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Unreferenced articles

Latest comment: 1 year ago236 comments64 people in discussion

Initial discussion

There is still discussion happening in the other subsections below, but this initial discussion was superceded by an RfC that was not adopted. Since this initial discussion seems to be attracting further !votes, despite being at VPI, I believe it's time to hat it so editors can focus energy on the related discussions below, or elsewhere entirely. (non-admin closure) —siroχo 08:48, 2 November 2023 (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.

Since I don't like writing long walls of text, and nobody reads those anyways, I'll state my idea in point form:

  • Unreferenced articles (i.e. those with zero sources) are a huge problem, and a violation of one of Wikipedia's core content policies: WP:V.
  • There are currently 119,000 articles tagged as unreferenced; and new ones get added every month.
  • With articles needing more sources, one can invoke WP:BURDEN and trim off the unsourced claims. One can't do that with totally unreferenced articles.
  • So here's my idea: "unreferenced" tags act as pseudo-prods. If the tag isn't removed within two weeks (and the problem fixed), the article is deleted. Users can draftify or improve the article during that period. Tags should not be removed unless references are added.
    • Don't panic! This idea will not apply retroactively; i.e.; articles already tagged with {{unreferenced}} would not be subject to this change.
  • This would greatly discourage creation of new, unsourced articles, of which there are too many.
  • This would stop the addition of new articles to the unreferenced backlog, allowing that to be picked away at.
  • This would maintain a higher average quality of verifiability and quality on the encyclopedia.
  • This would incentivise users to add sources to their unreferenced contributions.

I have a feeling this is idea will be drastically unpopular, but I believe something should be done, so... thoughts on the proposal? Since this is the idea lab, we can modify the idea to whatever directions necessary. Edward-Woodrow :) [talk] 18:17, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

