Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)

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WP:NSONG and covers[edit]

So, this idea stems from something discussed at Wikipedia talk:Notability (music) back in 2021, at Really, a cover can never have an independent article?. I think it's ready for a centralized discussion now.

Summary[edit]

The current guideline on the inclusion of cover songs as standalone articles is this line in WP:NSONG:

Songs with notable cover versions are normally covered in one common article about the song and the cover versions.

This sentence stems from a 2013 discussion, held at Wikipedia talk:Notability (music)/Archive 16#WP:SONGCOVER. The discussion was informal, relatively small, and localized to a single notability talk page. And, to be frank, I don't think the policy they came up with is very well thought-out, and it should be replaced with something more permissive.

Take "The House of the Rising Sun", a folk song of unknown origin. At 15kb of prose, it's a pretty large article; and it's a bit cluttered with infoboxes, tables, and paragraphs from all the artists who have covered it. The section on the cover by the Animals is simply an entire article pretending to be a section. This rule jams notable and non-notable versions alike into a solitary article, and it makes articles with many notable and even culturally significant covers feel bloated. In this case, the Animals' version is arguably more culturally significant than the composition itself, taking on a life of its own. To be squashed with every other cover and the song's origin seems counterproductive. Instead, the Animals' cover should be mentioned and discussed in a concise manner, that doesn't require every notable statistic and detail. There can be a {{Main article}} hatnote above the section, linking to a full article about the song with room for expansion. Did you know that the Beach Boys didn't write Barbara Ann? Neither did I, and our article on the song reflects that imbalance in notability poorly; in fact, the Regents don't even get their own section for composition or release. It's all Beach Boys.

It seems to me that, like any creative work, we should expect our best articles on songs to cover a broad range of topics: writing process, composition, themes, production, release, reception, impact (including brief summaries of notable recordings), and so on. A cover song with notoriety of its own will have a separate composition, production, release, reception, and impact. The only thing that remains essentially unchanged is the lyrics; so, if we were here to simply be genius.com and reprint lyrics, I would then understand merging various versions of a song into a single article. But that's not what we're doing, and the strategy we've come up with seems to be detrimental. There is precedent for this idea, a few distinct recordings that have swollen too large and have split off; see The Star Spangled Banner (Whitney Houston recording), We Are the World 25 for Haiti (YouTube edition), Somos El Mundo 25 Por Haiti, We Are the World 25 for Haiti, and presumably others because I couldn't really find any on my own. Thanks to Helloimahumanbeing and Tbhotch for these.

So, what's the solution? Well, I don't think every notable cover should have its own article; some GNG-passing topics remain basically stubs throughout their life on Wikipedia. Here, WP:NSONG comes in handy:

Notability aside, a standalone article is appropriate only when there is enough material to warrant a reasonably detailed article; articles unlikely ever to grow beyond stubs should be merged to articles about an artist or album.

I think that this is an excellent rule of thumb, and I propose that it be implemented for articles about cover songs. If there is enough material to warrant a detailed article, cover songs should absolutely be developed in a space of their own, free from the constraint of its parent article. This will not only allow for more detailed analysis of covers, but also for more concise articles on original compositions. Thanks for your time, everyone, and I hope we have a productive discussion here! theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/they) 23:11, 4 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion NSONG[edit]

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Wikipedia proposals

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What should Wikipedia's guidelines be concerning cover songs and individual recordings? theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/they) 20:02, 8 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Options

A: All notable covers can have a standalone article, subject to normal policies of splitting and merging
B: Notable covers can have a standalone article provided it can be reasonably detailed article based on facts independent of the original
C: Only "exceptionally notable" (i.e. demonstrably culturally significant) covers
D: No change

Discussion

For now, just adding a link to a related discussion, also from 2013. Interesting reading. At the time, more editors were adamant about combining versions than the editors who saw a value in splitting, curious to see if that changes through this discussion. I see the points on both sides, although I lean toward "exceptionally notable" covers having their own articles, such as "The House of the Rising Sun" by the Animals, and Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You". (Also, I changed this to a bullet; why would discussion comments be numbered?) Schazjmd (talk) 23:30, 4 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
if this proposal isn't dead on arrival, we might have a future RfC in this section with a few options moved options to top for RfC

