here is at the acronym title), in which case the expansion can come in the parenthetical or be omitted, except in the lead of its own article: according to the CIA (U.S. Central Intelligence Agency).

To save space in small spaces (defined above), acronyms do not need to be written out in full. When not written out in full on the first use on a page, an acronym should be linked. An unambiguous acronym can be linked as-is, but an ambiguous acronym should be linked to its expansion. Upon later re-use in a long article, the template can be used to provide a mouse-over tooltip giving the meaning of the acronym again without having to redundantly link it or spell it out again in the main text: CIA, giving: CIA

Seems to be the relevant passages from WP:MOSABBR. --Izno (talk) 17:53, 24 February 2016 (UTC)
There is a list of related acronyms, including WL, at Athletics abbreviations#Records. At least some of them in that table could be linked there on first appearance. Or, and perhaps more reader-friendly, you could use footnotes, which could in turn contain links to that article section. ―Mandruss ☎ 18:14, 24 February 2016 (UTC)
Links or explanations for sure. Assume ignorance. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 02:53, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

I was the one who reverted it back and wrote it to begin with. It's an Athletics Page, so I assume that people reading it will understand what WL stands for in this case. Either way, there is already "World Leading" above it due to a box with the World Record, Olympic Record and World Leading times, at the time of the event. I even wrote about the Original World Leading time had been abolished due to Doping, underneath. So I don't find it necessary to again write that WL stands for World Leading. Basetornado (talk) 10:15, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

Abbreviations like WL should not be used at all as they are a specialised jargon. This problem of specialised abbreviations crops up all over Wikipedia, and it need to be stamped out as much as possible. We don't need to save space, and their use makes the articles harder to understand. The target audience is not thw same as the likely writers, so we have to make efforts to change the writers' style they prefer to use. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 12:16, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

Okay, but I still think there is no need to say what it is, because of the aforementioned uses of the words. Basetornado (talk) 12:50, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

All the abbreviations in that article should be explained. I can't see what on earth is the point of putting in abbreviations like PB WL DQ SB and whatever other ones that are there without any explanation whatsoever. Lots of people would be interested in the 50 kilometers walk records but they will just be mystified by that article. This is supposed to be an encyclopaedia not a puzzle box. Dmcq (talk) 13:46, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

We should also remember that we are writing for a general audience, not a specialized one. While "WL" may be crystal clear to anyone interested in athletics, its not a common abbreviation outside it, and definitely must be defined at least once. --MASEM (t) 15:07, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

The original World Leading (WL) Time was abolished after Sergey Kirdyapkin was found guilty of Doping Violations. There you go. Basetornado (talk) 16:50, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks to all of you for the opinions. I will try to make sure PB and SB are referenced in all articles as well.--Ymblanter (talk) 16:52, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

I'm even a frequent sports editor, and have never seen "WL" outside of highly jargonistic context, and even then it was explained before it was used, e.g. a key/legend in a table. It's weird, confusing and inappropriate to just shove it into an article here. I wouldn't even use it with {{abbr}} markup without having already spelled it out earlier in an article.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  10:24, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

I think there might be an opportunity for a sports abbreviations template where one listed the abbreviations and it spits out a bit of boilerplate giving explanations for the various abbreviations. Dmcq (talk) 17:24, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

There is Template:AthAbbr, discussed here. Pinging SFB, just in case he wants to know, what's happening here. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 17:42, 27 February 2016 (UTC)
Thanks for the ping Edgars. Quite a lot of work has gone into the template to reduce confusion around athletics abbreviations. Within results listings it makes most sense to use abbreviations, given space considerations and typical presentation in other media. All the abbreviations have real-world basis, although many such as A or WL are nonsense to most (conservatively I'd say all but WR and PB are nonsense to most). Among editors in the athletics project, the best result we've come to is to link to the athletics abbreviations page and describe those abbreviation and meanings in full. The template also provides a hover-over decode for abbreviations, which also works for screen readers. Sports stats can be so niche at times that a little confusion is inevitable and it's mostly unavoidable – for example, "AR" or "area record" has a very specific meaning in athletics that needs to be conveyed, but concepts like "the best legal-conditions mark set within a given event by an athlete within one of the six continental areas defined by the IAAF, such as the North America, Central America and Caribbean region governed by NACAC, but not athletes from within that region who are subjects of non-IAAF member states, or non-sovereign dependencies of states in one of the other IAAF-defined areas" aren't ever going to be easily expressed within a table, or even each article, without severely affecting focus and readability. SFB 18:44, 27 February 2016 (UTC)
Thanks for the clarification.--Ymblanter (talk) 21:26, 27 February 2016 (UTC)
Yeah, {{AthAbbr}} resolves concerns I would have about use of this in a table, or infobox, or in a long string of sports stats, since it links to a glossary. It still shouldn't be used in running text, though (e.g. "A WL team, they earned a WR in 2015"), even with the template. Write in plain English any time you can, this being an encyclopedia, not a handbook of sports stats.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  06:37, 4 March 2016 (UTC)

Somewhat related discussion: Linking and bolding of acronyms in alternate names in lead

 – Part of the discussion below forked off to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Lead section#Disputing a major BOLDSYN change

Currently there's a discussion going on here whether or not the acronym BWV should be linked on first occurence in an article. Maybe the acronym can be explained in a {{efn}}? Maybe a link in the infobox (which in the wikicode "precedes" the text in the lead section) is sufficient? --Francis Schonken (talk) 12:14, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

Background and history: The article is about a Bach cantata, one of many, with their article titles construed of original title in German + BWV number, BWV being short for Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis. So far, both the original title and BWV 7 (in this example) were bolded, the former as the title, the latter as both the cantata number (we do bold symphony numbers) and as a main redirect. Some people would speak about the work as BWV 7, - it's almost a synonym. It seams particularly important to me to make the connection between the title and the BWV number by similar presentation as they are separated by (sometimes longish) translation(s). For those unfamiliar with the acronym BWV, a footnote {{efn}} explained what BWV means, which imho fulfills the spirit of the Mos to explain an acronym. The link - as required by the MoS - is prominently in the infobox, which to me is "the first occurrence" anyway. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:50, 26 February 2016 (UTC)
Re. "Some people would speak about the work as BWV 7" – can you back up that claim? As far as I'm aware no reliable source would refer to the composition as BWV 7 without also mentioning its name. --Francis Schonken (talk) 15:01, 26 February 2016 (UTC)
When I wrote "speak" I meant speak, - it's colloquially abbreviated like that. - Kindly look at some arbitrary page in the book of books about Bach's cantatas (by Dürr, translated by Jones): I see many mentionings of numbers without title. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 19:44, 26 February 2016 (UTC)
That book, like any other reliable source I know, gives the full name of every cantata it refers to by BWV number. Re. "speak", see WP:V. --Francis Schonken (talk) 07:41, 27 February 2016 (UTC)
"refers to by BWV number", we agree, thanks for the better wording. It supports that this number should appear bold. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:12, 27 February 2016 (UTC)
As I said above (now applying emphasis): "As far as I'm aware no reliable source would refer to the composition as BWV 7 without also mentioning its name." – AFAIK, in the context of a source BWV numbers are not used stand-alone, i.e. the source will always contain the name of the work. --Francis Schonken (talk) 10:28, 27 February 2016 (UTC)
  • @Francis Schonken:What concerns me after looking at the talk page discussion is that an editor with limited input changed a guideline and then uses that adjusted guideline as support for an editing position that includes edit warring. Could this be explained.(Littleolive oil (talk) 13:41, 26 February 2016 (UTC))

Perhaps you could explain the situation to clarify for those commenting here, and or link to the guideline discussion and change made.(Littleolive oil (talk) 13:50, 26 February 2016 (UTC))

        • For clarity, I didn't change/write a "guideline" (an exaggeration I ignored thus far), I updated a WikiProject "/Guidelines" subpage (a page clearly marked as having "essay" status), as a result of a discussion at the related WikiProject page (for the "/Guidelines" vs "guideline" ambiguity, I commonly refer to it as "guidance", unless it it is a guideline with guideline status). I also announced the update of the essay at the WikiProject talk page. Anyhow, both the diff of the essay update and the archived discussion related to that update are linked from Talk:Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam, BWV 7#BWV, in the sixth and seventh post to that discussion respectively. --Francis Schonken (talk) 14:17, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

An essay is just a formalized version of an opinion and holds no weight, so it should not be used as ammunition in a discussion. Further you did change the essay and then suggested Gerda abide by that change and that essay. I don't see any reason why she or any editor would consider the essay any more than what it is - an opinion - nor should it hold weight in this discussion. However, Rexx's comments below do hold weight and I would agree with him and Gerda that bolding BMV 7 is the appropriate way to title the article. (Littleolive oil (talk) 17:56, 26 February 2016 (UTC))

In this particular case, it's simply whether the article Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam, BWV 7 should have an opening sentence:

  1. Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam (Christ our Lord came to the Jordan), BWV 7, is a ...;
    or
  2. Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam (Christ our Lord came to the Jordan), BWV 7, is a ...

Both MOS:BOLD and MOS:BOLDTITLE indicate that the article title is to be rendered in boldface. In addition, BWV 7 is a redirect to the article (i.e. a reasonable search term), and readers expect their search term to appear in boldface as is explained in MOS:TEXT #Other uses. All three sections of MOS support version number 1 above - i.e. BWV 7 in boldface. --RexxS (talk) 17:42, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

According to the applicable guidance the abbreviation of the catalogue should not be separated from the catalogue number by a linebreak, so why did you remove the {{nowrap}} here? --Francis Schonken (talk) 07:41, 27 February 2016 (UTC)
Citing from the guidelines you refer to:
  • MOS:BOLD: "....This is done for the majority of articles, but there are exceptions." (emphasis added)
  • MOS:BOLDTITLE: "In general, if the article's title is absent from the first sentence, do not apply the bold style to related text that does appear: The Beatles rise to prominence in the United States on February 7, 1964, was a significant development in the history of the band's commercial success. (The Beatles in the United States)..." (which is one of the exceptions)
In sum MOS:BOLD and MOS:BOLDTITLE rather recommend not to bold in this case.
Re. MOS:TEXT #Other uses: applying the "principle of least astonishment" (as mentioned there) rather indicates to not be wishy-washy about "When not written out in full on the first use on a page, an acronym should be linked." (which is in WP:ACRO, which doesn't indicate exceptions to the rule). --Francis Schonken (talk) 08:34, 27 February 2016 (UTC)
Any exceptions to MOS:BOLD need to be for good reason. You have no good reason to remove the bolding on BWV 7, which is both part of the article title and a redirect. Therefore it should be bold.
The articles title's is clearly not absent from the first sentence. It is indeed the subject of the first sentence and not at all analogous to The Beatles in the United States. If you would prefer the opening sentence to read "Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam, BWV 7, (Christ our Lord came to the Jordan) is a .." then propose it on the talk page. The exception is for when it would be unnatural to re-write the opening sentence in order to re-create the title. That is no the case here. You read the words of the guidance mechanically, but have no understanding of what the guidance means.
MOS:BOLD and MOS:BOLDTITLE absolutely recommend to bold in this case. I cannot believe that the guidance could possibly be so misinterpreted here.
Forget acronymns. They are not relevant because BWV 7 is not an acronym - it's the catalogue number of, and a searchable redirect to, the article Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam, BWV 7. If you desperately want to explain the acronym BWV (note that's a different link), then link it at its next (non-bold) occurrence as the guidance suggests, or use a footnote to explain it. Either way, you don't need to break the guidance on bolding article titles and redirects. --RexxS (talk) 18:54, 27 February 2016 (UTC)
Um, "BWV" is the acronym, Rexx. Why would we "forget" it?  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  08:35, 4 March 2016 (UTC)
As for the removal of the no-wrap: the BWV 7 is placed so close to the start of the first line that there isn't a supported screen resolution low enough for a line break to realistically happen there. It doesn't hurt to put no-wrap in as "good practice", but it isn't needed in any likely scenario in this case. --RexxS (talk) 19:16, 27 February 2016 (UTC)
Some sort of tunnel vision I suppose: on my smartphone it is near the end of the second line. So, please just follow applicable guidance in this matter, some of its underlying reasons seem to elude you. --Francis Schonken (talk) 12:29, 28 February 2016 (UTC)
Aye. Those of us with shite vision and phones smaller than bricks actually blow this stuff up really big; if I don't turn mine sideways, I only get |somewhere around this much material| on one line.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  08:35, 4 March 2016 (UTC)
And WP:MOSBOLDSYN. --Izno (talk) 17:46, 26 February 2016 (UTC)
MOSBOLDSYN only applies for common abbreviations. Can you demonstrate that BWV 7 is a common abbreviation for Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam, BWV 7? --Francis Schonken (talk) 07:41, 27 February 2016 (UTC)
I did not contest that it was relevant to this exact case, only that it was relevant. --Izno (talk) 13:47, 27 February 2016 (UTC)
(edit conflict) That's obviously a misinterpretation of what BOLDSYN said. The exact same text is required to be boldfaced by BOLDTITLE, immediately above BOLDSYN. You can't play guideline sentence 2 against guideline sentence 1 as if they're in competition, especially when #2 is clearly an expansion on #1, not an alternative to it. You're applying a WP:COMMONNAME-derived titles rationale about what a name is, incorrectly to a style guideline on how names are presented, and as always this is not a viable approach. I agree with much of the rest of what you've been saying above and below, however.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  11:20, 4 March 2016 (UTC)
  • per Ymb (the OP), RexxS, LO, others and the need for this page: Wikipedia:ALPHABETSOUP — Ched :  ?  18:59, 26 February 2016 (UTC)
  • WP:BOOMRANG seems appropriate. A person needs clean hands to come and claim that changes they made should be observed by everyone. This is quite disingenuous. Montanabw(talk) 03:43, 27 February 2016 (UTC)
    • Please, "Comment on content, not on the contributor". --Francis Schonken (talk) 08:40, 27 February 2016 (UTC)
      • When the contributor is disruptive with IDIDNTHEARTHAT arguments, it is best to point that out. You have been tendentiously pursuing your own personal preferences and you need to stop. --RexxS (talk) 18:54, 27 February 2016 (UTC)
    • WP:BOOMERANG doesn't apply here. This isn't a disciplinary or dispute resolution venue where admins close with decisions to restrain editors. It's a WP policy ideas discussion forum. What would a boomerang look like here? People talking more about the idea the poster doesn't like instead of the one they do?  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  08:35, 4 March 2016 (UTC)
  • I guess this is two separate things now:
    • Boldface "BWV x" in the lead, per MOS We boldface significant alternative names/terms/abbreviations, especially if they are redirects to the actual title. Whether it's a common alternative name or not is extraneous (though of course it is very common [3]). Lack of frequency would be a matter for whether it should be in the lead or even the article at all. If it's rare, it shouldn't be in the lead; if it's not, it should be, where we boldface it, absent a compelling reason not to (e.g., if it's only a very slight variant of a name already boldfaced, perhaps, which we might give in a parenthetical after the near-identical bolded version). The appearance of the word "common" in MOS:BOLDSYN is not some magical loophole that can be WP:WIKILAWYERed/WP:GAMEd, since the "BVW x" would be bolded per MOS:BOLDTITLE anyway. [I've closed this wanna-be loophole, though WP:COMMONSENSE already very clearly indicated that it was not one.]. Another failed argument against the boldfacing is that is not a part of the formal title of the work, but that's irrelevant, since BOLDSYN and several provisions of BOLDTITLE would not exist otherwise. [Actually, I note below that there's also another irrelevant argument, that linking it is "clutter"; if that were valid reasoning, we would remove at least hundreds of thousands of boldfaced alt. names from article leads.]
    • Link "BWV" on first occurrence in the main prose (i.e., in the lead), per MOS. Infoboxes don't count. A) They cannot be relied upon to be first in the article; they have their own CSS class, and anyone who hates them (as many do) is liable to use WP:USERCSS to move them to the bottom of the page or eliminate them entirely. B) They are intended to be summaries of details from the article, so what is in them also needs to be in the article; a large number of previous discussions about linking, middle names/initials, and a zillion other things have always concluded the same way: Put it in the main article prose, too. [The only conventional exception seems to be supplementary material, like the taxonomic charts in {{Taxobox}}.] C) WP:REUSEs of WP article content often eliminate them; but we are also writing for that market (more so today than ever, as Web apps repackage what we write here). D) Infoboxes cannot even be relied upon to continue existing at all at such articles; the WP:CLASSICAL camp above all know better, since editwarring to remove infoboxes from composer articles turned into a WP:ARBCOM case that did not go well for the anti-infoboxers in that project, though some of them continue to lobby against their inclusion. Anyway, a standard wikilink is vastly preferable to a templated footnote that doesn't provide contextually specific info, but just regurgitates the key lead details of the linked page. Otherwise WP would have about 100 mil. fewer wikilinks and 100 mil. more footnotes. [Again, the argument below that the link is "clutter" is invalid for the reason I already gave above.]
 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  08:26, 4 March 2016 (UTC)
I agree with bolding BWV, naturally, but not with a link at the next possibility. (We can't link from the bolded BWV.)
  1. BWV will not stand alone again in a cantata article, but will always be part of a name composed of "title and BWV", - it would look strange to me to link exclusively from BWV within such a construction.
  2. Most readers of a Bach cantata will know anyway what it stands for (like most readers know what UK stands for), they might frown at a link on the second mentioning.
  3. Those (few!) who don't know will want to know the first time, and can be helped by the footnote, which - as RexxS pointed out above - stays within the article (and in it is the link who still need it.). Have you tried BWV? (simple? easy?) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 19:56, 4 March 2016 (UTC)

Linking to BWV 7, how could one be even discussing that? The very article is already about Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam, the most specific topic. And then linking to a redirect article, that actually takes one to an ambiguous List of compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach, how does that serve the reader? He wants to read an article on a wonderful composition by Bach, but he is advised to read a whole list of his production? 'Smart linking', eh...? Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 19:53, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

Readability

For clarity, we're not discussing the difference between

  1. Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam (Christ our Lord came to the Jordan), BWV 7, is a ...;
    and
  2. Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam (Christ our Lord came to the Jordan), BWV 7, is a ...
    but the difference between
  3. Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam (Christ our Lord came to the Jordan),[1] BWV 7[a], is a ... ([4]);
    and
  4. Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam (Christ our Lord came to the Jordan),[1] BWV 7, is a ... ([5])
    or other possibilities (see below):
  5. Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam (Christ our Lord came to the Jordan),[1] BWV 7, is a ... ([6])
    and:
  6. Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam (Christ our Lord came to the Jordan), BWV 7, is a ...

