Wikipedia talk:Keep Wikipedia-related metadata out of articles

Metadata: tagging instead of removal

All of Category:Wikipedia maintenance templates is basically metadata in article space. It is in article and not talk space because nobody reads talk pages (and {{NPOV}} and {{totallydisputed}} are there to warn the user). I agree that all Wikipedia-related metadata should be clearly marked as such to make it as easy as possible for content reusers to not use it. We should perhaps communicate with content reusers better than we do now, so stupid things like this or this do not happen. I don't think we should delete {{deletedpage}} just because answers.com is stupid, but come up with a smarter solution to mark metadata for content reusers (and tell content reusers how we do that). Kusma (討論) 23:30, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Object

I strongly object to this proposal becomeing a policy, guideline, or anything that would allow the removal of multitudes of tools useful for this project (Wikipedia) in order to benefit the mirrors/forks/copycats/whatever. Our purpose is to built a best encyclopedia. If others want to copy our work, sure, why not, but I don't see any point in making Wikipedia worse so they can have an easier life. Let them create a giant community, gather support and rewrite Wikipedia/MediaWiki/whatver for that. And let us concentrate on building an encyclopedia.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 20:53, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

There is nothing done with these metadata templates that cannot be done more elegantly on the talk page, or with extensions to mediawiki that would make removal easy. Raul654 21:08, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Would it be possible to imagine a mediawiki extension which could detect the presence of a given tag on the talk page when the article itself is displayed, and which would display the FA star (for example) ? Otherwise, which extensions did you have in mind ? More generally, I agree with Piotr against a general policy; we should be careful with the metadata, but when it benefits Wikipedia, it should be allowed. Users don't look at talk pages (neither do I most of the time) for information such as FA status, neither should they have to. Schutz 13:41, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

As a regular contributor to the Spoken Wikipedia project, I strongly object to this proposal being made policy. Removal from an article's main page of any link to it's spoken version would render the spoken version effectively invisible to most Wikipedia users. Questions of how metadata templates affect the appearance of article pages should be solved by constructive dialogue with the participants of the projects responsible, not blanket measures like this. -- Macropode 08:10, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. Mirrors and forks are free to use our content--and this includes the article narrations that the Spoken WP project members put so much love into, incidentally-- but the burden of processing out the metadata that makes the main WP functional and efficient should fall on them. I certainly don't think that WP should hinder their work, but I do see a limit to the amount of help we can and should provide. In other words, I think the benefit of the metadata as it exists now outweighs the cost of the disruption it provides to Wiki derivations.

I also agree with Macropode that a more finessed approach is in order. It's true that sweeping policies make a nice, standardized wiki, BUT at what expense? The very nature of the wiki means that thousands of minds from innumerable cultures are proposing ideas and improvements. Can broad policies really be depended upon to anticipate the direction of all of these contributions in a non-harmful and responsible way? I'm skeptical of it.

I think current wiki policy has done an admirable job of placing templates in the appropriate place as discreetly as possible. WP is a free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. If our motto encourages people to just walk up to the project and dive in, we need a way to give newcomers and visitors information about the articles they're reading, and simple access to accompanying media, etc. The templates on the article page do this. We can't trust people who don't know WP to consult Talk pages. Honestly, how many of us can say we honestly read every Talk page before the article? BUT templates like NPOV can alert one that there's something worth reading on the Talk page if one cares to look. Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia. and , to quote from the page I've just linked to,

Casual Web surfers are quick to jump to other pages. To keep their attention, Wikipedia needs to offer the information they expect as fast as possible. A well-structured, well-hyperlinked article helps them do just that. As a consequence, care should be taken to present the information in a way that is as easy to use as possible. [emphasis mine]

One of the wonderful things about WP is that it's online and can therefore take advantage of tools like templates and linked media files right on the article pages. Why deprive the wiki of these advantages? I understand that there are efforts to publish WP in a print and CD version, but there are also teams dedicated to those projects. Can't they clean articles internally? It seems like they could use bots in their projects to automatically search for strings like {{NPOV}} and remove them in their archives without actually changing the main WP. Ckamaeleon ((T)) 10:40, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