Or something like that. theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/they) 23:45, 4 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This proposal seems sensible to me. In my view, the best approach would probably be something along the lines of WP:SPLITTING – if a cover version is sufficiently notable, we build out its detailed information (the chart performance and reception and so on) into a separate article, and mention the cover in summary style in the broader article about the song. ModernDayTrilobite (talk • contribs) 17:42, 5 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
That the Whitney Houston cover of I Will Always Love You does not have its own article has felt bizarre to me for a long while. I understand the benefit of keeping covers together with the articles on the song (as any sections on lyrical analysis, background, etc. are going to have overlapping content), but I think opening this up to something somewhat more permissive than the current rule would be worthwhile. If WP:IAR frequently applies to a particular rule, then that might be an indicator that the rule has to change. — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 17:53, 5 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This should proceed to an RfC. What is mentioned above about covers and articles is sensible.--Whiteguru (talk) 21:19, 5 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think it's definitely possible to have an independent article for a cover, but the issue is that, most of the time, when a cover is really well-known it will eclipse the original to the point where it makes sense for us to just largely devote the main article to it (see eg. Hound Dog (song), which devotes a ton of its text to Elvis.) The only situation where we'd really want separate articles is when the main article gets so big that it has to be split... which several of them, like the one I mentioned, might have reached. But I don't see any value to splitting if it's just going to result in one of them being a stub. --Aquillion (talk) 21:30, 5 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think proposal B is sensible. I've often found song articles to be unwieldy. NemesisAT (talk) 21:44, 5 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think B-ish seems reasonable, but I would add the caveat that cover version should only normally be split out into their own article if and when issues like WP:ARTICLESIZE and WP:DUE are a problem. WP:SUMMARYSTYLE applies here; if we can include sufficient information on all of the various versions of a song and not overwhelm the same article, then there's no need to create more articles. If and when the article becomes excessively long or out of balance, then we could split into multiple articles. I don't want to encourage the proliferation of multiple articles where one article is sufficient, but I recognize that in some cases, one article isn't. --Jayron 32 14:49, 6 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Another example is Tainted Love. First recorded by Gloria Jones in 1964. I happen to think her version is pretty fantastic, but it was released as a b-side of a single that nobody liked (different world back then, do you kids even know what a b-side is?) She gave it another shot with a re-recording in 1976 but that also didn't really go anywhere. Fast forward to 1981, new wave band Soft Cell recorded their own version of the song and it became a massive hit, top ten in the charts on multiple continents. It's certainly the most known and popular recording of the song, and what could clearly be a stand-alone article about it is crammed between Jones' original version and the 2001 Marilyn Manson version. That seems a bit off to me. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:37, 6 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
No change, or only change to make the prohibition stronger. The articles are about the songs, not the recordings.--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 18:58, 7 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I would also support “No Change”. The song is what is NOTABLE … not the individual versions/covers. Yes, it is quite possible for a cover to be more famous than the original recording (or for one cover to be more famous than other covers), but notability and fame are not identical concepts. That said… when a specific cover is famous, it is appropriate to highlight it within the article on the song (and also in the article on the performer). To not highlight The Animals in the article on “House of the Rising Sun” would be redivilous. To not highlight both Dolly Parton and Whitney Huston in the article on “I Will Always Love You” would be silly. Blueboar (talk) 19:42, 7 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Note: I've retroactively made this an RfC. theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/they) 20:02, 8 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
No change: I've just read the articles mentioned above, and I think the present 'rule' (which says keep it together "normally") makes good encyclopedic sense, when one is trying to understand the song, and WP:SPLITTING already covers the times you should split out, so no need to change. "A Famous cover" is likely to have more space in the article, but that is fine, too, in line with DUE. Alanscottwalker (talk) 22:05, 8 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Option A I don't see why specifically being a song cover should make it have a higher standard than GNG. — PerfectSoundWhatever (t; c) 03:54, 9 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Option B as per previous comments and in accordance with WP:SPLITTING policy. P1221 (talk) 07:39, 9 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Option D. As an editor who has focused on music articles since first joining in 2012, I like having all the information about one particular song in one place. In other words, I don't have to go on a wild goose chase to find a particular page for a cover version simply because someone else happened to make a more successful version of it. Creating pages for particular covers seems biased. Similarly, if we make pages for covers, we'll be confusing our readers who'll ask questions such as, "Wait a minute, didn't [insert pop singer here] make a notable version too?" Where will they put this new cover? The page for the original version or the page for the version that their recording is based on? Meanwhile, what would we do for songs like "Unchained Melody" where eight—count them, eight—different musicians released versions that charted? This is where simple section linking and redirects triumph. I think things are fine the way they are, and I agree with what Khajidha and Blueboar said above: we're talking about songs here, not recordings. ResPM (T🔈🎵C) 19:00, 12 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Having 8+ articles about different iterations of the same creative work doesn't seem like it would be the end of the world. Colin M (talk) 20:08, 12 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
and if it is the end of the world (as we know it, anyway), then i feel fine :) theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/they) 05:38, 13 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Option B. I won't belabor the points made above, but it seems to make the most sense. We shouldn't have an article for every cover of every song, but surely some are notable enough to be worthy of their own articles. (While this may read as an endorsement of Option C, it's not. I find phrases such as "exceptionally notable" and "demonstrably culturally significant" to be too stringent.) -- Vaulter 19:08, 12 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Option B (or maybe A). I've written previously about my reasons for supporting separate articles for notable covers in the 2021 discussion linked above and this little mini-essay. In principle option A seems reasonable to me, but it might be safer to start with a somewhat more incremental change, work out any kinks, and then consider pushing it all the way. Colin M (talk) 20:02, 12 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Option D, as we want to encourage more merging, not more splitting (without guidelines like this, we have what has happened for obscure plants and villages - individual micro-stubs, when a longer combined article would benefit the reader more) and per ResPM. BilledMammal (talk) 05:45, 13 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Option A or B: You know, I never liked the fact that notable covers had to be in the same article as the original song. Some covers far surpass the popularity of the original, to the point where many people are unaware they are even covers in the first place. Wouldn't it make more sense to have articles on them over the original, with most of the article being dedicated to that particular cover? MoonJet (talk) 21:48, 16 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Options A or B As I wrote above, song articles with notable covers can quickly become unwieldy, especially on mobile. The current policy is also at odds with WP:GNG. NemesisAT (talk) 23:04, 16 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Moving Article to Draft Space During AFD[edit]