Notes

  1. ^ "BWV" is Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis, a thematic catalogue of Bach's works.

References

  1. ^ a b c Dellal, Pamela. "BWV 7 – "Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam"". Emmanuel Music. Retrieved 30 August 2014.

→ My point being the general readability of the opening phrase of an article. I don't think the sequence (in #3) "Bolded title/parenthesis/footnote for parenthesis/Bolded catalogue indicator/other type of footnote for the catalogue indicator" (and all that before starting to say anything about the subject of the article) is very inviting to continue reading. I'd gladly reduce the clutter at the start of such articles. --Francis Schonken (talk) 11:01, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

My point is that if we agree that BWV 7 should by bold, for various reasons mentioned above (such as the MoS if we don't make an exception - but why should we? ... and because Bach's cantatas are often referred to by their number, ... and to distinguish at a glance from the article with a similar title), your last version is not possible, so the question is reduced to: bold or not. What you call clutter is the little hint to a footnote which has been established to help readers who still don't know what BWV means. I can take it, but could also live without it. The link that you request is prominently in the infobox. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 11:56, 27 February 2016 (UTC)
ps: which adds possibility "5.", bolding yes, but no footnote, as it is in the article right now. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:03, 27 February 2016 (UTC)
Added #5 & #6 to the alternatives above.
#6 is possible as the translation is referenced further down in the article, and content referenced in the body of the article doesn't need a footnote in the lede. So, that would be my preference.
I think it is best, indeed, to see this as a whole and not try to reduce it to bold/nobold of the BWV number. Other arguments have already been replied to, on this page, or at Talk:Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam, BWV 7 – would try to avoid becoming repetitive about arguments already given and repeated multiple times, but look at the new angle for its possible merits in the discussion. --Francis Schonken (talk) 12:20, 27 February 2016 (UTC)
Just responding to the new translation aspect:
  1. I understand that in the lead, you have to cite every quotation, which I think a translation is
  2. It may even be a copyright issue
  3. Further down in the article, sometimes even in the lead, it may be a different translation. There are always several, with different strenghts.
  4. I feel I have to clarify that the translation is not by some Wikipedia editor, but by a source, and by which source.
I don't believe the inline citation for the translation is clutter. Readers who want things clutter-free can turn to the infobox. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 16:04, 27 February 2016 (UTC)
For clarity, we're discussing the difference between the first two. The rest is consequential muddying of the waters. Once the principles of bolding the title, and bolding searchable redirects are established, then the ways of explaining BWV become clearer. A bare link to BWV is not the best option here, because (1) it's much less obvious in that juxtaposition (as you can see in 4 and 6); and (2) it's quite easy to briefly explain it within this article (e.g. a footnote), rather than requiring the reader to navigate away from the article to read the definition. --RexxS (talk) 19:26, 27 February 2016 (UTC)
Quite unclear: are you discussing #1 and #2, or #1, #2, #3, #4, #5 and #6? Also: this is WP:VPP, which means that all policies, guidelines and essays can be discussed, in particular WP:ACRO which this section is about. Are you doubting the validity of WP:ACRO? --Francis Schonken (talk) 09:18, 28 February 2016 (UTC)
Re. title translation in the lead: I think the issues mentioned by Gerda can all be addressed (some may even not be an issue at all), but as I don't want to be sidetracked by this aspect I'll leave it for what it is for now. --Francis Schonken (talk) 09:18, 28 February 2016 (UTC) Update: see Talk:Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam, BWV 7#English meaning of title for more on this aspect. --Francis Schonken (talk) 18:49, 28 February 2016 (UTC)
  • Prefer Option #4. In asmuch that it wouldn't be clear that this option isn't contradicted by MOS:BOLD nor by MOS:BOLDTITLE (for me this is clear but for some other editors this apparently isn't clear), this could maybe be made a bit more explicit in the applicable guidance. --Francis Schonken (talk) 09:18, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

For instance (as an example formatted for a possible inclusion in MOS:BOLDTITLE):

When the incoming redirect contains an acronym:

The Europlug (CEE 7/16) is a ... (Europlug, with CEE 7/16 as an incoming redirect)

The Europlug (CEE 7/16) is a ... (Europlug, with CEE 7/16 as an incoming redirect)

--Francis Schonken (talk) 10:07, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

  • Option 5 is the the correct one (whether with the translation and its source or without), for reasons spelled out in detail in my bullet-comment in the parent thread. Options 4/6 is a MOS:BOLDTITLE / MOS:BOLDSYN / MOS:BOLD problem, failing to bold a significant alt. name that is a redirect to the page. (Options 4/6 are the same thing for purposes of this discussion; whether a translation is in the lead and whether it is controversial enough to require a citation in the lead [or we need one there because it isn't in the body, which would itself be problematic per WP:LEAD] are unrelated matters, for editorial consensus at an article. Option 3 is "user-hateful", pretending that we don't have good reasons to prefer simple, easy wikilinks, and it's pointlessly coding up a footnote which thwarts readers' ability to just hover the link and see what it links to; it did get the bolding right, though. Options 1 and 2 only address the bolding matter and not the "WTF does this initialism mean?" matter; #1 is the correct one on the bolding, as far as that one point goes.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  08:26, 4 March 2016 (UTC)
  • Comment – per my proposal above, I've updated MOS:BOLDSYN thus --Francis Schonken (talk) 11:55, 4 March 2016 (UTC)
    • @Francis Schonken: Why would you radically change an active guideline in the middle of a dispute about its interpretation, to change it to say what you are proposing when you know that proposal is disputed in a still open VP discussion? Please self-revert it immediately.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  06:40, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

Whatever clarifies:

The St Mark Passion (German: Markus-Passion), BWV 247, is a ... (St Mark Passion, BWV 247)

The St Mark Passion (German: Markus-Passion), BWV 247, is a ... (St Mark Passion, BWV 247)

(etc.) --Francis Schonken (talk) 09:52, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

? Wikilinks aren't used for verification so "is already verified by the source" seems rather off-topic.
It's about whether it is clear for the average reader what "BWV" means when they first encounter it in this article.
(BTW, the Dellal reference is no longer used in the lede, but as said that has no relevance to whether or not BWV should be linked.)
WP:ACRO says: "...When not written out in full on the first use on a page, an acronym should be linked."
So, BWV, being an acronym, should be linked, thus: BWV, upon first usage on the page. There are no exceptions mentioned for this rule on the guideline page (WP:ACRO). --Francis Schonken (talk) 20:46, 6 March 2016 (UTC)
I can hardly see why this would be a policy based question. The text is about BWV 7, which is a synonym for Christ unser Herr zum Jordan Kam; there is no need for any further linking since that's the very article. Moreover, it'd make no sense to link BWV 7 (a specific composition by Johann Sebastian Bach) to a ambiguous list, List of compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach.
The case hardly compares with, say, linking ADHD at the first mention per WP:ACRO for the above-mentioned reasons. For example, we are not linking BMW to Bayerische Motoren Werke at the BMW 5 Series (E12) article. Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 07:08, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
In this case do not put a link in the middle of the bolding, as it detracts from the bolding. But somewhere else in the article it can say that the work is 7 in the BWV catalog, with a link to it there. Though I expect that Gerda Arendt can say it in a nicer way. We have the same issue with stars and galaxies that are often found in catalogs and lists and identified with a code. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 07:24, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
Don't see the comparison with stars and galaxies. Can you show me an example of an article that uses such a code as a comma-separated disambiguator in the article title? Also, can't follow why NGC isn't linked on first occurence in the Andromeda Galaxy article? The article does not conform to WP:ACRO in that respect. Sorry for pointing that out as a problem.
In classical music composition articles there's a long tradition to link to composer catalogues on first occurence of their abbreviation being used, usually in the lead section. I don't think that is going to change anywhere soon by stars and galaxies analogies, nor for someone initiating "user-hateful" (as they have been called above) footnotes in one particular series of compositions (Bach cantatas), a series that covers less than 20% of the compositions listed for that composer. --Francis Schonken (talk) 08:11, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
Yes, "In classical music composition articles there's a long tradition to link to composer catalogues on first occurence of their abbreviation being used, usually in the lead section." Correct. Nobody wants to change that. Nobody (I assume) would bold a catalogue number of a Dvořák Symphony, not even one of the several, because they are not known by that number. However, like it or not, the Bach cantatas are known by their numbers, the cantata number equals the BWV number. Look at pages in serious literature: you will find a cantata referred to by BWV 7, to stay with the example, see [8], [9], or just look for BWV on a page like this. In such cases, I vote for a way to bold that term (your #5), if needed with a footnote (your #3), while I think a link to BWV from the bolded term gives too much prominence to BWV. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:14, 10 March 2016 (UTC)
Just thinking aloud here: would this satisfy both your and my concerns?
  1. Step 1: Let's make Cantata No. 7 (Bach) a redirect to Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam, BWV 7
  2. Step 2: Let's write the start of the cantata article thus:
    Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam (Christ our Lord came to the Jordan), Cantata No. 7 in the BGA and the BWV, is a ...
This could be done for all cantatas thus numbered in BGA (and similarly for the last few that are thus numbered in NBG editions). --Francis Schonken (talk) 08:46, 10 March 2016 (UTC)
It doesn't satisfy my concerns, look at the page linked above, it would say (staying with our example) "BWV 7", not "Cantata No. 7", - "BWV 7" is something like a common name, and it is simple. Compare the TOC of this book, where you read "1.1 First Sunday in Advent: BWV 61, 62, 36". --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:25, 10 March 2016 (UTC)
And this compromise proposal (I don't say I'm wildly enthusiastic about these compromise suggestions, but seems the right time to consider them)?
Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam (Christ our Lord came to the Jordan), Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis No. 7 (BWV 7), is a ...
Doesn't seem too excessive for cantatas that are also known by a cantata number identical to their BWV number, satisfies all interpretations of relevant guidance, and gets rid of the type of footnote that has been qualified as user-unfriendly. --Francis Schonken (talk) 10:51, 10 March 2016 (UTC)
Sorry, I see you want to build a compromise for me, but ...
  1. If a little footnote is user-unfriendly, how is this, holding up the readers expectation to finally get to know what all the German means, for even longer? By adding even more German? Keep in mind that s/he doesn't yet know that it is a cantata, nor by Johann Sebastian Bach, a name s/he may have never heard.
  2. I believe the duplication of the number is user-unfriendly itself. IF duplicated, the version I've seen is Cantata BWV 7. However, when the naming of the cantatas was discussed, that construction was dismissed, and the simple version chosen. We have to bold only the simple version.
  3. Do me a favour: avoid the coding nbsp; - it's user-unfriendly for someone who wants to edit. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 17:49, 10 March 2016 (UTC)
(ec) FYI, "BWV 7" is not a "synonym for Christ unser Herr zum Jordan Kam". So I don't know whether you understand or don't understand what BWV means in this context.
For the BMW example: I think the intro of the BMW 5 Series (E12) article is rather an example of how not to handle this (doesn't even link to the parent article BMW 5 Series from the intro, etc...). IMHO the intro BMW New Six does much better. However, please distinguish the article title and its disambiguator. All these BMW-related articles have "BMW" in the article title (before the disambiguator if any). For the Bach cantata article "BWV 7" *is* the disambiguator. We don't usually bold a disambiguator in a first sentence. E.g. the article Orlando, Florida starts with "Orlando (/ɔːrˈlændoʊ/) is a city in the U.S. state of Florida, ..." As you can see the disambiguator ("Florida") is not bolded, but linked in the first sentence. Of course for Bach cantatas there's no need to link the disambiguator as a whole (nobody contended that), only the part that may need a bit of clarification for many readers. --Francis Schonken (talk) 07:41, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
Hi Francis Schonken, a quick reply:
  1. BWV stands for Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis, whereas BWV number 7 is synonymous to Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam.
  2. BMW 5 Series (E12) does link to Bayerische Motoren Werke, but not in the manner you'd prefer.
  3. "Orlando (/ɔːrˈlændoʊ/) is a city in the U.S. state of Florida...", that's an WP:LINK violation.
I hope this helps! Cheers! Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 11:30, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
Re. "BWV number 7 is synonymous to Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam": again, incorrect, and doubting whether you grasp the BWV concept.
Re. #2: the BMW 5 Series (E12) does not link to BMW nor to BMW 5 Series from its lead section afaics. As said, I think BMW New Six a better example of how to go about this.
Re. #3: where do you see the WP:LINK violation in the Orlando example? --Francis Schonken (talk) 11:44, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
Missa in tempore belli

How is this, Missa in tempore belli, with six bolded names, if for Bach just two seem too much? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 19:18, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

To begin with, let's avoid seas of black & blue:
Missa in tempore belli (English: Mass in Time of War) is Joseph Haydn’s tenth,[1] and one of the most popular, of his fourteen settings of the mass.
This mass is catalogued Mass No. 10 in C major, (H. XXII:9),[1] and is sometimes known as the Paukenmesse (English: Kettledrum Mass) due to the inclusion of the timpani in its orchestration. However, the autographed manuscript contains "Missa in tempore belli"...
Applying the same kind of bolding to the current intro of Lobet Gott in seinen Reichen, BWV 11
[Lobet Gott in seinen Reichen] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) (Laud to God in all his kingdoms),[2] BWV 11, known as the Ascension Oratorio (Himmelfahrtsoratorium), is an oratorio by Johann Sebastian Bach, marked by him as Oratorium In Festo Ascensionis Xsti (Oratorio for the feast of the Ascension of Christ), probably composed in 1735 for the service for Ascension and first performed on 19 May 1735.
Bach had composed his Christmas Oratorio, based on the gospels of Luke and Matthew, in 1734. He had composed an Easter Oratorio already in 1725. The text for the "Ascension Oratorio"...

References

  1. ^ a b The Haydn masses are sorted using chronological indices given by New Grove. The Hoboken catalogue had also placed the masses in a presumed chronological order, but further research has undermined that sequence. See Oxford Composer Companions: Haydn, ed. David Wyn Jones, Oxford University Press, 2002, p. 475. ISBN 0-19-866216-5
  2. ^ Ambrose, Z. Philip (2012). "BWV 165 O heilges Geist- und Wasserbad". University of Vermont. Retrieved 13 May 2015.
I don't think it is a good idea to start comparing with the intro of Haydn's Missa in tempore belli before someone took the effort to straighten its many issues (excessive boldface; sea of blue linking; explanatory footnote posing as reference; "abbreviating" Mass No. 10 to No. 9, disparity of italicization of the article title,...) out to an acceptable level. --Francis Schonken (talk) 08:19, 14 March 2016 (UTC)
I found the sea of black and blue, and find horrible. The process of expanding that article has not yet begun. I am asking you expert(s) to fix it. Who am I to say that kettledrum is not even a good translation of Pauken. It may still be widely known as Kettledrum Mass, - I don't know. My version would look like this:
Missa in tempore belli ([Mass in Time of War] Error: {{Lang-xx}}: text has italic markup (help)) is the title that Joseph Haydn assigned to his Mass No. 10 in C major, H. XXII:9. It is also known as the Paukenmesse (Kettledrum Mass) because timpani are used for dramatic effects. ... --Gerda Arendt (talk) 14:05, 14 March 2016 (UTC)
As far as I'm concerned:
Missa in tempore belli ([Mass in Time of War] Error: {{Lang-xx}}: text has italic markup (help)) is the title that Joseph Haydn assigned to his Mass No. 10 in C major, H. XXII:9. It is also known as the Paukenmesse (Kettledrum Mass) because timpani are used for dramatic effects. ...
(although I'm no expert either, the "No. 10" still seems a bit odd, but it may be the Mass is mostly known under that number in English reliable sources, contrary to its number in the Hoboken catalogue)
Anyway, if the "experts" in the matter can accept the above, I'd say, by analogy,
Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit (God's time is the very best time), BWV 106, also known as Actus tragicus, is a church cantata composed by Johann Sebastian Bach in Mühlhausen, intended for a funeral. ...
for the Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit, BWV 106 article. --Francis Schonken (talk) 15:03, 14 March 2016 (UTC)
... only that, while most people won't refer to Haydn's mass by any number, mass no. or Hoboken number, they do refer to Bach's work also as BWV 106. In the Dürr-Jones book (compare above), the table of content reads: "Funeral: BWV 106, 157, ...". --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:19, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

This is a subsection of a subsection of a topic called Linking and bolding of acronyms in alternate names in lead. The Missa in tempore belli example illustrates the principle that the acronym should be linked, not bolded. Why else was that example introduced in this section? --Francis Schonken (talk) 15:52, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

Country abbreviations

Is this edit ok? The user started edit-warring over it. Thanks.--Ymblanter (talk) 20:17, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

RfC: Full-length films/videos in articles

There is an RfC at Wikipedia talk:Videos/Archive 1#RfC: Full-length films/videos in articles seeking to establish consensus on what we should do with full-length films/videos in articles about those films/videos. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 21:39, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

RfC venue question

Since the start of the video RfC that I posted above, Alsee (most vocally -- there are a couple others now) has noted that because the discussion is located at Wikipedia talk:Videos, which is an information page rather than a guideline, it can have no project-wide effect.

If it were on an article talk page, say, a WikiProject talk page, I would understand, but whatever it's classified as right now, Wikipedia:Videos seems to me the most relevant place to have a discussion about the use of video in articles. That it is an information page doesn't, to me, mean it's a poor choice of venue but that it's woefully underdeveloped and in desperate need of this sort of discussion in order to take steps to develop it. Another obvious choice is WP:NOTREPOSITORY, but while that will need to be discussed/updated to address more than just textual content regardless of this discussion, that page is for broader, site-defining rules than for setting forth guidelines for when it is or is not appropriate to use certain videos in certain kinds of articles. So as far as quasi-"official" venues go, that leaves, it seems, image-specific pages like MOS:IMAGES and WP:IUP or this page.

