Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)

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The policy section of the village pump is used to discuss already proposed policies and guidelines and to discuss changes to existing policies and guidelines.

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Utterly badly sourced business articles

I observed somewhere over a decade ago how Articles for deletion was often approaching People, bands, and businesses for deletion. This is still true today. I wonder whether we can relieve some of the pressure on the AFD process, and on volunteers, with a modification of policy.

Consider the likes of Industrial Fasteners Institute (AfD discussion) It has stood for 12 years (and a few hours!) with its only source ever being the business's own WWW site. Or there's Imagine Sports (AfD discussion) which has stood for 16 years with two "official web site"s and an "official blog".

Should we encourage a presumption of deletion, or perhaps greater use of the proposed deletion process, for articles on business where they cite no other sources than the business's own direct publications? We have the proposed deletion of biographies of living people process for biographies with no independent reliable sources, perhaps we need a similar mechanism for utterly badly sourced business articles, where we demand at least something other than company self-published histories and "about" pages.

(I'd agree with the deletion of business articles sourced to nothing other that the business's own publications, and press releases in other publications; but I think that that's another discussion. And similarly, I notice that people are addressing the undisclosed paid editing through other means. That's another discussion, too. It's the plethora of business articles that are basically vehicles for company website links that I think that we could address.)

Thoughts?

Uncle G (talk) 11:17, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

• I'd agree. But it should apply to all articles about anything. Which is better, a badly-sourced article that might or might not be accurate but nobody cares enough to source it, or no article? Does WP:BURDEN not apply to article creation as much as to its content? Maybe we need a WP:NOEXCEPTIONS policy. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 18:49, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
  • Many of the older ones are actually fine, they originated in the days when sourcing was optional but derived from respectable sources such as other encyclopedias. Espresso Addict (talk) 02:33, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
    • That claim is currently not verifiable, and the longer the cites stagnate the less tenable it becomes. Again, I draw your attention to WP:BURDEN. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 07:29, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
      • As I've said in various fora of late, if we all just referenced articles instead of wasting breath discussing how to delete them the encyclopedia would be a great deal better served. Espresso Addict (talk) 10:03, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
• Undersourced businesses are already prod staples, I don't think any more encouragement is needed, and there's a big difference between non-profit societies/organisations and for-profit companies. Espresso Addict (talk) 02:33, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
  • I disagree. WP:N and WP:V apply equally to all subjects. RoySmith (talk) 14:52, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

After the recent changes to WP:NCORP, the standards for for-profit companies are higher than for non-profit bodies such as academic societies – which just have to be national/international in scope & meet GNG – rather than having to meet the new elevated standards for companies. Espresso Addict (talk) 23:36, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

• "nobody cares enough to source it" includes those trying to delete it, in many cases. The "BURDEN" is WP:BEFORE. A lack of sources in an article does not mean there are a lack of sources. Wikipedia itself is not a reliable source for determining if a topic is notable. Many editors don't look beyond Wikipedia. This is a common problem at AfD. -- GreenC 15:07, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
  • That sword cuts both ways. Many editors have not gone beyond corporate promotional blurbs when creating articles, and not only is this a problem at AFC this is a worse problem in the encyclopaedia. Vehicles for corporate WWW site links like International Labmate Ltd (AfD discussion), which had even more external links to the company's various WWW sites in its older versions than it has now, are littered throughout the encyclopaedia. Uncle G (talk) 17:29, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

That company won The King's Awards for Enterprise, the UK's highest business award, in 1996. It could actually be notable if one knew the right places to look for coverage. Espresso Addict (talk) 01:07, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

The most slam-dunk case is articles on businesses. If the above example one went to AFD, it would be an easy fail or if there is advocate for the article they will need to quickly find and add GNG sources. But for those years nobody even questioned it. Sports articles are a lot tougher. Since in sports, coverage itself a form of entertainment (rather than the typical criteria to receive coverage) and has lots of fan clubs in Wikipedia, and whoever takes it to AFD will get beat up for not first searching for the missing sources. Edge case bands always end up as edge cases because there is a lot of edge case coverage situations. (interviews etc.) Finally, the typical mechanics of the Wikipedia system are that WP:Ver is a way to remove content and not directly a criteria for existence of an article. Theoretically, if GNG sources exist that aren't in the article it can be kept. So if it's a sports article with no substantive sources from a place when the media is non-english in a different character set, it's arguable that you need to have someone fluent in the language/character set to search to show no suitable coverage in order to delete it. Bottom line, I don't think that anything that speeds up the simplest cases is going to do much. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 15:35, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

• This is why I asked specfically about businesses, and about a specifically identifiable set of business articles, at that. This isn't setting out to solve the world's problems, just to address one thing to see whether there's a way to make things incrementally better. And I think that there's a good case to be made that if we already apply the just one reliable independent source criterion to biographies, we can apply it to businesses. Indeed, we already do that and more to business articles at AFC.

  So maybe we should close this hole in our standards and require that as a simple uniform minimum across the article namespace too: at least one reliable independent source in the article for a business. We decide that we don't host external linkfarms for corporate WWW sites for 15 years like, say, Forsythe Technology or Nisco Invest.

  Uncle G (talk) 17:29, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

• Nowadays, these wouldn't make it through our excellent if overloaded NPP process. The community might be minded to enact WP:CSD#X4: article about a business, enterprise, or product that was started before 2020 and has never had an independent source?—S Marshall T/C 17:51, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
  • If we can't get consensus to speedy new articles like this, then we're unlikely to find it for deleting old ones. —Cryptic 18:05, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

  CSD is really not appropriate, because Wikipedia:Deletion is not cleanup, and therefore there is the potential for it to be legitimately contested. PROD should be sufficient.

  That said, I took a look at Industrial Fasteners Institute, mentioned at the top of the thread, and I have two overall thoughts:

  1. Wow, that industry is way more complex and interesting than I'd ever have imagined, and
  2. I couldn't find any sources (e.g., in Google News) that contain more than two consecutive sentences about the organization itself, though https://www.google.com/books/edition/Magazine_of_Standards/8Cw9AAAAYAAJ looks promising, if anyone can track it down.

  I can find sources for European Industrial Fasteners Institute (EIFI), which started a trade dispute a little while ago, but not as much about the (US) IFI. But I suspect them of being a case of WP:ITSIMPORTANT in the real world (like: they're actually important, if you care about things like whether a plane is likely to spontaneously disassemble itself while you're inside), and I'd suggest a "merge" (of this one stub plus a half-dozen similar organizations for whom a stub hasn't been created) to a List of fastener industry organizations or Fastener industry, rather than deletion.

  I was reminded recently that it's our official policy that more information (NB: information, not separate articles) is better than less. If we make a recommendation, I would like to see us recommend something that results in more knowledge. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:09, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

I too looked at the fasteners article and was intrigued. Agree merging would be more useful than deletion.

Unless we want to purge almost all content on companies, a new speedy tag is not the way to go. I don't see why standard prod is not effective for old articles where the creator has retired? Are people mass-removing the prods? (I try to check the prod list from time to time but mostly tend to leave the businesses alone, as it is not an area in which I edit.) Espresso Addict (talk) 23:45, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

In 1976, the IFI instituted a proceeding over import relief for U.S. fastener manufacturers with the International Trade Comission.[1][2]. It's also necessary to search under its pre-1949 name "The American Institute of Bolt, Nut and Rivet Manufacturers"[3]. There's more out there than people seem to have found so far. Jahaza (talk) 04:44, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Can we get a list generated of company articles for which the only external link on the page is the company website? BD2412 T 04:02, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

I imagine that would be tricky as it's not always going to be easy for a bot to identify that given only the article title. A list of articles about companies (presumably identified by presence in a category) that include external links to only a single domain would I guess be easier. There will be false positives in that list (e.g. when the only citations are to the same newspaper), but I suspect it will also be worth examining those articles for issues. There will also be false negatives (e.g. if an article cites megacorp.com and megacorpinternational.co.uk), and no such query will be able to identify when the article cites only regurgitated press releases and similar, however as long as these limitations are understood and presence or absence from the list is not treated as evidence of anything in itself I think the list would still have value. Thryduulf (talk) 12:32, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

If any article is longstanding but as poorly sourced as you state, I'd at least give them the benefit of a cursory search for RS, then prod it. Wikipedia won't be specially harmed if an ultimately notable business gets removed, as if it's truly notable, it will come back as a new article (or restored deleted article) with proper cites. But as someone who has seen plenty of this kind of junk, my emotional center says to "Prod away!". Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 19:06, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

I'm doubtful that it's an entirely harmless action (what if someone's looking for that information during the interregnum?), and I'm even more doubtful that it will somehow come back as a new article with more sources.

As a side note, one of the distinctions drawn in the academic literature into whether users trust websites is between "trusting" and "finding useful". A Wikipedia article can be very useful to a reader ("Oh, I thought the account I was just assigned was an agribusiness customer, but it looks like they have a lot more business interests than I thought...") even when they don't really trust it ("...so I should probably check in with the previous account rep before I call them"). WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:12, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

Since Wikipedia is not a business directory, the lack of an article for a likely non-notable (or barely notable at best) enterprise will be harmless within reason. There's Google and the yellow pages and what-not to cover the rest. We don't have to host it. There's myriad notable subjects we're still missing so I won't lose sleep over prodded business articles. :) Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 04:00, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

Who says that a poorly sourced article is "likely non-notable (or barely notable at best)"?