P.S.: Please ping me on reply. Cheers, Edward-Woodrow :) [talk] 18:24, 17 September 2023 (UTC)
  • As long as this is not applied retroactively, as described in the proposed idea, this doesn't seem like too problematic of an idea, although it's not within current policy. WP:MINREF states: Technically, if an article contains none of these four types of material, then it is not required by any policy to name any sources at all, either as inline citations or as general references. That's an information page, but WP:V has always stated that All content must be verifiable. I think it was last year User:Levivich opened an RFC at VPP or somewhere proposing this language be changed to All content must be verified; the RFC did not pass. I think the present idea might be forcing through an unsupported policy change. If there is sufficient support for this, I would prefer an action less drastic than deletion, but as evidenced by other discussions currently active at VPR and VPI, something like draftification is a whole can of worms inside a barrel of worms inside an intermodal shipping container of worms. Folly Mox (talk) 19:18, 17 September 2023 (UTC)
I did consider proposing draftification, but abandoned it for pretty much that reason. I do frequently draftify articles myself, but I think institutionalized, automatic draftification would lead no where good, especially as long as G13 is around and kicking. Edward-Woodrow :) [talk] 19:21, 17 September 2023 (UTC)
What if, instead of leaping all the way to deletion, articles thus tagged, after 14 days, were __NOINDEX__ed? That's just a tiny baby step towards a fully referenced mainspace, but mitigates propagation of potential misinformation, and retains the problem articles for potential improvement. Folly Mox (talk) 15:53, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
The page would still be accessible, though, through links or URL-hopping. It is possible this idea could go hand-in-hand with the above-proposed softdeleting/archiving/whatever we're calling it this week. Edward-Woodrow :) [talk] 19:42, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
The RFC I was thinking of was indeed last year. Folly Mox (talk) 20:18, 17 September 2023 (UTC)
Although MINREF says that, WP:V which is policy boy an information page says Any material lacking an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports the material may be removed and should not be restored without an inline citation to a reliable source. So an editor can redirect an article without any referencing, or cut it down to a stub. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 21:42, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
Agreed. Stubbifying, redirecting, sourcing, tagging, and the null action are all permitted over unreferenced articles under current policy. Folly Mox (talk) 05:26, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
  • Support. It's not 2004 anymore. Everyone in the English-speaking world with an internet connection knows what Wikipedia is and what its basic requirements are, to the extent that {{Citation needed}} is a pretty universally recognized phrase even outside the context of Wikipedia. Sourcing things with the internet is easier now than it ever has been. So we should expect much more of people when it comes to citing something at article creation than we did in 2004. I would also guess we're somewhere approaching 99% coverage of the most globally-notable non-CE topics; thus, unlike in 2004, there is virtually 0% any old as-yet-untagged unreferenced article is going to be on a subject so integral to society that we can be certain expansion and sourcing will ever happen. JoelleJay (talk) 01:32, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
I think the idea that we're approaching 99% "completion" isn't accurate; see this recent discussion at VPM, for example. Curbon7 (talk) 03:09, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
I did not say 99% "completion". I said 99% coverage of the most globally-notable non-CE topics. This means subjects like apple and knee and Muhammad and psychology and division (mathematics) and beauty and Russia. Things that are universally recognized and would always be expected to appear in any broad general-use encyclopedia. JoelleJay (talk) 03:31, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
For clarification, when you say coverage are you talking about articles created or articles fleshed out? Curbon7 (talk) 04:24, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
Articles created. JoelleJay (talk) 22:01, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
Everyone in the English-speaking world with an internet connection knows what Wikipedia is and what its basic requirements are: on this point, it's just wrong to presume that everyone understands Wikipedia. They really don't. It might be a frequently used tool but it's extremely to rare to find people who have scraped near its innards, or to have more than the vaguest idea of en.wp's reliability beyond "I know it's iffy but it seems mostly ok". {{Citation needed}} is a niche reference in the first place, but especially outside cities and outside the age group 20–35. Even for highly educated people, have they ever looked at a Wikipedia reference list? would not infrequently elicit a 'they have those?'. Notability and verifiability are pretty much Wikipedia's basic requirements, and it's totally mad to expect anywhere upwards of 5% to recognise either one. Everyone in the English-speaking world with an internet connection? That sentence struck me as a massive example of projecting oneself on others, and I'm sorry if it's tangential but just wanted to put it out there. J947 † edits 09:46, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
Agree with Everyone here being an overstatement. My experience has been that people of my generation are aware of Wikipedia's existence, and people of younger generations typically encounter us in the form of their google lady saying "according to Wikipedia," before answering a question beginning "ok google" asked aloud in their kitchen.
If nothing else, the data constantly spewing in from AfC indicate that people generally don't understand what Wikipedia is and especially don't understand its basic requirements. Folly Mox (talk) 14:39, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
By "understand Wikipedia", I mean "understand that it's an encyclopedia" and what an encyclopedia is. It's the 5th-most visited website in the world, people are using it as a resource for accurate information. Sure, "everyone" might be hyperbolic--I guess there is that cohort of old folks who haven't had to write an essay in 50 years and so might have forgotten that things should be cited--but looking things up online is universal within the demographic I mentioned so I find it highly unlikely anyone doesn't understand what Wikipedia is. We have many expectations of adults that aren't always met, that doesn't mean we shouldn't have those expectations. Likewise, we can expect (as distinct from presume) that editors provide sources when creating articles. JoelleJay (talk) 18:47, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
  • Oppose as utterly irresponsible. I don't like a subject area, I go and mass tag all the unreferenced articles at a pace that nobody can keep up with, and they are gone in 14 days. It is simple as that. Could even be done by bot. --Rschen7754 04:13, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
    I don't like a subject area, I go and mass tag all the unreferenced articles at a pace that nobody can keep up with: are you suggesting requesting sources or deleting unsourced content is a form of vandalism or harassment? Or are you suggesting that a fait accompli implies what has been done is now everyone's valuable treasure and responsibility?
    If users did not add sources it is their problem, providing sources is the responsibility of the person who added information (WP:BURDEN). And other users have to deal with this lack of sources: no user should consider themselves "bad", "frivolous", "in a deletion frenzy", or "irresponsible", because they are simply doing what's right by removing what is unsourced (deleting articles included). Again, it is the person who adds the information who should be sourcing them. There were thousands of people who did not provide a source on multiple articles throughout WP? Anyone can remove what they have added, any of those unsourced articles should be deleted. Veverve (talk) 05:38, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
    I don't like a subject area, I go and mass tag all the unreferenced articles at a pace that nobody can keep up with: Not only would this happen, we would probably see a few people who "accidentally" remove "unreliable" (according to them) sources just before tagging them, or even tagging articles while the sources are still present. That's not IMO a sound reason not to set this long, slow train in motion, but I wouldn't want anyone to be surprised when it does happen. WhatamIdoing (talk) 09:15, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
    we would probably see a few people who "accidentally" remove "unreliable" (according to them) sources just before tagging them, or even tagging articles while the sources are still present: the same argument can be said for anything that gets PRODed or XfDed. Veverve (talk) 10:32, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
    It already happens with PROD and XFD; that's why I am confident that it will happen here, too. I suppose the more subtle way to handle this is for one editor to remove sources from the articles they dislike, and another to come along later to tag them for deletion. Since we can reasonably predict that this will be interpreted as a black-and-white rule, we should expect all uncited articles to be tagged for deletion. If it follows a PROD-like process, there's a risk that an admin will notice that the article was previously sourced, but I would not expect that to be a major barrier to deleting most articles about any subject we choose. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:43, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
    I read the will not apply retroactively as applying to articles created prior to the potential adoption of this idea, rather than articles tagged prior, but that could certainly be clarified further. Are there whole topic areas lacking references? There probably shouldn't be any topic areas lacking references created in the future, and if such a situation were to arise, I think I'd characterise the creation of all the unreferenced articles as more disruptive than tagging them all db-unref or whatever we'd call this process. Folly Mox (talk) 14:58, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
    My intent was articles tagged prior to potential adoption, but I'm willing to be talked around. Edward-Woodrow :) [talk] 19:44, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
  • Support: you add information, you source, you prove notability. WP:BURDEN is on you. A 2007 essay already proposed the same philosophy Edward-Woodrow does here: Wikipedia:No reliable sources, no verifiability, no article. Veverve (talk) 05:27, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
  • Deletion would be too harsh; consider that these may be created by newcomers, who would be bit and perhaps leave before they can become a good contributor. If we have to go down this road, then draftifying is a better solution, but with no deadline, this is way more than is necessary for all but BLPs and sensitive topics. SounderBruce 07:08, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
    If someone in 2023 does not understand that they need to cite whichever sources they're using to write a Wikipedia article, they should not be writing Wikipedia articles. JoelleJay (talk) 18:18, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
    No one begins editing with a perfect understanding of policies. Many editors receive proper guidance and become productive with some experience; turning them away at the first step would only contribute to worsening editor retention. There are also cultures that might not conform to our ideas of citations and reliable sources; are all those people not excluded from what should be an inclusive movement? Do we want to wall ourselves off to only people who fit a colonialist view of knowledge? SounderBruce 00:52, 20 September 2023 (UTC)
    @SounderBruce: They'll have two weeks to find references. Besides, speedy deletion would be far more bitey than this. I'm not sure I understand your statement There are also cultures that might not conform to our ideas of citations and reliable sources; are all those people not excluded from what should be an inclusive movement? Wikipedia policy requires sources. Period. And in what way would different cultures diverge on interpretation of "citations reliable sources?" I'm not sure I understand this. Edward-Woodrow • talk 01:16, 20 September 2023 (UTC)
    We could write more about this subject than anyone would probably care to read, but the following two points are probably the biggest general areas:
    • What counts as "reliable" varies by culture. My culture doesn't accept "I saw Karp in the elevator, and he said it was probably np-complete" as a reliable source, but personal information from an expert is a very highly valued source in some other cultures.
    • Cultures without a long tradition of written language do not expect the sources they rely upon to be fixed in a tangible form. My culture (and enwiki's policy) does.
    WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:49, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
    I see, thanks. Edward-Woodrow • talk 12:12, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
    You don't need a perfect understanding of the policies. You only need to meet the most basic expectation that you cite whatever source you're using to write an article so that other editors can verify it. If someone is from some hypothetical culture that doesn't have the concept of "this information came from this place" ends up on Wikipedia, gains autoconfirmed status, and then creates an unsourced article in passable English, this proposal would alert them to the requirement for sources (and what that means) and they could learn what to do. But I find it very unlikely that anyone creating unreferenced articles in 2023 is an editor we would want to retain, and even more unlikely that deleting unreferenced articles from 2006 would be discouraging to anyone. JoelleJay (talk) 01:31, 20 September 2023 (UTC)
    You are assuming that the person is using a source, that the source has been fixed in a reasonably permanent form, and that the source has been made available to the general public. We require that it be possible to cite such a source, but I also know that I could write, without consulting a single source, that there is one public park in the small town where my mother grew up. It would be accurate, and it would probably be verifiable (I assume the town has a website), but if you asked me to "cite whatever source you're using", I'd have to say "I'm not using any sources. This is just something I've known for decades." While I give an example of a single sentence, it's possible to do this for whole articles.
    I think we do want to retain editors whose first contributions don't have inline citations. Your first addition of content was unsourced. Your first article had a few bare URLs but no inline citations. (My first edits were no better: although my first mainspace edit was to add bare URL as a source, my second added a significant amount of verifiable but uncited information, and my first article had just one bare URL, to what's now a dead link but whose domain name makes me think it might have been a personal blog.) I think that the core community would agree that they are happy that we have both been retained. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:05, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
    I wrote my first article 13 years ago as a high schooler, and despite clearly not having read Wikipedia's rules I still assumed I needed to cite some sources before I even published it to userspace. It had inline citations and a reflist a bit over an hour after going into mainspace.
    I'm talking about articles created in 2023 that don't have a single hint of a source, including external links. Someone so totally unaware of the concept of "published sources" that after two weeks they still don't understand what to do when their page gets the proposed tag should not be editing here. It should be irrelevant whether they come from some hypothetical culture that doesn't use/acknowledge Western sources even when they are writing on a modern platform. JoelleJay (talk) 01:21, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
    I agree with SounderBruce (talk · contribs), draftiying is a better way to tackle new unreferenced articles. Deleting unreferenced articles, and assuming that they fail WP:V does not WP:AGF. SailingInABathTub ~~🛁~~ 09:08, 20 September 2023 (UTC)
  • Support in theory. Reminds me of the Commons thing where files without copyright data can be deleted with a similar system.
    • Does the tagger have a burden to search for sources and add them directly (or through Template:Refideas or similar)? We would need detailed policy on when not to tag. Add to TW eventually?
    • This would probably be primarily for the 110 000-some articles that already are unsourced, not affecting NPP, because unsourced articles wouldnt get through anyway? If this would affect NPP (flowchart), how?
    • What would 'automatically deleted after X days' mean in practice? Would an admin check for sources before deleting, or are articles really automatically gone?
      • How about a deletion review, where like 3 RS found = restore?
    • Eventually could we have nice things, like cats and bot-updated tables. NotAGenious (talk) 08:10, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
    @NotAGenious, based on how things went when we started deleting unsourced BLPs, "how it would work" is "with a good deal of finger-pointing and blame-shifting". The group of people who demand that articles be sourced tend unfortunately not to overlap significantly with the group of people who actually source articles themselves. For example, in the last ~two months, you've made about 750 edits and added about 15 refs. This doesn't mean that your contributions are unhelpful – nothing like that at all – but overall, as a purely practical matter, we'd probably have to assume that you wouldn't contribute a lot to the work necessary to make this proposal successful. I wouldn't be surprised to discover that was the case for most editors who support the idea in theory. WhatamIdoing (talk) 08:23, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
    The group of people who demand that articles be sourced tend unfortunately not to overlap significantly with the group of people who actually source articles themselves: and why should it be otherwise? Burden is not on those who demand sources, but on those who add information.
    As a sidenote, I have noticed that those who do not add sources to their claims are very much overlapping with those who do not want those kind of methods to exist. One just has to look at the fact you yourself consider unsourced contributions as valuable. Veverve (talk) 10:27, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
    When you demand that other people do work that you do not choose to do yourself, they tend to feel like you are uncollegial, uncollaborative, and a nuisance. And when the person making those demands adds unsourced content himself (example from earlier this year), we can add hypocritical to the list of words people might apply to someone who says everything must be sourced, but doesn't actually add sources himself.
    But I wasn't actually concerned about you in particular; I'm just saying that if we're going to identify a problem that needs to be fixed on a certain timeline, we need to consider whether that is realistic with the time and energy that actual editors are willing to devote to it. Otherwise, the work won't actually get done.
    I do not consider unsourced contributions to be valuable per se, even though I opposed having your badly written essay in the project space. I consider some unsourced contributions to be valuable, and others to be garbage, just like I consider some cited contributions to be valuable and others to be garbage. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:20, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
    Thank you, WhatAmIDoing, for expressing your concerns. While I have read a lot of info and past discussions on referencing and participated in a few discussions on reliable sources, I agree that I haven't focused much on adding sources (well, nor content creation overall - but when I write something, I always source it). But, from what I've learned, I feel competent enough to participate here, and if the idea is succesful, be a part on implementing the system. NotAGenious (talk) 10:39, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
    I'm glad to hear it. The next question is: How many others like you are willing to pitch in?
    If we have 100,000 articles, and everyone in the team cites one article per week, we'll need 2,000 editors to accomplish this goal in one year. If they can do one a day, we'll need 275 for a year. Realistically speaking, and keeping in mind that all of the other work of the wiki still has to happen, including some major challenges during the next year (e.g., the introduction of mw:Help:Temporary accounts in 2024, which may ultimately be an improvement, but which will disrupt some people's workflows), how many do you think that an editor like you could do? WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:25, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
    A rotating crew of eleven, each sourcing an average of five articles a day, could complete the task by 2030. One year sounds like a pretty ambitious timeframe. Folly Mox (talk) 17:16, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
    One article per week seems like a good goal. One per day seems like a little too much. Edward-Woodrow • talk 19:54, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
    All right: At the rate of one article per week, per editor, between now and the start of 2030, we need 300 editors signed up. Doing it over the course of six years will require continually recruiting folks to replace those who fall away, but that's the scale that we're looking at.
    Now: Is that reasonable? I'm thinking that it's maybe not entirely reasonable. For comparison, consider the one-month-long Wikipedia:WikiCup and Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles/GAN Backlog Drives, which seem to draw about 100 participants (some of which don't do much; others of which do a lot more). We're looking at needing three times as many people, for one or two orders of magnitude longer (depending on whether you think of this as "six annual events, each of which is 12 months long" or "72 months in a row"). Either way, it's more people for a much longer period of time.
    What might make it feasible, or at least not obviously impossible, is that the request is smaller. I added two sources to five medicine-related articles just now. It took me about 45 minutes to do five articles, with some of them being faster than others. (Generally, the more specific/narrow the subject, the easier it is to find a relevant source.) So if the goal is to get just one source into an article, rather than to fully source the content, that request is just 10 minutes a week, and the challenge would be to find enough people (you'd probably have to recruit more than a thousand, in the end, because people won't do a full year), and to find ways to keep them on task (because even people who genuinely want to help will forget). WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:13, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
    It would be helpful if a couple of other editors did a similar self-experiment. I pulled five non-organizational, non-BLP articles out of https://bambots.brucemyers.com/cwb/bycat/Medicine2.html#Cites%20no%20sources There are similar lists for most of the large WikiProjects. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:17, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
    I would say the tagger has a burden to do a cursory search, to make sure they aren't about to delete a future FA. It would be good for an admin to do the same quick searches, just to be safe. Edward-Woodrow :) [talk] 11:39, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
@Edward-Woodrow, The very first bullet point is wrong. Unreferenced articles are not "a violation of one of Wikipedia's core content policies: WP:V." WP:V only requires inline citations under certain circumstances. It is possible to write a (very short) stub that is not required to contain any inline citations. For example:
  • Lung cancer is a type of cancer. Smoking raises the risk of lung cancer.
  • Christmas candy is a type of candy associated with Christmas. Candy canes are one type of Christmas candy.
  • French Renaissance sculpture is the type of sculpture made in France during the Renaissance.
None of those sub-stubs contain direct quotations; none of them contain contentious matter about living people; none of them contain material that is WP:LIKELY to be challenged; none of them contain material that has already been challenged. If you wish to expand your view a little further, then all three of them contain solely material for which a source could be found quite easily, so it's not a NOR violation, either.
It is true that none of them prove that they are notable subjects, but I suggest to you that it is equally true that no editor will genuinely have any doubts about the notability of these subjects, and for better or worse, there is not one sentence in any of the core policies that says obviously notable subjects must be proven to be notable through the addition of an inline citation, even if every editor already knows that these are notable subjects. Past efforts to create such a requirement have failed. Maybe if you want to be able to delete articles because somebody else didn't do the thing that you haven't done yourself, then you should first try to get the undesirable behavior officially banned first. That's how we ended up with WP:BLPPROD some years back: first, you have to get the policy amended to disallow unsourced articles; only after that can you start deleting them for violating the rule. WhatamIdoing (talk) 08:13, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
I'm not saying that everything needs an inline citation, I'm saying that all material in Wikipedia mainspace, including everything in articles, lists, and captions, must be verifiable. It's not verifiable if there isn't a source anywhere in the article, is it? Edward-Woodrow :) [talk] 11:33, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
Typical cases where things are verifiable but unsourced are when articles summarise other articles, and the references can be found only in articles linked from the unsourced article in question. —Kusma (talk) 11:43, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
User:Edward-Woodrow, It's not verifiable if there isn't a source anywhere in the article, is it? To me this reads as a misconception. Information is verifiable if it has been published somewhere. It makes everything way way easier if some indication of that publication is in the article, but "takes extra work to verify" is not equivalent to "unverifiable". Folly Mox (talk) 14:47, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
That is definitely not how people evaluate WP:V in practice. An unsourced article tagged with {{sources exist}} because of some sigcov in obscure scholarship is rightfully said to “have unverifiable statements.” All information not proven false could theoretically be verified. Mach61 (talk) 23:40, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
Then 'people' are wrong. – Joe (talk) 12:45, 20 September 2023 (UTC)
@Joe Roe, you're right, but @Mach61 has only been editing for a year, and I would not be the least bit surprised to hear that some high-volume editors "stretch" or "simplify" the rules for newer editors, in ways that happen to favor the convenience of the high-volume editors. We have an endless supply of written rules, but WP:Nobody reads the directions, and most people learn the alleged rules through a sort of telephone game: one editor tells me a slightly distorted version of the rules, and I misinterpret that when I tell you what you should do, and you're stuck with bad information. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:33, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
I've been thinking the same thing a lot lately. It seems like new editors are increasingly learning about our policies from, well, somewhere other than the policies themselves (training programmes? Condensed summaries? Word of mouth on Discord? I really don't know), resulting in baffling examples of people misunderstanding what I always considered to be very straightforward directions, mixing up concepts, applying guidance on one thing to something completely different, throwing around shortcuts without knowing what the linked section actually says (never mind the next section), etc. And I don't think I'm just being a cranky old man here; it really does seem like something has changed in the last couple of years. I wish I could put my finger on what it is. – Joe (talk) 06:44, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
I think the change predates the pandemic, and I wonder sometimes if we could trace it back to as early as 2016. That's the year when both "extended confirmed" and "new page reviewer" became addition user rights, and their main purpose is to give experienced editors control. So whatever zeitgeist at that time prompted this desire for even more control might be the start, not of "nobody reads the directions", which has been a thing on the internet since before most people had internet access, but of the idea that everything should be tailored to my convenience, and that the highest goal was reverting someone else's less-than-perfect first contribution, instead of creating content yourself. WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:40, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
I think the change has crept up on us gradually. There were people like that when I started editing in 2007, but they seem to have got more and more vocal. I am of the generation to whom you could say RTFM and I would go away sheepishly to do so, but more and more people seem to think that everything should be done their way, which usually involves someone else doing the work. Phil Bridger (talk) 15:29, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
I agree that it has been a gradual shift. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:27, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
@Edward-Woodrow, if there isn't a source anywhere in the article, it's only uncited. It's still verifiable if you (i.e., anyone) are able to find a reliable source that matches the contents. The rule is that content must be verifiABLE, and we assume you are "able" to use a search engine. See Wikipedia:Glossary#verifiable for a short definition of the related terms. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:29, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
Yes but as I said above WP:V says Any material lacking an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports the material may be removed and should not be restored without an inline citation to a reliable source. So there should be no expectation that unreferenced content can standard if it is challenged. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 21:51, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
This is the idea lab, so I don't know what all the bold "support" votes above are here for. Anyway, the vast majority of the "unreferenced articles" issue is in old articles; most if not all new articles have some references (so I don't think your proposal would help discourage new unreferenced articles any more than they already are). Deleting articles that are unreferenced-but-nobody-has-tagged-them-yet (which focuses on articles that have been unreferenced for short times, not long times) seems less useful than other methods of choosing which unreferenced articles to deal with. You could randomly AfD five unreferenced articles per day. —Kusma (talk) 08:20, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
I think they're almost all tagged. We sent a bot through to tag unref'd articles some years back. I rarely encounter an untagged one (and sometimes still encounter an incorrectly tagged one). WhatamIdoing (talk) 08:25, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
Disagree. I checked Petscan. There are 307 articles in the category for this month, but only 15 of those articles were created after July 1 of this year. Many were created years ago. 276 out of 307 were created before 2018. So the assumption that because this only applies to newly tagged articles, it only applies to newly created articles, is untrue; this proposal as stated will have retroactive effects. DFlhb (talk) 09:21, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
most if not all new articles have some references (so I don't think your proposal would help discourage new unreferenced articles any more than they already are). Besides DFlhb's reply above.... I suggest you check the New Pages Feed. This month, I have draftified 104 articles because the have no sources. Edward-Woodrow :) [talk] 11:42, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
My question is how many new unsourced articles make it through New Page patrol. —Kusma (talk) 11:44, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
Well, based on my limited experience, it depends, mostly on the reviewer. Some people like to tag and leave a friendly message on the talk page, I prefer to draftify, with the goal there to get it out of mainspace, and I assume there are other methods, too. Edward-Woodrow :) [talk] 11:49, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
I've done I'd guess a few thousand NPP's. If I ever saw an article with zero references but where suitable sources clearly exist (and the article didn't have other disqualifying attributes and isn't a good situation for conversion of a stub to a redirect) I'd pass it, but that has never happened. North8000 (talk) 14:33, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
I've seen a few with zero references but where suitable sources clearly exist. When I find ones like that, I add the sources. Yes, that makes NPP take longer and is arguably not NPP's job, but I'm of the mind that it should be part of the job. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 14:54, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
Personally, I'd rather have NPP focus on CSD-worthy problems (=its original remit) and leave the rest for the rest of the community, but the scope creep has extended so far that I don't know that there is any chance of reducing the load on the NPPers at this point. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:36, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
I feel like I read somewhere that there are two actions that can be taken on new pages: patrol and review. I'm not sure whether this is a distinction without a difference or two actually separate things, but it would make sense to me if there were a first order "is this CSDable" check and a second "are there any other major issues" check.
There was also a discussion somewhere about smearing out this boolean NPP tagging, by introducing other actions that could be undertaken by people with different skillsets, such that one person could mark an article as "not copyvio", another could mark it "not spam" etc until the bar is crossed where it becomes "fully patrolled", without pushing any one editor into making determinations they don't feel sufficiently practised at. To address myself in the present comment, this tangent would probably be better suited to a different venue. Folly Mox (talk) 17:30, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
@Folly Mox: introducing other actions that could be undertaken by people with different skillsets, such that one person could mark an article as "not copyvio", another could mark it "not spam" etc until the bar is crossed where it becomes "fully patrolled" I understand the rationale behind that, but I feel like it would just make everything take orders of magnitude longer in NPP; the backlog is big enough (although it looks like the redirect backlog is levelling off? Maybe?). Edward-Woodrow • talk 19:51, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
It wasn't my idea, and it's not for this conversation, but yeah definitely if people have a single assigned station and you're always waiting on User:Example to finish the G5 check or whatever, NPP would certainly take longer. I think the original idea was to allow partial patrols to be recorded somehow, like if no one is comfortable assessing the reliability of the sourcing because it's in Armenian or Mongolian or something, but Earwig came up clean, there could at least be an easy way to record that to avoid duplication of effort. I think the thought was that ideally all NPPers would still be competent in all the areas to patrol an article fully from zero to indexed by search engines, but people who are weak in certain areas or can only dedicate time in smol chunks could still put in partial labour. Hopefully someone else remembers the conversation if anyone considers my hazy recollections to have value as a starting point for a new NPP experiment. Folly Mox (talk) 21:25, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
@Folly Mox, you are thinking of User talk:Iridescent/Archive 50#c-WhatamIdoing-20221011190200-Novem Linguae-20221010223100. It was partly inspired by the way MILHIST does B-class assessments.
A new article often gets ~50 page views on the first day. Particularly in the first hour, people are most often looking for the "quick fail". Those who have particular areas of interest (e.g., attack pages and copyvios) could save some time and reduce duplicated effort by being able to filter out articles that have already been determined not to be a hoax, attack page, etc. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:44, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
I feel like Alice and Bob might have been there, but Special:Search has not been aligning with what my brain tells me it once read. I'll take your word for it. That sounds more reliable than my leaky memory. Sometimes it all feels like a dream. Folly Mox (talk) 07:54, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
I'm pretty sure that I was in (at least) two discussions on that topic around that same time. Another at WT:AFC or a similar page, perhaps? It's possible that an insource: search for the buttons would find it, if we assume that I copied them from one discussion to the other.
P.S. Alice and Bob are everywhere. ;-) WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:20, 25 September 2023 (UTC)
Indeed, it was the same conversation. I just had to scroll up from the posted link to the top of the subheading. That will (not) teach me to read the larger context I'm always harping on about. Folly Mox (talk) 18:16, 25 September 2023 (UTC)
Duplicated effort is not necessarily a bad thing. One person may spot what another has missed. Phil Bridger (talk) 08:20, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
But the tenth person is unlikely to find an attack page that was somehow missed by the previous nine. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:21, 25 September 2023 (UTC)
@Folly Mox: Sorry to continue this tangent on NPP, but the patrol vs review discrepancy is only because of a complicated technical issue explained Wikipedia:New pages patrol#Other issues under the Technical details subsection. VickKiang (talk) 08:15, 23 September 2023 (UTC)
My goodness! So it's not so much a two tiered system as it is a technical glitch. I'll forgo any further commentary on what it could or should be. Tangents are beautiful. Folly Mox (talk) 08:32, 23 September 2023 (UTC)
  • I'm generally against anything categorical like this, but having absolutely zero references is a very very very very very very low bar and I'd support it. It would need some safety mechanisms to avoid unintended consequences. It would also put us a step towards the mentality that finding reference(es) is the main step 1 of building an article which would solve many of our problems. Without that somebody has done nothing of value / nothing worth preserving. It's like I say that I'm giving somebody a car and I just give them a floor mat and call that an "unfinished car" and tell them to keep a space for it in their garage while they "develop" the car. North8000 (talk) 14:22, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
  • I would support this, as long as currently existing articles are grandfathered-in and ineligible. Curious how that could be technically implemented. Could we have a bot revert this template when added to older articles? DFlhb (talk) 14:44, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
  • Question - wouldn’t it be simpler to have a bot scan any potential new article - and simply not accept the “save” into Mainspace unless there was at least one citation? It could generate an error message so the creator knows why the text isn’t being saved. Blueboar (talk) 14:58, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
    Not exactly a bot task, but presumably the Submit button on drafts could be coded to throw an error if no ref tags are present in the article rather than doing whatever it does to submit the draft to the AfC heap. Articles created directly in mainspace, expanded from redirects, or moved manually across namespaces would require at least an edit filter and possibly a software change. Folly Mox (talk) 15:05, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
    (edit conflict) It would be difficult. Many (if not a majority) of new articles go into mainspace via "move" and so that restriction would also need to get applied to "move". Many others are created by conversion of redirects and it would also need to apply to those. Finally, people creating articles in mainspace would need to know that the absolute first edit would need to contain a reference which would practically mean that only clever insiders could build an article in mainspace. North8000 (talk) 15:09, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
    There's also the issue that any warning describing how to solve the problem (e.g. "Error: All drafts must contain at least one reference before they can be saved to mainspace. Refs are added using <ref></ref> tags containing by the reference's name, ...") will just have users copy-and-paste the "magic words" so their article can be saved, without them knowing or caring what those tags mean to begin with. 2603:8001:4542:28FB:49F5:C6E1:BDC2:515F (talk) 15:24, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
    It would be non-trivial, but those can be addressed by the WMF with thought-through interface changes. It would also narrow the "feedback gap" (proactive enforcement vs reactive, so newbs are told ahead of time if they're doing something they shouldn't, which would be more newb-friendly). Given the vast amounts of work spent on maintenance and gnoming, we could do with more 'automation' of this kind. DFlhb (talk) 16:16, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
    I agree that pro-active feedback is potentially the way to go, via improvements to the AfC wizard, edit filter warnings, etc. Suriname0 (talk) 20:47, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
    See mw:Edit check, which will be nudging editors to add sources (for any whole paragraph, at the moment, but that can be changed.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:39, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
    This looks like a great initiative. Eager to see the results once this gets deployed. Suriname0 (talk) 03:14, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
    This should be a non-issue for drafts, as an unsourced draft is easily dispositioned as such by AfC. --Ahecht (TALK
    PAGE    ) 18:30, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
    Yes, this template would only be applicable to mainspace. Edward-Woodrow :) [talk] 19:36, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
  • Good idea. Anything that reduces the burden of AfD and cleans up the project with only high quality sources is a good thing. I would use it to amend BLPPROD. Aasim - Herrscher of Wikis ❄️ 15:45, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
  • I'm in general agreement with something along these lines - a requirement that articles cite at least one source (doesn't have to be in-line; doesn't have to be the best quality source) to remain in mainspace. I also think sending all such articles to draft is a bad idea. This seems to be similar to BLPPROD. That said, the two week time frame seems arbitrary. BLPPROD gives people 7 days to add sources. Regular PROD provides 7 days for someone to object. If instead of this psuedo prod we sent it to draft, they would have 6 months (although the drafts are harder to find than PRODs). I think this needs to be in line with some of our other processes, and either be 7 days or 6 months. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 16:40, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
  • Good idea as is Blueboar & North8000's idea above to have the Submit button throw an error code if someone tries to make an article without sources. I wouldn't even mind this being retroactive for the oldest articles- say, any articles from the <current oldest year tagged> get tagged with this. I'm neutral on whether this should last a week or a fortnight.
Additionally, I would point out that requiring sources isn't just a Wikipedia thing. Every essay requiring research since high school that I've written has required me to cite my sources. It doesn't take a genius to cite sources- if the average high school idiot can manage, there's no reason not to require it of would-be editors. This would just be a change to enforce rules that keep Wikipedia better than a failing high school essay. Happy editing, SilverTiger12 (talk) 17:46, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
@ONUnicorn and SilverTiger12: About the time frame... I chose fourteen days because I thought seven days would be seen as a bit too stringent, especially since I suspect there will be more unreferenced-prods then other PRODs. Then again, seven days would be more consistent, and thus easier to remember, etc. Edward-Woodrow :) [talk] 19:39, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
  • Good goal in spirit. I don't agree with this suggested implementation for roughly 4 reasons.
  1. We should strive for clarity for our editors, experienced or new. We should improve the accuracy of template names, rather than making them mean something other than their name. Thus, repurposing {{unreferenced}} is not the right idea. I'm not fundamentally opposed to a new tag, for example {{proposed deletion unreferenced}} or even a fancy custom message for something like {{proposed deletion|unreferenced}}.
  2. {{unreferenced}} is currently often misused.
    1. For example already published books etc are sometimes marked unreferenced, but an article about an already published book has implicitly verifiable information from the published item itself.
    2. Sometimes it's also used when {{no footnotes}} would be more appropriate.
  3. Changing the meaning of {{unreferenced}} isn't worth it for the gain. Articles without references at AfD are not a major problem, they are (1) rare in comparison to other types of articles at AfD and (2) frequnetly HEY-able. The biggest threats to Wikipedia at AfD these days are WP:PROMO/WP:NOTCV things, and these articles tend to be WP:REFBOMBED with weak references.
  4. After some time, this would begin to encourage editors to add weak references. An article with only weak references is arguably worse than one with none at all. An article without any references is easy to spot and therefore improve. It's also easier to spot for readers. An article with weak references is harder to spot and could sit unimproved for much longer. For readers who only check for lists of references (as many of us do on occasion), it might fool them into thinking its better referenced than it really is.
—siroχo 19:14, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
@Edward-Woodrow Here's some feedback on the specific use of {{unreferenced}}, forgot you had asked for a ping on reply so here it is now. —siroχo 19:16, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
Excellent points, especially number 4. We want people to add proper references, not the crap that sometimes gets added in referencing contests. An unsourced article is better than one with inline citations to a Wikipedia mirror. —Kusma (talk) 11:40, 20 September 2023 (UTC)
I think in that case, an editor could re-add the tag. <ref/> tags aren't the magic word, it's what's in them. Edward-Woodrow • talk 11:58, 20 September 2023 (UTC)
Ah, so your proposal isn't just about unsourced articles, but also about the (far more numerous) articles using bad sources? —Kusma (talk) 13:34, 20 September 2023 (UTC)
No, I didn't say that. But it isn't a stretch to say that the following example would be disallowed:
  • Editor A creates an article with no sources.
  • Editor B tags it with {{unreferenced PROD}}
  • Editor A adds an unrelated citation that does not support the content, and they remove the tag, saying "look, it's referenced now".
In that case, the tag should clearly be re-added, otherwise the entire purpose is nulled. Edward-Woodrow • talk 19:42, 20 September 2023 (UTC)
Realistically, it'd be better to follow the removed-PROD process, and ship it off to AFD. Otherwise, you're just going to end up with edit wars over whether that source is reliable, supports the content, etc. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:51, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
True. However, in egregious cases, Editor B can probably safely re-add the tag. Edward-Woodrow • talk 22:18, 23 September 2023 (UTC)
  • Support For the simple reason that this is the standard already applied to most IP and new editors, realistically only long-term editors can get away with creating such cruft. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 21:46, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
    I like with siroχo ideas of a new proposed deletion template would be a better idea than repurposing a pre-existing template. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 21:54, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
  • Support I think it is high time that we work at insuring that information in Wikipedia is in fact verifiable by requiring citation of source that varify the content. It is no longer enough to assume that something is verifiable without bothering to find and cite reliable sources. - Donald Albury 23:34, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
  • If I'm going to be 100% honest, I kind of thought something like this was already happening. You just don't see many of these unreference articles being successfully pushed out, at least not in my experience going from random page to random page. That being said, if at any point this becomes a bigger issue, such a process would be vital to have. I'm very much on board with this, but I think the month based system proposed would be better off as a set amount of time rather than the end of the month (should that be what you're actually proposing). Somewhere between 21-30 days? - Mebigrouxboy (talk) 04:52, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
Since this idea seems to be enjoying broad support, I will start a WP:VPPR discussion in early October, bearing mind the suggestions here. I support Siroxo's suggestion of creating a new template ({{unreferenced}} would be marked as deprecated). There remains the question of how long the waiting period should be. One week? Two weeks? One month?
We should also make sure that users don't:
  • Add nonsense references so they can remove the tag.
  • Add failed verification references so they can remove the tag.
  • etc.: listing the myriad methods here would be a WP:BEANS violation.
Edward-Woodrow :) [talk] 14:04, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
  • Strong Oppose Whenever I see one, my first reaction to assume good faith the creator thought the topic is notable. I do a quick search and add some references, which usually exist. I don't understand a first reaction to delete the entire article for lack of a 20 second Google search. The nominator and others sound like they don't want to do the work, with mass deletion the easy solution. If you don't want to do it, let others do it. Lots of articles have been fixed that were previously tagged. -- GreenC 19:56, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
    ...but there is still a backlog of 119 000 unverified articles with absolutely no sources. How is that in any wise acceptable? Edward-Woodrow • talk 19:58, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
    Less than two percent of articles are tagged as unsourced. For many of them it is trivial to find at least some sources (they might be one click to a parent or sub-article away, or one click on an interwikilink away). I wouldn't want to threaten all of these article with deletion without at least trying to save the low hanging fruit. —Kusma (talk) 12:24, 20 September 2023 (UTC)
    Especially lists. Yes, it's definitely best to have inline citations for list entries, and I cleaned up a bunch of them at Faked death#Notable faked deaths this summer, but it mostly involved clicking through to the linked article and copying a citation from that. If the whole page had been citation-less, it would have been silly to think that was a deletion-worthy problem, but the fact is that we have more than a couple of editors who look at these things from a very black-and-white POV: uncited is bad, uncited is deletion-worthy, the BURDEN is on you, and therefore I don't have to even lift a finger to help – indeed, it would be more morally correct for me to push this list towards deletion instead of spending two minutes copying refs over myself. These editors see their job as forcing other people to drop everything to make the articles conform to their own standards, not to improve the articles to their own standards themselves, even when it would be very easy for them to do so. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:48, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
    Cleanup categories are acceptable. Editors have been actively working through this backlog for 20 years keeping it down. If not for their work, it would be a lot larger than 119k. See the stats at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Unreferenced_articles. For example, Category:Articles lacking sources from September 2007 has been reduced by 67%. That is, of the tags added in September 2007, 67% of them have been resolved. -- GreenC 14:50, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
  • Comment Even if this was done, tagging so many articles with such a short time period ensures most of the will never get looked at before being deleted. -- GreenC 19:56, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
    It wouldn't apply retroactively. - Mebigrouxboy (talk) 22:20, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
    It might. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:49, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
    In the same way that an IP "might" apply for adminship. This idea will not apply retroactively, says the proposal. - Mebigrouxboy (talk) 21:44, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
    And the proposal has not been adopted in that form. Even if the proposal is made in that form, if the community says "Great idea, let's extend your idea to apply retroactively", then it will apply retroactively. If you want to know whether the community might change the proposal in that way, then I suggest looking at the comments in this thread that say things like "I wouldn't even mind if this being retroactive", "A good idea, although I would apply it retroactively as well", "I would eventually want this procedure to apply to all unreferenced articles retroactively", etc.
    Additionally, even if it's not adopted as a retroactive measure from the very beginning, it almost certainly will be extended that way in the future. Wikipedia:Proposed deletion of biographies of living people began by applying only to articles created after the policy was adopted, and now all BLP articles are subject to deletion through that route. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:38, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
    That seems like a textbook Slippery slope fallacy. --Ahecht (TALK
    PAGE    ) 20:37, 26 October 2023 (UTC)
    Or a textbook case of pattern matching.
    • Fact: In 2010, we said that BLPPROD would not be retroactive.
    • Fact: In 2017, we decided to make BLPPROD retroactive.
    • Fact: In 2023, the OP says that UNREFPROD would not be retroactive.
    • Prediction: In the future, we will _________.
    Well, you fill in the blank. The options are "make UNREFPROD retroactive" or "benignly tolerate 100K unsourced articles just because they're old". WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:55, 2 November 2023 (UTC)
  • Support. This seems like a good path to take. There really is no reason in allowing new articles to be created with zero sources. Regarding the above mentioned gaming the system, a fail verification or a nonsense source should be removed and the article tagged as unsourced. Personally, I'd not grandfather any article, but that's me. Gonnym (talk) 19:56, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
  • Good idea. Given the risk of vandalism removing references, I'd prefer to have admins make all decisions about deletion, and not leave anything to bots. And there should be advice along the lines of WP:BEFORE for the use of the template. We might want to make repeatedly tagging pages that shouldn't be tagged something that is considered disruptive conduct. I would eventually want this procedure to apply to all unreferenced articles retroactively, although I realize that there would be a backlog. (I suspect, but don't know for sure, that a proposal like this could get consensus, even without grandfathering old articles.) I'm ambivalent about the length of the waiting period. On the one hand, I feel like editors should not be too rushed to find sources. On the other hand, with a likely backlog, there will be a delay anyway. I guess two weeks might be reasonable. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:31, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
    Whether two weeks is reasonable depends on how many of them get tagged in a given time span. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:50, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
    Following up, I've been thinking about the concerns some editors have raised, that this would go against what Wikipedia has stood for. It seems to me that, nonetheless, times change, and this might be something where it's reasonable for us to do something that differs from historical practice. In its early days, the project needed to create new pages. Today, we have a much larger problem with low-quality content, than with missing content. So I believe we can move in the direction discussed here, without turning into Citizendium. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:32, 27 September 2023 (UTC)
  • In its present form, this proposal is not compatible with WP:ATD, WP:NPOSSIBLE and WP:BEFORE. Unreferenced tags are very often erroneously placed on articles that are referenced. Many erroneous tags still remain on those articles. There are editors trying to clear the backlog of unreferenced articles by adding sources, and an artificial two week deadline would seriously disrupt their efforts. If an editor is trying to work through the unreferenced tags on, to pick a random example, articles about the chronology of Ireland (which has many obviously notable articles to which tags were inappropriately added instead of sources), it is not helpful to waste his time by forcing him to look at yet another prodlist every day. What is really needed is more people working on the backlog. James500 (talk) 06:18, 20 September 2023 (UTC)
    The proposal would only apply to new articles, not the backlog Mach61 (talk) 12:01, 20 September 2023 (UTC)
    Actually I'm certain this would apply to the backlog, at least eventually. NPP and AFC already prevent new articles from not having any sources. If this debate is about new articles only, then people are passionately debating a moot point. Dave (talk) 22:27, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
  • Good idea. I'm not sure if I would ultimately support or oppose the proposal, but this has clearly been thought through and I would encourage the OP to take it to RfC when they feel it is appropriate. Curbon7 (talk) 09:18, 20 September 2023 (UTC)
    Upon reading more of the comments here, I am not sure of the feasibility of this. I think Kusma raises a good point below that this may simply lead to a rise of poor sourcing, and it feels like the proposal is getting more complicated as we're now talking about deprecating templates and de-"Prodding" procedure rather than a simple page tag. Curbon7 (talk) 08:37, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
A reminder that this is the idea lab, so please remember not to make support/oppose !votes, just suggestions for how we can improve the proposal. Thanks, Edward-Woodrow • talk 12:09, 20 September 2023 (UTC)
  • What people always seem to miss when trying to (mis)apply WP:BURDEN to deletion is that, while creating an unsourced article is analagous to adding an unsourced statement to an existing article, deleting an article is decidely not analagous to removing text from an existing article. You can't undo an article deletion without a whole bureaucratic song-and-dance. You can't even see what was deleted without the help of an admin. Removing an unsourced statement is just the first step in WP:BRD; deleting an article is a drastic and, for vast majority of editors, irreversable rejection of that content. That's why our deletion policy has always been based on the principle that we don't use deletion for surmountable problems, and unless you have reason to believe the whole article is unverifiable, lack of citations is definitely falls in that category. – Joe (talk) 12:41, 20 September 2023 (UTC)
    I think you have misunderstood how editors apply WP:BURDEN/WP:ONUS to article creations in practice; they don't delete articles, they redirect or draftify them. Such an action is easily revertable, if a consensus emerges to support the articles creation. BilledMammal (talk) 00:38, 27 October 2023 (UTC)
  • The idea behind this is valid, we definitely should not be solving it by enshrining grandfather clauses into Wikipedia's rules. * Pppery * it has begun... 02:28, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
    If you do propose this, you need to be clear about what you are proposing - is it "unreferenced articles created after <DATE> are subject to this process", or "all unreferenced articles are subject to this process, but some human has to edit the page to start the 14-day count". The former I would oppose as both too infrequent to bother with (most unref tags are old unreferenced articles that somebody decided to add a tag to today) and creating an obvious double standard, and the latter I would probably support. * Pppery * it has begun... 02:47, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
    @Pppery: The latter. Specifically, in the theoretical case this was implemented, here's what (I imagine) would happen from the technical perspective:
    • {{unreferenced}} is marked deprecated.
    • {{unreferenced PROD}} is created.
    • The {{unreferenced}} backlog stops growing at all.
    • {{unreferenced PROD}} replaces {{unreferenced}} except in the places where the old tag is already transcluded. Twinkle etc. remove the tag from their tagging options and add the new version to their "PROD" section.
    • Now, if you see an unreferenced article, instead of tagging it with the old template, you tag it with the PROD template.
    Edward-Woodrow • talk 12:20, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
    I'm not sold that "deletion within 14 days" is a good way to deal with unsourced articles (mostly because I am afraid we will see too much poor sourcing as an unintended consequence), but I agree that grandfathering is not the way to go. Instead of concentrating on articles newly tagged as unsourced, any new proposal should deal with the unsourced backlog. If we had a method to deal with two months' worth of backlog per month, we should be able to kill the backlog within ten years; if we can do four months per months, in five years. Anything faster than that is probably too fast for our limited number of volunteers. —Kusma (talk) 08:13, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
  • The current system is (or at least is supposed to be) that an editor concerned about a lack of sourcing looks for sources first, and then, if unsuccessful, nominates for deletion if deletion policy applies. What is wrong with that? Remember that the creator doesn't own the article. Phil Bridger (talk) 15:42, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
  • It's always been policy that every article should be good enough to pass a GAC review if nominated. However, until recently, that was seen as a goal; an imprefect article was better than no article. It is my honest opinion this fairly recent trend of people who by and large do not contribute content to the encyclopedia, but go around and tag every flaw they find in articles with "Fix it now or I send this sucker off to AFD" will be the eventual demise of Wikipedia. I truely believe this. What made wikipedia great and allowed it to defeat Encarta, Citizendium and a hundred other encyclopedias in the market was that Wikipedia was a "one stop shop" with at least some coverage of the core topics you'd find in any respectable encyclopedia and those "$10 bar bet" articles that were beneath coverage in a "academically credentialed encyclopedia". The fact that many of the articles were flawed didn't really matter; what mattered is Wikipedia had coverage of a topic and "they" didn't. In my opinion, the people who now want Wikipedia to switch to the very model that it defeated a hundred times over should be laughed at, not listened to. If you find a flaw in an article, the right thing to do, IMHO, is fix the flaw; not tag, not whine, not delete. I see tagging as a means of requesting help when you can't fix the flaw yourself. Deletion should be reserved for when the flaws in an article are foundational and cannot be fixed by editing.Dave (talk) 18:45, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
    Indeed, the approach to building the encyclopedia that you describe is detailed in the editing policy, specifically at WP:IMPERFECT and WP:PRESERVE. —siroχo 18:54, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
    You're saying I should be laughed at? I'm fine with that. Go ahead. I still think we should maintain quality over quantity. Edward-Woodrow • talk 19:49, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
    My interpretation of Dave's comment was not literally that you should be laughed at, but that the model of encyclopedia creation that traditional encyclopedias, or UGC encyclopedias like Citizendium have used is less effective at creating a high quality encyclopedia.
    It's a worry that workable suggestions like yours could, over time, add up to a model like that. The vast majority of articles on Wikipedia started as low quality in one language or another, it's rare that the first edit creates a true good article.
    There is value in low quality articles. So when/if we implement a policy like this, we do need to take care not to lose that value. So, personally, the question I'm trying to help answer here how do we effectively reduce the number of unverifiable articles on Wikipedia without losing the value that low quality articles continue to bring to Wikipedia. —siroχo 02:54, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
    Edward, I don't think it's "quality over quantity". I think it's "narrowness over breadth".
    I think this old comment from Iridescent might be worth thinking about. Maybe the world needs our little articles on ultra-niche subjects, even if they aren't beautiful, more than the world needs Wikipedia:Vital articles from us. You can get information about popular and generally important subjects from many websites. But if you want to know more about the Ceilings of the Natural History Museum, London, Wikipedia may be one of your few free options. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:33, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
    I think this comment is a little inappropriate, in that it suggests editors support getting rid of articles like Ceilings of the Natural History Museum, London; that is very much false. BilledMammal (talk) 06:46, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
    Which is an FA? I'm not sure I see your point. Edward-Woodrow • talk 12:28, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
    Sure, it's a beautiful article, as one would expect from both the subject matter and the editor who created it. But also: "the ceilings in a particular museum" is not a subject whose notability is obvious from the start. What often matters is that we have some information about the subject, not that we have perfect information.
    The COVID-19 pandemic is an example of this. The highest traffic to the articles was in the gap between the disease obviously becoming a problem and "proper" sources getting their things published. For a couple of weeks, we were one of the best places on the internet for reasonably up to date, reasonably accurate information. When better (free) sources became available, our page views dropped. People might prefer beautiful articles from authoritative sources, but what they need is something useful.
    We've seen the same pattern for natural disasters, celebrity deaths, and other time-bound subjects. For those readers, what matters is that we have content. They do not need or expect us to be perfect. Material can be useful without being trustworthy, authoritative, or credible. We all know this from the real-world, too: If Uncle Bob says ____ about politics, then the opposite is almost certainly true. Uncle Bob isn't trustworthy, authoritative, or credible, but he's still useful. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:39, 25 September 2023 (UTC)
    Are you a long-lost cousin or sister that I didn't know I had? We seem to have the same Uncle Bob. Phil Bridger (talk) 17:53, 25 September 2023 (UTC)
    So you're saying that sometimes people rely on us for information, even though sometimes it's incorrect? I don't see the advantage of misinformation. If Uncle Bob is wrong, then Uncle Bob is not useful (unless he is consistently, 100% wrong, but that's a different matter). Edward-Woodrow • talk 19:41, 25 September 2023 (UTC)
    I'm saying that there's a difference between useful and trustworthy. Information can simultaneously be accurate and untrustworthy ("even a stopped clock is right twice a day"; we can't rely on Uncle Bob being wrong every single time), and it can be inaccurate and trustworthy (every news article between its publication and the publication of the corrections; every journal article between its publication and its retraction, that doctor who tried to convince me that over-the-counter cough syrup suppresses coughing, etc.).
    Wikipedia readers are generally looking for information that is useful, not information that is guaranteed to be correct. "Useful" can look like giving you some ideas for better keywords to use in your Google search. It doesn't necessarily mean that you got the One True™ Answer. Also, when it really matters to them, most people check information on multiple websites. Wikipedia might be the first place they look, or it might be the third, or the fifteenth. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:06, 2 November 2023 (UTC)
    Edward, while I would largely agree with Dave's comments, I don't find your actions or proposals offensive or laughable. However, there are two broad philosophical points I would earnestly urge you to consider. The first is that, in their time, Nupedia and Citizendium could have justified their superiority on the exact same grounds that you've given: they favored quality over quantity. Quality is a virtue, but pursuing it in certain ways endangers the entire enterprise of a crowdsourced encyclopedia. The second is to consider our overall goal as a work of reference: we are here to present true (well, verifiable) and relevant information about the generalized and specialized topics that people look up here (IMO, anyway). Things like sourcing and policy compliance are metrics we use to estimate how well we're meeting that goal, because it can't easily be evaluated at scale. However, as anyone who's been part of a large, modern organization can testify, confusing the metrics with the goal itself can have major detrimental consequences. Choess (talk) 13:10, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
    Exactly. Not only could they, Citizendium did. They bragged they had a better model of quality over quantity. Veropedia was another one that did. The only Wikipedia competitor that is still around with a quality over quantity model that I can name off the top of my head is Encyclopedia Brittanica. Even then Wikipedia has made a severe dent in their market share, and they have had to change their business model to adapt to Wikiedia's dominance. I think the heart of this difference in philosophies is the assumption "but we can't have flawed articles out there, we could mislead the public." Twenty years of experience suggests that's not the case. The public knows Wikipedia's model of "the encyclopedia that anyone can edit" will result in potential flaws in it's articles. This is well known and discussed ad-nauseum all over the internet. Yet Wikipedia has thrived. The vastness of coverage in Wikipedia's articles makes up for the fact that a number of them have flaws; the flaws are known and tolerated. I would view it more like the market leader in many products, from cars to computer operating systems has many critics who point out the numerous flaws and longtime issues that have never been fixed. Yet they remain the market leader because in the big picture they still deliver what there competitors can't. That doesn't mean we ignore flaws in articles, we should fix them as we find them. I am saying Toyota shouldn't throw away it's market dominance to change business models because Volvo is perceived as having higher quality. Dave (talk) 15:50, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
    This is edging towards the age-old inclusionist–deletionist debate, which I'd prefer to avoid in this discussion (and my leanings are probably fairly obvious, anyways), but I will say this.
    Wikipedia needs stubs and we need coverage in obscure areas; even if the articles aren't perfect. And no article is "perfect".
    However, an unreferenced article is completely different from an unnotable article. Unreferenced articles are a poison that we could do without. We shouldn't force out anything that isn't a C-class article and devolve into Encyclopedia Britannica v2.0, but we also shouldn't be willingly letting in unreferenced content without a fight. This proposal isn't a speedy deletion criterion or anything so drastic; it gives plenty of time for the creator and other interested editors to improve the article by one very small step. Really, it's BLPPROD extended to all articles.
    Perhaps deletion is too drastic, per WP:PRESERVE. Perhaps this idea could work with BilledMammal's idea of "soft-deleting" (or "archiving").
    Fundamentally, I see the core idea of this proposal (minus any specifics) – and my intent in starting this discussion – as an extension of WP:BURDEN:

    Any material lacking an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports [...] the material may be removed and should not be restored without an inline citation to a reliable source. [...] In some cases, editors may object if you remove material without giving them time to provide references. Consider adding a citation needed tag as an interim step.

    Happy editing, Edward-Woodrow • talk 22:30, 23 September 2023 (UTC)
  • Oppose as unnecessary for cleanup and irresponsible to our preservation goals. Certainly not appropriate for deletion; maybe in some cases for converting to an archive [if we had a non-draft archive space that didn't auto-delete after 6 months]. The equivalent mass deletion on Commons of all images without modern copyright tags was a mistake and an avoidable loss. – SJ + 02:14, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
    You bring up a good point, WP:PRESERVE is a policy.-- GreenC 17:00, 23 September 2023 (UTC)
  • The proposal sounds sensible in spirit, but it has bite potential, and I feel that retaining and training new editors is a more valuable pursuit than aggressively removing unreferenced articles. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 16:16, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
  • Support. I think this is a really good idea, but I think there should be a delay before the article is proposed for deletion. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Professor Penguino (talk • contribs) 09:58, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
  • Oppose per Rschen7754 and against the spirit of WP:BEFORE. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 01:47, 23 September 2023 (UTC)
    A reminder that This page is not for consensus polling. Stalwart "Oppose" and "Support" comments generally have no place here. Instead, discuss ideas and suggest variations on them. This is not the RfC on this proposed change. Curbon7 (talk) 02:02, 23 September 2023 (UTC)
    I'm intrigued by against the spirit of WP:BEFORE. Would you care to elaborate? I was assuming the nominator would do a quick WP:BEFORE check to see if the problem can be easily fixed, like one would for PROD or AfD. Edward-Woodrow • talk 12:18, 23 September 2023 (UTC)
    "I was assuming the nominator would do a quick WP:BEFORE" That is indeed the way it's supposed to work, however, a quick scan at some of the mass deletions, including mass deletions of every article that was ever created by an editor we've now deemed isn't worthy to be on this site, will reveal that is no longer how our deletion process works.Dave (talk) 16:42, 23 September 2023 (UTC)
    But this isn't a mass-deletion question. Edward-Woodrow • talk 16:51, 23 September 2023 (UTC)
    Based on my reading of the proposal, it allows deletion of articles simply for being unreferenced, not for being unreferenceable. If the nominator is supposed to conduct WP:BEFORE (and refrain from nominating articles where sources exist), then how is it not redundant to our existing PROD and AfD processes? -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 02:33, 25 September 2023 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose we already have a {{prod}} tag. This proposal is to hijack a different, useful maintenance tag to become a copy of that tag. And even the proposer agrees that deleting all 100k articles tagged as "unsourced" (some of which are lists that don't need sourcing) is infeasible.
    As far as the proposals to (via edit filters, etc.) require new articles to have at least one source at the time of creation: possibly, but I'll believe it's possible when I see it. 217.180.228.138 (talk) 04:02, 24 September 2023 (UTC)
    This is a good point, but there is one major difference between current WP:PROD and this proposal. PROD must be subject to WP:DEL-REASON; unreferenced articles are not explicitly included in that policy, and thus this would exist as a sort of exception, propped up by WP:BURDEN, in the same way that BLPPROD is an exception, propped up by WP:BLP. The closest DEL-REASON comes to unreferenced articles is a little more stringent:
    • Articles that cannot possibly be attributed to reliable sources, including neologisms, original theories and conclusions, and hoaxes
    • Articles for which thorough attempts to find reliable sources to verify them have failed.
    Cheers, Edward-Woodrow • talk 13:02, 24 September 2023 (UTC)
Story
It is 2023.
A: The earth is not a cube.
B: Add references please.
A: The earth is not a cube. You know it and I know it. It’s verifiable. Our children may not know it and we’re telling them now. Why do we need that?
B: Please provide references. It’s our policy.
A: Why don’t YOU add that if you think it’s needed?
B: The BURDEN is on you.
A: Oh the atmosphere here is toxic. The people here are . . . OKOK, the earth is a cube. It’s a cube. Okay? Please don’t chase after me. I won’t edit any more. You can do whatever you want.
B: . . .
--Dustfreeworld (talk) 06:40, 24 September 2023 (UTC)
...seems like a WP:SKYBLUE scenario rather than a relevant analogy, honestly. Edward-Woodrow • talk 12:57, 24 September 2023 (UTC)
But when we set down a "rule", we can expect it to get implemented mindlessly. Consider, e.g., BURDEN, which says you may (=are permitted but not required to) remove uncited content, while noting that if you're stupid, mindless, or POINTY about it, people will be angry with you, but which is twisted by someone basically every day of the week to say that uncited content must be removed, that it is an abomination to have even exclusively SKYBLUE information on a page if there isn't a source on the page, etc.
And, of course, if you think that a particular unsourced sentence is okay (Something vulgaris is a type of insect in the Something family"), and therefore an unsourced article containing only that would be okay, then there wouldn't be any point to this proposal. You'd check an individual article, do a quick WP:BEFORE search, and then either add a source or {{subst:PROD}} it through the existing process. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:55, 25 September 2023 (UTC)
I will note that the size and shape of the Earth have inline citations in that article... and if they didn't then that information should not be allowed to remain. Fritzmann (message me) 00:06, 2 November 2023 (UTC)
  • Oppose Category:Articles lacking sources I am surprised to see articles created this year on the list. Just don't let new articles be created that don't have references. I thought we had that already. Didn't we have that at one point in time? A bot should be created to post on the talk pages of all those who created these articles, with a link to where to find references and instructions. Specific instructions can be given such as if they are in the catagory for artists, mention that any musuem that has their artwork will have an official website that mentions them and being featured in a permanent musuem collection confirms the notability of an artist. Dream Focus 15:50, 25 September 2023 (UTC)
    @Dream Focus: Ah, so it's NPP's fault for letting in bad articles? Edward-Woodrow • talk 19:43, 25 September 2023 (UTC)
    During the time this discussion has been open multiple new/IP editors have been blocked as disruptive for creating continuously unreferenced articles, it's only established accounts that can get away with doing this. But they are a special case and shouldn't be subjected to community policies apparently. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 19:50, 25 September 2023 (UTC)
    Wait... are there articles from this year? The category just contains articles according to when they were tagged. Birel, for example, is listed as September 2023, but it was created in 2004. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 21:20, 25 September 2023 (UTC)
    Yes, currently 123 of them. —Cryptic 23:05, 25 September 2023 (UTC)
    I created one of those. List of fire departments in United States. Navigational list don't need references. Dream Focus 15:03, 27 September 2023 (UTC)
  • What about pages like weak operator topology? There's a reason that page is still unsourced after all these years: most of us are utterly unqualified to judge if any reference even supports any non-trivial claim in the article. The responsible thing is to leave that page to someone who actually knows what they are doing, however long it takes, instead of accidentally TURGIDAXing it in an attempt to protect it from deletion.
    And it's not just math and physics. What about subjects where all the likely sources are in a language I do not speak? Again, if there's a deadline to deletion, and no speaker of the language seems to be coming along, should I just use Google Translate and hope for the best?
    Instead of this broad proposal, what I might favor is expanding BLPPROD (or a similar process) to cover at least some subjects other than BLPs. For example, anything that might realistically cause real-world harm, e.g. an unsourced page about a medical treatment. And maybe some "spam-magnet" subjects, e.g. online content, commercial products, etc. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 23:14, 26 September 2023 (UTC)
To anyone still subscribed to this discussion and interested: I have started an RfC at VPPR. Edward-Woodrow • talk 19:13, 6 October 2023 (UTC)
  • Support, but can they be draftified instead and then deleted after six months if inactive. This is fairer than straight-up speedy deleting them. Nominating them for deletion is also a good alternative. JacobTheRox (talk) 06:40, 18 October 2023 (UTC)
  • Oppose as unworkably disruptive. Also, we should have 100s of !voters at an RfC before signing off on new deletion system, not 1-2 dozen. Great idea in theory, though. We do have a big problem.
What we need is to recruit more editors to work this backlog down. Folks talk about an admin drought -- I think the big problem is not enough rank and file to research refs, which can be time-consuming. That's all the more reason to be welcoming and supportive of newcomers.
--A. B. (talk • contribs • global count) 02:53, 22 October 2023 (UTC)
  • Strong Oppose, as it goes against the spirit of the wiki, and would change the very nature of the project. Why not program a feature into MediaWiki so that the save button doesn't work unless a citation for every sentence is included? Because, it would dampen participation and harm the wiki. If you raise the bar so high, you will hinder collaboration. Edits are the building blocks of the encyclopedia. The emphasis should be on adding citation building blocks, rather than removing content building blocks (which punishes editors for contributing). This proposal is all-or-nothing-reasoning an a grand scale. Content building blocks are extremely valuable, and they are what have made Wikipedia one of the largest-scale publishing projects in the history of civilization. Promote content contribution and citation contribution side-by-side, but, don't punish editors if they don't give you what you want. This would be taking deletionism to an extreme. Bypassing AfD, and denying other editors-at-large the opportunity to rescue an article before it is deleted is a bad idea. Besides, uncited articles do not violate WP:VER per se—they are only in violation if they are not verifiable, and that has to do with whether or not they are challenged or likely to be challenged. The idea behind the verifiability policy is not to automatically challenge everything that isn't referenced. But, that's where this is heading.    — The Transhumanist   22:46, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
  • Support This isn't 2004. Uncited articles violate WP:VER; the interpretation about "challenged or likely to be challenged" was resolved a decade ago and now means fully cited is required. All articles must be fully referenced. Unreferenced articles are a burden to maintain, a liability to our readers, and a stain on opur reputation. They have no value and we don't want them. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 23:59, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
    Nah. I've been casually monitoring this page for 15 years. The core of the policy, and its interpretation, haven't changed much since 2006. Also, I just came from a discussion over at WT:VER, about the claim about WP:VER that the proposer made. I.e., this very discussion. Their current interpretation of WP:VER does not coincide with the proposer's or your claim about what the "challenged" clause means.    — The Transhumanist   08:22, 2 November 2023 (UTC)
    @Hawkeye7, The Transhumanist, and A. B.: a reminder, in case the page notice wasn't enough: this is the idea lab, a place for workshopping. As the editnotice says, try to be creative and positive. If possible, suggest a better variation of the idea, or a better solution to the problem identified. This is not the formal proposal, let alone and RfC. There was an RfC at VPPR; "oppose" !voters will be happy to know that it went down in flames. In conclusion: please stop !voting. Edward-Woodrow • talk 00:57, 2 November 2023 (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.