There are other considerations for this RfC, but I want to ask this specific question: is it not enough for an RfC to be at the most relevant projectspace talk page? For it to have site-wide effect, would this question need to be on this page? If so, why wouldn't it be enough to post it here and elsewhere, including centralized discussion? Again, we're not talking about an RfC in some obscure place -- it's an obvious location, it just happens that our guidelines on the use of video need work. My hope is that this is a step towards working out real guidelines. If I was wrong in my choice of venue, the RfC should certainly be withdrawn. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 15:04, 12 March 2016 (UTC)

5 of the last 8 commenters are advocating a more appropriate venue and/or improved drafting of the question. It's time to pull the plug and get a fresh start. Alsee (talk) 19:50, 12 March 2016 (UTC)
In reality, any RfC that will have a wide-reaching impact on the encylopaedia should be held here, as this is a public forum that is widely-watched and isn't in any sphere of influence. It is a neutral space, whereas many project pages are not. Of course, this isn't a rule of any kind, and RfCs arise all over the place in an organic way. However, I tend to find that the ones conducted here get wider input, and seem to get on better. RGloucester — ☎ 19:55, 12 March 2016 (UTC)
Alsee, you've been peppering me with messages telling me to withdraw it ever since the RfC opened and started veering towards option (B). You raise some good points, and I want to be crystal clear that I don't think you're acting in bad faith, but you are among the most vocal/visible proponents of option (A) on multiple pages, and I don't know yet if the thrust of your argument to withdraw (concerning venue) holds water yet. That doesn't mean you're not right or that you're pushing a POV (and I agree with you about (A), after all), but it does mean that because I simply do not know if you're right, I want to get other opinions. If you're right, it makes sense to withdraw. So that's why I'm here -- to get other people's opinions and see if I should consent to withdraw.
But here, as elsewhere, you're trying to frame the question to convince others and to pressure me using these figures about what # out of # people say. On my talk page you said "Since I first raised the issue, it is now 4 out of 7 people objecting to the validity of the RFC", and here "5 of the last 8 commenters..." But these numbers appear to be misleading. here is a diff of ALL edits following your request. There are indeed 8 people who have weighed in since then, and I only see three who share your concern about venue: Crisco 1492, OpenFuture, and Nigel Pap (whose "if the result is simply changing the guideline then this RfC won't have much effect" seems based on the presumption that you are correct rather than an independent assertion). So 3 of 8 since you raised your objection, not 5 of 8. Add to that the 5 preceding your objection who likewise did not themselves object, and the total is 3 of 13 people sharing your concern about venue (not counting you and me).
But I'm not trying to get into a debate over numbers or saying that the concerns of those 3 people (and yourself) aren't important. Quite the contrary. That's why I'm here. Again, if you're right and the RfC can have no real effect, I would consent to it being closed early. My point is that I would like to get other people's opinions about the appropriateness of the venue without you trying to poison the well with e.g. this "5 of 8" business, which is both inaccurate and irrelevant to the question at hand. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 23:08, 12 March 2016 (UTC)
Regarding "commenters are advocating a more appropriate venue and/or improved drafting of the question" Me, Crisco_1492, Nigel Pap, OpenFuture, Mendaliv(misconceptions section), RGloucester here. That was 6 out of the 9 people in a row discussing the topic, although now it's 6 of 11. I'm sorry if I'm "pressuring", but starting fresh is more productive than dragging out something that isn't going to generate a viable result. Alsee (talk) 01:32, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
To clarify, there's no hostility here. I want to work together to get this done right. I'm a bit of a policy/RFC wonk, I've done a fair number of closes. I've done a few preemptive closes of RFC's that weren't going to be productive, with zero objections. I was really hoping you'd withdraw it immediately to minimize the mess. Coincidentally I almost preformed a preemptive close a day before your RFC, here, but I accidentally got involved on the page before I saw it. I brought in admin to do the early close. The reason I was counting out the objections is because a good closer isn't going to issue a consensus when a significant number of people are making a reasonable case that there's a problem with the current RFC. They'll just say to start again with a better RFC. That just delays things by an entire month. Yuck. Alsee (talk) 01:59, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

Anything that appears at {{centralized discussion}} is a valid community result, regardless of page. Doubly true for anything on watchlist notices. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 04:26, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

This was a problem, in my opinion, at this recent RFC, which fortunately got seconded by a second RFC at MOS Images which cured the question of the project-wide legitimacy of the first RFC. My opinion, for what it's worth, is that the venue of a RFC to create policy or guideline shouldn't make any difference so long as (1a) notice of it is properly distributed (which would include at the Village Pump and at any existing policy or guideline affected by it, (1b) that notice makes clear that policy or guideline (or at least a rule of project-wide applicability, which amounts to the same thing) is being formed, and (1c) the RFC itself also makes that clear or (2) the RFC is at an existing and relevant policy or guideline page, in which case 1a-1c should not be needed, though they may be advisable if the change is important enough. The sentiment has been expressed, with which I mostly disagree, that any RFC that happens anywhere even without the additional notice I mentioned above should be able to form policy or guidelines if enough editors respond to it. Frankly, I think that's a formula for unnecessary drama. Regards, TransporterMan (TALK) 16:45, 15 March 2016 (UTC)

Comments wanted on Video RfC: Full-length films/videos in articles

Agree with Oiyarsbepsy - its listed as a centralized discussion. Moreover, just draw notice to it for more comment like I just did for more input. Comments wanted at Wikipedia talk:Videos/Archive 1#RfC: Full-length films/videos in articles Alanscottwalker (talk) 00:02, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

Amendment to our Username policy

NOT DONE
There is clearly no support for implementing this. Beeblebrox (talk) 17:44, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

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.

According to WP:UNCONF, our current policy on confusing usernames says that such names are "are highly discouraged but which are not so inappropriate on their own as to require action". This statement is extremely vague as to what defines a username as "confusing" or not.

As such, I am proposing that usernames which meet a set of given criteria be blocked immediately, regardless of the user's edits. On Wikipedia's username policy talk page, I have quoted a policy that is already enforced on the Dutch Wikipedia as follows:

De volgende namen zijn niet gewenst: *Namen die moeilijk te onthouden kunnen zijn, waaronder: **Namen met daarin een reeks van meer dan 6 cijfers; **Willekeurige reeksen letters als "DGLJDLGKSKJALKDJFA"; **Andere willekeurige combinaties van tekens;

Translation of the above:

The following names are not wanted:

  • Names that could be difficult to remember, including:
    • Names which contain a series of more than 6 digits;
    • Random letter sequences like "DGLJDLGKSKJALKDJFA";
    • Other random combinations of characters;

This is further iterated in the Dutch version of our Uw-ublock template, and seeing several users blocked for this reason on NLWIKI (many of which have made no edits to the wiki, like this user, this user, and this user) among many others, I thus propose that this policy be extended to the English Wikipedia. Any comments?

Best, <<< SOME GADGET GEEK >>> (talk) 21:12, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

  • Oppose, rules creep. Our current situation handles it better: one of those usernames can be brought up for discussion, and the community can decide on a case-by-case basis. If a user with one of those names is editing disruptively, then the blocking administrator can add the confusing name as a behaviour item that suggests intent to disrupt.
    That said, if we want to expand WP:UNCONF to list those as examples of confusing user names, I don't see a reason why we shouldn't. However, we're just adding them as examples of confusing usernames, not prohibiting them outright. —C.Fred (talk) 21:37, 10 March 2016 (UTC)
  • Oppose. There is no need to remember usernames, therefore no need for a policy prohibiting them. We allow IPv4 addresses, which are just a bunch of numbers, and IPv6 addresses which are long strings of hexadecimal characters. Nobody needs to remember them. -- zzuuzz (talk) 21:38, 10 March 2016 (UTC)
  • Comment: There's at least one regular editor who uses a username like this - pinging jps since this proposal would affect him. Sunrise (talk) 23:45, 10 March 2016 (UTC)
  • Oppose I needed to do some testing with an account that Wikipedia would see as a new user (nonautoconfirmed ), so I created User:TestAccountZboxx3R7ql001, which would violate the proposed "Names that could be difficult to remember" rule. It would have been silly to pick a username that someone might find desirable some day and want to use. --Guy Macon (talk) 00:03, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
  • Oppose I tire of this perennial proposal. There is a reason I use a random string. There is no reason that I (or anyone else) shouldn't be allowed to use a random string. jps (talk) 00:17, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

information Note: Hi everybody. Please note that I brought up this topic in response to noticing a piece of vandalism committed by Bob12345678909876543211234567890 (talk · contribs), a name which obviously meets the criteria used by NLWIKI to be treated as "confusing" and lead to a block. The editor did not make any more edits since then, but was nevertheless blocked by Alexf, using the Uw-vaublock template which explicitly states that his username "is a blatant violation of our username policy". Based on this discussion and where it seems to be going, it seems like you are arguing that this is not a blatant violation of our username policy. Is this the case, or do you change your mind now? <<< SOME GADGET GEEK >>> (talk) 02:00, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

  • Not at all. It meets both the letter and spirit of WP:UNCONF - a confusing name in combination with other behavioral problems. Bob123whatever isn't a blatant violation by itself, but as soon as he starts vandalizing articles, username policy means he gets that much less leniency before blocking. —Cryptic 02:08, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
  • Something to keep in mind is that, following the SUL finalization, all accounts truly are cross-wiki accounts. Usernames that look nonsensical in one language are perfectly reasonable in other languages. It is probably best to avoid inflexible rules for usernames. Risker (talk) 03:35, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

 Comment: And here we go again: Wikipedia talk:Username policy has just been vandalized by Djdjdjhdhdyu (talk · contribs) - another name that would imply disruptive editing, and another reason to implement the rules above in our username policy. <<< SOME GADGET GEEK >>> (talk) 20:23, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

No change in policy is needed to block a vandalism-only account. User blocked. --Floquenbeam (talk) 20:32, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
  • Oppose IMO the example names are easier than the foreign-character-set names of some valued contributors. (Hebrew, Japanese, whatever.) With cross-wiki SUL accounts we want to apply extra care to minimize conflicts with other language name policy.
I do agree that a blatant garbage-name is a strong contributing indicator of irredeemable bad faith after vandalism or other disruptive behavior has occurred. If the user creates a throw-away account with a random garbage name, that's an invitation for us to throw it away. Alsee (talk) 20:32, 12 March 2016 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Simple English, etc.

Is there any other Simple WPs excluding the English version? If negative, is there any raised idea for creating one (or some) more Simple versions for the other WPs, e.g. German or French? Thank you. Hamid Hassani (talk) 17:37, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

There is currently only a Simple English Wikipedia. There have been proposals for simple German and French projects in the past (see this proposal for example), but none of them have passed despite numerous attempts. I voted for the last Simple French proposal, but I can't find it now. I'd be open to them myself, but I think there would need to be a clear indication of the potential use for such a project, as well as the potential for it to reach a critical mass of contributors in order to have usable content. Ajraddatz (talk) 18:03, 14 March 2016 (UTC)
I'm personally somewhat against there being a Simple English Wikipedia, since simple English isn't really a separate language or even dialect. But I don't think I could even get close to winning a debate to delete the wiki. There could be a separate website, where articles are written in simple wording in all languages. Philmonte101 😊😄😞 (talk) 18:16, 14 March 2016 (UTC)
Compared to English Wikipedia, Simple English gets 0.002 times as many page views, has 0.005 times as many active editors, and has 0.02 times as many articles. If we make an optimistic assumption that you get similar ratios, simple versions of some of the other larger languages may be viable. However that is "viable" as in "it's comparable to some of the tiny obscure language wikis that exist". You'd be in the ballpark of Telugu wiki. And that's assuming you do attract enough attention to get it rolling. Alsee (talk) 07:28, 15 March 2016 (UTC)
That's the catch, and none of the other simple project proposals have been able to demonstrate that (simplewiki barely does). There's always the possibility, but with a decade of failed attempts I doubt it will happen any time soon. Ajraddatz (talk) 08:07, 15 March 2016 (UTC)
The problem is that simple english is not really a language but is just limiting vocabulary to the most commonly used words. What simple english really is is a junior encyclopedia that is oriented to seventh graders, instead of college and professionals. There has always been a market for junior encyclopedias, and we do need to create ones for each language, but not by calling them simple, but instead calling them what they are - junior encyclopedias. The name of simple english needs to be changed from simple to wikijr and in long form "Junior Wikipedia". In French it would be something like "Jeune Wikipedia" and frwikijr. While simple says it is "for everyone! That includes children and adults who are learning English", it is pretty dumb to create an encyclopedia for that, which is why it has never taken off. Apteva (talk) 16:53, 16 March 2016 (UTC)
Thats not really the entirety of it however. Simple English is meant to convey information in simple enough English that anyone with a basic vocabulary can understand and get to grips with the subject. While this may include readers who are juniors, it is not (meant to be anyway) a Junior encyclopedia for people who lack the intellectual capacity to understand subjects, merely the vocabulary. Only in death does duty end (talk) 17:03, 16 March 2016 (UTC)
This is the fundamental problem with simple.wiki — it's based on a false premise. The theory is that the content is not to be dumbed down at all, just expressed in simple language.
The false premise is that this theory is realizable, which it just isn't. Oh, to some extent it is; there is definitely writing that uses insider jargon for its own sake, and it is an improvement to remove that. But that's just as true in the regular English Wikipedia.
In general, though, the idea that you can express complicated ideas in simple language and not lose anything is just wrong. Technical terms exist for a reason, and the reason is that they are the clearest and simplest way to express their referents. If you want to learn a subject, you need to learn its language along with it.
So basically I don't think simple.wiki is ever going to work, on its own chosen terms. They may not want to dumb down their articles, but they inevitably will.
The Junior Wikipedia idea, on the other hand, strikes me as something with possibilities. I'm a little surprised that something like that doesn't already exist (or maybe it does and I'm just behind the news?). --Trovatore (talk) 01:49, 18 March 2016 (UTC)
I can read "simple English" - as used by simple: - but I can't write it. My natural tendency always takes over, I write what seems normal to me, but I read it back, think "this isn't simple", and don't save. One barrier is that I don't like to think that I'm "talking down" or otherwise using a patronising tone. Sometimes I read one of their articles, think "this grammar can be improved" - my problem is then one of "does the existing grammar fall within the definition of 'simple', and does my desired change do so also?" If the former does but the latter doesn't, why change it? My contribs there are few, and don't give any indication of the number of unsaved edits. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:59, 16 March 2016 (UTC)
In order for that to happen, there would have to be people who speak the language who are willing to open that Wiki. CLCStudent (talk) 18:08, 17 March 2016 (UTC)
That's an insightful observation.--S Philbrick(Talk) 20:39, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

There are multiple current proposals, to see the list, or make additional, please stop by meta:Requests_for_new_languages. — xaosflux Talk 00:30, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

  • There's no question they would be useful, for major languages with a large as-a-second-language userbase (I would add Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, and Russian, before either French or German, frankly). It really is a problem of insufficient number of interested editors to form "critical mass" for such projects to be functional.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  06:47, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

Video games and historical figures

Duplicate discussion. While this thread was opened as a general topic, most of the material is forked discussion from Talk:George Washington#Video games are part of the Wikipedia encyclopedia culture, and should centralize back there if specifically about that article.

I don't feel this warrants an RfC at this point, but I would like to get some opinions informally in a public venue.
A historical figure appears as a character in a video game. Does that fact alone warrant a mention of that game in a "Popular culture" section of that person's bio article? Or, must there be something else to provide enough weight for inclusion? If so, what?
Is there any guidance specifically related to this, such as inclusion criteria for "Popular culture" sections?
This stems from this article talk (permalink), which so far lacks a quorum for consensus. ―Mandruss ☎ 01:02, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

See WP:MISC for guidelines for this area - though not specifically for the example of "appears in a video game". TBH & IMO, that someone appears in a video game seems about as relevant as them appearing on a t-shirt - which is to say, not at all of note ... on which basis, I think you'd need some exceptional reason to add mention of the videogame appearance in the historicl person article. --Tagishsimon (talk) 01:13, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
This issue arose on George Washington, when an editor noted that Washington played a role in several video games, and Mandruss reverted using WEIGHT as his argument. There are independent RS to source the statement. There is nothing controversial about the facts--the issue is whether any such role is worthy of mention in the "Popular Culture" section of the Washington article. I certainly think it is--video games are a major part of popular culture in 21st century (and indeed Wikipedia has 32,000 articles on them.) WP:MISC is about lists of miscellaneous facts and clearly does not apply. Video games are an integral part of popular culture, not trivia. One person can make a t-shirt--it takes hundreds to make a game and thousands/millions of customers to find it of interest. Rjensen (talk) 01:19, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
Video games or not, the guidance for an "in popular culture" section or article should be if secondary sources note the appearance of the figure in the newer work. I would say this applies to video games just as much as any other work. --MASEM (t) 01:24, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
@Masem: Would, say, a catalog or listing of video games and their characters qualify as such a secondary source? ―Mandruss ☎ 01:26, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
Oh ffs. Whereas it is important that there is a secondary source to back up a fact included in an article, that fact that there is a secondary source does NOT of itself make the fact sufficiently weighty to be of merit in the article. --Tagishsimon (talk) 01:30, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
An appearance should never be listed as merely an appearance. The point of Popular culture sections is to: "explain the subject's impact on popular culture rather than simply listing appearances", to quote a maintenance template that probably most such sections ought to be tagged with. If an appearance is exemplary in illustrating a subject's impact on popular culture – and reliable sources treat it as an exemplar – then it can be thrown in. If not, it's just trivia. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 01:33, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
(edit conflict)No, secondary requires analysis or transformation of information. For example, for better or worse, the inclusion of Washington as a villain character in the game "Assassin's Creed 3" was noted and criticized by a number of sources [10], so that would be secondary (transformation from just the simple fact he's in the game). --MASEM (t) 01:36, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
Mandruss deleted the entire "popular culture" section. It noted Washington's role in 5 =different games such as Assassin's Creed III --and linked to our articles on those games. We have thousands of articles on video games and none on t-shirts for a reason. Mandruss has been unable to explain his strong opposition to video games--saying in his edit summary he will accept "Historical film and TV portrayals, maybe. Computer games, no. MAYBE films??? And exactly why not--he is unable to say. Rjensen (talk) 01:38, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
WTF? That was my take on the situation, and I don't pretend to know everything about this. That's why I opened this. Why are you focused on my arguments, when there are more experienced editors here saying that (1) at least most of the two of the three entries probably shouldn't be included, which directly opposes your arguments, and (2) the mention of AC3 should include a discussion of the impact? ―Mandruss ☎ 01:46, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
Mandruss reverted several editors at George Washington and was unable to justify his position at Talk:George Washington. So he moved the discussion here and still cannot defend his blanking a whole section on popular culture. Rjensen (talk) 02:01, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
Still focused on me, and this is not the venue for editor behavior complaints. For clarity, this is the "whole section" that I "blanked". ―Mandruss ☎ 02:07, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
Duplication of proposal already under discussion at Talk:George Washington#Video games are part of the Wikipedia encyclopedia culture.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  10:14, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