Is an editor permitted to move an article from article space into draft space while an Article for Deletion nomination is pending? I am asking because I thought that I knew the answer, but it appears that there is disagreement. I had thought, once an AFD was properly started, moving the article to draft space was not permitted. In the past, if an article has been moved to draft space, it has been moved back to article space, and the AFD allowed to run for seven days, with Draftify being one of the possible closes. However, in the most recent case, the article was moved to draft space, and then a non-admin did a Speedy Close of the AFD, stating that the AFD rationale is no longer valid, because the article was moved to draft space.

So what is the policy? Can an article be moved to draft space, closing the AFD? Or should the article be left in article space to allow the deletion discussion to run for the usual seven days? Robert McClenon (talk) 03:26, 10 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The AFD template on the article says not to remove the template and not to blank the page. It doesn't say not to move the page. (The template on a page that is pending MFD has a longer list of things not to do, including moving the page.) Robert McClenon (talk) 03:31, 10 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's generally unwise to boldly draftify an article if an AfD is pending, especially if at least one editor has expressed opposition to draftification. WP:AFDTODRAFT, which might be the guidance that you're looking for, states that [w]hile there is no prohibition against moving an article while an AfD or deletion review discussion is in progress, editors considering doing so should realize such a move can confuse the discussion greatly, can preempt a closing decision, can make the discussion difficult to track, and can lead to inconsistencies when using semi-automated closing scripts. So, there's currently no policy prohibition, though there are ways in which it can be disruptive. — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 03:40, 10 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Like Mhawk says, there's a long-standing consensus that moving articles during an AfD is disruptive. I also can't imagine that an article at AfD would be eligible for draftication, unless there hadn't been any !votes for any other outcome. Even then, incubation in draftspace is a possible outcome of an AfD, so the early close is ending the discussion prematurely and pre-empting consensus. It might be justified in some WP:IAR edge cases, but otherwise this sounds like a bad close and should be reversed. – Joe (talk) 07:46, 10 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, User:Joe Roe, User:Mhawk10. I have observed this at least several times, usually where the person moving the article to draft space had previously moved it to article space. That is, the editor moving the article into draft space was previously the proponent or author of the article. It was in draft space, either because it was in review or because it had been moved to draft space once already. Then the proponent decides that it is ready for article space. Someone nominates it for AFD at this point. Then the proponent moves it back to draft space. If this sounds like gaming the system, that is because I think it is gaming the system. My own opinion is that the current policy is wishy-washy, but that is only my opinion. My own opinion is that, because it doesn't prohibit this behavior, it enables a proponent to try to sneak a page into article space and then run back. But maybe the community wants the policy to be ambiguous. Robert McClenon (talk) 14:32, 10 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I will add that I have in particular observed this behavior in an area where the notability guidelines have been ambiguous for more than ten years, films that are pending release. Part of the problem is that the notability guideline has been ambiguous, and an effort to clarify the guidelines resulted in No Consensus. A typical sequence is:

A. There is a draft.
B. A proponent moves it to article space.
C. A New Page reviewer moves it back to draft space, saying Not Ready for Article Space, Incubate in Draft Space.
D. The proponent moves it to article space a second time.
E. Another editor nominates it for deletion.
F. Now the proponent moves it back to draft space.
G1. An admin moves it back to article space and the AFD continues, or
G2. A non-admin speedy-closes the AFD.

So, I think that the policy is ambiguous, but maybe the community wants it to be ambiguous. Robert McClenon (talk) 14:32, 10 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

If I saw in the wild what you are describing above and the editor making these moves were either experienced or did this across multiple articles, I would start to look for signs of UPE in the editor’s history. It’s a bit odd.
I think the most natural thing to do would be to treat this akin to BLARing a page that is already up for AFD. Which is to say, please don't do it if you are not the uninvolved closer. — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 14:46, 10 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I'd be a bit more charitable and say that it's not gaming the system, but a common misunderstanding of the system that we wilfully perpetuate by treating draftspace and AfC as if they exist outside our usual collaborative norms. That is, we tell new editors wanting to write a new article that they must make a "draft" and that this will be reviewed for "publication". They probably go through a cycle at least once (either creating in mainspace and having it moved to draft, or having an AfC submission declined) that teaches them that if their draft is not suitable for publication, it is returned to them to work on further. Finally they get to a point where the reviewers are satisfied and... whoops, now it's at AfD and a bunch of other people are saying that it isn't suitable for publication after all! In that context, trying to move it back to draftspace to work on further is an entirely reasonable response based on how they've been led to believe Wikipedia works. Of course, in reality, the "draft" was never theirs and whether it was suitable for "publication" never had anything to do with their work or the decisions of reviewers, but was entirely dependent on community consensus on the merits of the topic it's about. But how the hell were they supposed to know that? We need to communicate better to these editors how mainspace ownership and collaboration actually works – or rather, we need to stop deliberately misleading them with the fantasy peer review and "publication" process offered by AfC. I'd say that starts with ending the review–decline–resubmit cycle: articles that start in mainspace should stay there, and drafts should only be moved once. In other words, if we get rid of steps C and D in your sequence, I think there's a good chance it will naturally eliminate F and G. – Joe (talk) 15:14, 10 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Two general things we can that should deter these cases without the need for specially tailored rules directed at regular participants in AfDs is (i) say that if an AfD is irregular in that the content radically changes other than unambiguous improvement, including a move, then it is then not suitable for NAC, and (ii) the closer of the AfD is to interpret the question as to whether the content belongs in mainspace under the given name. Then, we will only don't delete the article if the closer interprets the AfD as asking for draftify.

Apart from my general aversion to rule creep, I'm happy with codifying that this behaviour is unacceptable. — Charles Stewart (talk) 15:31, 10 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I think that a rule saying not to move an article to draft space while an AFD is open is a good idea and has a low wp:creep risk. To me it looks like it should be too obvious to need saying. The AFD period is brief, and I see no non-disruptive reason for such a move. BTW, we should understand that AFC is a tough venue. Edge case articles that would survive in mainspace are usually rejected in AFC because the folks there are playing it safe, the alternative being "go out on a limb" with an edge case article. We should both thank the AFC folks for what they do and also be nice to the folks trying to get their article through AFC. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 15:58, 10 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

First, I agree with User:North8000 that codifying a rule against moving an article while it is being discussed for deletion is a minimal change in scope, and would add that I have seen it done often enough that I think it should be either forbidden or permitted, and I think forbidden is a better approach.