I also agree. I think I understand what this proposal is driving at. However, rather than an across-the-board of all information that isn't strictly article content, we need to examine each piece or type of metadata and determine whether its value on the article page itself outweighs the trouble in removing it in a copy. Some information is extremely helpful to readers, and really isn't discussion of the article either. Simply removing everything that is not literally article content is a little too drastic for me. A better approach might be to debate each individual "metadata" item on the pages, in their respective spaces, such as Raul654 did with the Spoken Wikipedia icon (there may be other examples that I don't know about). It takes more work, but this way we can ensure that we're not removing anything that actually does make sense on that page. -- Laura S | talk to me 15:02, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

• I also strongly object. The metadata is easy to spot and follows a standard format, so content copiers can find ways to get around it if they want. I don't think that they should want to eliminate the metadata, though. Tags like "fact", "NPOV", and such are important warnings that articles are incomplete or otherwise open to debate. They are vital to the integrity and reliability of the articles.--M@rēino 19:41, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Persondata

Does Wikipedia:Persondata fall under the scope of this proposal? --Spangineer^[es] (háblame) 18:14, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

There are at least three types of metadata: deal with them individually!

• 'Metadata primarily to help the reader: Spoken, featured articles, interwiki links. Tell the reader something useful about the article they are reading (available in other languages or forms e.g. audio; badge of quality in the case of FAs)
• Metadata primarily to help the editors: e.g. stub types (usually there to attract the attention of editors rather than to inform those who are looking at the page), the "undergoing a major edit" warning notice, deletion notices, post-deletion protection notices.
• Metadata that is hidden and is primarily meant to help machine-reading content reusers: e.g. persondata may eventually be used by search engines to find birth and death dates and locations. Probably not best regarded as a link to Wikipedia.

Warnings about current events, NPOV, citation or other content disputes etc are hard to class: they serve a variety of purposes, and although they often say a lot about Wikipedia politics, may also be useful for readers.

These cases deserve individual analysis. Metadata there primarily to help the reader, even if unhelpful to content reusers, should pretty clearly (judging by the consensus here) be kept but marked in some way as a self-reference. This needs to be defined pretty tightly - general article classification probably shouldn't be kept, but the F.A. star represents the results of an intensive quality improvement and assessment process so probably should be. The machine-readable metadata is in my opinion one of the most exciting things on the Wikipedia and in 10 years time it may be this metadata that Wikipedia is most useful for other content providers.

By contrast, things there primarily to help the editors probably belong mostly on the talk page. Page protection notices: certainly should be dealt with better. Stub templates: I'd say move to talk page (just like requests for images, why not requests for expansion? What does a reader gain by seeing "I am a stub" in a page?). The same goes for the "undergoing editing" template, although admittedly not everyone will notice it if it's on the talk page, I don't see why readers should be subjected to it. What about "nominated for deletion" notices? It's probably fair enough they are on the front, they do serve some benefit to readers (who probably interpret it as "the page you're looking at is liable to be rubbish, please don't take it seriously") and given that the content may be just days away from disappearing forever, a notice on the page probably isn't too drastic.

So, how about "Keep metadata intended purely for editors out of articles"? I would run with that proposal and I expect some of the opposition above would also. Would anybody be too unhappy if I edited the proposal to reflect this? TheGrappler 00:23, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Wow Grappler, you got right at what I was trying (ineloquently) to say above. Namely, that there are various types of metadata, and while some of them are probably better moved to the talk page, some of them are best kept right there with the article. I agree with your comments and would be a lot more likely to support this proposal if you made the edits you're suggesting. My only concern is that, as you were hinting, it's not always easy to draw a clear line. But, if the proposal in its edited form were to gain more support, perhaps then would be the time to work out the details. -- Laura S | talk to me 01:21, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