Proposal: In the case of the George Washington article, there is no "long list of minor or unimportant references" to justify the "article with "In popular culture" template. Simply placing the reference to three video games, with sources, in the "Legacy" section avoids placing the information in its own section. The introductory analysis, "George Washington as a prominent historical figure in world civilization and as a military commander is recognized in several modern video games." --- is sufficient to explain the significance of the references. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 11:16, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

No opinion, but the issue at hand is much larger than George Washington—starting with these recent contribs. ―Mandruss ☎ 11:33, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
Then, without any objections, I take it that Mandrus now concurs with the proposal for the George Washington article until the larger issue is resolved to the contrary, --- As all expressed reservations have been answered, it may be that the George Washington proposal now serves as a model for the broader solution. It avoids the artificially narrow "popular culture" section, it is sourced, with few prominent examples (three), couched in an analytic perspective to avoid a mere listing of trivia factoids.
The figure of George Washington in Civilization V is featured in Gergo Vas' review of “The most Memorable Presidential Cameos in Video Games at [11]. Fox News published a story on a fictionalized King Washington as villain in Assassin’s Creed III at [12] George Washington is noted as appearing in the 2005 Age of Empires III on page 82 in the PediaPress “George Washington” discussion of “Cultural depictions of George Washington” including movies, television, coins and currency.
James Paul Gee in his book (p.56) “Why Video Games are Good for Your Soul: Pleasure and Learning”, notes that “These imaginings and visions — really perceptually-based simulations in your mind—are what give meaning to a fact like 'George Washington was the first president of the United States’", whether than scenario is with a King Washington as some called for at the time, or a George Washington "in civilian clothes bickering with legislators.”
George Washington is discussed as a character in Age of Empires on page 70, Empires III on page 148, and Assassin’s Creed on page 160 in Winnerling and Kerschbaumer’s “Early modernity and video games” and on page 73 notes, “Concerning Early Modernity, the player reflect the semiotic system and thereby gives insights in his historical consciousness…” TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 09:40, 14 March 2016 (UTC)
I didn't say I concur with anything, I said I have no opinion on your proposal, which at that time was only for the GW article and now has become a proposed model. I am interested to hear how others feel about treating video games as legacy on a wide scale, and your first proposal is only 24 hours old. If the concept is not accepted for wide application, I don't know why the Washington article should be exempted.
Regardless, if impact relevant to the article subject can be sourced and summarized, there's no reason the entry can't be included in a Popular culture section; there has been no objection to that from me or anyone else (with the possible exception of Tagishsimon). ―Mandruss ☎ 10:30, 14 March 2016 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
A similar topic was discussed at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Trivia sections#Deprecating the "In popular culture" heading. There was another one or two of similar bent by SMcCandlish right around that time period as well. --Izno (talk) 11:28, 14 March 2016 (UTC)
@Mandruss and Izno: There is no reason to revert reliably sourced information by an academic publication at Wikipedia. There is no attempt at the George Washington article to “deprecate the “In popular culture” template heading. The issue at the George Washington article has morphed in response to unsourced abstract objections, it now revolves around academically sourced information specifically related to the legacy of George Washington as a leader of civilization, a prospective King of America, and as a military commander.
George Washington in popular culture is discussed as a character in Age of Empires on page 70, Empires III on page 148, and Assassin’s Creed on page 160 in Winnerling and Kerschbaumer’s “Early modernity and video games” and on page 73 notes, “Concerning Early Modernity, the player reflect the semiotic system and thereby gives insights in his historical consciousness…”
Tobias Winnerling holds a doctorate in History and is on the faculty of the Dusseldorf University, Austria. “Early Modernity and Video Games" is published by the academic press, Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing in 2014 [13]. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 13:46, 14 March 2016 (UTC)
I'm almost convinced that an RfC is needed on the general question, the topic of this thread. You're making this an extension of article talk, and that was never the intended purpose here. You're also posting duplicate comments in both places, and I'm not going to follow suit by duplicating my replies. ―Mandruss ☎ 14:10, 14 March 2016 (UTC)
Very well, I agree with you that the encyclopedia articles should not be cluttered with factoid lists which are not related to the subject by sourced publications. The first posting at the George Washington article was not substantially written in narrative form, nor was it adequately referenced. I agree with your initial reversion. However, now that the initial posting has been amended with analytical context and academic referencing, we will proceed with reliably sourced information by academic publications for the George Washington article. You will find me an ally at the proposed RfC on the general question requiring analysis and reliable academic sourcing to include elements of popular culture, otherwise lists of factoids do not rise to the notability threshold. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 14:39, 14 March 2016 (UTC)
The fact that a piece of trivia can be sourced does not mean it must be included, if that's what this forked debate is about; see WP:NOT#INDISCRIMINATE, WP:V, MOS:TRIVIA, etc. Re: The original question: A historical figure appears as a character in a video game. Does that fact alone warrant a mention of that game in a "Popular culture" section of that person's bio article? Or, must there be something else to provide enough weight for inclusion? If so, what? – If there is such a section, the game is notable, and the character is a significant feature of the game, it's probably sufficient. But such sections, especially as lists, are strongly discouraged. They should instead be rewritten as prose treatments of the subject in fictional works and other cultural contexts. E.g., we might have a paragraph on filmic portrayals of a historical figure and how they diverge from historical reality, and round it off with mentioning some video games in which the figure is a major character. That serves an encyclopedic purpose. A list of appearances by a figure as a character in every known fictional work in which {s}he appears is precisely the kind of indiscriminate trivia WP:NOT is about.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  21:48, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

We are agreed with Mandruss. The fact that an historical figure appears as a character in a video game does not alone by itself warrant a mention of that game in a “Popular culture” section of a bio article. The section may be established as “Legacy”, “Historical reputation” or “Popular culture”. If the game is notable, and the character a significant feature of the game, it must be written in into the prose narrative in the context of of fictional film and documentaries, commemorations, stamps, coins and memorials in the names of places and schools. The reference should be a verifiable published work recognized as a scholarly reliable source. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 06:54, 15 March 2016 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
Same duplication of proposal already under discussion at Talk:George Washington#Video games are part of the Wikipedia encyclopedia culture.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  10:14, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

Example: George Washington in the popular culture of video games is featured as a prominent historical figure in world civilization and as a military commander in Age of Empires III, Civilization V and Assassin's Creed III (as a counter-history King). These games are discussed in Winnerling and Kershbaumer’s “Early Modernity and Video Games” explaining that "the player reflects the semiotic system and there by gives insights in his historical consciousness.”[1]

  1. ^ Winnerling, Tobias and Kershbaumer, Florian. “Early modernity and video games” ISBN 978-1-44-386234-9, p. 70, 106, 148, 160.

TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 06:54, 15 March 2016 (UTC)

Well, sorta. There are serious problems with that prose, which I addressed at Talk:George Washington#Back to video games.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  10:04, 21 March 2016 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

RfC: Merging pop-culture material from George Washington article to the side-article for that

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Talk:Legacy of George Washington#Section merge.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  10:04, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

RfC: Amending MOS:JR on comma usage

As fraught with difficulty as it is, the discussion concludes that our MOS should express a preference toward not using commas. Grandfathering older articles, FAs, etc., is recommended, and one should remember that the MOS is a guideline, not a policy. Nyttend's warning against rule creep should be born in mind as well. Moreover, DGG is correct in saying that there is no consensus outside of Wikipedia, and I find the overview of style guides to be less convincing than I had hoped: based on that evidence I would have spoken out against the proposal. But the editors have spoken. Drmies (talk) 02:32, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

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.

Following an RfC in April 2015, the text of MOS:JR was amended to allow both the use and omission of commas around the suffix "Jr" in names. In other words, as long as an article is internally consistent, one is allowed to write either Martin Luther King, Jr, or Martin Luther King Jr. In recent discussions of the matter, it has come to light that the form with the commas, whilst traditional, has lost ground to the form without them. If one reads a survey of style guides done by SMcCandlish, it becomes apparent that eliminating the comma not only has advantages in terms of readability, but it also is nearly universally recommended across the various varieties of English. Eliminating the comma improves prose readability, fulfilling MOS:COMMA's recommendation to reduce comma usage, where it is possible. In addition, it eliminates the necessity of the matching comma, which is often omitted in error or otherwise misused.

Based on these findings, should MOS:JR be amended to prefer the use of the suffix "Jr" without commas? RGloucester — ☎ 23:34, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

Survey

  • Support – Based on the evidence provided by SMcCandlish, I see no reason to allow for the comma. Consistency is desirable, in this case. Having to work around the commas makes it harder to write readable prose. RGloucester — ☎ 23:34, 25 February 2016 (UTC)
  • Support per proposer, and kudos to SMcCandlish for the solid work. ―Mandruss ☎ 23:42, 25 February 2016 (UTC)
  • Support SMcCandlish's research on updated and current usage puts this baby to bed. Nice work SM. In the case of Martin Luther King, Jr., however, the name is so ingrained in history and his own personal use that in this one case it should stay. Randy Kryn 00:16, 26 February 2016 (UTC)
  • Support but consider it a deprecation / grandfathering approach. New articles and those now heading into GA/FA/PR review should be encouraged to used the comma-less version, but I would grandfather GA and FA articles that use the comma, allowing for consensus to change over. (eg a DATERET type situation). This would seem to enable the MLK Jr. case to be kept as is. --MASEM (t) 00:21, 26 February 2016 (UTC)
Feature pages and MLK material do stand out as reasonable exceptions. Well said. user:Randy Kryn 00:33, 26 February 2016 (UTC)
  • Support as we should attempt to matchcurrent practice. Also the use of commas in this stiuation causes confusion in lists with commas, such as references. When it comes to FA status, none should lose it over this, but on the next review, articles should be ammended to the current preferred practice. There would be no need to have a grandfather clause. We need to have one clear recommendation, and the allowed alternatives to prevent useless edit battles. Perhaps we can allow conversion to the preferred "no comma" form, and discourage the reinsertion of commas, but keep an article consistent. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 01:56, 26 February 2016 (UTC)
  • Oppose. The use of Martin Luther King, Jr., here is interesting because he is one such subject where the comma is universally used. I see no reason to change from the current guideline because of cases like King where the comma is used more often than not. Per our article titling policy, we use commonly recognizable names such as those with the comma. This wouldn't be an issue but for a pair of MoS zealots who have fought to add commas in places where they should not be. The prior RFC was well-attended and should not simply be discarded because a couple users don't like commas. Calidum ¤ 05:14, 26 February 2016 (UTC)
    • Not a correct claim re: MLK, as I demonstrate below. There is no recognizability issue with or without commas; you're misunderstanding what "recognizable" means. It is not even slightly plausible that someone will think "Martin Luther King Jr." is a different person (or not a person at all) compared to "Martin Luther King, Jr." I won't comment on the civility of labeling other editors "zealots", other than to make a cross-reference to WP:ARBATC#All parties reminded. Finally, WP:Consensus can change, and it often does when evidence is presented instead of just opinions. Whether lots of people gave an opinion last time has no bearing on the evidence presented this time.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  08:59, 26 February 2016 (UTC)
So you're going after the Martin Luther King, Jr. commas again, saying there's no case for them? The case seems overwhelming. There is a memorial on the National Mall in the states which uses the comma in its official name. There is a National holiday in the United States which uses the comma. These commas are set in stone, literally. Dr. King's tomb carries the comma. This is not a case of preference over style, it is an actual situation where a man's name is set in stone. For Wikipedia to change the titles of the pages on the National Mall monument, on a national holiday, and on the other instances of agreed-upon honor and focus for this internationally recognized icon give pause to what 'exceptions to the guideline' means. Randy Kryn 12:49, 26 February 2016 (UTC)
No one is "going after" MLK, and he is tangential to this discussion. Only consensus on that talk page can determine whether that article should use the comma or not, and the last time it was brought up the comma was retained. Right now, we're talking about the MoS, and whether it should express a preference, as it usually does. RGloucester — ☎ 13:53, 26 February 2016 (UTC)
See the many mentions already posted in this discussion using MLK as an example of removing the commas, with arguments already being brought forward. So, yes, it does seem that the comma in King's name is being focused on by editors, including myself, with one in particular already strongly advocating removing that comma. I support the proposed language, with exceptions, and the King comma is such an exception that it should actually become part of the guideline language. Randy Kryn 15:28, 26 February 2016 (UTC)
Um, Randy, the MLK-related evidence was produced in direct response to your own raising of MLK as a supposed smoking gun against this proposal. You're getting cause and effect backwards.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  00:43, 2 March 2016 (UTC)
I have no recollection of ever having previously commented on this matter with regard to MLK. My recent assumption (mostly because you and a few others keep asserting it without evidence – examples of the usage you like are not evidence of its dominance in current writing) was that MLK would be an exception; however, as I demonstrated below, there doesn't seem to be any evidence that its should be. But, yes, your umbrage about a particular case is definitely tangential.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  00:41, 2 March 2016 (UTC)
  • Support. The no-commas pattern should be what MoS recommends without hesitation. We should allow exceptions for WP:BLPs (per MOS:IDENTITY, WP:SPNC, and WP:ABOUTSELF) who have affirmatively stated that they use the comma, provided that we also advise that the second comma (or terminal punctuation) must appear if the first comma is used. I do not support the notion of permitting the commas where a subject dead for 2 generations or whatever is believed to have preferred it back then, since English usage continues to evolve after people die, and 40+ years ago the commas were common. If the comma-laden style is continued here for some non-BLP case, as someone proposed for MLK, above, it should be only on a basis that a strong majority of reliable current sources, across multiple genres and registers of writing, continue do it that way. And this is not the case with MLK, sorry (see #Discussion section for proof).

    As for BLPs, simple examples of them using commas are insufficient, since we don't know if they're doing it out of preference, or because someone told them it's "correct", or someone actually edited it after they wrote it (very few celebs directly and personally maintain their own official websites and such). It's entirely reasonable for our house style, like any other professional-grade publication's house style, to go with its default rule, absent unusual circumstances that genuinely warrant an exception. Being consistent on this would be, well, consistent with our approach to similar matters, e.g. J. K. Rowling despite the house style of her publishers being "J.K. Rowling"; and so on. GA/FA articles are not magically exempt from changes, especially minor conformance tweaks most readers will never notice. The idea that GAs would be exempt that but FACs would not is self-contradictory, since the typical FAC candidate is already a GA. Any sort of "all style matters at my FA should be up to me" territoriality is not useful in a collaborative editing environment. And the analogy to WP:DATERET is faulty; it has nothing to do with GA/FA status, and is about cases where MoS has no preference (in this case, there would be a MoS preference), and defaulting to what was used in first major revision if consensus cannot be reached, which has nothing to do with obeying the demands of much later revisers. It's just completely unrelated to FA protectionism, on multiple levels.
    PS: Maintenance note: We should probably move the Jr/Sr/III stuff and MOS:POSTNOM to be juxtaposed, since many readers are going to think of them as the same thing, and also put these right next to the initials section, which wasn't even in the same MOS page for some reason (see merge proposal here.
     — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  08:59, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

  • Support – for the reasons given by others, for me especially because it would be good to not have to get into fights about whether and why a comma is required after the "Jr". Unless someone can provide a substantive response to what SMcCandlish had to say about the use of MLK Jr, it also seems like the opposition to the proposal is a bit reflexive. AgnosticAphid talk 19:30, 26 February 2016 (UTC)
  • Support It is either no commas, or comma always both before and after, the latter being gramatically technically the more correct but not by popular convention. Also note for consistency it should be the same as IV after name etc. no commas at all as it is now. Technically Junior Joe Citizen == Joe Citizen, Junior, and The Fourth King Freddy == King Freddy, The Fourth, == King Freddy IV . . . Aoziwe (talk) 13:10, 27 February 2016 (UTC)
  • Support – I have used the comma all my life but now see the light and the freedom not using it allows. Cheers! {{u|Checkingfax}} {Talk} 13:48, 27 February 2016 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Don't force more rule creep on us. Allow the editors of a page to use common sense instead of preferring one valid use over another. Nyttend (talk) 16:33, 28 February 2016 (UTC)
    • "Valid" according to what? Virtually all RS on present day English indicate the usage is obsolete, in both American and non-American publishing. What some plaques and street signs put up 30 years go say isn't really relevant, but seems to be the principle basis for the argument that certain cases should be exceptions. It's just weak. We're already contemplating than any BLP who insists on a particular usage would get it (we'd also honor that for someone like Jennifer 8. Lee who uses a digit for a middle name, or someone who insisted on being referred to as "II" rather than "Jr[.]"),  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  00:46, 2 March 2016 (UTC)
  • Support and thanks to SMcCandlish for their research. I don't see how changing this is avoiding "common sense"; if style guides and standards worldwide indeed prefer one use over another, we should go where they're going. Ironholds (talk) 04:32, 29 February 2016 (UTC)
  • Support—per SMcCandlish and RGloucester. Tony (talk) 01:51, 2 March 2016 (UTC)
  • Oppose Actual US publications usually still use the comas. There is no actual standardization, and trying to be prescriptive about such things, until there is consistent external consensus that only one form is acceptable is wasted effort. What we need to work on is content. DGG ( talk ) 05:00, 6 March 2016 (UTC)
What we need to work on is content. - Agreed, and the less time we spend debating whether to use the commas or not in a given article, the more time we have to spend on content. The common sense thing to do is to choose a house style and use it. Those who can't be bothered needn't be bothered; that's not a problem, someone else will come along and fix it per the house style soon enough. (There are many gnome-type editors who are good at that sort of thing and not so good at much of anything else; they lack the time and/or the interest to master the labyrinth of content policy. There is nothing wrong with giving them a way to contribute.)
In my opinion, the choice for the house style is fairly arbitrary, as long as it has a significant amount of support in the authoritative sources. From what I can see, no-comma has more-than-significant support. ―Mandruss ☎ 06:01, 6 March 2016 (UTC)
  • Support – a quick survey of articles with "Jr." in the title finds that very few use commas consistently and correctly, except those that I and a few other editors have recently fixed. Fixing them to not use the comma is much simpler and cleaner, which is the point that most style guides make. And as The Elements of Style points out since the 1979 edition, the restrictive nature of Jr. being part of the name logically calls for no commas. There is no good logical basis for the "traditional" use of commas, so it's not a bad idea for us to get away from that tradition and follow all the modern advice instead. Dicklyon (talk) 03:27, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
  • Support Among all the other obvious advantages that editors have listed here now and elsewhere before, it's the small things that get in the way. In my mind is the possessive form with the Jr./Sr. construct: For instance, "John Smith, Jr.'s, mother and father ..." is a cluttered mess, and of course the style guide survey referenced before and now takes into account all these little intricacies of the language. I can barely withhold my glee that the commas should be on the precipice of eradication. Fdssdf (talk) 07:30, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