I believe that sending readers off to other sites (e.g., with worse privacy policies, or which might be secretly paid advertisements) is not harmless. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:08, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

If something has been prodded, the prodder is supposed to have done a cursory search to see if there's hope for a subject being notable. Per AGF, I assume this happens most of the time. Also, the Wikipedia does not exist for being a web searcher's soft landing. I'm not buying into the scope creep. We're just an encyclopedia. Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 04:14, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

• I totally side with encourage a presumption of deletion, not only when the only sources are directly related to the topic but also with articles that are loaded with obscure sources that seem purposely dredged-up to prevent deletion on what would otherwise be a totally non-notable topic. This seems to be a common hallmark of paid-editing. Just, in general, I wish we would be more strict with notability, especially for business-related topics, including questioning if sources are actually notable (eg, WP:CONTEXTMATTERS). Also despite WP:SOURCEACCESS some things like trade publications available only to a limited audience, etc., simply shouldn't count as reliable sources as they weren't generally available to the public as per WP:PUBLISHED. Ultimately, despite all the policy stuff, it needs to boil down to asking ourselves, "Hey, has somebody purposely scraped the bottom of the barrel to get this article to pass our notability standards?" If so, I think we should err on the side of deleting it; otherwise, we just accumulate promotional cruft. Historically, I think we've tended to side with keeping anything that is referenced with too little weight put on the quality of the references. We need a cultural shift that tighten the hatches. Jason Quinn (talk) 15:33, 26 December 2023 (UTC)
• Do the whole bold Oppose. Nobody seems to have explained why Prod isn't enough for me to get behind this. I'd also argue it's a strawman argument, there isn't actually a problem beyond I don't like it that these article are in wikipedia. If they exist and have existed a long time it indicates they are doing something right and that consensus is to keep, as that's how consensus forms and works. If we need to change the rules to exclude them, what does that say about us? And how does it come to define Wikipedia? Don't we have enough articles that require copyediting to be worried about this, the top of my watchlist indicates a drive there? Wouldn't our efforts be better directed there than here? A look at Wikipedia:Backlog tells me over 400,000 articles need more refences. Could we better pressed finding them? I do wonder why I give my valuable time to this project, creating and salvaging, when so many people want to destroy that work. Sometimes I decide I no longer want to because of the negativity. Does that make Wikipedia better? Or should we strive towards consensus. Should we say we're at an even keel as things stand, the guidelines are balanced, in harmony, we know how to use them to achieve the goal, let's kill the backlogs then regroup on discussions such as these if merited? Hiding T 19:57, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

  I agree to some extent however business articles should be backed up solid independent evidence not just statements from the business website. My biggest gripe is editors creating forks when there is no need. Take House of Fraser. The company havestarted to create Fraser stores, and have announced that all stores will eventually go over to the new branding. An editor has created a news page Frasers (department store) which was excepted by a reviewer. But as per the owners, this is just a rebrand! We don't need to fork out something unless it's way to big or there is a genuine split off of the business. Davidstewartharvey (talk) 11:13, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

  Yeah, I get where you are coming from, but I think it's easier to deal with that happening with what we've got in terms of a ruleset/guidance now, rather than reinvent the wheel and add more potential issues into the pack. Hiding T 11:36, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose. A presumption of deletion is not compatible with WP:NEXIST or WP:ATD or WP:BEFORE. It would be positively damaging to apply such a presumption to history articles about nineteenth century businesses; or to articles about businesses in industries that actually have some kind of fanbase (eg railway enthusiasts). The fact that independent sources are not cited in article does not mean they do not exist. James500 (talk) 14:14, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

RfC to limit the inclusion of the deadname of deceased transgender or non-binary persons

Moved to Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Names of deceased trans people

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Should the following be added to MOS:DEADNAME?

For deceased transgender or non-binary persons, their former name (birth name, professional name, stage name, or pseudonym) should be included in their main biographical article only if the name is documented in multiple secondary and reliable sources containing non-trivial coverage of the person.

For pre-RFC discussions on this proposal, see:

1. Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biography#Deadnames of the deceased – yet again
2. Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biography/2023 archive#Proposal to split MOS:GENDERID from Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Biography
3. Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biography/2023 archive#WP:BOLD restrictions on the use of deceased transgender or non-binary persons birth name or former name

This text was added boldly by different editors, originally in July and again in October, but was removed in December. 18:38, 10 December 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 have split this long discussion to its own page, because (a) it's only been open a few days, and we've already got 85 comments from 46 people here and (b) due to the number of large discussions, this Village Pump page is currently almost half a million bytes long, which is much longer than some people can effectively read and participate in. The new location for this RFC is Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Names of deceased trans people. Please join the discussion over there. Thanks for your understanding, WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:24, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

WP:PGCHANGE and clarification of "widespread consensus" (may alter WP:CONSENSUS as well)

Currently, WP:PGCHANGE says this: After some time, if there are no objections to the change and/or if a widespread consensus for your change or implementation is reached through discussion, you can then edit policy and guideline pages describing the practice to reflect the new situation.

Should WP:PGCHANGE include an explanation, or else clarify the meaning of "widespread consensus" to mean the following:

For the purpose of this policy, "widespread consensus for the change" means that the discussion about substantive changes to a policy or guideline must be advertised sitewide to the entire community (such as through a request for comment and/or by posting at centralized discussion) and, after being so advertised, would reach consensus for the change.

It need not be the exact wording, but this would be the intended meaning. The possibility to edit policies and guidelines if there are no objections to these changes will stay. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 13:27, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Background

A recent discussion about WP:ARTICLESIZE (a guideline) was closed as "consensus to change". But there were a few editors over there who opined that in WP:PGCHANGE (the policy about changing policies and guidelines), "widespread consensus" means that the discussion must be sufficiently advertised (preferably sitewide, as in with an RfC) and there be consensus. VQuakr went on to say that in a discussion about changing policy or a guideline, even a unanimous discussion with ~15 editors would mean little if it only remained known to those who cared about the guideline and did not appear as an RfC or similar.

I then asked DfD to help me out, and the one editor (Isaacl) who answered didn't say whether this was what the policy said but suggested that personally they would prefer to read it as asking for sitewide advertisement. Other editors (the majority of those people) wanted to avoid an RfC as it would be a drain on the community.

To be clear, I do not mean this discussion to overturn that closure (I don't have a horse in that race), but I do want to hear opinions on whether changing policies and guidelines is appropriate without an RfC, given the doubts that have appeared in interpreting that policy. I do not wish to comment about that discussion so as not to appear favouring either side of that discussion. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 13:27, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Survey

• Oppose - I don't think the additional text works in the broader context of the section. A change can be made if no one objects. A single objection shouldn't neccessarily trigger the need for a site-wide RFC. Often the consensus can become clear through ordinary, widespread discussion, without the bureaucratic overhead of an RFC. There are some changes that should be put to such an RFC, but they shouldn't be mandatory in all cases that aren’t strictly unanimous.--Trystan (talk) 15:25, 22 December 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose as needless bureaucracy. A WikiProject talk page isn’t a valid place go get consensus, but a policy talk page obviously is Mach61 (talk) 18:28, 22 December 2023 (UTC)
• Reword. I think something is needed, but perhaps not this precise wording. What's really necessary is some sort of link to WP:CONLEVEL and an indication that you need a consensus commiserate to the level of the change you are making - minor tweaks don't require widely-advertised consensus, and sometimes may not require affirmative consensus at all if they're slight wording tweaks and nobody objects, whereas if your change would fundimentially alter the functioning of core policy then it needs consensus on a level appropriate for that massive impact. Currently, at least at a glance, the page doesn't mention that at all; there needs to be at least one link to CONLEVEL somewhere on the page, since understanding that policy is essential for any major policy change. (Especially see the second paragraph of CONLEVEL, which is central here.) --Aquillion (talk) 10:49, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

  I'm ready to hear your proposal Szmenderowiecki (talk) 11:32, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

  A few months ago, Aquillion said that "an RFC on an article talk page is by default local, and any conclusions it reaches are local; that is the heart and soul of WP:CONLEVEL".

  This is neither consistent with what CONLEVEL says (it gives an example of an unadvertised, non-RFC discussion between a self-selected group of editors on a WikiProject's talk page that they claim overrides the views of editors on hundreds or thousands of articles) nor with how RFCs (the primary mechanism for advertising a discussion to the wider community, with the goal of getting comments from uninvolved editors) are understood by the community. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:01, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

  Indeedy. And those of who do more than a single trivial cleanup bit, like a top-to-bottom clarity and cross-referencing overhaul, tend to announce this on the talk page and lay out what we're doing and invite discussion (or even reversion). I do this all the time. We do occasionally get someone trying to make unconstructive substantive changes (add a new rule we don't need, flip a rule backwards from it original intent, subtly shift wording to help them win some petty dispute at an article, etc.), but this stuff usually gets reverted quickly if it's not discussed on the talk page and met with approval.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:15, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose at least in something like that form, per WP:NOT#BUREAUCRACY and WP:CREEP and WP:EDITING and the intent of WP:P&G (particularly WP:PGCHANGE) in the first place. That said, I agree with Aquillion that the section should include a cross-reference to WP:CONLEVEL. If some suggestion to do an RfC or something is included, it should not refer to WP:CENT which is for high-profile things needing massive amounts of editorial attention and which are likely to affect a bazillion articles (or editors thereof). CENT is absolutely not for minor clarification or loophole-closure tweaks to P&G material. The more appropriate venue for "advertising" a discussion about something like that is WP:VPPOL itself. Editors who care to be involved in the formation of our P&G pages already watch this page, but the entire editorial pool do not need CENT browbeating about what is usually maintenance trivia.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:01, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

  About a year ago, on the talk page of one of the core policies (NPOV?), an editor stated that (in their opinion) every single edit to a policy page needed prior discussion, if not an RFC. We pointed the editor to the history page to review the edits made during the last month or so, and asked them how many of those they would revert. The answer was "none". I don't think most editors understand how many changes produce no real change in meaning – a link here, a grammar tweak there, but no substantive changes. Few of us make substantive changes without prior discussion, and even fewer of us make those edits without the change being reverted. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:06, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose per Trystan. Cuñado ☼ - Talk 19:37, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose I guess, I tend to agree and want to support but consensus works by being a consensus, not declaring it to exist. If enough people don't like the change when it is made, you enter into Bold revert discuss, don't you, because the consensus wasn't as strong as first thought or has changed since you thought you had it defined. So, hmmm, sitting on the fence getting splinters maybe? Hiding T 20:02, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Discussion

@Szmenderowiecki: thanks for the well-thought out content above and the ping. I would say that the meaning of "widespread" varies depending on the scope of the impact of the proposed change. In the specific case of the article size discussion that prompted this, the group was discussing subsequent changes to other policies and believed that those changes would be subject to the consensus they had there. For the impact of the change they were proposing, their consensus was not widespread. I think we agree, though, that most changes to PAG do not need sitewide advertisement. The proposed change above effectively just kicks the can of when to advertise from the definition of "widespread" to the definition of "substantive". Ultimately, a judgement call will need to be made, and given that groupthink is more or less inherent in a collaborative environment, the reminder that a small team of editors (however internally aligned) shouldn't be making sitewide decisions in a vacuum will be met with occasional resistance. I'm not sure that's a problem that can be mitigated with a tweak to policy. VQuakr (talk) 16:53, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