That's a very useful distinction, and at the very least it belongs in non-talk space. I'd tentatively agree that it is the editor-related matadate that is our largest concern, but I think stubs are a bad example: intentionally or not, they now serve the purpose or reminding newcomers that they too can edit this aticle (you can help Wikipedia by editing this article...). From my personal experience, two other kinds of metadate I tend to see used in the articles are 1) {{fact}} and {{dubious}}, both of which are mostly used for editors, although they need to be kept in text to be useful, and 2) your standard NPOV/copyedit/wikify templates, which again serve both editors and users. I wonder if I missing something, but I just don't see any large category of metadate, now used in articles, that 'needs to go'.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 02:56, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Here's a thought, but I don't know how feasible it is: What if the template (monobook??) for pages put metadata for editors in a sidebar...maybe under the items on the left column? (I can't imagine having a second one on the right...) I think while we're at it, it would also be useful to find a way to keep editors' metadata off the print-friendly view/printable version. It occurred to me that maybe if we find a way to strip the printable version of this editor-oriented metadata, then reusers could pull those pages directly for their purposes and the editors tags on the main wiki are reserved. Does this make sense? Again, I think that it might not work out if the code isn't amenable to being written that way...but it was a possibility. Ckamaeleon ((T)) 16:48, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

I think you've missed the point. The point is not to avoid/rearrange how it is displayed, because it would still make our database difficult for re-users to use; the point it to seperate them out (by putting them on the talk page, for example) so that it is not there to cause problems.

Alternatively, I'd be less concerned if it was uniformly tagged and filtered dumps were available, but I seriously doubt that is ever going to happen. Raul654 01:34, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Actually I would totally support tagging metadata as such. It would take more of a concerted effort than Wikipedia might be up to, but so far that's the only solution I've seen that takes care of your desire to provide a metadata-free text, and the opponents' desire to have certain metadata still residing on the article page. By the way, even though I oppose this particular proposal in its current incarnation, I do support what seems to be your underlying goal, which is a "cleaned up" wikipedia where articles are articles, and everything else is everything else.

It almost seems there should be an additional section; right now we're debating whether metadata belongs on article or discussion. But really, most metadata is neither. It would be nice to have a separate tab, or a separate box in the left sidebar, specifically set aside for metadata (although not all metadata necessarily belongs together). I know, what a cute dream. -- Laura S | talk to me 19:41, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Would the modifications to the print-view that I've described qualify it as a filtered dump if it were downloaded to a reuser's server? Ckamaeleon ((T)) 19:02, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

No. The key is to remove metadata from the wiki-text. All other changes are cosmetic and useless. Raul654 19:08, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Redundant?

I've been away from Wikipedia for a little while, but I was curious to see how the Spoken Wikipedia project was going, which I've contributed to in the past. Snooping around there led me here.

First, it's nice to see that most people here are giving detailed reasons for their opinions, so that anyone who disagrees with their conclusions can point out exactly what they disagree with (and what they agree with).

Now, I was interested by Macropode's interpretation of this proposed policy. I'm not sure if that interpretation was intended, but I see nothing in the wording of the proposal to deny this. However, if this interpretation is correct, then it must also be the case that the proposal suggests removing the links to equivalent articles in other languages; after all, these links are also metadata that sully the source code of the article just as much as the {{Spoken Wikipedia}} template does. If this really is intended, then it affects almost every article on Wikipedia, and it really should be discussed by more people than seem to be currently aware of this proposal.

I hope it was not intended, but before you go to the bother of trying to reword this proposal to clarify it; we may not need to bother. Feel free to correct me, but I can't see any reason that this proposal isn't just a proposal to modify the established guide called Wikipedia:Avoid self-references. In an earlier discussion, Raul654 pointed out this guide. Surely any changes to that guide should be discussed there, rather than by making a new proposal.

Unsurprisingly, the consensus at Avoid self-references is reasonably similar to what seems to be the emerging consensus here, with perhaps a few exceptions, like the policy regarding stubs. At any rate, the general idea is that self-referential metadata should generally be avoided, but there are acceptable uses of it, including linking an article to another version of itself.

Should we abandon this proposed policy, and discuss relevant changes at Avoid self-references? T J McKenzie 03:35, 1 July 2006 (UTC)