Alternative Idea

How about instead we have it so that they have to be fixed within 30 days before they can be nominated for deletion? After they are nominated for proposed deletion sources must be added then within 14 days. There can also be a tag for "An editor has identified that the contents of this article is verifiable, but the article does not cite any sources. Please help improve this article. More information can be discussed on the talk page." The PROD tag could then only be removed as soon as a single reliable source is added. Sources in WP:RSPS determined to be "deprecated" can be discounted when assessing whether any sources are cited. Aasim - Herrscher of Wikis ❄️ 18:58, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

Comment - I doubt anyone is reading this far down but could maybe someone send a bot through to add == References == {{reflist}} to the 118,000 that don't have it? It would just make the repair work slightly easier for people going through and trying to get things up to par. Who knows it might even prompt someone to add a ref just because it irritates them to see an empty unfilled field for them? jengod (talk) 20:19, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

I suppose it couldn't hurt. Also, I like the idea of empty references sections glaring at the readers. Edward-Woodrow • talk 20:27, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
Yes, for some reason that imagery also appeals to me a lot. JoelleJay (talk) 05:17, 30 September 2023 (UTC)
I like this idea for a bot. It could check the last edit time to make sure to wait at least a few hours from the last edit. —siroχo 23:32, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
I think this idea for a bot to create references sections is a great idea. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:24, 30 September 2023 (UTC)
So do I. BilledMammal (talk) 20:29, 30 September 2023 (UTC)
Awesome Aasim (talk · contribs), you have described the goals of Wikipedia:Article Rescue Squadron which over the years has drawn a lot of hostility for trying to save articles thought notable by finding references & proving their notability. I've been too busy off-Wiki to know if they're still active, but it's a misunderstood project that deserves more support. -- llywrch (talk) 23:31, 27 October 2023 (UTC)
I don't know about the Article Rescue Squadron, but the WP:WikiProject Unreferenced articles is still active. If everyone participating here spent the time sourcing articles instead... Espresso Addict (talk) 23:51, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

Bot to create References sections

Continuing directly from the subsection just above, I want to pull out an idea that I think is promising, and I don't want it to be overlooked amid a long discussion. Repeating what was said just above, the idea would be to have a bot go through the 118,000 pages in the unreferenced category, and add == References == {{reflist}} to each page. This would do nothing in the way of deleting any content. It would help editors a little bit in getting sources onto the page. And it would be a constructive way to present editors with a prompt that references need to be added. The bot could also set a minimum amount of time since the last edit to the page, before adding the section, so as not to step on editors' toes when new pages are being created. Personally, I think this is a splendid idea. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:38, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

Some care will need to be taken in implementation, since some of the tags are placed incorrectly. Special:Permalink/1173684615 had a general reference present in a subheading named "Literature", for example. Also this bot will codify the project's preference for naming this subheading "References", which I'm not against but should be recognised as an outcome. Folly Mox (talk) 22:53, 1 October 2023 (UTC)
This should be done where the article has ref tags but no references section. It could also fix up where there is a header but no template or tag below to insert the references. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 03:00, 2 October 2023 (UTC)
I agree that there should be a reasonable amount of care regarding incorrectly tagged/categorized pages (although those pages are already incorrectly tagged and categorized). There's nothing to stop editors from subsequently changing the section header. But I disagree with limiting this only to pages that already have ref tags (which aren't unreferenced pages to begin with), although I'm fine with having the bot do clean up for improper formatting. Part of the idea (see comments in subsection above) is that there is actually a benefit to having a References section with no references in it. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:19, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
As one of those "cleaning up the mess", Adding the Ref. section from a bot insures it is correctly placed, i.e. After "See also" and Before "External links". I'm clueless how a bot can handle complexity of articles with/without those sections. Regards, JoeNMLC (talk) 19:26, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
  • If the reflist being added would be empty, the bot could also add a conspicuous call-to-action to help inform the author about what they need to do next. We could make the message hidden if references are added. Maybe also a date parameter, to say that the article will need to have references added within n days or whatever? I put together a mock-up to kind of demonstrate what I mean:
  • References
     It's time to add references to this article
    This article, {{PAGENAME}}, doesn't cite any sources yet. All Wikipedia articles must be supported by references to reliable, published sources.

    Learn how to add references   Edit this article

    Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

  • Cleanup/prod tags kind of do this already, but this could be less scary looking/bitey. It could also be a supplement to those tags. Well, it's just an idea! I hope this isn't too weird. 3df (talk) 06:53, 21 October 2023 (UTC)
We were talking about doing this to old articles, so the likelihood is that the creator retired years ago. The editors dealing with the problem are generally experienced and don't need instructions on how to add sources. Espresso Addict (talk) 08:06, 21 October 2023 (UTC)
@3df and @Espresso Addict, I do like the idea of adding that box to unref. articles. Below here is a version that I "tweaked" to include the article's age.
References
 It's time to add references to this article
This article, {{PAGENAME}}, was created February 2003 (21 years ago) (2003-02), and doesn't cite any sources yet. All Wikipedia articles must be supported by references to reliable, published sources.

Showing that article age can motivate update/PROD/AfD action. Regards, JoeNMLC (talk) 01:29, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

@3df and JoeNMLC: I like this idea a lot. Perhaps we should move it to a new section? @Espresso Addict: I think it's readers and (potential) casual editors that this would target, not experienced editors. We unfortunately we don't have enough of those to fix 118,000 unreferenced articles any time soon. – Joe (talk) 06:29, 27 October 2023 (UTC)
Do readers/casual editors add (valid) references to articles? That's not common in my experience. Would this encourage them? I really don't know. @WhatamIdoing: for an opinion. In the past, I've tried to get academics to help out with various problems with articles, but have invariably found that the culture here puts them off. I've tried to get wikiprojects involved as well, but that has not been all that successful.
As to the backlog of completely unsourced articles (now 117.5k), it's been trending down consistently of late, which I believe has been down to the diligent efforts of a small number of experienced editors (and a lot of prods), presumably coupled with NPP not allowing new completely unsourced articles to enter mainspace in the first place. Espresso Addict (talk) 18:12, 27 October 2023 (UTC)
@Espresso Addict, AFAIK there has never been even one study on what it takes to get a banner off a page. @Steven Walling will remember whether any research was done on this point 10–15 years ago, and @Trizek (WMF) can tell us whether the Growth team has studied this, but AFAICT if the question is "Does spamming an {{unref}} tag on an article result in references being added by a newcomer?", the answer is "nobody knows" (and my guess is "no"). WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:58, 27 October 2023 (UTC)
I suppose the useful question to ask in context of the present discussion is whether the proposed banner is better, worse or the same as the standard orange-edged banner. But, more generally, my experience with asking new good-faith editors to add sources to stave off deletion is that at best they add blogs, unreliable genealogy-type websites and the like. Espresso Addict (talk) 21:04, 27 October 2023 (UTC)
I guess a follow on there, is once they add blogs and such, how likely is it that editors will add better sources? A blog is much more valuable than nothing to an editor looking to improve sourcing. I know I do try to improve sourcing some of the time, and having something to start from is easier than doing raw searches across multiple indices. Personally, I'm a huge fan of the collaborative, evolutionary model of Wikipedia, but I have noticed that there is a bit less of that in 2023 than there was back in the aughts. I don't necessarily mean that as an indictment, as I know we also need folks focused on FAs and GAs, but I also think the encyclopedia would benefit from more gnoming and such. /Ramble over. —siroχo 22:52, 27 October 2023 (UTC)
The proposed banner takes up about 40% of my vertical screen space, FWIW. If I hadn't popped by this discussion for the preview, and first encountered it at a live article, I imagine I'd mistake it for a banner ad and scroll past it without reading. Folly Mox (talk) 11:45, 30 October 2023 (UTC)
Growth features offer an option to connect any template that asks for citations to newcomers tasks. Newcomers are then encouraged to add citations. The technicalities are in place and some newcomers work on these tasks (you can highlight them in Recent Changes).
However, we observed the following, at all wikis where we keep an eye at newcomers' questions to their mentors:
  • newcomers ask their mentor about reliable sources, as most templates don't tell newcomers what a reliable citation is,
  • newcomers ask why their edits were reverted (colorally of the previous point),
  • newcomers ask why the template is still present while they added citations to the article.
Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 10:56, 30 October 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for this Trizek (WMF). So theoretically it would be possible for someone like me to go through the unsourced heap, find a generally unproblematic looking, not-too-technical article (eg Nishi-magome Station or Kawasaki KX250), and add it to the newcomers' task suggestions? I think the most useful way this could be implemented is if the experienced editor could also index the task by subject (eg motorbike) and/or language fluency (eg Japanese), so that there's a mechanism for the new editor to be offered tasks they might find possible/interesting based on what they've said about themselves, or their editing pattern. Espresso Addict (talk) 01:44, 31 October 2023 (UTC)
@Espresso Addict, as both article use {{unreferenced}}, they are already suggested to newcomers visiting Special:Homepage (you can visit it too). Users can filter articles using 39 topic filters. More at mw:Help:Growth/Tools/Suggested_edits
Regarding languages, considered translation work, but we never considered language fluency as a filter. We rely on geographic filters, as it seems that users are coming more for their passion than for their language. Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 11:24, 31 October 2023 (UTC)
Thanks, Trizek (WMF). From the (selfish) perspective of getting useful edits out of newcomers, I'd consider language fluency too; what stops me sourcing articles is generally inability to read the source enough to see whether it supports any point in the article. It's a much lower level of fluency than translation would require. New editors conversant with languages that don't use the western character set would be a particularly valuable resource to find or check sources. Espresso Addict (talk) 20:26, 31 October 2023 (UTC)
If the bot adds a ==References== section to a page that has ref tags, then that action could inadvertently mask section-blanking vandalism.
Also, just as a probably unwelcome but important point of fact, we don't technically have a rule that says all non-BLP articles must cite sources. An article that contains only the most basic information, so that none of it falls into WP:MINREF territory, is not technically required to have any citations at all. See User:WhatamIdoing/Christmas candy for an example of what's 'legal'. Sources must be WP:Glossary#verifiable, but your suggested text claims that they must be WP:Glossary#cited, which is not the same thing. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:30, 27 October 2023 (UTC)
@WhatamIdoing: If I'm not mistaken the proposal is to this only to pages in Category:Articles lacking sources, so it should always have been checked by a human who has verified that the lack of sources is real and really a problem. – Joe (talk) 06:37, 27 October 2023 (UTC)
I checked the first 10 in Category:Articles lacking sources. Two had references, and needed the WikiProject banner to be updated. (A bot could do that.) One already had a ref section.
I checked the first item in the first 10 subsections of the randomly selected Category:Articles lacking sources from April 2020 (i.e., first starting with A, first starting with B, etc.). Four contained ref sections, one of which had no <ref> tags but did contain a bare URL to an article in The New York Times. One of the ref sections was named ==References and notes==.
This suggests that the bot would have to be moderately smart about detecting existing sections. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:14, 27 October 2023 (UTC)
That is a problem, but one that exists independently of this proposal. – Joe (talk) 12:25, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

The concept of "preserve" is based on there being some non-trivial work product to preserve. Without references, these is no work product. It's like I throw a floormat into a garage and say that it is a yet-to-be finished automobile and saying to leave a space in their garage waiting for somebody to finish it. North8000 (talk) 00:24, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

Yeah... or it's just perfectly good, accurate encyclopaedic text without citations. One of the two. – Joe (talk) 06:23, 27 October 2023 (UTC)
Hear hear! Yeah, after first encountering this thread, I started dabbling in adding sources to Unreferenced articles. Of the ones I've tackled, I turned two into redirects just bc they were one single hopeless sentence but mostly the articles I've worked on are incredibly small-potatoes low-traffic articles with good material. It's stuff like "cultivar of melon" and "Senate committee abolished in 1912" and "thunder god of aboriginal religion". Most of them are short and non-controversial, and I think part of the reason they've been unref'd for so long is because they're rarely read generally but also because they're largely fine and thus haven't made anybody mad.
The longest unref'd article I dealt with was an obscure kind of baseball pitch (Circle changeup). It was an interesting article! I added one ref to get it out of deletion jail (bc you guys are scaring me!). I imagine it would be trivial for a baseball person to repair it but it would be a huge pain for a complete rando to reference it to our current standards.
Which is to say:
  • RE PROPOSAL: I think threatening to delete all old unreferenced articles would incite panic, garner very deserved bad publicity, and is an abrogation of the unwritten deals we've made with our volunteers. In short, a Very Bad Idea.
  • LIBEL-RISK EXCEPTION: The main exception I see worth considering is whether or not there are any biographies of living persons on the site without references. If yes, those might be candidates for either some kind of deletionism OR a campaign to resolve that OR...something. Ideally someone could run a search and see what if any articles are both tagged unreferenced and categorized BLP.
  • GOING FORWARD: Finally, I would not be opposed to a de jure policy (which I think we already have de facto) that NEW unreferenced articles will no longer be accepted on en-wiki. I'm sure there are good reasons for admitting anything that's currently getting through with no sources, but I don't think it would be wrong to just draw a line.
OK, off now I'm off to pay the toll for participating in this thread by adding refs to three unref'd articles. Byyyyeee.
jengod (talk) 00:48, 29 October 2023 (UTC)
Re point two: isn't that basically WP:BLPPROD? Edward-Woodrow • talk 01:08, 29 October 2023 (UTC)
Looks like it. I think the only difference (not articulated above) is that I was imagining a killer cyborg hunting down bot tagging the articles at the intersection of Unreferenced + BLP and maybe allowing/encouraging a small mass-deletion panic (in that domain only) with a highly publicized six-month countdown or something. (But also I'm truly I'm just curious to know what if articles we have in that intersection!) jengod (talk) 01:24, 29 October 2023 (UTC)
The only truly unreferenced BLPs we should have are ones where the sources were sufficiently unreliable that someone removed them. I think there were some which were originally sourced to the Daily Mail? I've deleted one or two BLP prods where the article was old but "sources" had obviously been added at random when challenged and had literally nothing to do with the subject. That's a major downside of deletion drives.
There's the dilemma of what to do with actors only sourced to IMDb; I imagine there are quite a lot of those. I've never been as convinced as the folk at the Reliable Sources Noticeboard that IMDb is completely useless; it's pretty good (in my experience) at credited roles in recent films, though the user-supplied biographies are of course completely worthless. Espresso Addict (talk) 03:57, 29 October 2023 (UTC)
I wouldn't want a bot to create a reference section, but I 100% can get behind a bot that either adds to the talk page with possible references, either just as a new talk section or as part of {{refideas}} block. Human review can determine the best sources to add from that. --Masem (t) 04:11, 29 October 2023 (UTC)
I like 3df's mockup specifically (with "Learn how to add references, "Edit this article", and the Find sources links), since it's more actionable and newb-friendly, but also like JoeNMLC's idea of adding the article age. The thing looks sleek and modern, really nice. I would change the wording: doesn't cite any sources yet, and may risk being deleted., since that clarifies why readers should add sources; most non-Wikipedians have no idea about how AfD works (and sometimes fails to work). And I think it's worth adding to all these articles by bot, as a call-to-action to add sources. These articles may be neglected by us, but it's plausible that some readers would have domain expertise and know of good usable sources. DFlhb (talk) 09:02, 2 November 2023 (UTC)
I agree that the template mockups look very good, and I agree with your suggested wording addition. I think it would be fine for a bot to add a references section to pages in Category:Articles lacking sources, and put the template there. (I don't like the thought of it being at the top of the page, where it would be too intrusive. And I think it's better to put it on the page in the refs section, than on the talk page, where it might not be seen and might get archived without being acted upon.) And I think that even in cases where there had been blanking of existing references, the template would provide the right kind of feedback to lead editors to find those references. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:01, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

{{Article for deletion}} refinement

Latest comment: 1 year ago26 comments13 people in discussion

When an article is nominated for deletion it can create controversy outside Wikipedia, here's the latest for example: https://twitter.com/stillgray/status/1707181074001121633. This problem I think can be because of how the template is worded and designed. The use of red color can be misleading, as if it's "warning this/your article is going to be deleted" and as if deletion is a bad thing (whatever the outcome, deleted or not, is actually a good thing as long as it's according to the policy); probably the color should be changed, or no color is needed at all. Only one user is needed to nominate an article for deletion, but the template doesn't really indicate that. Also the wording could be not neutral, as if the article is leaning to deletion. The bolded text could be changed to something like: "An user has nominated this article for deletion. An uninvolved administrator will decide whether this article, after discussion, is kept or deleted according to Wikipedia's deletion policy." Hddty (talk) 08:30, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