The "substantive change" thing is already in the policy. Before making substantive changes to policy and guideline pages, it is sometimes useful to try to establish a reasonable exception to the existing practice. Maybe this will be an issue sometime later but we can assume that typos, grammar, markup and general changes to wording that do not change the meaning of policy or guideline are non-substantive changes. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 17:20, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure if the proposed change to the text is the best approach. Often changes face objections by someone who raises no specific concerns other than suggesting that a request for comments discussion be held, which can lead to the degree of impact being exaggerated and thus deadlocking minor changes from proceeding. In the referenced discussion, I said that in my view, the affected community of editors should be given the chance to discuss and influence the proposed change. This may not require a site-wide advertising of the proposal. It will depend on the scope of the guidance and the proposed change in question. isaacl (talk) 18:24, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Yep. Going through this right now with a bit of policy cleanup, which is being stonewalled by someone resistant to change (even basic grammar correction) simply for the sake of being resistant to change, as far as I can tell.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:21, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

I guess WP:NOTAVOTE would apply in that case. If the best they can argue is that their gut feeling is wrong or that I just want to resist all change, then I think we can safely disregard this. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 09:19, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Since I closed the discussion referenced above, I guess I'll just note that of course I think matching a proposed change to an appropriate quorum will always be a balancing act. Those affected by a change should have the opportunity to share their thoughts about it. In this case, a table listed "rules of thumb" in two (intended-to-be) equivalent measures – word count and kb of prose. A discussion at the guideline's talk page concluded the second measure (kb of prose size) should be removed as potentially confusing and unneeded. How broad a discussion is needed for such a change? The guideline's meaning is unchanged, it's just now expressed in one way rather than two. Even if WP:PGCHANGE read as proposed above, I likely would have closed the discussion the same way, considering this to not be a "substantive change", and expecting no particular controversy. Ajpolino (talk) 03:05, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Been a part of that discussion, and it does seem to be stonewalled also by a single party. I think their argument amounts to a (rather impassioned and stubborn) disagreement that the change is non-substantive. They seem to feel that the change, while perhaps not altering the actual end-result size/length limits, will in some way strongly affect at least some subset of users' understanding of how to arrive at it, their sense of what it means in reality, or something to this effect. I don't agree with the position, for reasons given over at that discussion, but it doesn't seem entirely out of left-field.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:01, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Over-capitalization of NFL Draft

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Moved to Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Capitalization of NFL draft article titles

RfC on the matter opened below, the moved to its own page due to length. Closing this original loose discussion, since someone in the RfC was confused about there being two threads open. (WP:TALKFORK).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:47, 12 January 2024 (UTC); updated: 17:36, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

---

In you look at sources, "draft" is overwhelmingly lowercase in most relevant sports contexts, including NFL (see [4], [5]). Yet it's hard to get away from the capitaized "Draft" on wikipedia due to the large number of football-fan editors compared to the editors who want to respect our style guidelines (at least, the was my impression in past discussions). Is there anything to be done about that? I recently moved a bunch of "List of ** in the NFL Draft" articles to lowercase draft, as that context is one of the most overwhelmingly clear in stats, but before I got most of them done they all got reverted. Is another RFC the way to go? Other ideas? Dicklyon (talk) 04:38, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

I've contacted WP:NFL about this discussion. GoodDay (talk) 05:04, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for that. Dicklyon (talk) 05:17, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

• Note The last related move discussion was closed in May 2023 at Talk:2024 NFL Draft § Requested move 27 April 2023—Bagumba (talk) 05:13, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

  Thanks for finding that clear lack of consensus. Dicklyon (talk) 05:17, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

@BeanieFan11:, in reverting my moves to the "in the NFL Draft" articles, you wrote the current consensus is that the main draft article is spelled with an uppercase "D" - that should be reflected here. Can you share where you find that consensus? Dicklyon (talk) 05:53, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Until National Football League Draft is moved to National Football League draft, any instance of "NFL Draft" should have a capital D, particularly in article names. That's the only reasonable and consistent interpretation of Wikipedia:Article titles for this case. Everything hinges on how we name main article. Jweiss11 (talk) 06:16, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

A gaggle of editors from the American football wikiproject will stonewall any attempt to move any of these articles; RM process has too few uninvolved participants to overrule their false-consensus. The article title "National Football League Draft" is demonstrably inappropriate per WP:COMMONNAME (and WP:CONCISE) policy, and also fails WP:NCCAPS and MOS:SPORTCAPS and etc. [6] It should be at NFL draft, which is actually the common name by a wide margin – with d not D. Of the four renditions "National Football League Draft", "National Football League draft", "NFL Draft", and "NFL draft", the "National Football League Draft" one is the least frequent and "NFL draft" by far the most. (And that's without even doing anything to filter out title-case appearance in names of works and chapters/sections; i.e., the capitalized forms are being significantly over-represented in these search results.) The long version is barely attested in published material. But this means nothing if no one one but football fans who love capitalizing everything to do with football weighs in on the question. (Which shouldn't be a question in the first place. Dicklyon's moves should not have been reverted, because they comply with the policies and guidelines and the over-capitalization has no leg to stand on (it's unadulterated WP:ILIKEIT).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:20, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

I suspect you'd get the same resistance in an RM at the NHL Entry Draft page, fwiw. Editors can't force other editors to agree to what they want. Thus they can't force such changes, if enough editor oppose. GoodDay (talk) 12:13, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Question, but this only applies to National Football League draft, correct? The 2024 NFL Draft and all other years should still be considered proper nouns as they are specific events. ~ Dissident93 ^(talk) 18:18, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

No. They are specific events, or processes, but not proper names unless maybe in the context of the TV show or something (e.g. "I got tickets for 2024 NFL Draft", or "ESPN got rights to broadcast 2024 NFL Draft", perhaps). Stats show lowercase dominant draft, same as in other sports. Dicklyon (talk) 18:40, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Regardless of where one stands on the issue, we should be consistent with the capitalization used at the primary article that these other articles are based off, which is currently at National Football League Draft. Until that article is moved, which there is not consensus to do based off past discussions, we are essentially in limbo and should be consistent, otherwise it'll devolve into edit warring. Hey man im josh (talk) 01:51, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

We definitely have a WP:CONLEVEL failure happening here, where a WP:FALSECONSENSUS of people devoted to a topic area are defying site-wide guidelines that apply to all topics, to get an over-capitalization result in their pet subject (against both MOS:SPORTCAPS and MOS:SIGCAPS, as well as WP:NCCAPS, and WP:COMMONNAME policy), all on the basis of a specialized-style fallacy, namely that various American-football-specific sources like to capitalize just about everything to do with football, while general-audience sources provably do not do this. Statistics this stark [7] do not lie. We have a problem that WP:RM, a process nearly no one pays any attention to, is regularly overrun by topic-specific editors after one of them alerts the related wikiproject, and the results end up being a predictable pile-on that ignores the large stack of guidelines and at least one policy, to just suit the preferences of the topical wikiproject participants; meanwhile few RM closers have the gumption to just discount their anti-WP:P&G and anti-source arguments and close in favor of the lower-cases moves, because the headcount majority crying for upper-case is apt to make WP:MRV noise about it and otherwise cause a bunch of drama. The RM process is palpably failing for cases like this; it is being outright WP:GAMED.

I'm skeptical that this can be settled any other way than with a broadly advertised RfC, tedious as style RfCs may be. If football fans are convinced they have on their hands some kind of demonstrable exception that just must be made to site-wide capitalization rules, then they are welcome to try to prove that to the community's satisfaction. This sort of thing has come up before many times (common names of species, capitalization of breeds and cultivars, etc.) that have festered sometimes for years, with a lot of editorial strife and disruption in sporadic, uncentralized debates, and were not resolved until broadly RfCed (here or at WT:MOS).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:20, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

I suspect there'd be resistance as well from WP:HOCKEY, concerning pages related to the NHL Entry Draft, too. BTW the Major League Baseball draft page, was moved to its current form without an RM & with little input. GoodDay (talk) 12:07, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

The NHL Entry Draft stats are a good example of what happens when over-capitalization in Wikipedia influences the real world. It's not too late to fix it, as it's still not nearly consistently capped in sources, esp. independent sources. Dicklyon (talk) 18:35, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

@Dicklyon: You should either officially propose a move of National Football League Draft or accept that editors will (and should) try to be consistent with the capitalization used at that article. Otherwise this is, frankly, a waste of everyone's time. We'd just end up rehashing the exact same discussion happening here. Hey man im josh (talk) 01:54, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

The problem with RM, mentioned above, makes it hard to get to a consensus in such cases. Maybe an RFC? Dicklyon (talk) 03:12, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

You could go the route of an RFC, but I don't really think there will be consensus on this issue either way. I suppose I'm asking what the goal of starting this discussion is. Are you planning to craft an RfC based on this discussion? Hey man im josh (talk) 03:27, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

I'm seeking ideas; I had asked: "Is another RFC the way to go? Other ideas?". RFC was one idea supported. Dicklyon (talk) 03:50, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Personally I'm not convinced there is an issue of overcapitalization, given that many editors are trying to be consistent with the main draft article. Hey man im josh (talk) 16:07, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

This is turning entrely circular. We've been over this already: the main article is capitalized, against WP:COMMONNAME and MOS:CAPS and WP:NCCAPS and other considerations, because a handful of "give us capitals or else" football fans want it that way, and will en masse blockade any RM that tries to change it, producing a FALSECONSENSUS against guidelines applying to a "magically special" wikiproject. The problem is not that the main article says what it does, the problem is that RM is easily and badly gamable by a wikiproject who want a "pet" variance from guidelines that apply to every other subject, which is prevent that or any other related article from changing names, without wider community input that cannot be gamed by half-a-dozen people from a particular wikiproject.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:54, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Your best bet is to neutrally summarize all the pro and con arguments and counter arguments, and place them right after the brief opening RFC statement. Too often people are !voting without knowing all the factors, which is difficult when bits and pieces are scattered in other people's !votes. At least give those people who want to be informed a clear overview. MOS, esp. capitalization, can be quite nuanced. Some !voters that only see "NFL Draft" in their everyday sources, honestly don't know there are other options or why. —Bagumba (talk) 04:43, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