Discussion (JR on comma usage)

We must remember that the WP:MOS is a guideline, that there are always exceptions. As I proposed it above, the MoS would express a preference for the comma-less version. It would not be a blanket proscription or prescription. RGloucester — ☎ 00:40, 26 February 2016 (UTC)
Just to be clear, I do think I'm advising as a guideline with this with common sense exceptions. The reason I call out as a grandfathering aspect for existing quality articles because we don't want editors edit warring MOS issues (which happens, welcome to Wikipedia) on quality pages citing MOS as "policy". If we include language that grandfathers in existing quality articles, then there's no basis for edit warring at all. And along as the language to be added say "comma-less 'Jr' is preferred", that further enforces the guideline, exceptions-allowed nature. (To that end, I do wonder if we need a "MOSRET" guidance that applies across all of the MOS akin to DATERET, in that when the MOS presents optional approaches, that edit warring over the different options is not appropriate at all.). --MASEM (t) 01:35, 26 February 2016 (UTC)
Edit warring is never acceptable, though. That's why we have WP:3RR. Regardless, the MoS states clearly in the lead "Where more than one style is acceptable, editors should not change an article from one of those styles to another without a good reason. Edit warring over optional styles is unacceptable. If discussion cannot determine which style to use in an article, defer to the style used by the first major contributor. If a style or similar debate becomes intractable, see if a rewrite can make the issue moot". This has always been part of the MoS. Editors behaving in such a manner are not acting in line with the MoS, they are just acting poorly. What I meant above was that what you say here is implied by the MoS and its status as a guideline. RGloucester — ☎ 01:42, 26 February 2016 (UTC)
Um, Masem, a "MOSRET" to freeze style that consensus has determined isn't what we want, and keep it in articles we think are good would a) irrationally defeat the purpose of MoS, which is to consistently present our content; b) thwart the very consensus by defying it; and c) make the good articles worse, by including style we've concluded is substandard in them, on purpose. So, 3× unworkable.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  08:59, 26 February 2016 (UTC)
SMcC, perhaps you are missing that the lead section of the MoS includes the equivalent of a "MOSRET", as I cited above. Of course, this only applies in cases of optional styles, and is subject to consensus, just like DATERET, RETAIN, &c. RGloucester — ☎ 13:51, 26 February 2016 (UTC)
No, I'm not missing any such thing. I'm directly opposing this particular attempt to create another *RETAIN or *VAR as poorly thought out in three distinct ways.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  00:51, 2 March 2016 (UTC)
  • The problem with stating a "preference" is that it quickly morphs into "the rules"... And people start trying to enforce the preference as if it were "a rule". Better to bluntly say "both styles are acceptable. If you wish to change the style, state a reason on the talk page, discuss the issue with other editors, and respect consensus. Edit warring over commas is considered disruptive. Blueboar (talk) 02:17, 26 February 2016 (UTC)
    • I have to wonder if major newspapers, etc., experience so much resistance to their manuals of style. I seriously doubt it. Is it the fact that we're not getting paid that frees us from having to be consistent on style? If so, I fail to see the connection. We're supposedly aiming for professional-quality work, paid or not, and professionalism is generally taken to include consistency.
      As far as I can tell, this whole MOS-conflict thing boils down to people with poor attention to detail being offended when people with good attention to detail "correct" "their" work (as contrasted to each of us simply contributing what we can to the project based on our personal skills).
      Damn, I've gone all meta again. ―Mandruss ☎ 03:51, 26 February 2016 (UTC)
      • Of course other style guides don't see this much resistance. The collaborative editing nature of WP means that many participants automatically think that their style notions are 100% as good as anyone else's, even when theirs is based on opinion, but someone else's is based on a shipload of research. What Blueboar seems to be missing is that this isn't a proposal to state in different wording that both styles are mutually acceptable (we already have that statement, based on inadequate research around a year ago); rather, the proposal is to recognize that a detailed survey of nearly every major style guide in existence concludes in a real-world consensus strongly against the comma usage, and that MoS should go along this with this, having no internal reason to prefer the commas, and several reasons to avoid them. (The only potentially notable style guide I didn't have on hand for this was Penguin Handbook, and Dicklyon has that, so we can ask him to add a cite to what it says.)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  08:59, 26 February 2016 (UTC)
        • many participants automatically think that their style notions are 100% as good as anyone else's - I'll have to take your word for that. It's been my impression that many simply feel that style consistency isn't important enough to be concerned about, which is something entirely different. It's anti-professionalism, a relative of anti-intellectualism, similar to a recent U.S. president's deliberate mispronunciation of the word "nuclear". ―Mandruss ☎ 23:53, 26 February 2016 (UTC)
          • Not to mention "Soddom Hussain". Yes, that anti-intellectual element is very thick in the mix, too. It just tends to be less problematic than the "what I was taught in middle school Hoboken in 1983 is the only correct way to write and I will campaign to the death until MoS says what I want or it is destroyed" stuff. The "I don't care" people really, well, don't care and eventually drop it. The GREATWRONGS ones don't. The main result of the WP:DGAF attitude is people just write as they will and gnomes, bots, and AWB clean it up later. This is generally how it goes with all of our guidelines, which the truly average editor never reads any of.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  00:57, 2 March 2016 (UTC)
        • SMC, I just noticed your question of a weak ago, so I took a look at my Penguin Guide to Punctuation, 1997. The chapter on commas does not mention "Jr." but has a long section on one of four use categories, the "pair of bracketing commas", that appears to apply. They suggest using a pair of commas to set off "weak interruptions", and state that if you can take out that comma-delimited interruption and still have a sentence meaning what you intended then you've done it right. At the end they mention "Remember you don't have to set off a weak interruption with bracketing commas, as long as the meaning is clear without them, but if you do use bracketing commas, make sure you use both of them." The also have a bit on restrictive vs non-restrictive, which implies that if the Jr. is needed to specify the intended person (that is, that it's restrictive), then it should NOT be set off with commas, since dropping it would not leave the meaning unchanged. I've seen other guides that apply this logic specifically to "Jr.", but in this one you have to read between the lines. I might have a newer edition at work, but that library is in boxes for a move right now. Dicklyon (talk) 03:57, 4 March 2016 (UTC)
        • I found one more you didn't have: the American CSE's 2006 Scientific Style and Format. They say no comma; so I added that to your list. Dicklyon (talk) 04:11, 4 March 2016 (UTC)
          • ! Not sure how I missed that one; I must have had it in the wrong stack.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  08:44, 4 March 2016 (UTC)
  • It is not the case that "Martin Luther King, Jr., ... is one such subject where the comma is universally used"; not even close. A Google News search on "Martin Luther King, Jr" reports back a mixed bag of results, that is actually dominated by comma-free usage, even in American sources [14]. I'm often suspicious of news searches, but in this case, the journalism style guides and the more formal ones are in agreement, and this is reflected in a Google Books search [15]. The books search reports more comma usage than the news search does, since it includes older works, of course. But if you take time to look at them, you can see that the comma-free cases are predominantly newer works. In the first 10 pages of books results [I don't have all night for this!], all comma-free cases are 2004 or newer, except two dating to 1999, while the comma-bearing cases often date to the 1960s to early 2000s, though a few were as recent as 2015. No one is making a case that the comma usage is extinct yet, but it is very clearly no longer the majority usage, even in American publishing. A general Google search of the Web (i.e. including unreliable sources) also shows strongly mixed usage, as a point of "ground truth" on what people are doing in English more broadly [16], just in case someone wants to make the "those are just ivory-tower sources, and everyone really still uses the commas" argument. Nope, they don't. In short, there is no case to continue using the commas with MLK, certainly not on the incorrect basis that "the comma is universally used".

    But, if it had turned out that sources did overwhelmingly use the commas with MLK, WP would, too. MoS already regularly makes "the style is unusual but the whole world goes along with it" exceptions for such cases; cf. iPod, Deadmau5, DaimlerChrysler, CC Sabathia, etc. So, WP:DONTPANIC.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  08:59, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

    The wall of texts seem to being built again (ten feet higher this time?) to try to convince editors that Dr. King's name is not his name, although it is recognized on the National Mall, on the calendar which honors his birthday with a holiday, on his tomb, and on all of his books. This one exception does not seem unreasonable, and probably should be actually mentioned in our style guide. Randy Kryn 13:00, 26 2016 (UTC)
    Your response to a well-researched and thoughtful comment is "too long, didn't read"? Why bother? AgnosticAphid talk 19:26, 26 February 2016 (UTC)
    Of course I read it, and please reread my response. Dr. King should be a common sense exception, as a National Day, a National Monument, and King's own preference (there's a comma on the man's books, and on his tombstone, which is a pilgrimage site for people from around the world) all contain the standard and historically accurate spelling of his name. Randy Kryn 00:59, 2 March 2016 (UTC)
    Already addressed that. Those are all random, isolated usage examples, decades old, that do nothing to disprove that current, reliable sources on English deprecate the comma style almost without exception, and that modern RS for MLK in particular are also dropping the commas. "Dr. King should be a common sense exception" is not common sense, it's special pleading without sufficient evidence to back it up, and since I already showed that the evidence is against it, it also constitutes WP:IDHT a.k.a. "proof by assertion". I'm going to pre-decline to engage in any further circular debate with you. Either produce a new argument or stop rehashing already-deflated ones, please.

    PS: I checked, and the main source of "Martin Luther King, Jr., Day" with commas appears to be WP's own article on the topic [17]. Book sources are mixed, with newer sources dropping the commas (and many that do not have ungrammatically forgotten the second one, indicating low-quality editing) [18]. Same results for news sources [19]. It is conclusively disproven that "Martin Luther King, Jr.", with comma, is the preferred usage, much less near-universal. It's simply a decreasingly surviving old usage not favored by modern sources, and which frequently leads to punctuation errors, which is the entire point of this RfC to begin with. But go ahead and call my evidence "test-walling" again.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  01:19, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

    You say that "Those are all random, isolated usage examples, decades old,". The Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial was dedicated in 2011. Randy Kryn 10:18, 2 March 2016 (UTC)
    Your smoking gun is one random isolated example that's not quite so old? They're all still just cherry-picked instances of the usage you like, not reliable sources on how to use English, nor even aggregate search results through publications. I recognize that you feel strongly about this one, from a traditionalism standpoint. As I said above, my original assumption was that this was a case where conventional usage was overwhelmingly in favor of the commas, but the facts don't lie. I'm not cherry picking anything. I've been through an enormous source pile on this (which I began with the expectation that there must be some nearly 50/50 split on comma usage for "Jr", generally, given the "fan base" that usage has on WP). I find that almost every RS says "no commas". Then I've given you raw feeds of "Martin Luther King, Jr" searches, with the comma just in case. The results – books, news, and Web (to the extent we care about the last of those) – show the comma being abandoned, and that commaless usage now dominates even for MLK, the more so the newer the sources are. And this is no sudden, recent change; here's Google News results from all of 2003, again with very few commas [20],. I don't know what else to tell you. I was surprised, but I believe what the evidence tells me when there's this much of it. I certainly can cherry pick prominent examples for you – [21], [22], etc. – but it wouldn't add anything to my data; it's all already in the first page of general Google hits. The comma usage is generally found in establishments like the King Institute that are not recent, in unreliable Web sources, in Wikipedia itself which is spreading not reflecting the comma usage, in newspapers even more recalcitrantly traditionalist than the New York Times, and in older works like Enc. Britannica.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  13:39, 2 March 2016 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Post-RfC clarification; closure dispute

As stated below, disputes about RfC closures belong at WP:AN. Arguing it here accomplishes little and AN will provide a broader perspective on whether the close was appropriate. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 19:58, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

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.

Closer noted that "Grandfathering older articles...is recommended." But no editor suggested anything about "older" that I can find. Did I miss something? Looks like only one editor mentioned grandfathering at all. Wondering why closer, who states he is against this proposal, throws that in. Could we not get a neutral closer? Dicklyon (talk) 03:31, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

  • Dicklyon, since I'm not a party in this, and you are, I wonder how you pegged me as not neutral. Let's clarify that first. Drmies (talk) 17:03, 16 March 2016 (UTC)
    • I was going by your closing statement where you said, "I would have spoken out against the proposal." Thanks you for not pretending to not take a position. Dicklyon (talk) 23:35, 16 March 2016 (UTC)
      • Yours welcome. Note that I was talking about SMcCandlish's evidence. My close is not based on that evidence (duh), but on the comments in the discussion--that's how this goes. Drmies (talk) 01:18, 17 March 2016 (UTC)
Looks like only one editor mentioned grandfathering at all. - Actually two, one for and one against, hardly a consensus either way. I'd like to see the close modified to remove any mention of grandfathering. I personally feel that it doesn't make a lot of sense to exempt an entire class of articles from discussion about whether they should deviate from house style as to these commas. The argument for grandfathering said something about avoiding conflict, but how does it avoid conflict to provide for grandfathering for "older" articles without clearly defining "older"?
Nobody is saying that we're compelled to fix all articles now, or even at a particularly high priority; only that an editor should be able to remove commas from any article unless local consensus is to keep them. No-consensus should default to house style, not status quo. ―Mandruss ☎ 04:02, 16 March 2016 (UTC)
  • Oppose. What's the point of having RfCs if you can just WP:FORUMSHOP your way until you get an answer you prefer? It was pretty clear that editors wanted to reflect real-world usage and allow both options. Come on, WP. Dohn joe (talk) 16:49, 16 March 2016 (UTC)
  • The language "Grandfathering older articles, FAs, etc., is recommended, and one should remember that the MOS is a guideline, not a policy" is welcome as a way of not having controversial page moves. I would think that most pages would be changed without controversy. The items most mentioned, by myself and others, are the Dr. King pages, where moves would create undue arguments. It seems a fair close. Randy Kryn 23:45, 16 March 2016 (UTC)
You're seeking peremptory protection for MLK, from an RfC that was not about MLK. There is no reason that MLK or any other articles should be exempted from discussion and consensus (discussion, not political maneuvering, is how Wikipedia is designed to work). Any page moves will follow, or not, from that discussion.
As to the more general picture, aside from FA's, how would we identify those articles that enjoy this protection? Are we going to create a new template for their talk pages? Who would decide which articles get the template? As I said previously, any favored-class protection would create at least as much conflict as it prevented.
I stress again that a RfC close should reflect the consensus, if any, and there is no consensus for grandfathering anything. ―Mandruss ☎ 00:49, 17 March 2016 (UTC)
  • There were sixteen "votes" in here. Three editors, or maybe two and a half, in one form or another spoke out for a kind of grandfathering: Masem and Randy Kryn, obviously, but really also RGloucester in their exchange with Masem--the careful observer will have noticed that RGloucester cites the MOS which appears to leave this kind of leeway. That equally careful observer may note also that Graeme Bartlett makes mention of "the allowed alternatives", which is just vague enough to make me think that he's thinking of other, already existing articles: "grandfathering". But I am also thinking of the objections by DGG (that there is no firm rule outside of Wikipedia) and Nyttend (who refers to common sense). This is not a presidential election where you choose one party or another; it is an RfC, the conclusion of which should reflect not the votes but a consensus on serious subject matter. You are welcome to challenge this, of course, but it would be nice of all y'all did so politely. As a professor of English literature and linguistics, I understand that everyone gets in a tizzy over some commas, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't treat each other with respect. Thank you, Drmies (talk) 01:18, 17 March 2016 (UTC)
  • I am a little amazed at the editorial tone taken in the closure window. The MoS desperately needs a definitive ruling on this issue one way or another — not murkiness that will result in another RfC in six months. There is a mountain of third-party style evidence supporting the removal of commas and a hill supporting their remaining; there is a majority of editors here against the commas and a minority for them. As mentioned by other dissenters, the grandfather issue was not close to consensus, and only a couple editors mentioned it explicitly (because it was not central to the RfC). So adding closure caveats that were not fleshed out well during the RfC is in poor form from my vantage. There was nearly a consensus for one side of the debate, and third-party styles, for the most part, advise for that majority side. I remain baffled. Fdssdf (talk) 04:29, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

This close needs to be reviewed at WP:AN, especially given the additional display of activism and bogus WP:P&G rationales [23], like confusing this with ENGVAR/CITEVAR, when three of us requested that it be clarified, at his talk page. I wasn't even aware of all the additional requests for clarification above, and objections to numerous aspects of the close, until just now.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  10:37, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

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

Logo galleries allowed in Wikipedia??