I think it's fairly normal to use red to represent something been cancelled or deleted. A deletion nomination is more serious and urgent than most tags that appear at the top of articles, and I think it's a good idea to draw attention to that. Few authors of articles would agree that having their work removed is a desirable outcome or a "good thing", even if it accords with policy.
But I do agree that there's a common misunderstanding that a deletion nomination means that "Wikipedia" (which most people seem to assume is some sort of tech company that controls articles, even if the know that in theory we're the encyclopaedia that "anyone can edit") has decided that the article should be erased. We could easily avoid that by using more active wording, e.g. An editor has nominated this article for deletion [...]. We should probably avoid giving the impression that a single administrator decides anything, and perhaps make more explicit reference to the concept of consensus (since "please share your thoughts" often leads to drive-by voting). – Joe (talk) 10:07, 5 October 2023 (UTC)
WRT red, it's not just that it can signify deletion (though you're right it does), it also ties into some more general visual shorthand. There is an escalating colour scheme for reader-facing tags - blue for the most neutral things like {{current event}}, yellow and orange for ones which indicate varying levels of content problem like {{very long}} or {{POV}}, and red for the most dramatic ones like {{copypaste}} or the various deletion templates. I think it's quite helpful to have that little visual flag. Andrew Gray (talk) 12:32, 5 October 2023 (UTC)
Personally I feel a lot of the template messages come of rather cold. "There is a current discussion to decide if this article should be deleted" might come across better than "This article is being considered for deletion in accordance with Wikipedia's deletion policy".
Although I wouldn't worry touch about cranks on twitter using Wikipedia discussions for part of the culture war, whatever is done there will be some (of either side) who try to use it to create outrage. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 19:13, 5 October 2023 (UTC)
I've made some changes to the wording prompted by this discussion. Please take a look. – Joe (talk) 04:12, 6 October 2023 (UTC)
Convenience diff. Folly Mox (talk) 04:24, 6 October 2023 (UTC)
Thanks. Text at WP:PROD and WP:CSD templates should probably be changed too. Hddty (talk) 07:54, 6 October 2023 (UTC)
For PROD, how would "An editor has proposed that this article be deleted" sound? Going off of the changes to the AfD template. Deauthorized. (talk) 18:55, 6 October 2023 (UTC)
I don't really know, better ask native English speakers. Hddty (talk) 03:11, 7 October 2023 (UTC)
@Joe Roe and Sdkb: On my mobile screen there's a space missing before "Feel free", so it reads "retain it.Feel free" – but when I view it in landscape mode, "Feel free" drops down to a separate paragraph so I don't know what's going on there.
This seems like an unexpected place to be discussing major changes to a heavily-used template. Could we move this to VP/PR? For my part, I like the active voice but I don't think the link to the deletion policy should be hidden the way it is, so I'd like to see the wording workshopped a bit. Sojourner in the earth (talk) 13:22, 9 October 2023 (UTC)
I can't reproduce that exactly, but it behaves strangely on mobile, both before and after our changes. Maybe something to do with this: Template_talk:Article_for_deletion/Archive_8#Edit_request_(mobile_support). Might be worth raising it at WP:VPT.
As for where to discuss, this is a template message, not a policy. I don't think it's necessary to discuss changes centrally, and it does not appear to have been done for previous changes. They were just proposed on Template talk:Article for deletion (because the template is protected) or done directly. – Joe (talk) 14:13, 9 October 2023 (UTC)
I've linked to this discussion from Template talk:Article for deletion, because that's where editors wishing to discuss this will naturally go (and they might not find their way to Template:Afd/dated, where the changes were actually made). Sojourner in the earth (talk) 15:51, 9 October 2023 (UTC)
User:Sdkb, in Special:Diff/1178838002 you mention avoiding easter eggs in the edit summary, but link Wikipedia:Deletion policy to the text "whether or not", which confused even me, a person who knows what to expect this template to link to.
Might I propose a mostly-revert? Maybe something like "which will decide whether it will be retained per our deletion policy" or something similar? (I would personally prefer retained in accordance with our or retained pursuant to our over retained per our, but I know we're trying to keep it concise and non-technical.) Folly Mox (talk) 17:30, 9 October 2023 (UTC)
Or like which will decide whether to retain the article per our deletion policy. I don't know; I'm not really good with this kind of words. I just found "whether or not" to be confusing. Folly Mox (talk) 17:37, 9 October 2023 (UTC)
Done. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 18:13, 9 October 2023 (UTC)
I preferred sdkb's more concise wording. I don't think placing the link on "whether or not" was an easter egg; that's what the policy is about. By contrast, using "may" and "per" here makes the message sound colder and more legalistic ("per" here sounds straight-up ungrammatical to me, but I know it's used more loosely in American and Indian English), which is unfortunate given the goal of the sentence is to invite people to a discussion. @Folly Mox: Could you clarify, was it the placement of the link you didn't like, or the actual phrase "whether or not"? – Joe (talk) 04:05, 10 October 2023 (UTC)
User:Joe Roe, it was the linking of just those three words that had me confused (I even clicked through, so maybe it was a feature). I think "which will decide whether or not to retain it" might be both clear enough for easily confused types like me, and also concise as is preferred. Folly Mox (talk) 04:36, 10 October 2023 (UTC)
I feel like the struggle for concision is resulting in a sacrifice of clarity in one part of the message or another. Does it really matter if the message is on two lines? My suggestion would be: You are welcome to participate in the deletion discussion, which will decide whether or not the article meets our criteria for deletion. (I prefer "criteria" because it's a little ambiguous whether "meeting the policy" is a good thing or not.) Sojourner in the earth (talk) 04:41, 10 October 2023 (UTC)
I'm fine with either suggestion, but the deletion policy almost always uses the word "criteria" to refer to speedy deletion, so that could be a source of confusion. – Joe (talk) 05:28, 10 October 2023 (UTC)
Hmm. What about whether or not there is a valid reason for deletion. (With or without naming delpol after in the same sentence) Alpha3031 (t • c) 06:38, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
This looks good to me and I think it helps address the problem -- whenever there are high-traffic AfDs, the coverage (in the news and on le social media) tends to be something along the lines of "I can't believe WIKIPEDIA is TRYING TO DELETE this thing". Which is understandable given what the message is -- the old version really did sound opaquely bureaucratic. (especially frustrating when the AfD in question is an inappropriate nom and very few people want to delete it, we're still forced to tell the world that for seven days we're unable to tell whether it's good or bad) jp×g 09:01, 21 October 2023 (UTC)
You may participate in the deletion discussion, which will decide whether or not to retain it But the discussion doesn't decide whether the article will be retained, the editors in that discussion (and closing administrator) do. – Teratix ₵ 14:53, 23 October 2023 (UTC)
Yes, that sentence still looks awkward to me, and I agree with Joe above that "per" sticks out as ungrammatical. I'm also not sure about the relevance of the deletion policy to the actual AfD discussion. It makes sense to say that an editor has AfD'd an article in accordance with the policy that describes the deletion process, but we don't really use that policy to decide whether or not the article should be deleted. Could we maybe just revert back to Joe Roe's original edit, which changed the passive voice to active but left everything else untouched? That change seems to be uncontroversial, it's all the later copyedits that are causing difficulties. Sojourner in the earth (talk) 16:04, 23 October 2023 (UTC)
@Hddty, just in case it wasn't already obvious to you (or others), the big red box shown in that tweet is something that the poster drew. That's not what an AFD notice actually looks like. We use a different shade of red, and a lot less of it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:22, 25 October 2023 (UTC)
I'm already aware that the poster drew the big red box. Hddty (talk) 17:23, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

Having "welcome" in the template is a nice addition, but now in some discussion only extended confirmed users can edit in the discussion because of WP:ARBECR, should it be indicated in this template or not? (and also for Template:Title notice, and other template if it similar) Hddty (talk) 00:44, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

Rewriting WP:N to reflect community consensus

Latest comment: 1 year ago31 comments13 people in discussion

I always thought how we lay out our notability guidelines are a) convoluted b) does not reflect community consensus, most glaring example being

"It meets either the general notability guideline (GNG) below, or the criteria outlined in a subject-specific notability guideline (SNG)"

This lumps all the SNGs into one group wholly seperate from GNG when in fact they have different levels of acceptance and independence from GNG. What is your opinion on replacing the lead of WP:N with something like User:Ca/Notability restructuring? Ca talk to me! 08:45, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

Well, it does say "A topic is rebuttably presumed to merit an article if:" That seems pretty correct. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 12:07, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
At this point I would call NSPORT a supplement to GNG, not a standalone notability guideline. Apart from that, the general principle is good; making it clear that meeting SNG's is not as good as meeting GNG will hopefully help editors realize that to future proof their creations they should ensure they meet GNG. BilledMammal (talk) 13:26, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
Honestly at this point I think we would be better served by turning NSPORT into an essay, removing all language implying it's a notability guideline, and renaming it to make point clear (even deleting the NSPORT and "Notability (sports)" redirects, which implies an equality with actual notability guidelines that no longer exists.) The simple reality is that the idea of having a sports-specific notability guideline with any actual force to it has been rejected. As a result, the page not useful in its current form and isn't really a "notability guideline" because it is completely subsidiary to the GNG (IMHO all subject-specific guidelines are subsidiary to the GNG, of course; ultimately we need enough sources to write a neutral article. But NSPORT lacks even the force that the others have.) It's just an essay discussing things that might meet the GNG and possible places you might look for sources to do so. We need to put a stake in it once and for all, basically. --Aquillion (talk) 20:47, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
There are aspects of NSPORT that remain important and suggest a higher bar than GNG to meet the expectations for notability - especially how it discusses prep and college athletes. But it also provides guidance on individual sport seasons. - Enos733 (talk) 22:05, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
I would not be in favor of the change. While some SNGs are more akin to WP:OUTCOMES than guidelines, there are good reasons why the SNGs exist and why they make sense as subject-specific alternatives to GNG (such as WP:NPROF). In general, the presumption of notability in some SNGs can and do limit which articles are brought to AfD and can provide some guidance to (new) editors about which subjects are likely to merit an article. - Enos733 (talk) 15:54, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
I think NPROF is actually unique in this way, there are no other "such as". Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 16:54, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
There are NAUTHOR and NGEO. Newimpartial (talk) 17:25, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
WP:GEOLAND is a little special, acknowledged, but since when is NAUTHOR "explicitly listed as an alternative to the general notability guideline."? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 18:02, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
It isn't "listed" in that sense, but it is "listed" as an exception to NOTINHERIT and offers a presumption of notability independent of the GNG, as NGEO and NPROF also do (as does ANYBIO, for that matter). Newimpartial (talk) 21:00, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
I'd also note that NAUTHOR, by being an exception to not inherited, often allows us to have fewer articles on the author/their works as several notable books/&c can often be covered in the article on the author. Espresso Addict (talk) 00:31, 13 October 2023 (UTC)
Also, the real "teeth" of NPROF - the part that matters relative to the GNG - is that it allows us to use a very narrowly defined category of sources that wouldn't usually be considered WP:INDEPENDENT for GNG purposes, on the basis that some academic sources are sufficiently high-quality to overcome that hurdle. Despite what it says, it doesn't really really replace the GNG in that regard, it just clarifies how to apply it in a particular area. --Aquillion (talk) 20:56, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
Often the sources are actually independent (ie citations in research papers by other scholars) but the coverage would not be considered sufficiently in depth. Espresso Addict (talk) 00:10, 13 October 2023 (UTC)
Can I ask you what part of the proposal contradicts what your views? I tried to adjust the "tiers" so that it aligns with popular opinion. Ca talk to me! 03:46, 13 October 2023 (UTC)
I know you weren't addressing me, but I think the biggest problem with the proposal is that it gives GNG notability the highest "level" as (perhaps) more than a rebuttable presumption for a topic to have its own article, compared with other grounds for Notability. I don't think this is true at present, I don't think this view has community consensus, and I think this interptetation of the Notability ecosystem (as a hierarchy, with GNG on top) actively works against the encyclopaedic treatment of topics. Newimpartial (talk) 16:22, 14 October 2023 (UTC)
The prose of WP:N had a recent (last 2 or 3 years) addition to spell out the complicated nuances of the SNGs to the GNG. It is more complicated than the nutshell statement but the nutshell statement captures 95% of that otherwise. There is no need to change. Masem (t) 16:59, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
The key thing is "presumed" - which means that if it meets these guidelines, it is up to editors at a deletion discussion that the page should not be included for WP:NOT reasons. Awesome Aasim 17:42, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
The thing that I think we need to make clearer regarding SNGs is that, for the most part, they are guidelines to tell us when sources probably exist and where to look for sources. The thing we need to make clearer about the GNG is that it is explicitly not about if something is worthy of an article, it's about the fact that we cannot write an article without sources of information. Something is presumed to be notable (worthy of an article) if there are sufficient sources of information that we can write about it. If there are no acceptable sources, it's not that it's not worthy of notice, it's that we do not have the necessary raw materials to build an article. We have consistently made a mistake by calling topics for which there is insufficient available sourcing "non-notable". I do not think your proposed text clarifies that, and indeed I think it makes the situation more confusing, not less. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 18:18, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
I do think that this bears repeating. The reason why the GNG finally put the first round of major disputes over deletion to rest is because it recognized that the key question wasn't "is this notable" but "do we have enough sources to write a neutral, independent article?" I don't think that an article that fails to pass the GNG is ever acceptable - it's the absolute minimum baseline below which it doesn't matter how "notable" an editor feels something is, we just don't have enough to write even the most basic stub in compliance with our policies. The real problem with articles that fail the GNG isn't that they're obscure or non-notable or whatever, it's that they involve original research, putting undue weight on a single source, relying too heavily on non-WP:INDEPENDENT sources, or relying too heavily on low-quality sources like raw databases and the like, which should never be used as the sole basis for an article. --Aquillion (talk) 20:50, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
Its also important to remember that the GNG itself is also a rebuttable presumption. Just showing two or three sources may be reasonable at the start of an article's life, but the article cannot reasonably be expanded past that, it still can be put to deletion. It's part of the complex nature of the GNG and the SNGs that can't be easily expressed in one sentence, only the majority of cases as we already do in the lede. Masem (t) 00:14, 13 October 2023 (UTC)
I do feel that the SNGs might be useful if, instead of trying to replace the GNG, they became more loose guidelines for "what should guide our judgement after the bare minimum of the GNG is satisfied." It might be worth at least considering an attempt to change the GNG to that end, ie. the GNG ought to be a hard bare minimum (with perhaps a small number of footnotes for cases where sources might be more useful than they'd appear at first), with SNGs mostly serving to answer where to go after that bare minimum has been satisfied. --Aquillion (talk) 05:21, 13 October 2023 (UTC)
I don't think the SNGs should be trying to serve that purpose only. We want the GNG and the SNGs to encourage editors to create articles that they can demonstrate may likely be notable (due to either existing sources or some type of high merit), but after that, when the rebuttal presumption comes into play is if there is simply no way to readily expand the article with more sources beyond a stub shape or other problem with NOT (eg overreliance on primary sources), and then we can talk whether retention in a larger article comes around or whether deletion is better. The SNGs can serve to say "look for additional coverage via these routes..." or "It may be better to cover this type of topic in a larger article..." with advice tuned to the field the SNG covers, but I don't think we should expect the SNGs to be for this purpose. Masem (t) 16:45, 14 October 2023 (UTC)
A side effect of the levels, is that we shift from: GNG is for everything, SNGs are for some stuff, to: GNG is the strongest form of notability, SNGs are weaker forms. I agree with BilledMammal that there are benefits. But sources may fulfill GNG without being sufficient to let us to write a basic, neutral outline of the subject. GNG is already applied too rigidly (i.e. nominally meets GNG = must Keep). These levels, with GNG placed at the top, risk making that rigidity worse, even omitting the are very rarely deleted wording. DFlhb (talk) 18:55, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
I agree--I changed the wording around a little bit to reflect this. Ca talk to me! 06:22, 13 October 2023 (UTC)
  • More generally, no simplistic attempt to put GNG and SNG into tiers is ever going to reflect the complex relationships. Sometimes GNG trumps SNG, sometimes SNGs are held to overrule the GNG. The truth is the guidelines are often in conflict with each other; different editors understand that tension in different ways, and AfD exists to allow those different interpretations to be discussed as they apply to one individual case to come to a consensus on that individual case. If there was an easy codeable answer we could use just use speedy deletion. Espresso Addict (talk) 00:17, 13 October 2023 (UTC)
    I agree with your point entirely. To be realistic, notability is a mess, and no single systematic treatment would be sufficient to describe how notability is applied across all of Wikipedia. However, I believe that the adage "perfection is the enemy of good" applies here. It took me insanely long time grasp what notability is(I used a different account in the past), and some more time to understand the complex interplay between SNGs and GNG. I incorporated your suggestion and softened the wording to show that this tier system is not meant to be rigid—–exceptions may, of course, occur. Though it is not perfect, I believe this change would provide at least a general guidance to new editors. Ca talk to me! 00:55, 13 October 2023 (UTC)
What might be helpful is some sort of Notability for Newbies essay, though presumably several already exist. Indeed I believe one main point of the more-explanatory SNGs is to try to explain what is often considered notable in a particular topic area to assist newer editors. Usually when I talk to new editors I try to explain the individual case at least briefly, and link to the Teahouse for further advice. In an ideal world, very new editors should not be creating new articles nor trying to get existing ones deleted. Espresso Addict (talk) 01:48, 13 October 2023 (UTC)
I wonder if NPPSCHOOL training materials couldn't be partly integrated into our notability guidelines. Most would be out of scope, but they do a robust job of explaining the way GNG and each SNGs fit together, and which takes priority in each case. DFlhb (talk) 06:05, 13 October 2023 (UTC)
  • GNG is not "the highest form of notability". In particular, for WP:NEVENTS meeting GNG is necessary but not sufficient to demonstrate notability. Some SNGs are stricter than GNG rather than being a run-around. Fences&Windows 10:57, 22 October 2023 (UTC)
    I interpreted the "lasting coverage" requirement in NEVENT as just showing how WP:NOTNEWS is applied when considering whether to have an article or now.
    After all WP:N currently says

    A topic is rebuttably presumed to merit an article if:

    1. It meets either the general notability guideline (GNG) below, or the
    2. criteria outlined in a subject-specific notability guideline (SNG); and It is not excluded under the What Wikipedia is not policy.
NEVENT is just clarifying how WP:NOT applies in practice. Ca talk to me! 12:10, 22 October 2023 (UTC)
@Ca, this is probably obvious to you, but the WP:NOT exclusion applies to GNG subjects as well, and the way you've lined the items up here suggests that it only applies to SNG subjects. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:50, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

Replace Template:Broken anchors with inline tags

Latest comment: 1 year ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Currently, editors flag broken anchors in articles by placing Template:Broken anchors on the article talk page. This means that broken anchors are less likely to be fixed because their maintenance template is off in the talk page rather than in the article itself. On the talk page, Template:Broken anchors is a large banner, and may contribute to banner blindness. In addition, talk page banners are usually for longer-term banners, not for ones that can have their relevant issues easily fixed in a single edit. Replacing Template:Broken anchors with an inline tag like Template:Citation needed would make it easier for editors to tag broken anchors and for editors to notice and fix them. QuietCicada - Talk 12:53, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

Discretionary citations in reflist

Latest comment: 1 year ago2 comments2 people in discussion

LaTeX has several packages that allow an author to use a list of citations selectively, i.e., any citations that he does not cite are ignored with no message. A similar facility would be useful in wiki. As a start, a |discretionay=yes parameter for templates called within {{reflist|refs=}} would help. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 14:59, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

We have this too. It's the "Further reading" section. The reference section is for sources that are cited. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:18, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

Proposal to reduce citation clutter

Latest comment: 1 year ago27 comments15 people in discussion
Withdrawn by proposer in the face of WP:SNOW. Anomie⚔ 23:34, 6 November 2023 (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.

In my opinion, many Wikipedia articles suffer from citation clutter, particularly in sections covering controversial topics. The numerous in-line citations can disrupt reading flow, particularly for those who are not from academic background or are new to Wikipedia, and make the text look messy.

I think we can improve this by displaying all citations at the end of each paragraph by default. Furthermore, if a paragraph contains more than two citations, we could collapse them into an expandable symbol.

These changes would make articles more readable and visually appealing without compromising on the verifiability or the accessibility of sources. Advanced readers should be able to disable this feature. Marokwitz (talk) 07:22, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

EDIT: I am retracting this suggestion following your feedback, a refined suggestion is in the next section.


This should be at WP:VPI. The technical village pump is to discuss technical implementations and problems, not whether something would be desirable. Feel free to remove this section, including my comment. Johnuniq (talk) 07:56, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
Thanks, moved to VPI.Marokwitz (talk) 08:23, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
I don't think this is an issue in practice, as citations can already be bundled together; for example, see footnotes 3 and 4 in Marjorie Taylor Greene. Curbon7 (talk) 08:33, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
Marjorie Taylor Greene's article lead serves as a prime example of a section overwhelmed with mid-sentence citations, even after manual bundling. This format can be particularly disconcerting for readers, especially those without an academic background.
Bundling citations, while useful, carries significant drawbacks. It obscures which sources verify particular facts within a paragraph and complicates the reuse of citations elsewhere in the document without deconstructing the bundle.
Therefore, I propose a straightforward alteration to the visual presentation of citations. Wikipedia is not written on paper and we have modern technology that allows us to present things with better UX. Marokwitz (talk) 09:17, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
  • Oppose A lengthy paragraph may contain several discrete assertions, each verified by a discrete citation. For maximum benefit to the reader, the phrase or sentence making an assertion needs to be immediately followed by the appropriate citation. A two citation per paragraph limit is impractical, and collapsing citations is a bad idea for readers. I admit that I occasionally see a controversial sentence followed by nine citations, but that is a problem to be addressed at the individual article level. In 14 years of conversations about Wikipedia, I do not recall anyone telling me, "You have too many citations in your articles" or "I do not like citations in the middle of a paragraph". I see a project-wide proposal like this as a solution in search of a problem. Cullen328 (talk) 08:48, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
    Why is collapsing citations detrimental to readers? How inconvenient would it be to click to expand the list in the rare cases where it is lengthy? Why must Wikipedia resemble a paper publication when we have access to modern UX controls that enable the collapsing and expanding of citations? I believe we need to prioritize the continuity and flow of reading and take into account those without an academic background. I'm just proposing a better display that prioritizes continuous reading, not a fundamental change in how articles are written. Marokwitz (talk) 09:22, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
    Well, I have had people complain about excessive citations in the paragraphs, although sometimes they were in the middle of sentences. Sometimes I think that making the footnote symbol a little bit smaller might make some pages more readable. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 12:26, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
  • Mid-paragraph citations are necessary, particularly when discussing controversial topics, so it's clear which sources support any particular statement. That part of this proposal is a bad idea. OTOH, I do like the idea of a user script or gadget that would turn [1][23][42][etc] where it does occur into something like [+], because it might reduce the number of cases where people insist on doing WP:CITEBUNDLE. Anomie⚔ 12:29, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
  • I agree in principle -- and in my own writing I normally put citations only at the end of paragraphs. An occasional exception, however, should be made for sentences or words that are especially inflammatory, i.e. "Joe Blow said Jane Doe is a fascist." In that occasional case I believe a citation directly following the text is necessary. A problem is citation overload. Example: a previous editor has added a citation or two to a paragraph. I come along years later and revise or add material to the paragraph and add another citation or two while leaving the older citations. Pretty soon you have a citation jungle that looks goofy to the reader.
  • A remedy might be a recommendation stating a Wikipedia preference for bundling citations together into a single footnote at the end of paragraphs. Example. "Jane Doe said BS." <open ref> Jones, page 15; Smith, page 24; Journal for Advanced Pedantry, page 56.</closed ref> That way you would have only one footnote at the end of each paragraph instead of several which would improve presentation. Moreover, for the technically incompetent (me) that procedure doesn't require any complicated gadgets. Smallchief (talk) 12:32, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
  • I don't agree that anything needs to be done on a project-wide scale to make our text more visually appealing or cater to readers who don't encounter citations in their typical reading. I do agree that citations could often be better placed, or bundled more frequently, but this is more a problem for editors than for readers.
    The most common case seems to be doing a full inline cite every time, with the wikicode bloating haphazardly over the years, making the actual prose diffecult to locate in skins that don't support syntax highlighting (like Minerva). Sometimes bots will come along and name identical citations for reuse, but they'll never move them to the |refs= parameter of {{reflist}} for LDR, or convert them to {{sfnp}}s or the like.
    I do think more and better bundling and scootching the citation code out from the prose would be better practice, but leaving citations in full form wherever they start out is hardly our most detrimental poor citation practice.
    Without a background in the codebase, it's my initial take that the original idea here would be difficult to implement, but it might not be as hard as it seems if the software has a strong idea of where paragraphs begin and end. I don't think this would be something we'd want to have turned on by default: I'm imagining readers astonished about some extraordinary claim that seems unsourced, dropping into edit mode to slap down a {{cn}}, only to find that the statement was actually thoroughly sourced, but the citation was disconnected because they hadn't tapped the right thingy.
    I'm not opposed to a user script or something that could toggle the visibility of citations (the superscript numerals are clearly marked in the html, so should be easy to mark as hidden or visible with javascript). I don't think making the blue clicky numbers smaller (Jo-Jo Eumerus's idea) is practicable: they're already the smallest size reliably selectable on mobile; the text would have to be made larger instead to increase the size difference between the prose and citations. Folly Mox (talk) 13:14, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
I don't object to collapsing multiple citations but I really, really, really don't like forcing citations to the end of the paragraph. We'll end up losing more text-source integrity, especially if it's a long paragraph. It also makes it more difficult to find out if the sources verify the paragraph, since you have more text and more references to look through. I've made an example below, copied from Myzobdella lugubris. One sentence here I made up and inserted.
What is known for certain is that crustaceans act as vehicles for cocoon deposition and dispersion. The leeches lay their egg cocoons on the carapace of the crustaceans, sometimes in great numbers: one study found an average of 118 cocoons on 18 crabs. A population of the leeches found in Nova Scotia appear to lay their eggs exclusively on the legs of their hosts. Another related species, Myzobdella platensis, may be a true parasite of the blue crab. Other animals affected by M. lugubris include shrimp, oysters, crayfish and prawns.[1][2][3][4][5][6][3][2]
It shouldn't be that hard, but it makes it harder than it should be. Compare to the original, end-of-sentence-cited paragraph.
What is known for certain is that crustaceans act as vehicles for cocoon deposition and dispersion.[6][3] The leeches lay their egg cocoons on the carapace of the crustaceans, sometimes in great numbers: one study found an average of 118 cocoons on 18 crabs.[2]A population of the leeches found in Nova Scotia appear to lay their eggs exclusively on the legs of their hosts. Another related species, Myzobdella platensis, may be a true parasite of the blue crab.[6] Other animals affected by M. lugubris include shrimp, oysters, crayfish and prawns.[1][2][3][7][8]