If someone can point out a pro-capitalization argument, I'd like to see it so I can include it. About the only thing we heard before was a multiply-repeated claim to trademark status, but that was pretty thoroughly debunked, I felt, with the only found "NFL Draft" trademark being for clothing items, like caps and tee shirts, not for the player selection meeting. Dicklyon (talk) 00:42, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

My understanding is that the NFL uses a capitalization for the term, but I'm not able to dig into it at the moment. For what it's worth, I personally don't really care either way, but I do advocate for consistency with the main article. Hey man im josh (talk) 01:04, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

I imagine some !voters only see "NFL Draft" on ESPN, NFL.com—and even many (most?) newspapers—and just write off that non-NFL fans aren't following the NFL expert sources. —Bagumba (talk) 02:09, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

If people are only watching ESPN, they'll see it pretty much always lowercase, and we wouldn't have this problem. On NFL.com, usually uppercase (but they sometimes forget to tell their headline writers, like here and here. Dicklyon (talk) 02:22, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

You're right about ESPN. Try CBSSport.com, which seems to regularly cap. (And I might be wrong re: the extent of newspapers)—Bagumba (talk) 03:11, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

If you can't get consensus for a move, then there's no consensus for a move. It's a tautological statement, but it's also the core fact of it all. Not enough people agree with you. So what, move on and don't dwell on it. Also, can we not have presumptive and biased discussion headers like calling it "over-capitalization" when the point is to discuss if it is properly capitalized. oknazevad (talk) 02:16, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Sure, we disagree there. It's clearly over-capitalized, with respect to our guidance and sources. The question is just what to do. Probably a central RFC makes more sense than an RM at the article(s), to get a more balanced participation. Dicklyon (talk) 02:22, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

I think in order for you to get a 'green light' on the changes you're proposing? you'd first have to have an RM at National Football League Draft, with the result being - change to National Football League draft. GoodDay (talk) 02:46, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

The meta-question on P&G RfC vs RM

In the RfC below, there's a whole bunch of discussion on the meta question of what's an appropriate venue for finding a consensus, when page moves are involved. The venue would be expected to bias the participation, with RM discussions attracting more editors that are watching the affected pages, and a discussion here or other central P&G place attracting more editors who care about policies and guidelines. Ideally, the relative numbers shouldn't much matter, as long as there are enough participants to get a good representation of the community's interpretation of the issues, and how best to resolve the question. That is, it's not a vote. However, the RM mechanism typically doesn't attract very many people who care about policies and guidelines, so it becomes hard to see a consensus when there are only a few such voices.

The last RM on this question found 10 in support of lowercase, based on policies and guidelines, and 10 opposed, mostly citing and repeating alternate factoids about the relative usage or trademark status. The closer was unable to see that the opposition was not at all based on policies or guidelines or real data, so called it no consensus. In the current RfC discussion below, we have lower numbers on both sides, but maybe over time we'll see more participation. So far not. I've listed the RfC at WP:CENTRAL, and another editor informed a large number of the affected articles' talk pages; and another informed a bunch of other sport WikiProjects. So maybe we'll get more participation from one side or both. Whether we do or not, I doubt we'll learn anything not already in evidence about the community's views. I guess it becomes a problem for a good closer.

I'm still open to other good ideas about how to resolve such things. The football editors who are afraid of losing their precious capital D are not happy about the RfC approach. Dicklyon (talk) 20:22, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

I've an idea. Close the RFC & open an RM at National Football League Draft. Trying to bring about changes from the ground up, rather then from the peak down, merely causes (IMHO) chaos. GoodDay (talk) 20:27, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Weird metaphor, since doing things "from the ground up" is usually regarded as constructive and is a common idiom. I'm 54, and I've never once in my life heard the advice to do something "from the peak down".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:47, 12 January 2024 (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.

Asking Advice About Giving Advice About Contentious Topic Protection

If another editor asks me for advice about their disagreement with the extended-confirmed protection of an article, where should I tell them to go to discuss the protection? I will explain the origin of this inquiry, but I am not asking specific advice about the case in point, but about all similar cases. A case request was made at DRN by a relatively new editor. The filing party had added some information to a biography of a living person. Their edits were then reverted by another editor, and the article was then placed under Palestine-Israel restrictions, including extended=confirmed protection. As a result, the new editor couldn't edit the article, and wanted the protection reviewed or appealed. I am not asking for advice about the specific article or its content dispute, because I think that the protecting admin was right. But what advice should I give in the future if another editor wants to ask about partial protection of an article because of a contentious topic? I could tell them to request unprotection at requests for protection, but that would just shift the question off to the admins at RFPP. I could say to discuss with the protecting administrator.

So where should an editor go to ask about protection of an article as a contentious topic? Robert McClenon (talk) 02:07, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

I think you can say you think the protection is right (and explain why) and to discuss with the protecting admin, and failing that the editor can appeal the protection as per Wikipedia:Contentious topics#Appeals and amendments. Galobtter (talk) 02:10, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Also, even if the protection was removed, the new editor still can't make edits relating to Palestine-Israel. Galobtter (talk) 02:12, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

User:Galobtter - Thank you for providing the information on appeals. I did explain that the protection was right.

I assume that you mean that the user still is not allowed to make Palestine-Israel edits. Protecting the page also protects the user from making the edits that they are forbidden from making. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:52, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Adding a policy bias against articles without sources

Moved to Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Deletion of uncited articles

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

The page is getting large, which is a problem for some editors. This discussion already had almost 150 comments and it was just added to WP:CENT to draw even more attention. Please comment at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Deletion of uncited articles instead of here. Thanks, WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:52, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

---

Currently, there are over 114,000 articles on Wikipedia that contain no citations or sources, making it one of the largest clean up categories on the site. WP:WikiProject Unreferenced articles has been one of the main WikiProjects attempting to dig through this giant haystack in order to give as many articles proper sources. Unfortunately, a main obstacle to cleanup has been how stringent deletion policy is. If you WP:PROD an article, it takes a week to delete, which is fine, and can be reversed by anyone. The issue is that many of these articles are unsourced stubs with no indicated notability, an article that me and others would agree to be a uncontroversial deletion via WP:PROD. Many of these PROD's are contested and then must go through the possibly month long review process VIA WP:AFD. The conclusion to this process usually is delete, but I believe that a criterion should be proposed that biases an article in favor of deletion, which is not having any sources. If this is written into the WP:DELETE policy, then I believe that editors like me will have a much easier time combing through the massive garbage dump that are unsourced articles. Tooncool64 (talk) 06:39, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Doesn't our current policy effectively do that? Editors arguing for notability are already required to provide or attest to the existence of sources which support notability. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 07:09, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

True, but this is more directed at solidifying a valid reason for deletion, or a secondary reason, an article lacking sources, such that a PROD could say "Article fails WP:NGEO and WP:NOSOURCE", and be viewed as uncontroversial. Tooncool64 (talk) 07:12, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

I think to some extent PROD will always be controversial. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 08:15, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Interesting. I wasn’t aware of that. I proposed deletion for this article [8] but the tag was reverted. The reason was supposedly that other elections later on are notable, but regardless, the problem is many of the earlier articles are unsourced and redundant, and many just redirect to the nominated Emperors' pages. Yr Enw (talk) 07:46, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Its not a great reason, but its nice that they gave a reason at all (none is actually required to remove a PROD). The next step would be opening a talk page discussion on notability, hopefully the editor who removed the PROD is willing to work with you to find sources and if not will be willing to support a move towards AFD. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 08:15, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

I did talk page them, but they never responded. I get the need for collab, but often it can just become unintentional filibustering Yr Enw (talk) 09:19, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

What if the concepts of WP:BLPPROD were expanded to non-BLPs without any sources? At a minimum, a deprod could be required add one reliable source.—Bagumba (talk) 08:35, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

This might be the best option. I wasn't even aware of the WP:BLPROD policy myself, but having a similar policy apply to unsourced articles would allow for both one, editors to more quickly sift through unsourced articles, and two, editors who want to do specialized research to find obscure sources for articles that are proposed via this hypothetical process. If no sources can truly be found, reliable or otherwise, then it would be an uncontroversial deletion that would be able to avoid the lengthy WP:AFD process. Tooncool64 (talk) 08:43, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Brilliant. 100% support this.—S Marshall T/C 08:51, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Also support this. JoelleJay (talk) 20:16, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Support this idea myself as well. Let'srun (talk) 15:06, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Well, I don't. AfD exists for a reason: inclusion criteria are based on whether sources exist, and whether it's possible to write an article on a subject. They aren't based on whether Bill has time tomorrow afternoon to go get an interlibrary loan and then drive out to pick up eighteen books and spend the entire evening going through to frantically reference 53 articles before the guillotine falls. AfD lasts seven days. If an AfD is relisted because of lack of participation, it means that there isn't enough volunteer effort available to properly assess the article. If there isn't enough volunteer effort available to properly assess an article...there isn't enough volunteer effort available to come to a firm conclusion that the topic is non-notable. jp×g🗯️ 09:39, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

If someone wants to re-create the article in the future with sources, then more power to them. It would be a soft-delete, allowing an editor to re-create the page. Tens of thousands of these articles have no reason to exist, no content, no usability for information. Like I said previously, Wikipedia is not meant for collecting items that exist. Tooncool64 (talk) 10:02, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Well, it's not meant to be a shoot-em-up game either -- the fact that deleting articles causes an enjoyable sensation on the back of the neck isn't a reason to do it. There are plenty of reasons why stubs exist. They're written by someone who had access to some information, or maybe to a lot of information, but who for whatever reason wrote a very short article; for the vast majority of them, it's completely possible to write something longer. If it's not, and the article is such a turd it needs to be wholly extirpated from the project, we have AfD, which sees approximately fifty nominations per day, with a turnover of somewhere around a week. In fact, we also have draftification, PRODs and speedy deletion -- that makes four separate processes by which stuff can be taken out of mainspace if it's bad. Why do we need another? jp×g🗯️ 10:33, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Bagumba, a proposal to establish the system you describe recently failed at an RfC a few months ago (Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 207#Request for comment: Unreferenced PROD). Curbon7 (talk) 08:54, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