Does anyone have any opinions about logo galleries in Wikipedia?? Look at WSTR (FM). I'm sure the station has had a number of logos historically. There's a wiki that IS about logo galleries, namely http://logos.wikia.com , which has all of the station's logos. Look at http://logos.wikia.com/wiki/WSTR_(FM) if you don't believe me. Perhaps all Wikipedia articles that have corresponding articles at the Logos Wiki should have appropriate links. Any opinions?? Georgia guy (talk) 19:05, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

If there are non-free logos involved, these galleries are disallowed, unless there is discussion of each logo presented (such as why there was a change, who designed it, what it represented, etc.). If the logos are just being presented because it was an old logo, and the image is non-free, that fails NFCC#8 and are routinely removed. If all the past logos are free (likely PD-ineligible) that's a different story, but I would generally agree that the external wiki makes more sense to link to than to spam these logos in articles without comment. --MASEM (t) 19:10, 20 March 2016 (UTC)
To bolster that: Per MOS:ICONS and MOS:IMAGES and various discussions that their talk pages, it is generally undesirable to use the <gallery> feature without good reason, and just showing a bunch of old logos is not a good reason.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  09:12, 21 March 2016 (UTC)
pilin' on I agree with both Masem and SMcCandlish. Note the qualification of non-free. If the logos have been freely licensed, I could support a gallery as providing useful historical information.--S Philbrick(Talk) 20:27, 21 March 2016 (UTC)
  • comment - if the logos are protected by trademarks, they are not free. If all protection has expired and they are verifiably in the public domain, then it would be ok. Atsme📞📧 16:13, 23 March 2016 (UTC)
    • No, that's not true. Trademark is different from copyright. For example the File:Boeing full logo.svg Boeing logo is not copyrightable (fails threshold of originality in the US), but remains trademark. We treat it as a free image with the understanding that we're using the logo respectfully and not trying to create confusion in the market (which as an encyclopedia would be very hard for us to do). --MASEM (t) 16:18, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

Proposal for new admin probationary period

In the ongoing RfA for Widr‎‎, I read a suggestion from User:ArnoldReinhold that made good sense; i.e., an Assistant Admin position to try out someone like this who has worked hard on the project but only in a few specialty areas. Why not? Perhaps a probationary period for all new admins would prove helpful, and may even encourage more editors to become admins. Atsme📞📧 16:20, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

ArnoldReinhold - pinging in hopes this one will work. Atsme📞📧 01:17, 24 March 2016 (UTC)
This is a WP:PEREN topic for WT:RFA if not this forum. --Izno (talk) 16:47, 23 March 2016 (UTC)
This proposal resurfaces every year or so. What it misses is that:
Historically, problematic new admins are the exception; If anything the risk of needing to desysop peaks at three years experience. Probationary systems make much more sense for new drivers as risk of accidents etc peaks for new drivers.
While there are very few opposes to Widr, (currently that RFA has over 90% support), the most common reason for opposing in that RFA is that a small minority of RFA !voters want to see more significant content contributions such as a GA. A probationary adminship system is irrelevant to such opposes.
RFAs that narrowly fail do so for various reasons, but for experienced candidates the most common reasons are either that they aren't trusted by the community to show the right sort of temperament, or their tagging shows that they would be likely to misuse the tools. If a candidate is sloppy in their deletion tagging then it is fair to assume they would be heavy handed with the deletion button. A probationary system isn't going to help resolve that and could even be gamed.
Probationary systems typically require either some level of tools to be withheld during the probationary period or some supervision of edits by a more experienced person. But for the proposed "probationary admins" the former misses the point of the opposes and the latter generates extra work to no useful purpose.
There would be a much stronger case for a further unbundling, we've had several unbundlings over the years and I think most accept them all as successful. ϢereSpielChequers 17:46, 23 March 2016 (UTC)
WereSpielChequers to help me better understand, are you suggesting limited access to certain admin tools for new admins during a probationary period, or that we wait for them to make a mistake and then limit or .... ?? Atsme📞📧 17:53, 23 March 2016 (UTC)
Hi Atsme, I'm trying to list the main reasons why a probationary system is a bad idea. Whether that probationary system involves extra scrutiny or a limited toolset, it isn't something I'd suggest or that the community would eventually be won over to. ϢereSpielChequers 17:59, 23 March 2016 (UTC)
I agree that most concerns with admin actions happen after a long period of time, rather than initially. If anything, a system for recalling admins makes more sense than a probationary period. But this is a subject which has been discussed to death before. Ajraddatz (talk) 19:13, 23 March 2016 (UTC)
I'm sure it has, but the sad part is that to date discussion hasn't resolved anything and the stalemates continue, appearing to be support for the status quo, which isn't working, either. We are still experiencing a lack of qualified admins, the ones we have are overworked, few editors have the desire or incentive to brave the onslaught at RfA so I'm open to suggestions for improving the situation rather than comments about how all suggestions have failed. Perhaps it is time to investigate exactly why they failed without rehashing old arguments. It doesn't matter if similar proposals have been discussed to death, what matters is that nothing has changed and the situation is critical not to mention unsustainable which leaves us with the same overworked admins doing all the work. Who can blame them for losing patience? Can we please at least try to work toward positive change? I have a feeling that no matter what is proposed, there will always be the nay-sayers for whatever reason and because of that, editors are discouraged to investigate any further, much less try to make positive change. Just saying. Atsme📞📧 19:52, 23 March 2016 (UTC)
The problem here is that you have in no way made a compelling argument that this would lead to more qualified RFA candidates stepping up. You've said that "perhaps" it might do that without even clearly explaining why you believe this to be true. I'm sure everyone participating here would love to see positive change, but this idea has been repeatedly, strongly rejected by the community and you have presented nothing new that could potentially change that. This is not the way to make a policy proposal, or at least to make one that has a chance of succeeding. (I've written an essay on this suject based on my own experiences with trying to get policy changes implemented here that may be of some help) Beeblebrox (talk) 01:49, 24 March 2016 (UTC)
Thank you for pointing me to the essay, Beeblebrox. If/when the time comes for me to actually make a proposal, I will definitely refer to it. I thought this forum was for discussing proposals not making them which is why I tossed out the idea that another editor had mentioned, at least that's what the following lead me to believe: The policy section of the village pump is used to discuss proposed policies and guidelines and changes to existing policies and guidelines. If you want to propose something new that is not a policy or guideline, use the proposals section.. Perhaps I misunderstood its intent? Atsme📞📧 03:55, 24 March 2016 (UTC)

I realize that proposals of this sort have been made many times and rejected. I made the comment in the RfA because I thought it was an example of a situation where an Assistant Admin option would be useful. The candidate had an excellent record of hard work maintaining Wikipedia, but had only limited experience in content creation. That was in no way the candidate's fault. Wikipedia is a sprawling project and it's great when someone finds a niche they enjoy and puts a lot of effort there. My view of an Assistant Admin position is not so much a probationary assignment, but one that could be given out more freely, while limiting the most draconian powers, such as long term blocks or highly controversial closes, granting enough powers to clear backlogs and the like. If such a position existed it could have been awarded to this candidate long before now. I am think of Assistant Admin as an appointment that would be renewed periodically, with nomination to full Admin a separate step after a few years of sustained participation and demonstrated good judgement. Some assistant admins would work at it for a while and then lose interest in the effort and that would be fine. RfA's have become high drama in too many cases. Wouldn't it be better if candidate Admins had a record of administrative actions to review? What is the downside, exactly?--agr (talk) 03:50, 24 March 2016 (UTC)

School naming standard

Many if not most school names are non-unique, and there should be a naming standard for disambiguating non-uniquely named schools. List of high schools in California shows some high schools disambiguated more locally than necessary, by city and state even though they are the only high school by that name in the state, and others are not disambiguated more locally than necessary, i.e. by state only. For example, the following schools are disambiguated by city and state even though they are the only high school by their respective names in California (or at least the only one listed in List of high schools in California):

The following California high schools are disambiguated by state only:

We have the same problem in Tennessee. The following schools are disambiguated by city and state even though they are the only high school by their respective names in Tennessee (or at least the only one listed in List of high schools in Tennessee):

The following Tennessee high schools are disambiguated by state only:

For both states, both lists could be much longer, and the problem exists for other U.S. states. (Note that articles purporting to list all high schools in a state may include entries with piped links and redirected names and may be incomplete.) If there is a school naming standard, please point to it. If there is not a school naming standard, it should be created and it should appear in Wikipedia:Article titles. —Anomalocaris (talk) 06:46, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

WP:DISAMBIG says to disambiguate only as necessary to define the object of interest (WP:CONCISE defined a different way). I don't see a reason to have a naming convention--just apply the already-available guideline/policy by moving the relevant articles. --Izno (talk) 12:40, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
I actually just checked the 4 California high schools disambiguated with city names; Skyline High School has a red-linked school in an other California city; the other dab pages don't list any other city in California which has such a school in it. Similarly, the Tennessee schools appear, based on their respective dab oages, to be unique within the state of Tennessee. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 16:58, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
It seems that (at least at one time), the "official" place for this discussion is, or was, Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (U.S. schools), and the discussion petered out more than 8 years ago, in February 2008. The main proposals then were:
  1. Use state to disambiguate first, and adding the city only when needed
  2. Use city and state to disambiguate even if the name is unique within the state
  3. Use city and state to disambiguate names that don't name the city; use state to disambiguate names that do name the city
  4. Use city and state even for schools uniquely named ("pre-emptive disambiguation")
I believe that choice 1 is best; it is most consistent with Wikipedia in general. —Anomalocaris (talk) 01:57, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
Works for me. Maurreen (talk) 03:54, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

Philippine government works - resolving contradiction between Commons and enwiki policy

Forking off this discussion from Wikipedia:Files_for_discussion/2016_March_20#File:Ph_seal_ifugao.png and Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2016_January_21#Template:Non-free_Philippines_government: Right now, the English Wikipedia considers {{Non-free Philippines government}} as a non-free file template but Wikimedia Commons considers commons:Template:PD-PhilippinesGov as free images on the grounds that the restriction mentioned by the enwiki template is a non-copyright one. This has been upheld here and here, more background on commons:Template talk:PD-PhilippinesGov. There is no reason why Wikipedia should have a more restrictive policy than Commons for images, especially given the difficulty of enforcing WP:NFCC for non-local files. Thus I am suggesting that the Wikipedia template should be matched to the Commons one, unless someone wants to reopen a deletion discussion for their template on Commons and do so successfully. Pinging @Stefan2, Tbhotch, TagaSanPedroAko, Geni, and Izno: as enwiki participants in related discussions.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 14:36, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

I would support this (that is, moving to Commons' stance). The issue appears to be beyond a copyright issue, similar in nature to trademarks or rights of publicity, which is beyond what the WMF cares about but that we still do provide disclaimers on Commons and here that reusers of images should validate that their reuses fall within their country's respective IP laws to reuse appropriately, but for us and the WMF servers in the US, we consider the images as meeting the free content goals. --MASEM (t) 15:16, 25 March 2016 (UTC)
  • The current tags have been upheld in two Commons deletion requests and two TfD discussions on this project, and there has been further discussion at WT:C and probably also on Commons, so the issue seems complex. The problem is essentially that Wikipedia and Commons interpret the Philippine copyright law differently. I don't think that the Commons and Wikipedia communities are experts on Philippine copyright law, and I'm not sure if we should change any of the tags without getting some clarification from experts on Philippine law on whether such works are free content. Anything we do without getting such clarification may be wrong. I think that copyright tag stability is important here.
It might be a good idea to clarify WP:F8. Is the image's "license [...] status [...] beyond reasonable doubt", as required for deletion under that criterion? I'd assume not as Wikipedia and Commons interpret the law differently. It could also be useful to keep such files locally as we don't want logos removed from the articles about lots of organisations if Commons changes its mind about the issue. --Stefan2 (talk) 15:26, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

AfX: Move to userspace

At WP:AFD, many users' first articles are getting deleted, and that's okay. However, if an article is not a blatant hoax or vandalism, and has any potential to eventually become an accepted article, I believe these articles should be moved to the creator's userspace. This desicion would be made by consensus at the AFD page. This would create a more accepting environment for new editors while helping to create new articles. This is a win for everyone. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ProgrammingGeek (talk • contribs) 04:18, 26 March 2016 (UTC)

This result already regularly happens; there's nothing to propose here. Anyone who's created an article with potential can request that it be userspaced for additional work if the AfD looks like it won't be in favor of the article. This will usually be honored if the piece isn't totally unsalvageable (garage band, WP:NFT, copyright violation, attack page, etc.).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  04:56, 26 March 2016 (UTC)

New RFC dealing with citation formatting and the scope of WP:CITEVAR

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Views are wanted at WT:CITE#RFC: Is a change in citation markup method a change in citation style?. There is a long standing dispute over this issue, and it really ought to be resolved. DES (talk) 22:06, 26 March 2016 (UTC)

Promotional copyvio by copyright holder

I have a question, or two:

We delete copvio mateial, rightly so.

We delete promotional material, right so.

However, consider when the copyvio material is actually posted by the copyright holder as promotional material. Have they therefore signed over the material to "commons" usage, as per the text at the bottom of every edit screen, namely 'By clicking the "Save page" button, you agree to the Terms of Use and you irrevocably agree to release your contribution under the CC BY-SA 3.0 License and the GFDL with the understanding that a hyperlink or URL is sufficient for CC BY-SA 3.0 attribution' (my bold). Hence there is no longer a copy right violation since it was agreed to by the copyright holder? There then just remains the matter of making it encyclopedic rather than promotional. Eno Lirpa (talk) 13:16, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

This sounds fairly tricky. If this is indeed the case, the copyright holder basically waives any monetary claims to the uploaded material (as it is now open sourced under creative commons). This means that the uploaded materials would not only be usuable in Wikipedia, but anywhere, for any purpose, by anyone (as long as they conform to CC). This may be an unwanted and unknown consequence of the uploader (but tough luck there). However, to be able to allow this in Wikipedia we need to be 100% certain that the uploader is indeed the sole copyright holder (or at least has legal power to waive copyright on the material for ever). I am not sure Wikipedia has such control mechanisms in place; and we could get into a lot of problem if someone poses as sole copyright holder, uploads stuff, which then gets copied outside Wikipedia. Arnoutf (talk) 13:30, 23 February 2016 (UTC)
Okay, but how do we know anyone has the right to cc the right to any material they post? Eno Lirpa (talk) 14:06, 23 February 2016 (UTC)
We probably don't, and therefore should not allow this (sorry for backtracking in the thread) Arnoutf (talk) 15:34, 23 February 2016 (UTC)
There is a huge difference between content where, as far as anyone knows, only exists on Wikipedia; and content which is known to be on a company website, where we have reason to think that the copyright may have been legally turned over to the company (and not the person who claims to be the author), and even if not - there may be multiple authors in the company. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 14:40, 23 February 2016 (UTC)
When an organization identifies something has promotional material that is not enough for us to use it. The material must be specifically licensed with acceptable free license. This is very rarely the case. While I’m sure it happens on occasion I can’t recall ever running across it. Of course as suggested above but worth emphasizing, even if the material is appropriately licensed, the very nature of it being promotional means it is likely to be worded in a way that is not acceptable for an encyclopedia. ::::However, if it is appropriately licensed we can reword it and not have to worry about close paraphrasing and as long as we comply with the requirements for attribution.--S Philbrick(Talk) 14:42, 23 February 2016 (UTC)
The bit about clicking on the button irrevocably signing away rights has no more legal validity than a shrink wrap licence. Hawkeye7 (talk) 23:16, 23 March 2016 (UTC)
The copyright holder can legally license the work as CC-BY-SA or GFDL or whatever else; the practical problem for Wikipedia is determining whether the editor actually holds the copyright.
Clickwrap#Cases and Shrink wrap contract#United States do not agree very closely with each other. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:59, 28 March 2016 (UTC)

Overwriting original files with derived versions on Commons

The idle servant, 1655, painting by Nicholaes Maes. Original photograph taken by the National Gallery (UK) on the left, digital enhanced version giving false colouring on the right.

I welcome more feedback from Wikipedians about the damage done to Wikipedia articles when images are overwritten on Commons. This became a major issue for BLP portraits being overwritten with pornography a couple of years ago, as it was a route for vandalism that was virtually invisible on Wikipedia. In this case, a user has been systematically overwriting photographs of historic paintings with false-colour enhanced versions, in some cases radically changing the appearance of the Wikipedia articles these are used in, so that the image being displayed looks entirely different to what you would see of the painting in a gallery or museum, and radically different from the way the institutions represent these paintings in their own catalogues. Some of the files overwritten in the last few weeks have been used in long established Wikipedia articles for several years. When the files change on Commons, Wikipedia editors are not alerted by their watchlists as the article on Wikipedia that uses the image literally has no new edit.

The Commons discussion is at Commons:Administrator's noticeboard and a table of photographs overwritten this year is included.

There is a related policy on Commons (c:Commons:Overwriting existing files) but I do not believe there is anything similar on Wikipedia and as far as I am aware, nobody has suggested that Wikipedia watchlists should be adapted to alert users to these types of cross-project transcluded overwrites. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 12:57, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

  • phabricator:T91192 is a Phab project to have edits to transcluded files display on local watchlists. It might ameliorate this issue if done.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 13:16, 27 February 2016 (UTC)
    Given the task a thumbs up. I suggest other do as well, and consider commenting at Commons. The Commons guidelines which steer users to avoid any controversial overwrites need to be made clearer for files in active cross-wiki use. --Fæ (talk) 13:38, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

Interesting problem. But your example photo pair is a complete mis-representation of what happened, as you can see by looking at the history of the left one. And I would argue that the recent overwrite by the poor dark version from the NPG made matters worse. For 10 years there was a better brighter version in use on en.wp – not the one you show, and not modified from the NPG image – and we should go back to that one. Dicklyon (talk) 16:12, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

It is reasonable to expect that Wikipedia readers would expect an article about a 400 year old painting, to be illustrated with a photograph of the painting that shows what they would see, if they were stood in front of the original and it were nicely illuminated. Artificially brightened and saturated digital derivatives might have their uses, such as for a simple reproduction for a teeshirt, but they are not 'encyclopaedic' nor do simple digital tweaks represent how the painting would have appeared 400 years ago. As for returning this image in use on the English Wikipedia to the 2006 version a quarter the resolution, this appears to be an amateur flatbed scan from a printed exhibition catalogue (based on the EXIF data), the image shows a lot of distracting surface reflection and earthy browns are saturated to become terracotta red, so going backwards would not be an improvement for almost any viewer. --Fæ (talk) 03:21, 3 March 2016 (UTC)
That's your opinion. And even if we decided that it's reasonable to try to convey the dimly lit impression that a visitor would get, how do we know that that was the intent of the image that the NPG, or any other source, posted? In this case, it's just a crappy too-dark image. There's no good reason to portray a painting that way, in my opinion. Also no good reason to aggressively color balance it to a too-blue state as Jan did. The originally posted version of that one on the left was the best of all, imho. Or we could make an intermediate adjustment from the NPG version that would be not so dark, and not such a bad color in either direction. I'll do that, and you can see if you like it. Dicklyon (talk) 03:38, 3 March 2016 (UTC)
Did that. The one you see on the left above is now a "reasonable" rendering of that painting, imho. Dicklyon (talk) 03:52, 3 March 2016 (UTC)
The original version (this) is bloody awful. Like a cheap printing in a child's book rather than a serious attempt to reproduce the artwork. But it is clearly a different photograph to the one Jan overwrote it. And that's just absolutely wrong. As wrong as overwriting File:Paisley Abbey (11610930694).jpg with File:Paisley Abbey from the west - crop.jpg. I have reverted the edit by Dicklyon. Professional art photographers use colour calibration charts (like this). So if the photo is a bit warm/yellow then I guess that's how the painting is. You might prefer a more "neutral" colour balance and you might prefer a brighter photo but then it's no longer the photo taken by the National Gallery. It's your derivative work. Upload to a new file. Convince Wikipedia editors to use your variant if you like, but please respect the professional work. -- Colin°Talk 08:50, 3 March 2016 (UTC)
Yes, we can respect the professional work and assume that's the version that the NPG prefers, perhaps (though that's a guess). If someone uploaded a professional or official image and said that's what it is, we should leave it as such. But that's not what happened here, where the "official" one has come as the second overwrite. Why were not either of the other versions respected? OK, we all agree that neither one was great, but nobody has yet criticized my attempt at a better version, except to say that it's not the "official" one; we can agree on that. I'm not keen on getting into an argument about how best to adjust this image, just pointing out that the logic of overwriting a pretty good image with a dark "official" version is twisted here. Dicklyon (talk) 04:18, 4 March 2016 (UTC)

Hello, I agree that images should not be replaced with "enhanced versions". If the photo is new, it should have another name. --NaBUru38 (talk) 14:41, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

Images are replaced by enhanced versions all the time; see my edits on commons. Some more nuanced guidance on when this is to be discouraged would be more helpful. Dicklyon (talk) 03:36, 16 March 2016 (UTC)
I overwrite images fairly often, because it's a quick way to update outdated screenshots. As there is realistically no significant educational value to "appearance of this dialog box for a couple of weeks two years ago", and since overwriting automatically gets the current version into help documentation on dozens of wikis, I think that this is both practical and appropriate. Nuanced guidance should cover all the use cases. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 02:48, 28 March 2016 (UTC)

Global rollbackers and suppressredirect right

The global rollbacker right currently includes the ability to suppress redirects on page moves. See m:Special:GlobalGroupPermissions/global-rollbacker to see every right in that group. On enwiki, this right is only held by bots, admins, and 'crats. This difference was recently seen in action with this this move. Courtesy ping for Hazard-SJ who performed the move.