References

  1. ^ a b "Myzobdella lugubris". invasions.si.edu. Retrieved 2023-01-28.
  2. ^ a b c d Daniels, Bruce A.; Sawyer, Roy T. (May 1975). "The Biology of the Leech Myzobdella lugubris Infesting Blue Crabs and Catfish". The Biological Bulletin. 148 (2): 193–198. doi:10.2307/1540542. ISSN 0006-3185. JSTOR 1540542. PMID 1156600.
  3. ^ a b c d Sawyer, Roy; Lawler, Adrian; Overstreet, Robin (1975-01-01). "Marine Leeches of the Eastern United States and the Gulf of Mexico with a Key to the Species". Faculty Publications from the Harold W. Manter Laboratory of Parasitology.
  4. ^ M.C. Meyer; A.A. Barden, Jr. (Fall 1955). "Leeches Symbiotic on Arthropoda, Especially Decapod Crustacea". The Wasmann Journal of Biology. 13 (2). Retrieved 2023-01-29.
  5. ^ "NOAA technical report NMFS SSRF". National Marine Fisheries Service. 1971.
  6. ^ a b c Zara, Fernando José; Diogo Reigada, Alvaro Luiz; Domingues Passero, Luiz Felipe; Toyama, Marcos Hikari (Feb 2009). "Myzobdella platensis (Hirundinida: Piscicolidae) is True Parasite of Blue Crabs (Crustacea: Portunidae)". Journal of Parasitology. 95 (1): 124–128. doi:10.1645/GE-1616.1. ISSN 0022-3395. PMID 18601577. S2CID 23393406.
  7. ^ M.C. Meyer; A.A. Barden, Jr. (Fall 1955). "Leeches Symbiotic on Arthropoda, Especially Decapod Crustacea". The Wasmann Journal of Biology. 13 (2). Retrieved 2023-01-29.
  8. ^ "NOAA technical report NMFS SSRF". National Marine Fisheries Service. 1971.
Edward-Woodrow (talk) 13:09, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
See here we have some examples of live citations with actual poor practice:
  • 4 and 7 are the same, as are references 5 and 8 (this is an artifact of the copypaste, not in the live article)
  • no information on reference 1 (what is "invasions.si.edu"? inspecting the source reveals "Smithsonian Environmental Research Center Marine Invasion Lab")
  • references 2 and 6 have non-free URLs, duplicating the DOI, linking a publisher paywall page
  • reference 3 has dumb hosting information instead of the actual publication information (Journal of Natural History 9:(6)), with an artificially specific publication date, and no doi, even though it has one
  • reference 4(=7) has an unnecessary |access-date= parameter, even though it cites a printed source that does not change over time
  • reference 5(=8) completely lacks correct attribution, instead just a publisher id code (it's actually Marlin E. Tagatz and Ann Bowman Hall, "Annotated Bibliography on the Fishing Industry and Biology of the Blue Crab, Callinectes sapidus").
This is what happens when we let javascript cite our sources for us. Folly Mox (talk) 13:33, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose bundling all citations at the end of a paragraph. This can/will lead to much worse problems with WP:V policy than the aesthetic problem of many citations. This proposal will reduce verifiability and lead to worse issues in contentious topics. There may be a problem that needs to be solved, but it has to do with editor behavior, not how to write and place citations. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:31, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
    To clarify, I'm only advocating for a 'display mode' that groups the citations together, no changes in the way articles are written. Rather, when WP:V is needed, one could click on a tool, and the citations would revert to their standard position. However, 90% of the time, users are only interested in reading, and the citations can be obstructive. Maybe we can call those modes "Reading Mode" and "Scholar Mode". What do you think? Marokwitz (talk) 14:48, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
    We're putting the cart before the horse by putting readability before verifiability/accuracy. What's the point in reading wikipedia if there's lessened guarantee that the content is accurate? And isn't this just going to lead to a spate of people not understanding what's going on and slapping a ton of CN tags into the middle of paragraphs? Making this a default view seems like a very bad idea to me. Hog Farm Talk 14:51, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
    Yes, agreed... further to my comment below (which was made before seeing this clarification here) I don't think having separate "reader" and "editor" views is particularly a good idea either. The goal is for those readers who are so inclined to become editors themselves, and we don't want to entrench a view of the prose which differs from how it's supposed to be written...  — Amakuru (talk) 14:55, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
  • Heck no - moving all citations to the end of a paragraph is just going to make a verifiability mess. It's often quite important to tell what exactly is being sourced to what, as source acceptability will vary by topic matter. Verifying content in sources will become extremely difficult in many cases with this. Our guidelines/procedures for handling direct quotes and controversial material pretty much require direct inline citation at times. This proposal is pretty much a non-starter if WP:V will continue to have any sort of meaning. Hog Farm Talk 14:47, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
    Can you look at my previous response? I think my proposal is misunderstood. Marokwitz (talk) 14:49, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose per Sandy. As someone who spends a fair bit of time reconciling citations to the text they claim to cite, I'd say the problem is almost the opposite of that stated. Rather than mandating the pushing of references to the end of paragraphs we should be discouraging it. The references should be adjacent to the piece of prose they're verifying, for easy checking. As an aside, I also have to say I don't like the convention of not putting citations in the lead - obviously I understand the theory that everything in the lead summarises something in the body, but if I were the mythical god-of-the-wiki I'd say just put the same cite in the lead as well as the body. As things stand it just makes is all the harder to check whether what's written really is cited or not - particularly when the language used isn't the same. Cheers  — Amakuru (talk) 14:50, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
    Amakuru we may be getting off-topic, but see the observations from Sphilbrick at Wikipedia:Featured article review/Harriet Tubman/archive1; I'm unsure where I stand on that, but Sphilbrick is a thoughful editor who brings forward an interesting dilemma. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:50, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
    Yeah, @SandyGeorgia: I think for me this is almost a no-brainer - I think every mention of every fact, even in infoboxes and other tables should be cited, not this "it's cited here so no need to cite it here" business. I suspect there'd be fierce resistance, and not sure I have the time or energy to pursue it right now, hence an off-topic comment in this now-withdrawn discussion may have to do! But off the top of my head, good reasons for doing this include:
    1. Makes it easier for people (for example when I'm looking at potential POTD articles) to check citations without having to use Ctrl-F or comb through the article for wherever the fact in question is cited.
    2. On a related note, the lead is by far the most likely site for drive-by additions by inexperienced editors or those who can't be bothered to cite their sources.
    3. Ensures that if the text in the body is subsequently altered, or the text in question removed, then the lead citation is still there.
    4. Sphilbrick's point about giving readers more confidence in trusting and verifying what they read in Wikipedia is a very good one too
    The reality is that many non-FA leads have cites in them anyway, and when I'm trying to stitch up POTDs with enough verifiable material to include in a blurb, I'll just directly cite lead material myself too, rather than faffing around adding it in triplicate... Cheers  — Amakuru (talk) 17:37, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
  • (edit conflict) Hell no. Watch WP:V go up in smoke the moment you do that. This is a messy solution looking for a problem. - SchroCat (talk) 14:51, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose per WP:V and SandyGeorgia. Harrias (he/him) • talk 14:56, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

I would strongly oppose this. It would dilute wp:verifiability by removing the requirement for the direct connection between the stated fact and the citation supporting it. North8000 (talk) 17:58, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
I'd like to retract my suggestion. Please see a refined proposal in the next section. Marokwitz (talk) 14:57, 6 November 2023 (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.

New watchlist idea

Latest comment: 1 year ago2 comments2 people in discussion

This is probably more of a MediaWiki suggestion than a Wikipedia suggestion, but if we get support here, we could ask on MediaWiki.

The goal of the watchlist is to show new edits to your watched pages. When viewed in "latest revision" mode, if the newest edit is a minor edit, a small "m" will indicate this. However, most editors want to review the whole set of recent edits, not just the last edit. Some have complained that a significant change was marked as minor on their watchlist, just because the last edit was minor.

I think any of the following would improve the watchlist in "latest revision" mode:

  • We could add a box to indicate whether all the recent edits were minor
  • We could indicate the number of edits if it's more than one
  • We could show the total number of bytes added or removed in all the recent edits

Kk.urban (talk) 18:31, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

It sounds like what you want is the "show all revisions, grouped by page" mode that already exists. Anomie⚔ 23:40, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

Infobox guideline idea

Latest comment: 1 year ago11 comments6 people in discussion

One challenge for participants in, and closers of, infobox RFCs is that there is no guideline explaining how to determine whether an article should have an infobox, what factors should be considered, nothing against which to measure the strength of arguments.

The first paragraph of MOS:INFOBOXUSE says: The use of infoboxes is neither required nor prohibited for any article. Whether to include an infobox, which infobox to include, and which parts of the infobox to use, is determined through discussion and consensus among the editors at each individual article.

Here is an idea for adding two more sentences to the existing text: In discussions determining whether an article should have an infobox, editors should focus on whether the article as currently written has clear, policy-compliant (e.g. V, NPOV, BLP) information to fill enough parameters of an applicable infobox. Whether the information is "clear" and "policy-compliant," and whether there is "enough" of it to merit an infobox, should be determined by editorial consensus on a case by case basis.

This would help structure and focus discussions on something more measurable than just "infoboxes are useful/not useful." Feedback welcome. Levivich (talk) 23:26, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

Disagree. I think the problem we have here is that there are insuperable differences between those who think infoboxes are generally positive and those who think the converse. Any formulation will appear to favour one side or other, depending on which side of the fence one occupies. It really just needs to be a case-by-case discussion, defaulting to status quo where there's no consensus to change. Espresso Addict (talk) 00:18, 5 November 2023 (UTC)
Which side does this formulation appear to favor? Levivich (talk) 04:17, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
Obviously, the one I don't personally favour! To give a slightly more useful answer, there are many reasons that an infobox in a particular article might not be optimal, not all of which are to do with whether there is enough information to put in it. Espresso Addict (talk) 10:19, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
In May, I helped draft a proposal, but while there was plenty of editors who wanted to find a way forward there was no consensus on how to do it. Nemov (talk) 04:07, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
I'm not sure this will have the desired impact. The "infoboxes are useful/not useful" arguments are already about whether infoboxes are clear/NPOV/BLP, and the proposed sentences seem to spell out a number of different ways this can be argued. CMD (talk) 05:33, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
You say that last part like it's a bad thing? Levivich (talk) 05:56, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
This will give anti-infobox sentiments more of a leg to stand on, when they were just about beginning to die out (here, I mean classical music articles). If I correctly understand the article that led to this, it's too small a problem to address in that MoS. DFlhb (talk) 06:09, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
This isn't about any one article or any one RFC. This is coming out of admins pointing out at AN that there is no guideline explaining how editors should decide whether or not an article should have an infobox. AFAICT, all previous attempts at a guideline proposal have focused on categories of articles, answering the question "what kinds of articles should have infoboxes," rather answering the question, "how do we decide if a particular article should have an infobox?" Levivich (talk) 06:25, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
Ah, I'd missed the AN followup. I'd support your idea, or something similar, because too much time was wasted and guidelines can address that, but I'm not sure if this idea is sufficient, because "fill enough parameters" is still subjective. Perhaps consider wording like: "beyond trivial factoids"; that's wording I took from Isaidnoway's comment in the original discussion. DFlhb (talk) 07:14, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
Levivich, with reference to the timing and the AN, I appreciate the effort, and think something similar will eventually be fruitful, but think it might be the wrong time to advance solutions in light of the unresolved behavioral issues at that AN; hence, I oppose for now as the wrong solution to the wrong problem.
The idea that there is no policy to enforce is misleading; ARBINFO2 remedies already gives guidance about conduct and about how to approach the content, that is not being adhered to and is not even being addressed by admins. Having stepped back through the diffs in that case from the first callous post on 26 September, it's apparent the recurring problems are not a lack of guidance, rather behavioral issues that haven't been clearly examined at that AN, and in fact, have been obscured and only partially represented there. And it's unclear there would even be an infobox problem if those recurring misbehaviors and misbehavors were addressed. The discussion at AN hasn't presented all of what would be evidence in what should be a third arbcase (since admins aren't adminning the misbehavors that would be sanctionable even without CTOP, it seems Arb Enforcement has been rendered toothless in infobox disputes). Bad cases make bad law, so I suggest now is not the time to advance your idea. Particularly if dealing with the misbehavors first would address the problems (I believe it would, as the behaviors are a simple repeat of ARBINFOBOX1).
Looking at the specifics of the wording you advance, I similarly don't think it addresses the problems we're seeing; there are individuals who honestly believe that how many children one has, or the name of one's spouse, constitute meaningful neutral verifiable information worthy of an infobox. (I wonder how many BLP subjects who don't have children by choice, or can't have children for other reasons, feel about that being the summary of their accomplishments ... or how a BLP subject who has great accomplishments in life feels about having their mistaken marriage of youth featured as one of their main characteristics). Moving the argument from proper conduct in an infobox discussion, to your proposal, won't address the improper conduct; it just changes the target of the misbehavior from whether to include an infobox to whether how many children one has is a defining characteristic of their life accomplishments that made them notable. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:38, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

Reverse watchlist?

Latest comment: 1 year ago3 comments3 people in discussion

It would be nice if there was a way to start a clock ticking for when you expect something to happen on a thread and have it show up on your watchlist if it doesn't. One use case would be putting a WP:GAN on hold. Too often, people put a review on hold for a week (or whatever) and then forget about it. It would be nice to have a mechanism where I get a reminder on my watchlist after a week if the nom hasn't responded. It could also be used when making a request or asking a question on somebody talk page where you want to give them some respectful amount of time to respond, but not have it fall off your radar. RoySmith (talk) 15:02, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

I was looking for some sort of template that a bot could check to see if you wanted a reminder and I found User:DannyS712/RemindMe. 0xDeadbeef→∞ (talk to me) 15:13, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
For reminders on watchlist, literally, try User:SD0001/W-Ping. – SD0001 (talk) 18:01, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

Refined Proposal to reduce citation clutter

Latest comment: 1 year ago25 comments14 people in discussion

I would like to adjust my above suggestion. What I am proposing a 'Reading Mode' where citations are bundled and collapsed at the end of paragraphs, providing a cleaner view for those primarily interested in the content. This would be in contrast to a 'Scholar Mode,' which would maintain the current format with citations in their usual place for in-depth study and verification.Marokwitz (talk) 14:54, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

  • I don't like this idea. While regular Wikipedia editors like us will understand how this works, the average reader might not know about the two different views, and will be confused when citations disappear. Also, Wikipedia is an information and research website that shows where we got our information from: we should be proud that we have footnotes at the end of the sentence that it is verifying, not trying to hide them for readability. Z1720 (talk) 14:57, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
No; same problems, explained by others in the previous section. Whether reader or editor, we want both to be able to verify each bit, and particularly readers who aren't editors. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:51, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
Text–source integrity is important for editors and readers. Do you have any evidence that the average reader struggles to read paragraphs interspersed with footnotes? – Joe (talk) 16:02, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
Hi @Joe, Here is an example article, Suvigya Sharma with many wikilinks, cites. Regards, JoeNMLC (talk) 16:20, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
That's an example of an article with footnotes within paragraphs. I'm asking for evidence that this has a significant effect on readability, for the average person. – Joe (talk) 16:23, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
It is a good example for how too much notation kills the readability of an article. It is of course subjective but for me, this is annoying to read despite years of Wikipedia experience. No academic journal would read like that.
A clutter-free interface reduces cognitive load, making content easier to understand for individuals with cognitive disabilities or attention disorders.
While I don't have 'evidence' pertaining to the average reader - but I am confident we can improve upon the current design that relies on the text being interrupted by strings of tiny numbers.
This is an Idea lab. Let's imagine how Steve Jobs would have designed Wikipedia! Marokwitz (talk) 16:27, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
I don't find that article annoying or difficult to read (maybe because I'm used to Harvard referencing, be thankful we didn't go that way!) – I'm probably not representative in that regard, but that's the problem with anecdotal data. As you say this is the idea lab and I'm not saying you should have done a UX study or anything, but Wikipedia is one of the most widely-read websites in the world so if this change is going to happen then, well, someone needs to do a UX study. As for a Steve Jobs-designed Wikipedia... I'm glad I don't have to imagine that dystopia. – Joe (talk) 16:41, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
Well, probably not as bad as an Elon Musk Wikipedia - [1] Marokwitz (talk) 16:48, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
I've always had the belief that regular-folk readers of WP articles have long since (unconsciously) learned to visually ignore the blue superscript citation notations. Regular readers don't care if they are bundled or individual, or whether they are at the end of clauses, sentences, or paragraphs, or if they repeat the same number on consecutive sentences, or if groupings are not in ascending numerical order, or if they do or don't appear in any other way WP editors have been known to debate about. Regular readers just don't see them. Wasted Time R (talk) 16:55, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
I think we'd need some really strikingly clear data that readers are somehow underserved or misled in order to implement this. Right now this feels like the realm of browser extensions and userscripts. —siroχo 18:52, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
No. We should be proud of our citations, not trying to hide them. Edward-Woodrow (talk) 20:42, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

I would strongly oppose this. It would dilute wp:verifiability by removing the requirement for the direct connection between the stated fact and the citation supporting it. This isn't just for scholars to analyze it's for regular readers who might want to see the specific source that supports the specific claim. Also, which thanking Marokwitz for their concern, work and initiative in bringing this up, it is a non-solution (how would moving cites around reduce clutter) for a non-problem (seeing cite marks is routine reading in Wikipedia and elsewhere. — Preceding unsigned comment added by North8000 (talk • contribs) 18:05, November 6, 2023 (UTC)

The idea is to take the citation marks out of the sentences so that they don't interfere with reading flow, and collapsing long

strings of citation marks by using an expandable "+" icon. In addition, a reader can click on a button to switch to scholar view which shows the exact location of the citations Marokwitz (talk) 18:20, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

  • Is it such a fundamental and far reaching change really being proposed on the back of an evidence-free, anecdotal "I don't like it"? For shame. Gog the Mild (talk) 18:27, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
    Why so negative ? Isn't this the right place to suggest ideas ? Marokwitz (talk) 20:25, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
  • User:Marokwitz, why this intermediate level at all? Why not just a "show / hide citations" toggle (defaults to "show", obvs), so that if readers are getting distracted from the prose by the numerals they can just hide them until they want to check them? I'm not grasping what a single expandy pile of paragraph terminal citations you have to tap to locate citation position would accomplish that a simple visibility toggle wouldn't. Folly Mox (talk) 18:57, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
    t is possible, I suppose, but I believe that would contravene our core principle of verifiability. Showing a citation mark at the end of each paragraph, which enables jumping to the correct citations for that paragraph, seems to be a good compromise. In academic literature, multiple citations within a sentence to indicate the source of individual words are seldom used; this approach is excessive in 90% of cases. I aim to reach a compromise that is sufficient to become the default for many readers who do value verification. Marokwitz (talk) 19:51, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