I can completely understand why many people where against this in the way it was worded. If an unsourced PROD were to exist, it would need to have at the very least a 7 day time limit, like current WP:PROD. The major reason I am in favor of something like this is because I believe, at the very least in 2024, articles on Wikipedia need to have sources, even if it is just one. No article would pass WP:AFC without sources attached. Tooncool64 (talk) 08:59, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing that one out. After a quick glance, it seems it involved a new tagging process that people objected to, as opposed to just expanding a known process, PROD. The proposal just waved at a link, and some likely thought TLDR or made some wrong assumptions, and rejected for that reason. Not saying this would necessarily pass, but an improved presentation and concise pitch could go a long way. —Bagumba (talk) 09:18, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Yep. I tried an RfC on that. Snow-opposed. (Although the wording was really badly done, as I recall, so everyone was at least moderately confused.) 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 00:42, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

This is close to becoming a perennial proposal. Policy is the way it is a foundational principle of this project is that imperfect content is an opportunity for collaboration, not something that needs to be expunged. If you instead choose to look at articles that fellow volunteers have taken the time to write as a "garbage dump" and deletion as the preferred way of dealing with them, then of course you're going to meet friction. – Joe (talk) 09:05, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

My rhetoric might be harsh, but unfortunately, many of these unsourced articles are tens of thousands of one sentenced geography stubs, that may or may not even meet WP:NGEO, or tens of thousands of unsourced "Topic in Year" articles. If you are looking at these articles as part of a maintenance category, which they are, then you are forced to realize that many of these are not worth keeping, if for the very fact that they are unusable for information. Tooncool64 (talk) 09:13, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Clearly at least one person disagreed with you about that, or the articles wouldn't exist. – Joe (talk) 10:01, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Unfortunately, the standards for creating articles was much lower back in the day. Tooncool64 (talk) 10:04, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

So what? Here are some "one sentenced geography stubs", generated as single-sentence stubs from a database: Chain Island, Tinsley Island, Bull Island (California), Kimball Island, Joice Island, Island No. 2, Russ Island, Atlas Tract, Empire Tract, Brewer Island, Fox Island (Detroit River), Spud Island, Hog Island (San Joaquin County), Fordson Island, Tule Island, Headreach Island, Stony Island (Michigan), Aramburu Island, Bradford Island, Van Sickle Island, Powder House Island. You will notice these are twenty GAs and a Featured Article, all of which were written from said stubs -- the "garbage dump" of which you speak. The issue is that writing things requires effort and skill: the solution is not to spend all day sitting around coming up with new ways to delete stuff. jp×g🗯️ 09:44, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

That's amazing how much hard work and care went into those articles! If an editor in the future wants to re-create an article that was deleted via this hypothetical process, it wouldn't be difficult. We do not need to hoard unsourced articles currently for the possibility in the future that they may be found to be notable. Tooncool64 (talk) 10:03, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Yes it will: our hypothetical editor will have to notice that something's a redlink (from where?), look through the deletion log, ask the deleting admin for a WP:REFUND, wait on a response, and then get it restored to their userspace or draftspace. This is a rather long and complicated process that, generally, only power users are able to do. What concrete benefit is brought by forcing them to go through this? jp×g🗯️ 10:33, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Or they can just...create the article themselves without going through REFUND... The difference between expanding and de novo creating a 1-sentence stub is like, the one minute it takes to create a 1-sentence stub... An admin could literally paste the entire REFUND of the text in an edit summary, it's not like we're talking about valuable starting material here. JoelleJay (talk) 18:24, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Creating a new article on a title that has been deleted before requires one to know that one is encouraged to recreate some, but far from all, deleted articles. The box that comes up for all deleted content is far from encouraging. Espresso Addict (talk) 11:13, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

The problem in that regard is that the way PROD is set up collaboration is "encouraged, but not required." Why not require collaboration as a requirement of challenging a PROD? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 09:17, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

The fallback collaboration option is a formal AfD. PROD offers some rare opportunites for lightweight deletions if nobody is looking or people agree and don't contest, but a WP:REFUND is typically possible. —Bagumba (talk) 09:24, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

TBH I think the ideal collaboration option is actually in between the two... A talk page discussion should be able to settle the issue the vast majority of the time... If the challenger was required to open a talk page section with their rationale (preferably in the form of sources) I think that would go a long way towards facilitating collaboration without the wounded feelings that jumping to AfD can cause. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 09:35, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Could not agree more. Tooncool64 (talk) 09:36, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Honestly I consider PROD a failed experiment at this point. The grey zone between CSD and AfD is just too narrow to support an extra process, and the awkward process (add a template, wait a week, keep checking back in case it's removed and you need to turn it into an AfD) makes it useless for anybody who's patrolling articles en masse. – Joe (talk) 10:03, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

I would love to see some statistics on PROD... What percentage get challenged... What percentage of those go to AfD... What percentage of those survive AfD... Horse Eye's Back (talk) 10:12, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

@Joe Roe: what do you think of the notability tag? Also in the grey zone? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 10:25, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

The problem is that nominating an article for prod takes a few seconds, and editors often nominate many in a short space of time. Finding a source will often take hours or more, and needs to be specific to the article in question. They are not symmetrical operations. Espresso Addict (talk) 00:55, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

The creator of the article can take as long as they need to find sources, years even. There is no need to create the article in mains space to work on it, it can be done in draft or namespace . Horse Eye's Back (talk) 10:15, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

No problem with requiring sources for new articles, but we're talking about the backlog of old ones here. Espresso Addict (talk) 11:07, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

There has never been a time when that wasn't true, its as true of the old ones as the new ones... If the creator didn't want them judged by mainspace standards they wouldn't have created the article in mainspace. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:52, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Requiring a source be added to dePROD an unsourced article would be ideal. JoelleJay (talk) 20:14, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

+1 Mccapra (talk) 22:15, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

• oppose incredibly strongly. Merge and redirect them if you can't source them rather than run them through afd. Deletion isn't clean up. If the merger is undone, build consensus for the merge. Job done. There's no deadline. We don't need to constantly revise the rules to do the work, we just need to use the rules we've got to make Wikipedia better and coach the editors around us on the way to use the tools. Merge. Redirect. Build consensus that that's the right approach. Hiding T 22:05, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose. Haven't we discussed this recently? The existing procedures (prod, then AfD if challenged) are adequate for removing nonnotable unsourced material. Espresso Addict (talk) 00:32, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
• I think this is a bad idea for the reasons I've explained above. jp×g🗯️ 09:44, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose. This proposal is not compatible with WP:NEXIST or WP:ATD. The topic of an unsourced article is often notable. The content of unsourced articles is often accurate and verifiable. In fact, the content of unsourced articles is often WP:BLUE. James500 (talk) 11:40, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

  “The content is often WP:Blue”… really? prove it! 😉 Blueboar (talk) 15:13, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

  The article is so obvious, we don't need sourcing! Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 00:48, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

• So your suggestion is to merge unsourced material elsewhere...? JoelleJay (talk) 22:07, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

If the info is unsourced, then we shouldn't be merging it anywhere. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 00:47, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Nah, part of the merge process is either sourcing what is unsourced or discarding it and improper for merging. This discussion is about entire erstwhile articles with no sources, not about snippets of text without sources in articles that otherwise are sourced.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:14, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Merge and redirect them if you can't source them is directing us to merge the unsourced content of an unsourced article into another article. JoelleJay (talk) 18:44, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose. I agree with Hiding, above. We aleady have the policies we need; what we lack is editorial focus to get the job done.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:14, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

My idea would be to increase the “unsourced article deletion” time to 60 days. Then I would probably accept it. 71.239.86.150 (talk) 20:08, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

RfC: Should a special PROD category, similar to WP:BLPROD, be created for unreferenced tagged articles?

Should a special PROD category, similar to WP:BLPROD, be created for unreferenced tagged articles? Tooncool64 (talk) 06:33, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

This category for deletion would have four caveats.

1. Articles could be removed from this process by having at least one sourced attached to it, removing the unreferenced tag.

2. Articles held within this category would not be deleted until 30 days have passed, hopefully allowing editors ample time to go through these articles and potentially find sources.

3. This would not be an automatic process. Unsourced articles would optimally be only tagged for this special PROD after editors have looked for a source and have failed to find one.

4. This proposed PROD policy would not supersede WP:AFD or WP:CSD.

Survey (RFC for an unreferenced PROD procedure)

Moved to Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Deletion of uncited articles

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

RfC on capitalization in "NFL Draft"/"National Football League draft" etc.

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Moved to Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Capitalization of NFL draft article titles

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Regarding the capitalization in "NFL Draft"/"National Football League draft" etc., should it be capitalized "Draft", or lowercase "draft", in article text and titles? With what exceptions, if any? 03:46, 6 January 2024 (UTC) Dicklyon (talk) 03:46, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Due to growing length, this RfC has been split off, per request, to its own page at: Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Capitalization of NFL draft article titles.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:33, 15 January 2024 (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.

"Wikipedia sucks" spam through Wikipedia

Main page: WP:ANI § Email spam

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Phil Bridger (talk • contribs) 19:06, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Now archived to Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1145#Email spam. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 05:33, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

What a difference a name makes

Getting the name of an article right can sometimes make a big difference in readership. My example is the article Society of Jesus which from July 1, 2015 until August 22, 2022 was viewed 181 times per day. The name of the article was changed (with substantial opposition to the change) to Jesuits on August 23, 2022 and the article was viewed 1,685 times per day from then until January 7, 2024. I can't think of any explanation except the name change for the sudden increase in readership. Smallchief (talk) 14:34, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

I'm fairly certain of two things Smallchief: 1) that this is not the right place for this discussion and 2) that you have misunderstood how the pageviewer tool interprets redirects (this link may help). ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 14:57, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

I'm fairly certain (1) I don't understand what you're trying to say and (2) if naming articles isn't part of policy what is? Smallchief (talk) 16:07, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

What policy discussion is this supposed to lead to? The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 19:59, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

(1) What AirshipJungleman29 is saying is that the reason not many people were visiting Jesuits prior to 22 August 2022 is that the article was at Society of Jesus; if you look at the pageviews for that article from 2015 until the page was moved ([9]), you will find that it averaged 2,340 views/day. (2) There is indeed a policy regarding article names, but there are policies regarding everything on Wikipedia; WP:VPP is for proposing new policies or changes to existing policies and it is not clear what, if anything, you are proposing should change about our article naming policies. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 20:38, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

You can see the effect of the move quite neatly if you combine the two graphs - basically they just switched places overnight. The new page gets a higher proportion of its traffic through the redirect than the old one did, presumably because of links left at the old name, but the total is approximately steady for the two combined.