I am proposing an addition to the global rights policy regarding this discrepancy. Global rollbackers should not suppress redirects on enwiki as that right is not granted to the local rollback group. It is less of a problem in this instance, since the userspace page could have just been tagged U1 anyways, but in the future I feel like this should be said somewhere. --Majora (talk) 04:00, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

I would think that if you target a right assigned to a global group that isn't also assigned within the related local group, you may as well target them all, such as markbotedits, which allows the use of rollback without having the reverted edits showing up in recent changes. Regardless, however, the current policy says that "[g]lobal rollbackers can use their rights by default...", and I think that any global rollbacker (or any member of any other global group) should use some level of common sense when it comes to using any rights which they have been assigned when they aren't specifically disallowed by policy (as is the case here). I understand that the right was not assigned from local consensus, but then again, neither are the other global groups. Of course, local consensus can overrule the use of such global rights, but I certainly think that in such trivial cases such as your example (that move was indirectly brought up in the BRFA before being done), moves within own userspace, or even moving recently self-created pages accidentally created with an incorrect name, it should be fine to allow the use of such global rights. On the contrary, pages created by others having no consensus (or otherwise obvious reason) to be moved without leaving a redirect behind should probably not have their redirects suppressed by a global rollbacker in most, if not all cases, as that would be a bit more controversial. Just my opinion,  Hazard SJ  04:33, 28 February 2016 (UTC)
Putting in a recommendation that leaving redirects so that people accessing the old page can find the new one is a good idea seems fine for me. An outright ban means that wholly unnecessary redirects - the one in question here seems like it would be - will need manual deletion, so I think no.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 10:47, 28 February 2016 (UTC)
In my mind, the potential downside risks outweigh the minor benefits of saving an admin from a quick U1/G7 deletion once in a while, but a separate discussion can be held at WT:GRP if people feel strongly about including a self-created/single-author pages exemption. –xenotalk 10:50, 15 March 2016 (UTC)
Technically speaking, I am not seeing any risk at all, full stop. Adding a redirect if it is warranted is trivially easy, and a prominent "X moved Y to Z" note is left whenever suppressredirect is applied.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 16:42, 15 March 2016 (UTC)
There are risks, but perhaps not as pronounced as they may seem. The biggest concern for me would be accidental misuse of the right that goes unnoticed. Global rollbackers are highly trusted users, who have passed a mini-RfA on meta to use that toolset across all Wikimedia Foundation projects. I can't remember a single case of intentional abuse over the 6 years I have been active in global work - not that writing a sentence in GRP would stop intentional abuse, since they still have access to the rights. That said, while communities cannot opt out of global rollbackers, they are fully able to stipulate that the rights are to be used for counter-vandalism only. That is the purpose of the group. Ajraddatz (talk) 19:37, 15 March 2016 (UTC)
@Jo-Jo Eumerus: Setting aside any potential risks of accidental misuse, the local community has not seen fit to grant this ability outside the three usergroups that hold it (despite proposals being advanced for same, if I recall correctly), so gaining it through global channels and then using it 'outside the jurisdiction' of the global badge does not seem appropriate, even if used innocuously as in the presenting example. If the community decides otherwise, I would be fine with a U1/G7 exemption but not before the consensus is established. –xenotalk 03:15, 16 March 2016 (UTC)
  • The right is quite powerful and could be abused (deletion through the back door, basically), so if it is to remain with the user group, guidelines for its use should be created (e.g. only to be used in cases of obvious vandalism, etc.). –xenotalk 11:24, 28 February 2016 (UTC)
    100% agree, enwiki should stipulate that globalrollbackers only use this for obvious vandalism. — xaosflux Talk 14:51, 28 February 2016 (UTC)
  • I assume that the primary purpose of the global rollbackers is to fight cross-wiki vandalism. If they find a global vandal who does page move vandalism, they should be able to clean up without needing to find their way through our policies and templates. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 12:43, 28 February 2016 (UTC)
    • I agree. Also, as a general principle, individual projects should avoid imposing rules on processes and rules that they don't own or control, especially if they haven't encountered a significant, ongoing problem as a result. And in case anyone is wondering, moving a page from your userspace into project space (the example given above) is not "a significant, ongoing problem". That's "saving some admin five seconds in processing yet another uncontestable {{db-rediruser}}". WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:59, 28 March 2016 (UTC)
  • The meta-policy about this appears to be pretty light, we may want to suggest edits at meta:Talk:Global rollback. — xaosflux Talk 14:40, 28 February 2016 (UTC)
  • Side note, I think the warnings from MediaWiki:Movepagetext are not being displayed in all situations, this page may need tweaking. — xaosflux Talk 14:53, 28 February 2016 (UTC)
    Possible bug(?) appears that the 'default' message is displaying instead of the localized version? — xaosflux Talk 14:58, 28 February 2016 (UTC)
    I will follow up on that with some admins that have been involved on that mediawiki talk. — xaosflux Talk 15:13, 28 February 2016 (UTC)
  • As Vogone said on meta, users with global rollback are expected to follow local policies for non-countervandalism use of any of the rights in their user group. You could specify that the rights are to be used for counter-vandalism only at WP:GRP if you really wanted. Ajraddatz (Talk) 00:00, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

Info boxes

Why are some infoboxes in the article and some in templates like Template:PBB? Can we move all infoboxes off the articles? The pages look much nicer without all that guck — Preceding unsigned comment added by 107.72.99.76 (talk) 18:35, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

You will have to be more specific... which specific infobox, in which specific article prompted your question?
In some cases, it may be that the article's topic area does not have an infobox template that can be used (no one made one, so editors hand-craft their own infobox as needed). In other cases, it may be that there is an infobox template for the topic area, but for some reason editors have decided that it does not fit with a specific article (and so they use a hand-created infobox instead of the template). We are intentionally flexible about such things. An inflexible cookie cutter approach is almost always a bad idea. Blueboar (talk) 20:04, 3 March 2016 (UTC)
I do think that we should move towards having infoboxes as outside templates, as it keeps the wikicode of the article easier to understand. If you look at Hydrogen, for example, you can see there are a few one-line template calls, followed by an empty line, followed by wiki-prose. If someone wants to use that article to undrstand wiki-text, or someone who wants to edit the beginning of the wiki-prose, can do so relatively easily. Compare to Dongxiao South Station, where the user would need to scroll down over a scren of source code before they reach the wiki-prose. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 20:10, 3 March 2016 (UTC)
Meh... it does not really bother me to have to scroll past source code... it's no different than having to scroll past a lot of text to reach the specific paragraph I want to edit. Scrolling is simply part of editing (and if scrolling really bothers you... you can jump past both the code and text by judicious use of your computer's "find" function). Blueboar (talk) 20:46, 3 March 2016 (UTC)
I believe that mw:Design Research disagrees with you. "Just scroll past the incomprensible scary stuff" is a barrier for some new users. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 03:04, 28 March 2016 (UTC)
What kind of case are you talking about? Even for a one-article infobox that people cannot re-use on any other article, it should be coded with the {{Infobox}} template. It sounds like you've run into one that was accidentally substituted and spat all of it code into the article. If you tell us where this is, we'll fix it.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  08:49, 4 March 2016 (UTC)
When I'm talking about Dongxiao South Station, I am talking about an article which uses {{Infobox station}}, not a substituted template. On this article (and many others), this means that a user will have to scroll though the entire infobox (over a screenful) before reaching the wikiprose of the lede. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 19:39, 5 March 2016 (UTC)
I don't have to do a lot of scrolling to get past the infobox code when I look at that article in edit mode... What kind of device are you using to edit? Blueboar (talk) 21:44, 5 March 2016 (UTC)
I think the editor means they don't want to see the rendered infobox in the content of the page. If this is the case, they need to add the following to Special:MyPage/common.css:
table.infobox { display: none; }
or some more customized CSS to do something else, like move it to the bottom of the page.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  08:21, 6 March 2016 (UTC)
I agree with Blueboar, there are more important considerations than minimizing scrolling, like minimizing complexity, integrity of old revisions, etc. Templates often have higher protection than the articles that use them. I usually use my browser's Find function to eliminate the need for any scrolling at all, regardless of what precedes my target location (and that reduces eye strain too).
But the OP's comment, The pages look much nicer without all that guck, makes me wonder if that's what they are talking about in the first place. An edit window is not a page. ―Mandruss ☎ 23:03, 5 March 2016 (UTC)
Yeah, my attempts to find out what the issue really is haven't come to much either. I think the editor is objecting to the content of the infobox.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  08:21, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

Rechallenging the right for any type of school to have its own article!

This should be a long discussion, because I want my proposal that took one hour to write to actually mean something at least. I have not seen previous discussions of this sort of thing that establish this guideline, but I know that they exist, or else this guideline would not have come about. Currently, the great majority of elementary and middle schools in the United States only have redirect pages to their school districts, even though they are clearly notable by Wikipedia's GNG in my personal opinion. From what I can tell, people who create articles about "just regular ol'" middle schools or elementary schools immediately have their articles blanked and replaced with a redirect, which I personally don't think is fair. However, articles about high schools somehow are not even looked over, and are pretty much assumed to be notable, even though in reality the high schools, middle schools, and elementary schools generally have just about the same notability level. I have many oppositions to make to this guideline slash unspoken rule in this very long statement. I personally believe that (sorry to be blunt) this community tendency is very unfair, inconsiderate of the lurkers of Wikipedia, and ultimately, even if ever so slightly, hurtful to the community. All of my arguments are listed here:


Argument 1: There have been literally thousands of people who have come to Wikipedia in search of an article about an American public middle or elementary school, and are left looking at the school district's article. I imagine a majority of them were (at least in the back of their heads) disappointed and wanted more information about the schools themselves rather than their school district. Yes, I do agree that school districts should have their own articles too; that's pretty much a no-brainer. This leads into Argument 2.

Argument 2: However, I don't believe that articles about school districts do or should contain all the necessary information about the schools as a whole, and they're not exactly supposed to either. A school district article is supposed to give a general overview about the school districts, including a list of its schools. However, just that list does not generally describe all the aspects of the schools themselves that an article about those schools would describe in more detail. In a nutshell, school district articles are supposed to describe details about the school district, and school articles are supposed to give school-specific details, and redirecting people to an article about a school district is therefore incredibly unhelpful to readers. Significant information in articles about middle or elementary schools may include the history of the specific school, incidents that happened in that school, notable alumni/former pupils, etc.

Argument 3: Who in the world said that these middle and elementary schools "generally don't meet Wikipedia's GNG", while high schools "tend to meet GNG"? That makes no sense to me, because how are high schools any more or less notable than middle or elementary schools? Okay, so high schools do tend to have sports teams, and high schools would more often be mentioned by celebrity alumni than the celebrities' middle or elementary schools, but I believe the rationale that "middle and elementary schools tend not to meet GNG" is that they are not known for any two notable events. Well, if you think about it, regular high schools don't really have anything that special about them. I mean take Mauldin High School for instance. Sure, it's got sports teams and several notable alumni. But in the end, what's great about it? It's just another high school. If I searched for 5 minutes of high schools in random places, I could find high schools with around as many notable alumni and a sports team. So how does it stand out from the rest? Not really too much. Plus, middle and elementary schools tend to have gymnastics programs as well, and bands, and drama programs, and field trips (outings), and mascots, and notable alumni, so it's not like pre-high schools are useless and have nothing unique or special about them either, but the question still stands, what's really so special about any of these schools? Well, if most public schools tend to fall under the same boat of actual notability levels, why not just include articles about them all? I will give you examples of two schools out of the rest of the 20 thousand or whatever schools in the United States that I think should definitely have separate articles:

As you can see here, both of these schools have plenty of news and a few possibly useable book results that could merit an article, especially under an "Incidents" section (in Mauldin Middle School's case). Both of these schools do not fall under WP:ONEEVENT, as there are actually several news articles about various events that happened and that were related to these schools. These also come from various news sources, which establishes their notability further as there are not just one news website that the articles are relying on. These schools also tend to have their own websites, webpages, or sections of district websites, which definitely supply primary sources to be balanced out with the secondary sources.

No offense, Wikipedians; I am not talking about all articles as a whole, but most school and school district articles that I've seen on Wikipedia personally were not very well written at all and were often stubs, and content is therefore poorly cited. This tends to be because the local schools or districts are of very low importance to the general project, so there's also very low interest in editing. I could personally infer that critical Wikipedians who saw previous middle or elementary school articles may have confused poor citing with the article actually not being notable; that's why you don't assume.

Argument 4: I know what a few of you might be thinking; child protection and child privacy is a concern. I agree; yes it is. The fact that middle and elementary schools all educate students who are purely minors may have possibly been a contributing factor to Wikipedia's "redirect middle or elementary school article immediately" guideline. It is true that information about minors can be an issue in the case of BLP guidelines, but if something about a child was truly notable enough to be mentioned on an article, then so be it. It is also said that, since Wikipedia relies on reliable and visible external sources, the public would have already mentioned the minor, and Wikipedia's ultimate purpose is to "sum up the world's information" so to speak, so it is allowed to use any seeable source and sum it up where necessary. So child privacy is a completely different issue and should not be worried about in the case of creating articles about schools.


In conclusion, if this guideline is changed, which I'm very, very much hoping that it will be, WikiProject Education will be working its butt off trying to get these middle and elementary school articles all done, because of the inconvenient guideline that Wikipedia has presented to us editors for so many years. I am a very busy person, but I would be thrilled to help the project by making as many school articles as I can and as well as I can. I think that, by allowing middle school and elementary school articles when notable (which it's pretty obvious when they are), it will help the Wikipedia project and community so much and will make this encyclopedia more open and more informative for our readers. Thanks for your attention. I'm hoping to get a lot out of this. NOTE: I may add more arguments if I feel I've forgotten something. Philmonte101 😊😄😞 (talk) 04:08, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

Discussion (school articles)

I'm not familiar with this unwritten guideline you refer to, Philmonte101, so I can't comment on it, but if it does have to do with protecting children, I'm partly sympathetic to its existence and cause. To the point I want to make: High schools are where children become adults; where they begin to decide the future path of their lives; where they begin to conduct meaningful school work that helps show them how their brains work best and what interests them; where they begin to analyze the world and the people around them and how their behavior impacts those people. Elementary and middle schools, for most students, do not have this impact. I admit that I'm shooting from the hip here and that what I've said is completely anecdotal, but I think it translates to many people. I also admit that it's probably irrelevant — completely irrelevant — to Wikipedia articles, but there you have it.
As for Argument 1: People who are disappointed with the lack of elementary and middle school content can go directly to the school's Web page. Wikipedia, as you well know, is not the only source of information, and it is not meant to be the source of all information — only encyclopedic information. If elementary and middle schools are deemed to be encyclopedic, so be it. As for Argument 2, I agree mostly. District articles should describe the districts as a whole in mostly broad terms, and school articles should be the location for depth about specific schools. As for Argument 3, high schools tend to be much larger than elementary and middle schools, and school size directly impacts budget size. The bigger a school's budget, the more coverage it's likely to receive from the media, and the more coverage the media gives to a large-budgeted school, like a high school, the more secondary sources exist. Also, high school sports are more widely covered by the local media (giving articles about them far more secondary sources). Ditto with alumni references. You listed a couple schools for which you found references, and those should be examined on a per-article basis, just like any other Wikipedia article. As for Argument 4: Imagine the children themselves logging onto an IP account and inserting libel. Of course, this already occurs on Wikipedia, and the toddlers and children at elementary and middle schools can engage in this now on other articles, too. However, they might be more inclined to search out their own elementary or middle school article and make unconstructive edits. This is only a hunch, though. If the toddler-induced vandalism went far, suppression might be necessary. Fdssdf (talk) 06:47, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
@Philmonte101 and Fdssdf: Not sure who did this, but please do not "bump" the post by moving it to the end. --Izno (talk) 12:31, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
@Izno: I'm not sure what you mean. What I am sure of is that if I did break some policy about pump posts, it was not done with intent. Fdssdf (talk) 17:34, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
FWIW, the "unwritten" guidance on school articles is at WP:OUTCOMES; attempts to make a school notable guideline have always failed. It suggests that perhaps it is time to rethink how we handle high schools as to match how we require elementary/grade schools to show outside notability as well. --MASEM (t) 15:02, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

I have never understood why schools don't need to establish notability. Not every little institution deserves a mention in an encyclopedia, not sure how schools got this special treatment to begin with. We should tighten our standards for high schools, not loosen them for elementary schools. HighInBC 17:39, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