On the subject of citations, I pulled a random book off my shelves: When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away by Ramón A. Gutiérrez, 1991, Stanford University Press. In a quick survey of the book, I didn't find any footnotes in the middle of paragraphs. Single footnotes, and only single footnotes, were at the end of paragraphs and often cited two or three sources for the text of said paragraph. Well, if it's good enough for Stanford..... Also, I note that Parenthetical referencing is deprecated by Wikipedia. (An example of parenthetical references: "Smith said the sun is hot (Jones, 2000, page 12) but Clark said it is cold (Walters, 2023, page 251))". Why is parenthetical referencing deprecated? In the discussion about its deprecation, it was called inelegant and distracting, hindering the reader. I suggest that a plethora of blue citation marks distributed thickly inside a paragraph of text has the same inelegant and distracting impact.User: Marokwitz makes a good point. Smallchief (talk) 21:44, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

Keep in mind, many books and papers out there tend to be secondary sources, meaning that citations are provided for related but slightly different reasons than at Wikipedia, which is not only a tertiary source, but one with a very strong verifiability policy. The differences in location, frequency, and scope of citations can be explained in large part by that distinction. —siroχo 23:28, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
But the proposal does not suggest weakening verifiability; rather, it is a display option that presents simplified citation marks to optimize for continuous reading. This actually allows for the addition of *more* quotations placed directly after the facts they verify, without hindering the reading experience of casual learners - a single click would display the detailed citation marks. Marokwitz (talk) 06:20, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
The difference is that academic publishers are generally publishing works that are meant to represent new research, adding to the sum of human knowledge, while Wikipedia is not to be a place of original research. This is not an apples-to-apples comparison. Hog Farm Talk 23:44, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
Books from academic publishers can't remotely be compared to "the encyclopedia that any idiot can edit", and don't have credibility or verifiability issues we do. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:46, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
I reran this experiment with five arbitrary books on my shelf, and all had mid-paragraph citations. Two had mid-sentence citations (one Harvard parenthetical style). Folly Mox (talk) 03:38, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
Academic reviews always have abundant mid-paragraph citations, it's only original research and essays, where the viewpoint is the author's, that don't. And academic reviews are authored by topic experts, not a heterogeneous group of volunteers who are usually not topic experts. Espresso Addict (talk) 10:32, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
  • Generally, where there are multiple refs at the same place, the solution is a combination of a) not using every ref that says the same thing, but just the strongest (one or two), and b) "bundling" the refs so only one number appears in the text. Generally a semi-colon does this fine. Johnbod (talk) 02:51, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

Collaborating with other encyclopedias such as Britannica

Latest comment: 1 year ago15 comments7 people in discussion

Instead of Wikipedia just dominating what's stopping you guys from collaborating with other encyclopedias to share/pool knowledge or help each other out in some other way? Americanfreedom (talk) 15:27, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

We collaborate by default by licensing our content permissively: Wikipedia:Reusing_Wikipedia_content. Other encyclopedias are generally free to use Wikipedia content within the terms of that license. If the other encyclopedias were to return the favour, we could do likewise. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 15:42, 27 October 2023 (UTC)
Americanfreedom, Encyclopædia Britannica is a commercial enterprise. They probably wouldn't consider licensing their content freely to be compatible with their business model. Wikipedia requires content to be freely licensed. Wikipedia can technically borrow text from some freely licensed projects like Fandom (website). Unfortunately there's rarely any site with text that can really be used on Wikipedia without significant editing, at which point it's often easier to just start from scratch. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 01:47, 28 October 2023 (UTC)
Third party vendors already perform the function of pooling knowledge from available sources, including encyclopedias. AI chatbot-powered search engines, for example. They have the potential to leap-frog encyclopedias within as little as 5 years. See https://www.perplexity.ai/    — The Transhumanist   21:14, 2 November 2023 (UTC)
Rather minor point, but Britannica has for years been using one photo or another that I uploaded to Commons.[2] Donald Albury 00:09, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
They played around with the color balance a little, looks like. [3] [4] —Cryptic 00:24, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
Which they are allowed to do, per the license. :) Donald Albury 14:59, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
Well, yes, if they credited you, and licensed their derivative work the same. Which I see no evidence of anywhere. —Cryptic 01:55, 8 November 2023 (UTC)
Cryptic, it is credited, but you have to click the image to see the large version and uncollapse the description. There's no link to the original though. They also refer to the GFDL there, so I guess that's the license for the derivative as well. Though such a minor adjustment may well not be eligible for copyright protection depending on your jurisdiction, so I doubt it would legally be considered a derivative work. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 02:10, 8 November 2023 (UTC)
Clicking the image in the article without javascript enabled takes you directly to the full-size version, with no hint that attribution or licensing information was omitted; and the derivative work I was concerned about is the article. Besides which, GFDL 1.2 - now that we can see that's the license they chose as the basis for reuse - requires preserving copyright notices, including a history of modifications and who made them, and a notice, in a specific form, that grants permission for reuse, none of which is done even for just the image itself. —Cryptic 03:14, 8 November 2023 (UTC)
Cryptic, well there's two ways to look at this.
Creative Commons (but they're not using the CC license, which makes me wonder for how long they've been using that image - before 2010?) requires attribution "reasonable to the medium". I think the requirement for a browser that supports JavaScript is reasonable as all major browsers support that by default. Requiring something obscure or obsolete (e.g. Microsoft Silverlight) would not be reasonable. But as I said, there's no link to the original which CC requires if it's reasonable to the medium, and it certainly would be reasonable for a website.
the derivative work I was concerned about is the article.
That's actually not how a "derivative work" works, but I think I've been similarly confused in the past. The photo and the article are two separate works, they can exist independent from each other. A news article can use a photo with a CC BY-SA license without the need to freely license the article text. But if they make a derivative work, for example by moving people within the image around using photoshop, the derivative would have to be freely licensed.
The other way to look at it is simply this: they're using the GFDL license and GFDL is teh suck because it's so hard to comply with. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 05:08, 8 November 2023 (UTC)
As for how long Britannica has been using that image, I only know that a few years ago they were using a different image that I had uploaded to Commons. The Wayback Machine indicates that the current photo has been used in that article since it was first archived in 2015, but I remember another photo I had uploaded to Commons being used in the article, I just didn't think it had been that long since I saw it there. Anyway, as the copyright holder of the image, I'm not going to bust Britannica's chops over technicalities about how the licensing is presented. Donald Albury 16:03, 8 November 2023 (UTC)
Donald Albury, I'd guess Britannica changed the URL scheme in 2015. If you can figure out what the URL for a Britannica article used to look like you may be able to find it. Not really important, but might explain why there's no archive of the article with the other photo. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 17:16, 8 November 2023 (UTC)
Yeah, not a big deal. Oh, the photos were uploaded in 2007 under the GNU 1.2, which appears above the CCA licenses on the pages in Commons, which explains why Britannica is using the GNU license. It is one of the small pleasures in my life that photos I took with a point-and-shoot digital camera 16 years ago are still being used in both WP and EB. Donald Albury 18:43, 8 November 2023 (UTC)
@Americanfreedom: Encyclopedia Britannica is tiny compared to Wikipedia: see Wikipedia:Size of Wikipedia. We have hundreds of thousands of contributors, they have a few hundred. Yes, they are well respected for a good reason, and yes we benefited greatly from their older (i.e., public domain) editions in our early years, but by now we have little to gain from them. They are free to consult WP, and even directly use our material (with attribution). We are free to consult EB, but we cannot directly use their material, and we need to find the prpper references, i.e., the ones they used. This arms-length "collaboration" works well enough. By many measures, WP is a "better" encyclopedia than EB. Do you have a suggestion for how we could better collaborate? -Arch dude (talk) 20:23, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

Filter out AWB edits from watchlist

Latest comment: 1 year ago5 comments4 people in discussion

While this is possible through a user script, I think it should be added as an option in the Watchlist preference tab. AWB use requires a permission people have to apply for, is generally done by experienced editors, and the rate of actual content edits is very low, let alone disruptive edits. The "watchlist spam" leads to many editors (across many articles) spending time reviewing edits that are much more likely to be innocuous than the average edit.

I think the "watchlist spam" caused by AWB is currently a disincentive to AWB-assisted maintenance, so I'd further propose that this option be enabled by default. Some users, including admins, will of course want to disable it so they can catch misbehaving bots and users. DFlhb (talk) 19:14, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

@DFlhb You can already filter out AWB edits without a user script as long as you are using the new Javascript watchlist (you haven't checked the "Use non-Javascript interface" box in preferences). Either go to Filters -> Tagged Edits -> AWB -> Exclude selected, or just add &tagfilter=AWB&inverttags=1 to the end of the URL. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 04:50, 8 November 2023 (UTC)
Neat, thanks - DFlhb (talk) 06:12, 8 November 2023 (UTC)
One thing that stands out to me is that this can bury edits -- there's been a few times something on my watchlist got vandalized and I didn't notice for a while because a bot or a person running AWB went over it immediately afterwards. I imagine this would be way worse if I hadn't even seen the edits at all by default. jp×g🗯️ 04:33, 9 November 2023 (UTC)
Which is why being able to hide anything from your watchlist while you don't have the "Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent" preference on is such a horrific misfeature. —Cryptic 05:08, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

Recommending the TextDiff template around edit requests

Latest comment: 1 year ago10 comments5 people in discussion
Withdrawn. Aaron Liu (talk) 22:36, 11 November 2023 (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.

Thanks to an IP vandal, I've remembered this stale discussion around whether to recommend {{textdiff}}. In summary, the proposal would have 3 levels.

  1. Recommend on WP:ER (a policy)
  2. Recommend in ERW preloads
  3. Recommend in {{Submit an edit request}} preloads

None of these levels include requiring it. I advocate for all three. Discussion has staled and I want to find more comments but an RfC sounds a bit too much at this stage; I don't think I've satisfied RFCBEFORE yet. Any ideas on what next? Aaron Liu (talk) 21:33, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

Comment Aaron Liu, {{Request edit button}} does this through Template:Request edit button/preload. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 21:40, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
Many editors making edit requests don't have much wikiknowledge, which is why exact change X to Y instructions aren't always included. Making them use a template is only going to make that worse. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 21:56, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
Are we doing this again? The vast majority of those submitting edit requests can't use templates, don't read instructions, and often break the request template itself. Adding more templates continues to be a bad idea. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 22:05, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
Well, maybe we can ditch 2 and 3, but I don't see how recommending it in the policy where such unexperienced editors probably won't read will do much confusion. Aaron Liu (talk) 22:27, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
So then it's just WP:CREEP. Experienced editors will already know how to effectively communicate the change they want. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 22:31, 11 November 2023 (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.
I think it might be helpful to provide sample requests that use different formats. I don't feel it is necessary to recommend one specific way. If those discussing the request think it would be helpful to use a different format, they can do so. isaacl (talk) 22:37, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Sample edit requests covers that, and also provides a good demonstration of why textdiff isn't a great way to present edit requests. It also gets fewer than 5 views a day because no one actually reads the edit request instructions. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 22:44, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
I think more compact examples on the edit request page would be more beneficial. Some edit requests aren't well served by using the {{textdiff}} template, but some are. I agree that any instructions aren't going to be read very often. isaacl (talk) 23:56, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

Remove |sign parmater from Template:ITN candidate

Latest comment: 1 year ago3 comments2 people in discussion

Currently, {{ITN candidate}} has a |sign= parameter that almost everybody uses. However, I don't see why this should be in the template instead of having the proposer just add their signature after the template (which is what this currently displays as) and handling such signatures that are parameters inside the template is quite harder for many discussions scripts to do. For example, Convenient Discussions would mistakenly reply inside the template. I don't see at all why this exists and I want to remove this. However, my topic on this at Template talk:ITN candidate got no replies and I'm not comfortable changing such a widely-used template. What should I do to possibly further this change? Aaron Liu (talk) 22:48, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

Well, I see three options - ask about it on Wikipedia talk:In the news (since it's only often-used, not actually widely-used); quietly remove it and {{{nom cmt}}} from the examples in the documentation and stick "<!-- Your reasons go here --> ~~~~" after the template code, since the template will still work if those fields are left empty; or just remove it and wait for the angry reversion. I'm all for the third; auto-signing templates are a plague, and required "reason" fields that just show up outside the main template output anyway are almost as bad. If you do remove it, you get to clean up unsigned uses of it on WP:ITNC until people get used to it. —Cryptic 23:23, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
it's only often-used, not actually widely-used Not true, every single current nomination at WP:ITN/C uses the parameter. I've started a discussion at WT:ITN, thanks for the suggestion! Aaron Liu (talk) 02:33, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

Develop an RfC to reduce the advocacy from the Find sources module

Latest comment: 1 year ago2 comments1 person in discussion

We have a major problem with WP:ADVOCACY in Module:Find sources/templates/Find sources and, in particular, the associated Template:Find general sources. This is an elephant in the Wikipedia room and a major embarrassment that nobody got around to fixing so far. Work is needed at User:Boud/sandbox/draft RfC Reduce advocacy in Find sources Module to develop the RfC, with an associated talk page. The arguments given against my initial proposal of the RfC were meta-level arguments and the arguments that proposing to reduce advocacy is itself advocacy and that describing the sky as being blue is not neutral. In any case, the aim is to avoid wikilawyering and generously edit the draft and discuss any edits that need discussion. Boud (talk) 22:49, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

Any objections to the current draft RfC 22:26, 15 November 2023 draft RfC at User:Boud/sandbox/draft RfC Reduce advocacy in Find sources Module? Boud (talk) 20:57, 15 November 2023 (UTC) (update) Boud (talk) 23:07, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia Truth-O-Meter

Latest comment: 1 year ago7 comments7 people in discussion

I think people have suggested this before but maybe we have a personality-test style rating scale on each article (1-5) to see how true an article is. It would go False, Slightly True, Half True, Mostly True, True. The result is displayed as a bar graph. I know there's problems with this (bots, spam, people might vote straight away, e.c.t) but with enough polishing out we might have a good system. Maybe we could have a citation system like this too (same scale but majority is displayed) to show which ones are good and which ones might need to be replaced. 99.226.2.176 (talk) 12:57, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

How do you define what is true and who would how "true" the article is? The essays at WP:TRUTH and WP:IKNOWITSTRUE might be applicable. RudolfRed (talk) 14:49, 2 November 2023 (UTC)
This would be way too easy to abuse. QuicoleJR (talk) 17:03, 2 November 2023 (UTC)
So now we also have to define truth? Way too much to ask of volunteers. Edward-Woodrow • talk 20:08, 4 November 2023 (UTC)
We work on the basis of making all articles as true as we can. This sounds like a more agressive version of a POV tag, or some sort of social media "I like this" thing. Our problems are I think mostly about particular statements or sections rather than whole articles. I don't see this working. Johnbod (talk) 02:47, 8 November 2023 (UTC)
Wikipedia articles are supposed to be verifiable from reliable sources; absolute truth is not a philosophical criterion. (Defining reliable sources gets murky though.) To your point though, the most common inaccuracy I see in articles is failed verification of cited material -- for at least half of the cited material in half of articles based on recent random spot checks I've done. (As for uncited material, you shouldn't be trusting it anyway, but we have a banner template for those articles.)
Rather than have users gauge truth of an article based on what from your proposal sounds like their personal feelings (which would be a fun exercise for any remotely political issue), a simpler tool that's already implemented in bits and pieces if you install the extensions on your account (so in other words completely useless to the general public) is to have a citation-reference template that can be scoped to specific paragraphs/sentences/fragments in the text. Then the user can see text flagged by various highlighting: new edits with unreferenced content; changes to scoped material without accompanying changes to the citation text (flagged for oversight), or else moving of citation text or the like; and so on. No rating scale needed. SamuelRiv (talk) 19:41, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
See also Wikipedia:Article Feedback Tool. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:01, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

Stamping out Scams

Latest comment: 1 year ago3 comments3 people in discussion

The series of recent scam reports show that Wikipedia scams are alive and ongoing. There was a small discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Articles for creation § Where should we place the scam warning? that suggested that this issue requires a larger solution than just a disclaimer on the WP:Article Wizard. So I am posting here to raise awareness and bring out ideas.

Recent examples: [5], [6], [7] Ca talk to me! 11:09, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

Why not run banners like the fundraising-drive pleas from Jimbo for a week or two? Garish, sure, but I bet they'd raise the profile of the issue. XOR'easter (talk) 04:35, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
Or continuously, but at a low level. Say, 1% of page views? Or even 0.1%? It could say something like "Business owners: Wikipedia is 100% volunteer and never charges for articles. Don't get fooled by the scammers" and link to the scam warning (or to the WP:BFAQ).
A less-intrusive form would be to put a small note at the end of the Main Page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:35, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

Interactive collages/galleries for articles

Latest comment: 1 year ago3 comments2 people in discussion

Hello. I don't know if this is possible but I propose a way to make galleries more interactive (i.e. infobox collages and/or static gallery sections on articles become more like image slideshows). These slideshows could be linked to Commons categories relating to each topic; Commons galleries, which have a more refined selection of images; and/or manually queue images by adding them into the template. If manually inputted, each image caption could be edited as well. For the linked categories, it could either use the image captions on Wikimedia Commons or one umbrella caption for the template. To sum it up, collages and/or gallery sections on pages could be combined into one interactive thumbnail box which is animated (moves automatically) with the ability to become semi-static for mobile users (move between images with arrows). I have noticed many conflicts in the past about the size of infobox collages and whether gallery sections are notable enough to be included on pages. So this might be a compromise because the size of collages/galleries are limited to standard thumbnails but still include multiple images. Thank you for your time and have a great day! -- DiscoA340 (talk) 14:16, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

@DiscoA340, there's already a slideshow mode. See mw:Talk pages project/Usability#Design for an example. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:15, 18 November 2023 (UTC)
@WhatamIdoing: Many thanks, have a great day! -- DiscoA340 (talk) 16:09, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

Proposal: Make RATER into a Gadget

Latest comment: 1 year ago3 comments2 people in discussion

Basically what it says on the tin, this is a proposal to make User:Evad37/rater, a tool intended to allow experienced users the ability add and/or modify the {{Wikiproject banner shell}} and related Wikiproject class and importance parameters on the talk page of a page.

Making this a gadget would allow for the following:

  • Better maintainence by interface-administrators and/or anyone with access to the wikimedia-gadgets Github org :)
  • Easier installation procedure especially for newer users

Ping @Evad37 as a maintainer of the rater script. Sohom (talk) 19:44, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

This would 1000% need buy in from Evad37 as really the only maintainer, and User:Evad37/rater/app.js would need to be adjusted to a more human-readable presentation. — xaosflux Talk 19:51, 22 November 2023 (UTC)
Agreed, I don't have any intention of pushing this through unless Evad37 agrees. Wrt to the human-readability issue, the source appears to be at github.com/evad37/rater with clear build steps :) Sohom (talk) 19:59, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

I would really appreciate it if we could put the village pump back.

Latest comment: 1 year ago29 comments14 people in discussion

Many moons ago in this village, there was a wonderful picture of a village pump where anyone could go get some fresh sweet Wikipedia water. I miss that pump so much. Look Wikipedians, I know its the future now, its 2023 and all, but what the heck is a village pump page without the village pump? Please all of you fine citizens of this magnificent community, please bring back the famed village pump. JaydenBDarby (talk) 18:59, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

Boldly   Done... I'll see how long it takes for it to be reverted for some reason. Edward-Woodrow (talk) 22:08, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
We are going to PUMP YOU UP! RoySmith (talk) 22:23, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
Thank you very much, Edward-Woodrow! I appreciate it! That fresh, cold Wikipedia water is so good! JaydenBDarby (talk) 01:49, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

Someone downsized our village pump and moved it down the page. The water is going sour, lol. JaydenBDarby (talk) 03:29, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

 
It can only be speculated that, like the modern office water cooler, the village pump must have been a gathering place where dwellers discussed ideas for the improvement of their locale.
That would be this one →, removed without discussion here. I'll admit I kind of miss it too. —Cryptic 23:28, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
(ec) - I agree.
I was thinking that Wikipedia:Village pump should also have an accompanying piece of prose explaining how the town well/village pump was the common gathering place in society.
So I did some quick looking around, and we don't seem to have much on the subject. Noting that Village pump redirects to Well.
And Well#Society_and_culture doesn't say much at all.
I did some google searching, and I'm seriously wondering if an article could be started on this topic... - jc37 23:53, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
Hand pump is a bit better. —Cryptic 00:00, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
About pumps, but not much on the cultural part. I looked at Watering hole, and it has even less. - jc37 00:33, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
I second that, jc37. Let's start an article on that. Make it top shelf, like the Cleopatra article. JaydenBDarby (talk) 03:47, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
I'm game : )
Maybe we should see if we can better expand Well#Society_and_culture. If we can, then we can always split to a separate article. - jc37 15:26, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
Not much more explanation in the sandbox that edit says it's copying from, either. Anomie⚔ 23:43, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
Incidentally both the sandbox editor and the live editor are now under editing restrictions preventing them from repeating the edit (the sandbox editor is banned outright and the live editor is topic-banned from template namespace. * Pppery * it has begun... 00:42, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
Actually that edit was reverted (for reasons unrelated to the image removal). The later removal that stuck was here, calling the image "just simply useless". I'd be inclined to agree. * Pppery * it has begun... 00:42, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
What that edit removed was this. (Non-admins: It irritatingly shuffled through File:Wikipump.jpg, File:Amstetten Württemberg Wasserhahn und Gasleuchte 2008 10 11.jpg, File:Beypazarı Hırkatepe Köy çeşmesi.jpg, File:Village pump in India.jpg, File:John Snow memorial and pub.jpg, File:Thatched water pump at Aylsham, Norfolk.jpg, File:Town pump Vingtaine de la Ville Jersey.jpg, File:Clonakilty County Cork - geograph.org.uk - 209126.jpg, File:Reczna pompa studzienna - rzeszow p.jpg, File:Old manual pump in Crespino, Italy.jpg, File:Dorpspomp te Diepenveen -03.jpg, File:Doel - Water pump 1.jpg, File:Brunnen Rinnen 1569.jpg, and File:Balga, February 2010, Women around the water pump - conversation.jpg.) I'd've been tempted to get rid of it, too; only a couple of the alternates had the gravitas, and none the nostalgia value, of good ol' Wikipump. —Cryptic 01:06, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
I like idea of rotating images of pumps around the world. Drives home the universality of it. Levivich (talk) 01:52, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for the explanation Cryptic. My instinct is to disagree with Levivich; I feel universality is helped by having one common pump. That said, either that or the rotating seems relatively harmless. CMD (talk) 04:21, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
My instinct is to disagree with Levivich - it's a common human instinct. Levivich (talk) 05:33, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
Not mine, though. I like the rotation. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 09:33, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
Thirded. And since it was removed without discussion, see little reason not to just put it back. If someone wants to go through the horrible mess the markup has become... Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.6% of all FPs. 23:42, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
Put the pump back. RoySmith (talk) 14:56, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
I agree! undump the pump!! Sm8900 (talk) 22:39, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

That was terrible. I'll add it back in a proper way later, but in general... please stop using tables for designing pages. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:59, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

It's still incredibly ugly and totally messes with the readability, but at least it's not an accessibility problem this way. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:57, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
I removed it. Mach61 (talk) 19:21, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
I put it back :-) RoySmith (talk) 19:39, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
PS, I get that this isn't the most visually pleasing image. I think we would do well to replace it with one which is both a nicer image and which also emphasizes the historical role of the village pump as a gathering place for communication and discourse. I've been looking through commons:Category:Village pumps but haven't found any good candidates yet. Anybody see any good ones we could use? RoySmith (talk) 15:32, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
Yeah, I heartily agree with you RoySmith but I was not about to complain as the image WAS placed there for me after I asked for the village pump to please be reinstated. JaydenBDarby (talk) 20:54, 22 November 2023 (UTC)
How about the Clonakilty County Cork village pump? JaydenBDarby (talk) 21:00, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

General bias in all articles about "2023 Israel–Hamas war"

Latest comment: 11 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Hello,

I want to express my analysis of the impression that the articles, their titles and their sources give me about this war between the state of Israel and the Palestinian resistance factions, since the operations carried out by the Palestinians on October 7, 2023.