You can also see the effect of the pageviews including redirects - ie Jesuits plus all pages that currently redirect to it. This graph confirms no particular change in the traffic totals for that group of pages. Andrew Gray (talk) 12:50, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. Smallchief (talk) 15:44, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

I think the question is "Since most of our traffic comes from web search engines, should we consider SEO factors and Google ranking when we choose article titles?" WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:17, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

My answer would be: no, Wikipedia:Article titles is fine for helping readers find what they are looking for. Also, I think Wikipedia will outlast Google Search - we're already seeing how LLMs might make the "search results ranking" paradigm obsolete. No need to compromise our policies and guidelines at all, especially since we're already ranked #1 for a great many searches anyway. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 13:58, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

@Barnards.tar.gz, given that most of our traffic comes from external web search engines, are we actually "helping readers find what they are looking for" if we are not using article titles that are more likely to appear in external web search engine results? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:42, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Transfer of user's sysop status

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.

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Is it possible to transfer sysop status from one user account to another. For example if we have a case where someone originally have 3 different accounts on different wikis, say enwiki, jawiki, and jvwiki. Over time, this user gains a sysop status on two of three wikis not at the same time. At some point, this user wants to unify its sysop status from one wiki to the other, so it turns that he has two accounts where one of which has sysop status on two wikis. After all, is it possible? Sorry for my bad English, thanks. Natsuikomin (talk) 00:26, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

It's "possible" in that 'crats or stewards could remove the sysop group from one account and add it to another. The hard part would be in convincing them to do so. The person would need to have discussions on each different wiki, convincing each community that the transfer makes sense for them. Anomie⚔ 02:03, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

What do you mean by "make sense for them"? Natsuikomin (talk) 02:16, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

You would have to convince someone with the ability to create an administrator to do so. The tricky bit might be proving that the person who originally controlled an account when it became a sysop was the same person who currently controls the account wanting sysop. At any rate, that would be an issue for the particular project and the way they do things. Johnuniq (talk) 03:14, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

Besides that, should he coordinate with local sysops, or can he simply make a single global request, say through Wikimedia to enable the transfer to be done on any wikis which its separate acccounts would be affected on? Natsuikomin (talk) 03:38, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

And regarding whether or not the two accounts are controlled by the same person, wouldn't the administrator simply delete the old account to prevent it from being used by other individual?

And if the administrator worries that the transfer could enable other unqualified person to have the sysop right, isn't it still possible to happen, for example a naughty current sysop gives its username and password to unknown person without having to make a request for transfer? Natsuikomin (talk) 03:43, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't know and I think only a very small number of people would have experience with that. The rest of us would be guessing. Here, at enwiki, WP:RFA should be satisfied and I suspect there would be an uproar if a person were elevated to sysop without prior community scrutiny. You might try asking at WP:AN or perhaps one of the WP:ARBCOM pages. If trying that, post in one place only. Accounts are never deleted. Instead, an unwanted account might be indefinitely blocked or perhaps globally locked. An admin who was found to have handed out their password would never hold advanced rights again. I suspect indefinite blocks would be in order. Johnuniq (talk) 03:49, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for explaining. Natsuikomin (talk) 04:03, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Former_administrators/reason/renamed for prior cases. GZWDer (talk) 11:16, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

So, it's possible. I haven't found out how, but I will search for it later. Thanks for the help. Natsuikomin (talk) 12:08, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

These are examples from EN-Wiki, though. OP, am I correct in assuming that you would like to have sysop rights in all different language accounts you mentioned, but only passed the process for becoming one in 2 of them? Lectonar (talk) 12:24, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

No, I meant to say that I already have sysop status on 2 of 3 accounts (meaning sysop status on 2 of 3 wikis).

Note: I don't have sysop status on any wikipedia sites at the moment. It's just my curiosity about the possibility of such a transfer process. Natsuikomin (talk) 12:44, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

Yes, that's what I understood. And you want it on the 3rd too? Lectonar (talk) 12:46, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

No. Natsuikomin (talk) 13:06, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

We can only answer questions about the English Wikipedia here. To become an admin on this Wikipedia you need to go through WP:RFA, as explained at WP:Administrators#Becoming an administrator. It does not matter how many other Wikipedias may have given you admin status. Anything else should be asked at the Wikipedia concerned or at meta:. Phil Bridger (talk) 13:00, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

I don't know guys why some of you think that I was asking about how to become an admin on certain wiki site. All I was wondering about was the possibility of sysop status transfer. And all of your responses have explained it so well. Thanks a lot! Natsuikomin (talk) 13:23, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

If I understand right you're asking about having an account with sysop rights on a different wiki, while you use a legitimate alternate account to edit this wiki which is later promoted to sysop here. So then you have two accounts with sysop rights on different wikis, and you want to transfer your enwiki sysop rights from the alternate account to your main one. Sure you can, a bureaucrat would just remove the userright from the alternate account and add it to the main one. As long as we can verify that you control both accounts (probably we would run checkuser to check) I don't see why the request would be declined. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 13:48, 10 January 2024 (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.

Make Wikipedia:WikiProject Computer science/Manual of style into Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Computer science

This is a proposal to promote the WP:PROJPAGE essay Wikipedia:WikiProject Computer science/Manual of style (MOS:COMPSCI or MOS:CS for short) into an actual MoS guideline page, at Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Computer science. This isn't suitable for WP:RM because it entails a change from {{WikiProject style advice}} to {{MoS guideline}}, and recategorization as part of MoS.

• This "guideline in all but name" has been remarkably stable for a long period of time, and is actually followed. I.e., it already is used by consensus as a guideline.
• It is written in guideline-appropriate language already and does not need substantive revision, aside from removing a handful of self-references to WP:WikiProject Computer science (or user essays therefrom).
• It is consistent with other topic-specific MoS pages such as Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Mathematics (though much less detailed, which is surely a good thing).
• It has various "MOS:SOMETHING" shortcuts to it which are accepted in use and treated like any other; a 2022 WP:RfD to delete them closed with a consensus to keep.
• Most of our topic-specific MoS pages originated this way, as wikiproject style advice pages and were moved to be integrated into MoS later.
• A competing essay, now at Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Computing (failed proposal), was firmly rejected by consensus (even proposals to keep a few elements of it were rejected), while the page under discussion here was kept and praised.
• If promoted, it definitely should be part of MoS as a site-wide guideline, not something held within a particular wikiproject (per WP:CONLEVEL and WP:POLICYFORK); same as with all the other topic-specific MoS pages and naming-conventions guidelines already.
• This should not be interpreted as a proposal to elevate any other wikiproject style essays. Those that were viable have already been merged into MoS, and the rest seem to be disused and even problematic (though some might be reparable). This is the lone straggler, and I meant to nominate it years ago but forgot or pushed it off.
• Having wikiproject style essays laying around as neither incorporated into MoS nor deprecated as {{Historical}} or {{Rejected}} is a hazard; cf. this RM in which a non-admin closer incorrectly came to a "no consensus" decision when people cited a wikiproject essay that contradicts both MOS:& and WP:COMMONNAME policy, as if the essay was coequal with side-wide article title requirements. Policy-forking often happens at pages like that essay (since corrected) when they are not part of MoS and thus don't get watchlisted by the guideline-shepherding editorial pool.

PS: MOS:COMPUTING, MOS:COMP, WP:MOSCOMP, and perhaps a few other shortcuts that currently point to the failed proposal should be usurped to redirect to the "new" guideline after the change. PPS: I have had almost no input into the page myself other than minor cleanup.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:54, 12 January 2024 (UTC); rev'd. 18:55, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Survey (MOS:CS)

• Support as nominator, of course, and willing to do whatever cleanup is needed.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:55, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
• Support seems fine, generally in favor of making it clear what pages are actually guidelines (with consensus support) and what pages aren't. Galobtter (talk) 21:57, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
• Support. A good summary of what we currently expect for computer science related pages. 0xDeadbeef→∞ (talk to me) 05:25, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

Discussion (MOS:CS)

I find the statement The article should start with an introductory paragraph (or two) to be in a bit of tension with MOS:LEADLENGTH, which explicitly recommends larger leads for larger articles. If promoted, would this advice be removed, or modified to be in line with the general lead length guidance? — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 15:49, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Sure, any glitches like that would have to be normalized to agree with central guidance that governs it, like LEADLENGTH in this case. I figured I would probably miss something or other in going back over it before nominating. We don't tolerate WP:POLICYFORKs, so any such issues would have to be ironed out.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:44, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

 Fixed. Also updated the lead paragraph example to agree with the current version of the selected article.[10]  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:56, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Some of the example articles seem to be outdated or aren't actually best examples we have in those subareas. For algorithms, binary search is a featured article on this topic, compared to Quicksort which is B-class. For programming languages, Python is C-class, and IIRC the best we get on programming languages is Rust, which is a GA. 0xDeadbeef→∞ (talk to me) 16:45, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Which other examples did you want to replace with which? Happy to do it, or you could just have at it. I don't think replacing the examples with better ones (or updated versions of the same ones, when quoting examples) would be substantive (i.e. no WP:PGCHANGE concerns).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:58, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

 Done with regard to those two.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:02, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Many computing articles date from the early years of Wikipedia when sources weren't required; in particular if material was in textbooks was not thought necessary to provide sources. The result is much unreferenced material in these articles, which is becoming problematic. The proposed guideline says

It is quite important for an article to have a well-chosen list of references and pointers to the literature.

Can this be made more in line with current policy? The math guideline says

Per the Wikipedia policy, WP:VERIFY, it is essential for article content to have inline citations, and thus to have a well-chosen list of references and pointers to the literature.