The relevant essay is Wikipedia:Notability (high schools) which is pretty much a guideline. This does not include junior or primary schools where mere existence and proof of that in a newspaper is not enough for inclusion. Dmcq (talk) 19:04, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
I agree with most of the comments. We give high schools some leeway, but that does not mean they should not (in principle) meet reliability guidelines. I see no reason to extend this to other schools, nor to change the current discretionary decision to keep many high schools. So my suggestion would be not to change current status quo. Arnoutf (talk) 19:30, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
Huge hole in this entire topic: 1 This website is not the American Wikipedia, 2 Schools exist in every country on earth, even countries that no longer exist had educational institutions for children.
I dislike WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES because it is a self fulfilling prophecy and a circular argument "high schools are notable because high schools are notable". Consequently questioning the notability of any high school is effectively forbidden because people use SCHOOLOUTCOMES as a weapon to premptively shut down any discussion of the notability of any high school. While (most) American high schools may be notable it is certainly not true of high schools almost anywhere else. Amaricans (and perhaps Canadians too) are practically unique in the way they make a fetish of high school sport. Even the smallest "Anyburgh High" is practically guaranteed regular coverage of its sport in the "Anyburgh Gazette", whereas in many other countries school sport is only of interest to the immediate school community and consequently gets very little mainstream media attention. High status private schools in the Anglosphere are an exception, but run-of-the-mill government schools outside of North America can exist for centuries without a mention in the press. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 20:03, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
I think the policy is very black and white and steering toward different directions. "All high schools, keep. All middle or elementary schools, delete. Because of what we generally saw before as notable and not notable." It does make sense for geographical locations, since many people would want to look up their hometown CDP on this site and everyone knows that. So if we just made it so that "All schools with at least a mentioning in three different media sources can pass as notable." or better yet "All schools that are verified to exist somehow merit their own articles," then they would fall under the same boat as geographical locations, because really, if you boil it down, elementary and middle schools are places on the map. I think it's strange how school districts are automatically accepted as geographical locations when they are not actually geographical locations, but governmental entities; a group of different schools in one region, while schools actually are geographical locations with exact coordinates. Sure, I think school districts all merit articles too, but definitely the schools should. And also, User:Fdssdf, the problem with people just going to the school websites is that the school websites are almost guaranteed to be biased towards that school. From what I know working at several different schools, staff and administrators will purposefully keep away from speaking of any kind of incidents unless it's important to the students, for instance an emergency, because kids at high school age and middle school age are known to gossip quite a lot about incidents such as these. So, Mauldin High School's website wouldn't have anything on their History page noting last year's annoying bomb threats. Mauldin Middle School's website wouldn't mention the well-covered incident of a physical education teacher being detained for years of child pornography distribution that depicted hundreds of his own students, unless it was in an apology note or something. It definitely wouldn't be on an immediately reachable part of the site, such as "About Us" or "History". These kinds of things are what Wikipedia is supposed to tell; it balances the goods, the bads, the okays, into one large sum of neutral and unbiased information. School websites wouldn't do this. And incidents are just one example of reasons a school websites are almost always at least somewhat biased. Philmonte101 😊😄😞 (talk) 21:42, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
  • From my perspective, people threw in the towel years ago and allowed all secondary schools to have articles. I don't think even this was a good move. School articles are notoriously out of date (and any updates are almost invariably done by people with a clear COI - students, employees, school boards), they're incredible vandalism and BLP violation magnets, and a significant percentage barely meet GNG (if they do at all). The overwhelming, vast majority of elementary schools do not meet GNG. Those few that do will qualify for an article on their own. I will note that the BLP violations and other materials that I have cleaned up and suppressed on school articles is amongst the most vicious and cruel that I have seen just about anywhere on this project, directed most frequently at identified, named students. We really don't need to open those doors to grade school kids as well. Risker (talk) 22:59, 12 March 2016 (UTC)
User:Risker Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. All the drama and vandalism you speak of should be irrelevant to the content of the encyclopedia itself. In other words, the amount of vandalism or possible COI on a page should not determine the right to existence of that page. Vandalism and attacks and such can always be removed, and even have the revisions deleted. Anyway, I'm almost completely inclusionist; I'm all about making this encyclopedia as complete and informational as possible. Many here will naturally disagree, as they have deletionist points of view. Philmonte101 😊😄😞 (talk) 23:25, 12 March 2016 (UTC)
Philmonte101, you have failed to address my other major point, which is that the overwhelming, vast majority of elementary schools do not meet GNG. You may think it's a minor point to have people brutally and viciously abused on this website, but those of us who actually deal with it know that there's a lot more to it. I'll also note that Wikipedia is not a directory, listing every possible bit of information under the sun. There is rarely sufficient useful information about individual elementary schools that is not already published on the website of the schoolboard; in fact, that's often where all of the information comes from. That is also why most "articles" about elementary schools redirect to the schoolboard or the town. There are simply not enough independent reliable sources to establish sufficient notability to pass GNG. Risker (talk) 00:05, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
Elementary and middle schools get deleted "per SCHOOLOUTCOMES" even when they do meet the GNG. I once listed a half-dozen sources in an AFD for an old private school that runs up through about ninth grade, and it was still deleted on the grounds that it didn't issue high school diplomas. And I've had editors tell me that if a school that existed in a logging camp for a year or two in the 19th century, and whose name is not even known(!), issued even one high school diploma, then we ought to have an article about it. (Good luck figuring out the article title for that one: How do you feel about Temporary school in a California logging camp (1886)?) WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:20, 28 March 2016 (UTC)
Strongly oppose There aren't any rights per se in Wikipedia. It's not a democracy. Our WP:GNG policy has worked well for a long time, and as Risker already noted, the vast majority of elementary and middle schools don't come close to meeting it. Just because someone looks for a piece of information on the Internet does not mean Wikipedia needs to cover it; that's precisely why the WP:NOTADIRECTORY policy exists. OhNoitsJamie Talk 00:47, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
"Most don't come close to meeting WP:GNG". You don't give sufficient enough reasons for me to believe you. Many of these US schools at the very least have been around for over a century. If someone digged around enough online and in books, eventually some notability could be established. Take the examples I gave on the first post:
Please explain to me how on earth these two schools have "no sufficient notability." They have extensive coverage in books and media. I haven't even done full research, and I still found an extensive enough amount of sources to put into an article. Sure, there's nothing special about them, but schools are still locations where a lot of people go, so they should absolutely have articles if they have the same amount of notability as those listed above. FOR instance, an article about Green Springs Elementary could say in the History section that it used to be one of the segregated schools. Philmonte101 😊😄😞 (talk) 02:08, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
I agree with Philmonte101. I've done a lot of work in local newspapers across the US and they ALL give a lot of attention to local public elementary and middle schools. They write about graduation, new buildings, new staff, and local funding all the time. The schools get coverage in published county histories as well. That meets our rule: If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to be suitable for a stand-alone article or list. Rjensen (talk) 02:21, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
But it should be remembered that a topic only covered by local sources typically fails the notability guidelines (local sources however can enhance a topic notable at a larger scale). See the essay WP:LOCAL for how this matters. --MASEM (t) 02:25, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
There is no rule that says local newspapers are weak sources--the notability rules have no such "local" factor. WP:LOCAL explicitly says that if the RS provides enough info then a Wiki article is justified. Public school issues in smaller cities and towns are typically very well covered by local reporters in the local newspapers because of open board meetings and open budgets; editors like these stories because many subscribers are graduates or send their kids to that school and read the story. Local private schools, on the other hand, may get much less coverage because they do not disseminate information. Individual elementary schools in the big city rarely get much newspaper coverage so they will seldom qualify. Wikipedia's goals include more editors at work, and working on material they know more about is a very good place to start. Rjensen (talk) 05:09, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
Local sources are dependent sources - not in terms of financial or the like, but simply in terms of interest. This is how WP:ORG (the notability guidelines for organizations) are set up. Specifically, coverage in works aimed for a local audience is not sufficient per WP:AUD. Otherwise, this same logic begs that local businesses also would readily classify for articles, which of course doesn't work. --MASEM (t) 05:26, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
No-- local newspapers are typically part of a regional chain, and are institutionally independent. For example they rotate reporters in from other cities. the WP:AUD is satisfied by having multiple independent sources, such as two papers or regional television news programs that do their own reporting on local schools. I just gave a series of workshops on editing for Wikipedia using local resources, with an audience of mostly librarians from various schools in Montana and rural Missouri. I can report a strong interest in developing better local coverage. Wikipedia is embarrassingly weak right now, comprising mostly demographic data dumps from the census, and maybe some weather bureau reporting. I'm all in favor of writing about Notre Dame and Yale but we have a duty to the 99.9% of our potential audience who have a strong interest in learning about their public schools in places they live and in places they are thinking of moving to. Rjensen (talk) 06:25, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
Hold on. Do you honestly believe that *anyone* is going to consider Wikipedia the place to look to find out about the public schools in places they're thinking of moving to, let alone 99.9% of the potential audience? We should do our very best to dissuade such thinking, Rjensen, not encourage it. We are already a genuinely AWFUL reference source for the majority of schools that have articles on Wikipedia. Nobody except people with COI seems to have any interest in maintaining these articles; they are in pitiful condition. There seems to be a lot of magical thinking that goes on about articles that people want to create but have no particular interest in maintaining; they become someone else's problem. We need to stop thinking this way. Risker (talk) 08:57, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
There is a rule that says local-only sources are weak, and it's in WP:ORG (the actual guideline about schools, as opposed to the essay at WP:NSCHOOLS). Read WP:AUD. Note that it gets challenged regularly by editors who are unhappy that a story in their favorite small-town newspaper doesn't prove the notability of their favorite small-town restaurant. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:20, 28 March 2016 (UTC)
User:Risker Again; the issue of maintaining the quality of an article has nothing, and I mean nothing, to do with the notability of the topic. That's like saying "Most articles about websites are biased or poor-quality, so we shouldn't include any of them." (Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, all deleted because of this action, making thousands of readers confused) Or something similar. Philmonte101 😊😄😞 (talk) 10:01, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
Don't put words in my mouth, Philmonte101; that is not at all what I said, which is that elementary schools should not be considered automatically notable enough for an article; that is what you are arguing for in this thread. Since it seems I have not been able to word my replies to you in such a way that you aren't misunderstanding them or mischaracterizing them, I will respond using the same example as you have used above. Not all websites are notable enough for Wikipedia. In fact, our threshold for websites is significantly higher than the one for schools right now. To use a slightly different example: Not all streets are notable enough for Wikipedia. We're not the place to keep information on every street in the world. We're not the place to keep information on every school in the world. We're not the place to keep information on every website in the world. We restrict ourselves to the notable ones. Risker (talk) 14:39, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
  • Oppose There is no 'right' for anyone or anything to be in and encyclopaedia. The only thing they have a right to is what they pay for or what the law demands. They don't and can't pay to be in Wikipedia and the law has not demanded that anything or anyone has to have a Wikipedia entry. They have to have some notability. And may I also note that short succinct arguments that make a clear point are more likely to convince editors to make exceptions to the notability policy. Dmcq (talk) 11:59, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
  • I don't favor "inherent notability" for anything, so I certainly don't favor it for schools. That should include all schools, but in practice, it's very difficult to challenge an article on a high school or above, even if there isn't really much of any reference material out there. But we certainly should not start expanding it. If a given elementary or middle school really does have sufficient reference material available for a full article about it, write that article and cite those references. As always, that doesn't mean blurbs or name drops, it means substantial, reliable coverage by independent sources. If it doesn't, we shouldn't have such an article, because we don't have the appropriate material from which to write one. That should be the standard in all cases. Seraphimblade Talk to me 14:52, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
  • I oppose the prejudice I support WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES as it saves unnecessary time in debates in AfD. Some people don't get that message, I've fought the debates and have won every time by producing sources. Of course I believe in WP:BEFORE. I previously proposed that people who don't get that message, in this kind of case or other cases, those who bring unnecessary AfDs should be penalized. Bad dog. I lost that proposal. At least these challenges on an individual basis should be brought to AfD and maybe someday we might find a school so obscure that nobody can prove it existed. Poof, it loses at AfD. What perturbs me are the number of cases where WP:Speedy is used to sneakily evade the sunlight of a debate but to still achieve the result. Most of the time those disingenuous editors are not caught. I think editors who have a history of misusing Speedy should be banned. As far as middle schools and elementary schools, lets have the debate. Many article attempts are poorly sourced junk. Poof. But I have seen well written, well sourced articles about middle schools that are summarily squashed, frequently using the speedy technique. The debate rarely is allowed to happen. If it does go to AfD, the logical solution is to merge to the school district or superior entity. But merging invariably loses the majority of content about that school, reducing it to a single line only validating its existence. Valid, sourced information about that school just disappears. Knowledge is precious, that is why wikipedia exists. Our standard is WP:GNG. Let the debate happen. Maybe we will establish over time, a criteria that will set the standards for lesser schools to prove their notability and to be allowed to be included. A giant "No, not never, no how" prevents that debate, that evolution from happening based on prejudice. Trackinfo (talk) 18:29, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
  • Oppose - That outcomes are routinely used to dictate outcomes (and to chill/preempt discussions) is a seemingly intractable problem for AfD. I mean I get it -- it's a time saver. But that's what SNGs are supposed to be for. Instead, we have a pseudostatistical hodgepodge that's wielded with the authority of an SNG, and enjoys a self-perpetuating circularity. I totally agree that in most cases, high schools are notable. But they shouldn't be automatically notable (and technically they're not -- it's just that way in practice), and I'd oppose any expansion of that effective free pass. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 19:13, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
  • Oppose per Risker and Rhododendrites. Doug Weller talk 20:39, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
  • Oppose The present policy has one key advantage: it sorts out the articles unambiguously. It would be great if we could agree on similar standards elsewhere; I would support any effort here even if I did not like the result because the arguing is not worth the trouble. What harms WP is not a large number of trivial articles. What harms wikipedia is promotionalism and misue of the site. The effort spent in deciding just who or what should be covered would much better be spent in improving the quality of articles. Remember , V and NPOV are key policies essential to an encyclopedia ; the exact detail of what we have articles on doesn't in the end make that much difference. DGG ( talk ) 05:14, 15 March 2016 (UTC)
What harms WP is not a large number of trivial articles. What harms wikipedia is promotionalism and misue of the site. Well said. Trackinfo (talk) 20:08, 15 March 2016 (UTC)
The reason these schools should have articles when having even close to sufficient amounts of references is because the district articles currently are supposed to include information about schools in a list, apparently. Well, in my opinion, that information does not belong in a district article. Though school districts do manage the schools, the school district is a different institution or entity. Plus, like I said, which no one is addressing, the districts are much less important to readers than the schools themselves most of the time. Much less people end up going to the district headquarters than to the schools themselves. People want to know about schools, and much less about districts, so someone next please address that point. Philmonte101 😊😄😞 (talk) 20:20, 16 March 2016 (UTC)
  • Oppose: Proposal fundamentally misunderstands policy. Yes, there is a problem with closers treating SCHOOLOUTCOMES like a policy, but nothing here addresses that. A school article can be kept if it passes WP:GNG; this has consistently been interpreted to mean in-depth coverage in independent, reliable, and no-local, secondary sources. Local newspaper are presumptively reliable for WP:V purposes but they nothing to help establish notability. Otherwise, every other 7th-grader in small towns would have an article here, because the local papers have nothing better to write about other than who won last Sunday's spelling bee.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  10:30, 21 March 2016 (UTC)
  • Oppose I support keeping SCHOOLOUTCOMES as it is, but I oppose extending it to include pre-secondary schools. The reason is that this primary assumption - in reality the high schools, middle schools, and elementary schools generally have just about the same notability level - is false. High schools get far, far more coverage from the press than do elementary and middle schools. High schools have competitive sports teams that get written about; their students win significant awards; even their theatrical productions get covered in a way that middle school productions don't. The basis of the SCHOOLOUTCOMES consensus is the belief that pretty much every verified secondary school has significant coverage if you just look for it, and so a general assumption of notability saves hours and hours of wrangling over whether a particular school is notable enough. (I compare it to WP:ATHLETE, and for the same reason: virtually every professional athlete gets at least some coverage, and having a notability guideline prevents endless arguing over the notability or not of a particular athlete.) Having this guideline also helps to avoid WP:Systemic bias, since a strict insistence on WP:SIGCOV could result in the deletion of many secondary schools and even colleges in non-English-speaking countries, while their counterparts in English-speaking countries are kept. --MelanieN (talk) 00:33, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
    • Except, arguably, "High schools have competitive sports teams that get written about; their students win significant awards; even their theatrical productions get covered in a way that middle school productions don't." is all routine coverage, compounded by most of that coverage being local, which doubly fails the GNG. --MASEM (t) 00:49, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
      • Yes, the coverage is usually local. It is "routine" only in the sense that newspapers routinely write about it. If that's an issue now, coverage of professional sports is also "routine", i.e., newspapers routinely report it; it is also usually local, so should we stop writing about professional sports? Anyhow, my contention here was that secondary schools virtually always do get coverage (and pre-secondary schools don't, which is what this thread is about, and what I was talking about). --MelanieN (talk) 22:33, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

Side matter: Schools and ONEEVENT

  • Please discuss this issue below that line and the one above it separately. I also must note that I've read a couple of different former elementary or middle school articles that became redirected. All of the ones that I saw, even Sandy Hook Elementary School, were stub articles with almost no useful content and no references. This seems to confuse editors into thinking that school articles like those are 100% not notable. Well, here we have it! That may just be the reason why we have made the policy in the first place. If you see an article like Green Springs Elementary School (Ohio), which may not have anything particularly special about it, it still gives sufficient references to various different points about that school, including history, technology, and architecture. Green Springs Elementary School (Kansas), however, fails notability because of a literal case of WP:ONEEVENT.

    About Sandy Hook. Has anyone ever put it into their heads that maybe it wasn't WP:ONEEVENT? What about the mentioning of the various attempts to rebuild the school? What about the history of the school disregarding the shooting? What about its architecture, design, cultural elements, possible notable alumni, staff, or former pupils, etc.? By the way, all of the information I just stated should not be in an article about its school district. Things that should be in school district articles are a list of its schools, history of the district itself (mostly office stuff and whatnot), notable incidents related to the district (i.e. treasury theft, etc.), information about the school district office if notable such as architecture and history etc. If the school is actually (not just assumably) WP:ONEEVENT, or you can't find various enough sources, then it must be redirected to the school district. All of this is my ideal of a perfect standard for judging school articles. Now you fully understand and can quote me according to this. Philmonte101 😊😄😞 (talk) 20:32, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

    I see no reason to treat school district articles any different than any other WP:SUMMARY/WP:LIST style works: When it gets too large, remove the information to another article; conversely, if it' s not too large, and the individual subtopic cannot show notability, merge it to the list/series/whatnot. This is a pretty typical treatment of articles on Wikipedia. --Izno (talk) 11:13, 17 March 2016 (UTC)
  • I'm agreed exactly with Izno.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  10:30, 21 March 2016 (UTC)
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