Indeed, this war, which is the continuation and consequence of 75 years of colonization, dispossession and humiliation of the Palestinian people by Zionist groups, then by the state of Israel, via its army and its forces of Order and security, as well as by settlers in occupied areas, must be treated in a fair and balanced manner, taking into account the reality of both camps.

The versions of the belligerents can be considered non-neutral, since they seek to justify their action. Therefore, the media in countries at war cannot be considered neutral, especially if they support a war-torn government. However, as Western governments have decided to uncritically support the version of events delivered by Israel, and as the major Western media have decided to repeat these versions without doing too much fact checking (at least, this is the perception of many criticism of the media treatment of this conflict).

In fact, the reader's impression, when we see the caution of uncertainty when the abuses target the Gaza Strip, and attributed in part by some to Israel, compared to the certainty of the information in relation to the acts committed by Palestinian factions on October 7. In summary, by bringing together the different perceptions, we see that most of the articles and the different points of view discussed only relay the points of view from the Israeli side and their inherent narrative. However, this denies Israel's history of occupation of the Palestinian territories. Since several Western media relay the Israeli point of view, the use of these sources will make the texts biased. Let us not add another layer of unconditional support to the story of an oppressive state suspected of having committed several intentional crimes against innocent civilian populations. Let's not forget that Wikipedia is a source of information for the general public, but also a source of information for journalists. Likewise, the fact of writing these versions makes it possible to legitimize the reasoning of one camp or the other.

Thank you in advance, this was my perception of the current state of treatment of the conflict on the English Wikipedia.

--Anas1712 (talk) 02:11, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

Could you give some specific examples of bias and how you would suggest they could be improved? – Joe (talk) 05:40, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

Editnotice on all mainspace talk pages?

Latest comment: 11 months ago7 comments5 people in discussion

I've noticed that sometimes IPs or new editors create mainspace talk pages that appear to be articles about the corresponding subject, which I usually tag with WP:G8. Presumably, these editors go through the process of: looking up subject and finding page does not exist -> try to create page but is blocked by software -> realises that they can create talk page -> creates article there.

I wonder if it would be worth the effort to create a namespace-wide edit notice for all mainspace talk pages suggesting the new editor to use the WP:AFC process instead. The message would be something along the lines of "If you are here because you want to create an article about [insert page title], please use the Wikipedia:Articles for creation process instead."

I do admit that I have doubts about whether this would be that useful, since firstly, there aren't many such cases (I would estimate less than a dozen per day), and secondly, people might not read it due to banner blindness. Any suggestions? Liu1126 (talk) 11:14, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

I am against creating a edit notice due to banner blindness, but maybe we can get ArticleCreationWorkflow (which is what WP:ACTRIAL uses) to do two things:
- Show MediaWiki:searchmenu-new-nocreate when searching for Talk pages (if the user meets ACTRIAL restrictions)
- Remove the Talk: header tab in the WP:LANDING display when creating a new page. Sohom (talk) 12:54, 23 November 2023 (UTC)
Note having a notice on every Talk namespace page would exacerbate banner blindness, such that the effectiveness of existing Talk page notices would get diminished. Thus absent more info on the frequency of the issue, I do not feel this scenario warrants an edit notice. isaacl (talk) 16:31, 23 November 2023 (UTC)
  • It is not uncommon for editors to create “draft” articles in their userspace so that they can work on them at leisure. I have several attached to my userspace. If someone creates one in the talk page of an article in Mainspace, I would simply move it to the creator’s userspace. Blueboar (talk) 18:14, 23 November 2023 (UTC)
    Would preventing the creation of such talk pages not be a better solution (since for new editors, these will need to go through AFC anyway)? Note, I'm also not in favour of editnotices, but some kind of software hack (such as the one I proposed) would be useful. Sohom (talk) 18:17, 23 November 2023 (UTC)
    I agree with User:Blueboar; userfying such creations is simple and elegant, and avoids adding to banner blindness. Donald Albury 21:06, 23 November 2023 (UTC)
  • Also, in the early years of WP, when an article needed a major rewrite, it was common for editors to set up a “draft” page in talk, so they could work on a new version of the article behind the scenes (in “talk” space) without disrupting what faced the “public” in Mainspace. When done, they simply copied and pasted their end product into Mainspace and moved the “draft” page to talk archives to maintain a record of who contributed what. In such cases there is no single “creator” to move the “draft” to… and it is best left in the article’s talkspace.
In short, you need to ask why the “draft” exists - who started it and who worked on it, and whether it was part of the article’s history and development. Blueboar (talk) 01:46, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

Deprecating Wikipedia:Changing username

Latest comment: 11 months ago6 comments5 people in discussion

SUL has been a thing for almost a decade. Is there a reason why we have our own rename page? Renaming is truly a global function; Special:GlobalRenameRequest is easier if you have an email address, and m:SRUC works if you don't. From my POV, it is just a redundant layer of bureaucracy.

On the other hand, Wikipedia:Changing username/Usurpations is at the very least different from m:Steward requests/Username changes#Requests involving merges, usurps or other complications (one week versus one-month waiting period), but is there a reason we need to have two separate venues? It probably would be easier for stewards to reduce the waiting period at meta if it would have qualified for a usurp here (if there is a reason to keep the shorter waiting period). HouseBlastertalk 02:55, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

May be because for local users it is much easier to go to a local page than to some project completely alien to them? Ruslik_Zero 20:30, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
Probably? In any case, Special:GlobalRenameRequest can be done locally. I would guess (though you would know better than I do) the set of users who (a) do not have an email attached to their account, (b) want to change their username, and (c) do not wish to even edit metawiki is fairly small (or, at least, not large enough to outweigh the added CREEP). HouseBlastertalk 23:13, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
Or perhaps they're blocked at Meta-Wiki. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:45, 18 November 2023 (UTC)
Yes, the main purpose of the page is to serve users without an email attached. I'm indifferent to removal or keeping it, FWIW. — Frostly (talk) 03:35, 22 November 2023 (UTC)
If you're serious about deprecating it, WP:BN is the place. But last I heard there were still occasionally situations that called for a local rename. Andre🚐 06:02, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

Original Research Noticeboard is a gray hole

Latest comment: 11 months ago31 comments17 people in discussion

It appears that the Original Research Noticeboard doesn't have a community of volunteers, and that no one responds to concerns and complaints at it. I became aware of this problem when I referred a dispute from DRN to NORN to it about three weeks ago. See Wikipedia:No_original_research/Noticeboard#Hickory_Wind. After not seeing responses, I invited the editors to discuss at NORN, and they discussed, and did not get any third-party input. I had to start an RFC to address their question. Content noticeboards should exist so as to resolve disputes, or at least to provide some input. I hadn't previously sent a content dispute to NORN, and so I assumed naively that, like RSN and NPOVN, it might sometimes provide third-party input. I then mentioned this at WP:AN, although I knew that wasn't the place to do anything about the problem, and it was discussed: Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Archive355#Original_Research_Noticeboard. The suggestions there were that maybe we should combine it with the Neutral Point of View Noticeboard, which does have activity. I think that we have semi-agreement that something needs to be done, but that what needs to be done needs to be discussed and semi-agreed on. The simplest, but maybe not best, idea is to ask the submitters to go either to NPOVN for biased articles, or to the Fringe Theory Noticeboard for crackpottery, and we do have biased articles, and crackpottery, and we need to deal with them. So what should we do about synthesis amounting to original research that isn't obviously wrong, just not sourced? Robert McClenon (talk) 23:00, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

We should roll the low traffic content noticeboards into WP:NPORINGEN. NPOV, fringe, OR, and SYNTH are all intertwined and would benefit from a deeper pool of watchers. This is also why niche boards for closure reviews and admin action review aren't great. Few watchers, little traffic, little input. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 23:15, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
Someone mentioned at WP:AN that there once was a Content Noticeboard, which is hibernating, marked historical, and was implying that we could wake it up and merge the content noticeboards, except for BLPN, into it. There was a mention of the Reliable Source Noticeboard. I don't consider it to be a content noticeboard, because sources are where the content comes from. So the idea was to migrate NPOVN, FTN, and NORN into CNB. That seems like a reasonable first cut in my opinion. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:42, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
Some stats for this past year:
  • WP:NORN: edits: ~1100; pageviews / day: ~95
  • WP:FTN: edits: ~4300; pageviews / day: ~230
  • WP:NPOVN: edits: ~3750; pageviews / day: ~183
  • WP:VPI: edits: ~5150; pageviews / day: ~257
  • WP:AN: xtools times out
Folly Mox (talk) 02:07, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
BLPN ~11000 views in the past 30 days, RSN ~22700 views. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 02:14, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
WP:AN 14920 edits in the last 365 days with 1321 views/day; WP:ANI 51698 edits and 3295 views/day. —Cryptic 06:23, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
Low traffic isn't inherently a problem. If an issue only comes up occasionally, then it only needs to be discussed occasionally. We only have one or two RfBs a year and nobody is talking about shutting down. The problem comes if, when an issue does come up, not enough people are there to provide third opinions, because then the noticeboard isn't fulfilling its purpose. But you can't judge that from traffic stats. – Joe (talk) 10:22, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
RfB is a very weird example in this context: Wikipedia:Requests for bureaucratship has redirected to Wikipedia:Requests for adminship since it was created in 2004. If it were a separate page today, it's very likely people would advocate merging the two because there are so few requests and having two separate pages just splits the attention each gets.
In the case of WP:NORN, this thread was begun because at least one person did experience a problem with not getting attention to a query there. Low traffic might not inherently be a problem, but if someone is reporting a problem for which low traffic is a likely cause, data on the page traffic seems like fairly useful information to bring to the discussion! Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 14:36, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
Lack of function (ORN) and low traffic (the other boards being dragged in) are two separate issues and not necessarily linked, is what I'm saying. – Joe (talk) 08:26, 15 November 2023 (UTC)
Wikipedia:External links/Noticeboard is my favorite noticeboard. It is low traffic, usually friendly, and editors can realistically expect to get a sound response within a day. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:00, 18 November 2023 (UTC)
Thank you for the stats, User:Folly Mox and User:Cryptic. WP:NORN has the fewest edits of any of those noticeboards. More importantly, as User:Caeciliusinhorto-public says, I posted to NORN and did not get an answer. I then saw that most of the other threads were not answered. The traffic stats do not distinguish between questions and answers. I am not aware of a way to distinguish between questions and answers other than human examination of the threads. At this time, on 14 November, I see that there are 13 threads, including mine, and that 5 of them have not been answered, including mine. There is one thread that the Original Poster has "bumped" three times due to lack of response. I am not sure, but would guess that the underlying problem is that NORN does not have a community of regular editors who answer questions. I know that RSN does have its own community, and that it appears that most of the other boards do. As User:Joe Roe says, low traffic isn't inherently a problem, but too few editors who answer questions (as opposed to asking questions) is the problem. We don't have as easy a way to measure that, but there is a problem. WP:NORN is where questions about original research go to be ignored. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:38, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
I'm not sure a centralised notice board will actually help. OR and NPOV issues tend to be much more complicated than giving opinions on reliable sources, and about much lower interest articles than seen on BLPN. Easily sorted NPOV and OR issues tend to end up at ANI before one of the notice boards. So the issues that end up at the board are messy, complex, and require effort and time to start to be able to offer any advice. Centralising the boards may just see the OR and NPOV threads going unanswered there instead, how to encourage editors to take part is going to be the issue. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 18:46, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
OR questions might be better addressed at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Example & friends, since OR sometimes requires a degree of topic area knowledge. A combination board seems like it would be better than the current situation though. Does anyone in favour of combining the boards want to notify WT:FTN and WT:NPOVN to see if the folks there have any input on that idea? Folly Mox (talk) 21:40, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
I've dropped notices on FTN, NPOVN, and NOR. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 22:01, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
I think I said this before, but part of the issue is simply posting a link to where discussion has happened, rather than seeking a fresh discussion on NORN. I am far less likely to help resolve an issue if I have to go to a different talk page and participate there, rather than be given a brief summary and starting the discussion fresh in front of a larger audience. And a lot of NORN posts tend to be pointers than fresh discussions. Masem (t) 21:58, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
Noticeboards can be expected to serve that main purpose though, to bring attention to current events under their scope, rather than being discussion forums (although related discussions can certainly take place and in the case of places like RSN, community polls, etc.) I can understand that if it doesn't receive enough attention, a poster may feel that their notices are fruitless. This last part of my post is not necessarily in response to you and is likely already obvious, but just a reminder that I wanted to keep in the same comment: a main difference between canvassing and a board notice is that canvassing attempts to gather the attention of select editors, when the noticeboard is for a more general public notice in relation to general WP policy (like if the issue involves original research or synthesis, in this particular case). —PaleoNeonate – 01:37, 15 November 2023 (UTC)
Yes, I'm not talking about canvassing issues; using NORN to drop a link (of many) to an RFC at a central location that includes NOR aspects is absolutely fair. I am speaking when, after a local talk page debate that ends up nowhere, that a single notice is posted to NORN to ask for input at that talk page. I'd rather see the summary and further discussion on NORN for when a local page issue required further input. Masem (t) 02:21, 15 November 2023 (UTC)
I'm not talking about canvassing issues I agree, it was a general side note. My impression of the general scope is the lack of popularity or participation at the particular noticeboard. However, it's still common practice to use them to bring attention to the main article's discussion. Because it's very recent, FTN's "Muscovy duck" could be used as an example: (warning: this is a permalink for the archives, anyone editing should update the page first) there was some on-noticeboard reaction, but the more serious discussion really happens at the article's talk page, where consensus is also likely to be evaluated in the future for the outcome). Local consensus issues also exist, but noticeboards also help to mitigate that (if they manage to gather community attention, of course)... The summary or closure can sometimes be posted at the noticeboard and it may be good practice where possible, but I don't see that often except at administrator noticeboards or RFCs. It may be worth encouraging, perhaps? —PaleoNeonate – 07:06, 19 November 2023 (UTC)
Original research means claims that are lacking reliable sources. It is essentially a reliable sourcing problem. RSN would be the best place to discuss original research. Sennalen (talk) 05:05, 15 November 2023 (UTC)
For clarity, OR means claims that have never been published in any reliable source, including uncited sources. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:59, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia:No original research is structurally just sort of an explanatory essay and expansion on some aspects of Wikipedia:Verifiability. A WP:Nor violation is just a WP:Ver violation. WP:Ver permeates nearly every aspect of Wikipedia, is written to be slam-dunk for many situations and any "gray area" discussions inevitably involve or revolve around something more specific like WP:RSN, behavior issues, process issues etc. etc.. For these reasons, just as with WP:Ver, I don't see a noticeboard being useful/viable. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 22:10, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

That's not really a view that we take, as NOR is a core content policy. Further, SYNTH is not something covered under WP:V. Masem (t) 02:10, 15 November 2023 (UTC)
SYNTH is covered under WP:V, because SYNTHd content is not actually verifiable. We just explain it in detail over at the NOR page.
Years ago, there was a more significant distinction, namely:
  • Original research is when the thing you wrote is something you personally made up and wasn't published anywhere, not even on USENET, and
  • Unverifiable is when the thing you wrote might have been published somewhere, but there aren't any reliable sources for it.
Now, OR is defined as no reliable source has ever been published anywhere in the world, in any language, about this, and unverifiable is defined as no currently accessible extant reliable source anywhere in the world (including sources not yet cited in the article) says this. They are basically synonyms. We've just split the explanation up across two pages. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:52, 18 November 2023 (UTC)
A merger has been rejected before Mach61 (talk) 05:39, 15 November 2023 (UTC)
As User:Masem points out, there are at least two different types of original research issues. Regular original research is a verifiability issue, but synthesis amounting to original research is more complicated, because it normally involves at least two reliable sources, from which an editor draws a conclusion that is not directly in either of the sources. Synthesis is not a matter of the reliability of the sources. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:46, 16 November 2023 (UTC)
There are also WP:STICKTOSOURCE issues, where interpretation of just one source may involve some aspect of OR, and potentially hit a grey area between re-interpretation and the rewriting we are meant to do. CMD (talk) 05:46, 16 November 2023 (UTC)
I agree with Robert that "Synthesis is not a matter of the reliability of the sources"; it is a matter of straight-up verifiability. Content that is not in any source (e.g., a conclusion drawn by an editor that is not directly in either of the cited sources, nor in any others) is a case of {{failed verification}}. That we have a special name and detailed description for this particular method of content failing to be verifiable does not change the fact that the content is not verifiable.
Perhaps one misunderstanding is this idea that sources are "always" (or never) reliable. A source's reliability cannot be judged unless you know the content it is being cited in support of. I could imagine less-experienced editors thinking that WP:V is primarily about how to identify low-quality sources, but even the most excellent source, if it is cited in support of material it does not even mention, is a failure of verifiability. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:57, 18 November 2023 (UTC)
My comment was more as structural background/context in order to reflect on the noticeboard issue, (including explaining it's non-use) not to get into some bigger issue between the two policies. I'll stand by my comment that A WP:Nor violation is just a WP:Ver violation because structurally WP:VER sourcing requirements inherently exclude synthesis as a means of compliance. Similarly for research etc. that is not covered is wp:ver-suitable sources. And wp:NOR has some good stuff in it which is unique to wp:Nor, I didn't say otherwise. I called it "just sort of an explanatory essay and expansion on some aspects of Wikipedia:Verifiability" in my comment which started this subthread but within that (admittedly arguable) characterization there is a lot of good and important stuff that is not in WP:VER. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 16:42, 16 November 2023 (UTC)
  • I'm looking at it and it has 50 pages of archives and 11 active topics in the last 2 days so, not a lack of activity or want for lack of activity, and I don't think merging or combining noticeboards (or policies) is the answer. Some more organization like a task force or wikiproject is a good idea, but someone has to lead it and someone has to participate. Could it be maybe that the world and people's lives are a little nutty right now across the board, causing backlogs to rise? A backlog drive is an idea that people sometimes participate in, but not if there's no energy or appetite. One option is something like the "RFC solicit bots" but for a random un-addressed noticeboard posting. Andre🚐 06:10, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

Allow Page Movers to delete insignificant redirects

Latest comment: 11 months ago4 comments3 people in discussion

When I am working WP:RMTR I often run into redirects that have just a few insignificant revision history entries that always require a round robin page swap. I know these can be mostly semi-automated now but they still make a mess of everything. I think page movers should be allowed to delete redirects with trivial history to facilitate page moves better. My general idea is that on redirects page movers would have access to the "delete" button directly if the redirect has never gone above a certain byte count. They wouldn't have access to deleted revisions or anything like that which I know would be a concern. This idea basically boils down to expanding the delete redirect user right to allow PMs to use the delete button directly on multi-revision redirects. Seawolf35 T--C 16:07, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

I think this needs stricter definitions of what "trivial" edit histories mean. Sohom (talk) 21:49, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
If they don't have access to deleted revisions, then they can't undelete if they make a mistake, which seems a bit of an issue. Why couldn't this be solved with a speedy deletion criterion, or just doing it under G6? Seraphimblade Talk to me 22:24, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
In my definition, ""trivial" edit history is a redirect that has less than a certain number of revisions, say 5, and never has gone over a certain byte count, basically making sure it would have never gone above the byte count that would be a redirect + rcat tag. PMs could have access to deleted revisions of deletions done by other PMs so they could undelete. Seawolf35 T--C 22:35, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
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