StarryGrandma (talk) 23:03, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

 Done, though in more specific terms [11] that reflect the policy better (inline citations are only required for specific sorts of things).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:26, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

I like that better than my suggestion. I am a member of the decreasing number of editors who believes "likely to be challenged" means "likely to be challenged as incorrect" rather than "likely to be challenged, even if correct, because there is no inline reference". StarryGrandma (talk) 05:15, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

One would certainly hope the former continues to prevail.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:30, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

I agree that the current version is an improvement over the old version, but I don't think that either Wikipedia:WikiProject Computer science/Manual of style#Concluding matters or Wikipedia:WikiProject Computer science/Manual of style#Including literature and references should be in the page at all. Neither of them say anything unique to the subject. They are redundant with existing guidelines. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:49, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

@Red-tailed hawk and StarryGrandma: Anything else to patch up?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:32, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

If this is to become part of the MOS, can we drag ourselves into the 21C and get rid of the insane prohibition on using binary prefixes? Adding a short paragraph would be sufficient to explain the difference between and to note that the SI prohibits the use of decimal prefixes with a binary meaning. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 10:00, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

Would be a substantive change and something to propose in a separate RfC (also advertised at WT:MOSNUM, where this has been argued to death for over a decade). It's been a while, so it's vaguely possible that consensus could have changed on this question, though I doubt it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:43, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

I fear that you are right in the assumption that the usual suspects would pile in and the sheer number of !votes would guarantee that nothing is done. It's really quite odd how we have metric measures forced on us by the SI enthusiasts - until - something that the SI bans but they like is mentioned! Maybe try again in another decade. :-( Martin of Sheffield (talk) 21:21, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

I don't think including a "overview" section is something that I have seen in a lot of CS articles. Most articles will call this section a "background" section and what is being described as a "motivation" section is normally included with the history section. (Also maybe we can give a example of such usages of background sections (I'd personally say Small_set_expansion_hypothesis or maybe Cross-site leaks ?)

I'd also like to see some discussion on the use of self-published wiki/book content/blog posts from primary sources in the references section. (for example, referencing a blog post/ from the Rust development team is fine when specifically describing the internal architecture of the Rust compiler, or the motivation behind a specific issue with language design of Rust, however, it is discouraged in most other cases for example when describing Rust benchmarks or the features that set it apart from x language etc). Sohom (talk) 15:16, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

On the sectioning matter, probably need to look at what GAs/FAs in the topic are doing and see how to update that material a bit. On the primary/secondary point, can you suggest some specific wording to use?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:43, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

If I were to start writing a CS article, I'd be seriously confused by Wikipedia:WikiProject_Computer_science/Manual_of_style#Design_patterns. It's one sentence that links to an article about a book; is the article the example to follow (even though it's tagged for layout issues)? Or am I expected to get this book to learn how to format an article about design patterns? I think that subsection either needs to be expanded to be more descriptive or removed. Schazjmd (talk) 15:30, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

This well known book follows a very specific pattern when describing each design pattern See the entry about "Abstract Factory" I think following the pattern used by the book is what the guideline is talking about here. Sohom (talk) 18:04, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for explaining, @Sohom Datta. I think this subsection would be more useful if it provided a descriptive summary of the pattern used by the book. Schazjmd (talk) 18:13, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

The Gamma, Helm, Johnson & Vlissides ("Gang of Four") book (1994, O'Reilly; also 1995, Addison-Wesley) is findable online in full text easily, but it's unclear whether any of the copies are legit (I'm skeptical). There are "cheatsheet" summaries available on various websites, similar to citation-style cheatsheets findable at various universities, etc. There are a lot of such patterns, and our page would get long if it tried to address all of them, so referring people to the book, to our own article on it and the specific-pattern articles we already have, and to some good cheatsheets, are likely to be the best we can do. The patterns themselves might actually call for additional mainspace material, i.e. expand on what's covered at Design Patterns#Patterns by type and the articles linked therefrom, but that's an separate article-development matter. A similar book with a similar title by Pree (1995, Addison-Wesley) is available for free reading via IA [12]. Weirdly, IA does have the 1998 CD-ROM that goes with the Gang of Four book [13], but not the book itself.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:43, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

Then at least can we say explicitly to follow the examples in the book? Just linking to the article about the book, "The classic GoF format is a good guideline for the structure of an article describing a design pattern.", is decidedly unhelpful. Schazjmd (talk) 20:53, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

Yes, that seems easily doable, and I might link in a "cheatsheet" as a ref.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:23, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia:Village Pump (Idea lab) § Workshop: draftifying

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Village Pump (Idea lab) § Workshop: draftifying. 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 17:47, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

Removing Content from Talk Page

I have a two-part question about removing content from an article talk page. I have read the talk page guidelines, and I don't think that they clearly answer my questions. I am not asking about a specific case of removing content from a talk page, but two more general questions. I am trying to mediate a dispute at DRN where one editor has removed a large amount of material (26Kbytes) from an article talk page that had been posted by another editor. The author who is doing the removing cites WP:FORUM, WP:NOTHOWTO, and WP:OR. I read the talk page guidelines, and they are clear that removing material from a talk page should not normally be done, but occasionally should be done, but they provide poor guidance for gray area cases.

My first question is where can the editor whose material was removed discuss it? DRN is a noticeboard to discuss article content, not talk page content. If an editor had removed paragraphs from an article citing undue weight or balance or unreliable sources, we could have moderated discussion. However, removal of talk page content isn't what DRN is for. Where should the other editor or I go to discuss? I don't like to advise editors to go to WP:ANI; I'm a content mediator. My second question is whether the talk page guidelines talk page is the right place to discuss the lack of clarity of the guidelines about removal of content. I assume that it is the right place, but am asking. (I could say that I don't want my post removed, but that would be half-humorous and half-serious.) Robert McClenon (talk) 20:57, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

Given the non-specific title of DRN, can't the DRN mediator mediate any on-wiki dispute? If you don't feel comfortable mediating a certain issue, can't you pass it on to another editor? Mediators need not be particularly specialized, or knowledgeable beforehand, in the nature of the content being disputed itself.

As to the Talk page guidelines page, I'd say yes, or at least just start a thread there now while you're fresh, and if someone thinks of a better forum you can move it later. It's about time the issue gets dealt with. I revert a lot of Talk page removals, and it often comes down to a fundamental difference of philosophy that guidelines could probably trod into. SamuelRiv (talk) 00:16, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Looking at the specific dispute, they're both newbies, so we can't assume that they know what's appropriate (unless one or more is a sock). Getting the page semi-protected for a couple of weeks might solve that dispute by leaving it to editors more familiar with our usual practices (@I dream of horses being already on the spot). Semi'ing the page would also help the remover stop exposing their IP address. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:33, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

User:WhatamIdoing - You say that the editors in the specific dispute are both newbies. Either you are looking at a different dispute, or you are looking at different editors than I was, or you have a different definition of a newbie than I do. I avoided naming the dispute because I wanted the advice to be generic rather than about the specific dispute, but I should have known that some editors would think that I was looking for dispute-specific advice, and dispute-specific advice is helpful, just not what I thought was important. I was asking about the ZX Spectrum_graphic_modes dispute, where the editor who removed the talk page posts has 37,000 edits, which I don't consider a newbie. If you were looking at the IP editor and the editor who filed the DRN dispute, they are probably the same person, who registered an account after making some IP edits. It was the experienced editor who removed the talk page posts. If you are looking at the Kapersky dispute, then it is true that both editors are new editors who are editing this article for the first time, but that dispute doesn't involve talk page removal. So which dispute were you looking at? Robert McClenon (talk) 20:23, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

It turns out that I was looking at a different dispute at DRN, which involved two edit-warring accounts that both have less than 20 edits.

For this removal, I think the experienced editor is correct, and the former IP should be redirected to a site like Stack Overflow, or to a magazine that might be willing to publish an actual article written by the former IP. The removed content is not really about improving the article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:40, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Okay. I thought it might be that. In the specific case, the Kaspersky article, which was the subject of the edit-warring, has been ECP-protected as a contentious topic. What I was asking was where or how to discuss disputes over talk page removal. You, User:WhatamIdoing, have offered your opinion in the specific case, that you agree with the removal. But how or where should talk page removals be discussed? One editor suggested that I treat the talk page dispute as a content dispute and offer to mediate it. Another editor offered the compromise of archiving the material. Are there any other answers? Sometimes I am not asking about a tree but about the forest. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:10, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Sorry WhatamIdoing, but how is the removal in any way correct? Half the time the IP editor is referring back to changes they are in the process of, or have made to, the article. They are using the Talk page for one of the purposes we say to use it for -- explaining potentially contentious edits (like, say, if an IP editor started changing numbers around in the article, which are exactly the edits these Talk comments are explaining!)

We shouldn't be getting into the specifics of this particular dispute if OP is going to be mediating it anyway (and OP is not asking about the particulars of this dispute), but there you did. SamuelRiv (talk) 22:18, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

@SamuelRiv, consider this bit:

"I think I have found a way to faithfully simulate the output image of the ZX Spectrum on a PAL TV. Of course, different TV sets produce different images, so it can only be an approximation. Descibed below is a much better approximation than the images currently displayed in the article. That's why I'm writing this, for anyone who has sufficient spare time, to use this procedure to produce a more realistic output images."

Does that sound like explaining anything about editing the article, or does it sound like hacking your own device at home? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:33, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

It sounds like IP intends to describe a "procedure to produce a more realistic output images" which would be "a much better approximation than the images currently displayed in the article." In other words, how to make the images better, and in previous posts why the current images and descriptions are not accurate. I cannot comprehend how you get from this that it's about hacking one's home device -- "faithfully simulate the output image". SamuelRiv (talk) 22:46, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Sometimes these things can be "chilled out" a bit by moving the off-topic or otherwise inappropriate material to the most recent talk-page archive. It's "softer" than just a reversion.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:57, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Thank you, User:SMcCandlish, for suggesting what sounds like a compromise about talk page removal, to archive the material rather than arguing over whether to keep it or delete it. That is a generic answer that is also applicable in this specific case. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:10, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

I think that contents of a talk page are normally discussed on that same talk page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:01, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Do we really need over 600 articles on individual Samsung products?

See here; over 300 of these are Samsung Galaxy models. I'm sure they're fine products and all, but an awful lot of these articles are on the short side, and an awful lot seem to be doing little more than listing the qualities of the product. There are too many similar examples to consistently handle this piecemeal, and too many articles for an individual editor to handle. BD2412 T 22:59, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

My feeling is that this is an awfully good time for WP:NOPAGE to be invoked and for articles of products of the same series to be merged. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 23:20, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

My position is that whenever there are many similar short articles, they should be combined into a longer article or list that covers all of them (see WP:NOPAGE and WP:HASTE). Thebiguglyalien (talk) 23:21, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

Looks like many of those could be combined into larger articles and soec comparison tables. Lack of any discussion of individual models also begs why the need for separate articles. — Masem (t) 23:22, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, that's nuts. RoySmith (talk) 23:50, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

I agree with the various comments about combining these up, but it's a lot. Is there a WikiProject or task force that would take this on? BD2412 T 23:53, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

I was somewhat surprised at the arguments made here Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Samsung SCH-U470 and would gather mass action to be controversial, unfortunately. Star Mississippi 02:00, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

It always is. That said, there is lower hanging fruit than that: Samsung Galaxy A7 (2015), Samsung Galaxy A7 (2016), Samsung Galaxy A7 (2017), Samsung Galaxy A7 (2018). CMD (talk) 02:24, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Let's take a look at that AfD. The first keep vote says he added two sigcov sources; looking at the diff, he added two links to listicles as bullet points in the references section and then coupled it with an WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS argument. (least surprisingly of all, this person is a legacy admin). The second keep vote is just a plain WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS argument. The third keep vote asserted that it meets GNG because of the listicles and because it has a "notable design". It was then closed as keep without relisting by another legacy admin. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 02:38, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

This is a no-brainer for me. For starters, the year models like Samsung Galaxy A7 (2015), Samsung Galaxy A7 (2016), Samsung Galaxy A7 (2017), Samsung Galaxy A7 (2018) should be combined. The differences between those models must be pretty minor. If we look at a comparable aircraft or car where there are multiple variants and years in a single model, there is nowhere near this level of content forking. That AfD was exceptionally weak. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 02:45, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Yep, that was my Surprised at the arguments made comment, although DRV would be fruitless as there was no other way to close that. I missed that OwenX was an Admin, however. Star Mississippi 02:54, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

In my opinion, the best option would have been to relist with a warning that WP:ATAs would not be given serious consideration when closing, and we really need to start clamping down on !votes that cite weak sourcing as GNG. Getting back to the issue at hand, there's really not much in terms of precedent for combining groups of articles, even though it's something we should be doing more often. I tried to do this with List of mass stabbing incidents (2020–present), but months later someone went back through my edits to undo all of the merges because "no consensus", so now in many cases the smaller pages duplicate the content on the larger page. That's in addition to the fact that most of these only have routine coverage and don't meet GNG in the first place. If such a combination were to take place with the Samsung Galaxy A7 articles, for example, what would the first step be? And what would the target article look like? Thebiguglyalien (talk) 03:34, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

The first step to merging the A7s would be identifying the merge target, which would probably best be Samsung Galaxy A7 (2015), which is the oldest and was originally named Samsung Galaxy A7. The articles are short enough that they'd work simply as subsections of a model/edition section. There could even be a summary table as there is by year at Samsung Galaxy A series. CMD (talk) 03:58, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

I'm puzzled by all this handwringing at the possibility of merges being opposed for not having consensus and what to do about it. The answer is simple: get consensus. Wikipedia:Proposed article mergers exists for exactly this purpose - make a proposal, advertise it here and at any relevant WikiProjects then after a couple of weeks (or sooner if it starts snowing) ask someone uninvolved to close it. If there is consensus for the proposal then go ahead and implement it, if there isn't then either just move on or listen to the feedback you got and make a revised proposal. Thryduulf (talk) 14:46, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

I agree with this. The correct procedure in cases like this, I think, is to propose a merger at the relevant location and, if/when the merger attains consensus, perform the merges (and redirects - leaving categorized redirects, I would hope). The problems encountered previously, I suspect, result from using AfD as a venue - it is profoundly ill-suited to making the kinds of decisions required here. Newimpartial (talk) 17:50, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

What handwringing? I proposed a merge structure. This can be taken to PAG or any other board. There can't be consensus for a nonexistent proposal. CMD (talk) 01:18, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

The ToF listicle, in addition to being a "use with caution" source and thus likely ineligible for NCORP, has all of 25 words on it, 6 of them being just the name. On what planet would anyone consider that SIGCOV?? And the Business Insider listicle has just 3 sentences, nowhere near SIGCOV. Is this another walled garden maintained by a small number of AfD participants? JoelleJay (talk) 22:46, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Probably, but that's true for most of AfD. You could find people to !vote keep on just about anything if it was mentioned in a local newspaper once. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 22:52, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

@Star Mississippi: The first objection raised in that AfD was that the nominated subject received far more news coverage than most Samsung models, which suggests that this will not be a baseline concern for most Samsung models. BD2412 T 15:16, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Not to take issue with any individual editor, but this is a great example of why AfD isn't a good venue for making decisions like this. The question shouldn't be anything like "which Samsung (phone) models are famous?" but rather, "what treatment of Samsung (phone) models serves the purposes of our readers and offers encyclopaedic coverage?". There is a constant tendency at AfD to answer the former type of question rather than the latter. Newimpartial (talk) 17:53, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Agree with what Newimpartial said. And because of that I think that a general discussion is a useful place to discuss this. Having a different 3-4 participants at each AFD decide is not the best way to do this. Also due to the complexity of the considerations, with input/influence from both wp:notability and wp:not dictating the best course. North8000 (talk) 18:11, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

I agree with Newimpartial and North8000 here. The implied question at AfD is always "should the article(s) about this topic be deleted?", even if the nominator is actually asking something different or more nuanced. Accordingly people who think there should be coverage of this topic on Wikipedia will usually only !vote delete if the article is bad enough to require TNT and frequently this means they recommend keeping even if they would be happy with a merge, or even think a merge would be better. If you want to ask a different question, AfD is the wrong venue. Thryduulf (talk) 19:20, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Who's suggesting using AfD to combine articles? The AfD example just demonstrates that the most vocal people who want to keep the status quo generally don't understand or don't care about how notability is evaluated. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 22:49, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Of course not. How many of these actually receive non-routine SUSTAINED coverage? JoelleJay (talk) 22:30, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

More than 0 but less than 600. If you want a more precise answer than that you're going to have to look for sources. Thryduulf (talk) 22:32, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Too many phones for 1 article, too many phones for separate articles. With cars, they often separate into generations of models eg. Toyota Corolla third generation Toyota Corolla (E30). Do phones have generations yet? -- GreenC 01:53, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Amir Tsarfati

Recently Wikipedi took down the page of Amir Tsarfati. This proves that Wikipedia, like most big tech,is antisemitic at heart. Amir is a real, and legitimate, person and personality. To remove his page is showing this organization is not independent at all, it is a left wing purveyor of Propaganda 2600:4040:4029:7400:DD60:2E56:7133:282B (talk) 20:37, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Nah. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Amir Tsarfati is pretty clear: He does not pass the WP:Notability test (lacks in-depth coverage in independent reliable sources). There is no claim by anyone that he is not real, nor that he is "illegitimate" whatever that might mean. He's just some random person who has not attracted significant coverage in sources independent of his own religious and non-profit work.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:54, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

I literally just posted an article on Reuben Oppenheimer this morning. BD2412 T 21:37, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Sulaiman Shah, a real, legitimate, person and personality was recently deleted. Presumably Wikipedia is Islamophobic too? ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 21:52, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

If 2600:4040 had any connection to this person (or any other person or organization they wanted to have an article), then I'd encourage them to take WP:BFAQ#WHY to heart, especially the practical and helpful advice "to add to your own website a comprehensive list of any independent reliable sources, such as newspaper articles, which have been published about your organization. Such a list can help Wikipedia understand why you think your organization is notable" (emphasis mine). If you want to have an article about a given subject, then making it very, very easy for Wikipedia's volunteers to find Wikipedia:Independent sources about that subject is helpful. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:08, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

is antisemitic at heart. Sigh. To prove that, you'd need to prove discriminatory intent. Otherwise we're being antisemitic when we delete any article about anyone who is Jewish, and Islamophobic when we do so about anyone who is Muslim, and homophobic when... 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 22:38, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Not to be pedantic, but in my usage at least wikt:at heart always takes the meaning of "at the core, essentially, foundationally", and not any moral/spiritual sense (for which I'd instead say "in one's heart"). The latter definition may have something to do with intent, but no clarification of what OP means is given, and OP used the term "proves" in the most colloquial sense. SamuelRiv (talk) 23:09, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Trademark Symbol

I am trying to mediate a dispute at DRN in which a declared paid editor is asking to add the trademark symbol (TM) (actually the form in a circle) after the name of his company's product whenever it appears in an article. I looked in the policies and guidelines and the MOS, and didn't find a statement that we do or do not use trademark symbols. However, it has been my understanding that we do not use the trademark symbol, because it has a promotional quality, and that alternatives would include using a non-trademarked term for the product. Did I fail to find something in the MOS, or is the MOS silent on the subject? Should the MOS say not to use trademark symbols in Wikipedia articles? Could a compromise be to include a note in the article that that form of the name is trademarked? Robert McClenon (talk) 02:58, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

You're looking for MOS:TRADEMARK. MrOllie (talk) 03:00, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Trademarks says Do not use the ™ and ® symbols, or similar, in either article text or citations, unless unavoidably necessary for context. Pretty clear. Cullen328 (talk) 03:04, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

I have dealt with a similar situation before, where one name of the subject was claimed to be protected as a trademark. Where that is the case, one solution is to just eliminate generic use of the claimed term from the article completely, and refer to the subject by its clearly generic name. Compare adhesive bandage and Band-Aid. BD2412 T 03:39, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Using a trademarked term is not a problem as we are not doing trade under it, not passing it off as applying to our product. Look at any newspaper, and you'll see trademarked terms referenced left, right, and center in the newspaper text, without the trademark symbols. It falls under trademark fair use. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 05:18, 17 January 2024 (UTC)