Second, to User:Joe Roe, in the cases that I have observed, I am willing to assume good faith and say that sometimes it isn't UPE. (Sometimes it is.) In particular, it happens with future films, and the editors who do it are simply ultras, fanatics, willing to game the system to get an upcoming film listed.

Third, to User:Joe Roe, this is related to the problem of move-warring between article space and draft space. The repeated moving of an article from article space to draft space is move-warring, and should be avoided. If a proponent moves the page back into article space, the proper response is not to draftify it again, but to nominate it for deletion. But after it is nominated for deletion, sometimes the proponent then tries to pull it back into draft space.

Fourth, I was about to ask what BLARing a page is. It is cutting down to a redirect. Redirect wars are common in music disputes.

Robert McClenon (talk) 17:20, 10 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Fifth, the speedy close in the case in point was done in good faith because the closer didn't know that the move to draft space was out of process. The move to draft space was not in good faith, but the speedy close was in good faith; the closer just thought that they were wrapping up a loose end. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:07, 10 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I think moving to draft space should not be allowed during an AFD. Instead someone who wants to do that should propose it in the AFD discussion, then others can support or oppose that idea. Also any move during the discussion is a bit disruptive, though I can see why it may happen, eg error in title; title is an attack on someone eg "Joe Blow (loser)". If someone wants to change the scope of the article by renaming, then that should be discussed in the AFD anyway. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 00:47, 11 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- As I have outlined, the problem has to do with an editor who is determined to have an article in article space, and has moved it into article space after it was moved back into draft space. But then, when it is nominated for deletion, the editor says, "Oh. Now I am willing to compromise and have it in draft space rather than have an AFD." And they hadn't been willing to compromise earlier. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:20, 13 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I have had this arise as an issue recently. In my view, if the gist of the AfD nomination is that the subject is notable but the article needs to be completely rewritten, and a review of the article confirms this, then a move to draft space is immediately justifiable. It immediately removes poor content from article space, thereby improving the encyclopedia, and does not disrupt the discussion of the AfD question of whether such an article should exist in Wikipedia. The article is still visible, and quite frankly, because improvements to the article can be made in any space, it is less disruptive to the discussion than substantial efforts to improve the article while it remains in mainspace. BD2412 T 01:20, 14 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

User:BD2412 - I can see that this case will occasionally happen. But, if so, is it unreasonable to wait until the AFD is concluded in 7 days with a conclusion to Draftify? Alternatively, if everyone agrees, can the AFD be SNOW-closed? Also, are you, BD2412, saying that the AFD should then continue while the article is in draft space? That isn't consistent with current policy. Do we need an exception to current policy, or can we simply wait until the AFD concludes? Robert McClenon (talk) 03:32, 14 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I am saying, let's not let the bureaucratic be the enemy of the good. If the article is a hoax or an unfixably non-notable subject, then the move should not matter and the discussion should conclude as it concludes. If the issue is that the article is in poor shape (WP:TNT) is raised often, that's another matter. BD2412 T 03:42, 14 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I think that User:BD2412 is saying that an AFD can continue (conclude as it concludes) while the article is no longer in article space. Is that correct? If that is correct, then does the close of the AFD resolve the matter of what space the page should be in, if any? If so, that would mean that moving the article to draft space does not stop the AFD. In the cases I have been describing, the purpose of moving the article to draft space was to stop the AFD. So are you saying that an AFD should run to conclusion, then that means that moving the article should not stop the AFD, which should continue. That is interesting. Do other editors agree? Robert McClenon (talk) 19:35, 14 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the AfD can continue running. I think this is no different than an AfD continuing to run after an article remaining in mainspace has undergone a complete overhaul that removes the problems that prompted the AfD nomination and adds a dozen high quality reliable sources. I would give as an example John T. Newton, which was nominated looking like this (three lines, no sources). BD2412 T 19:54, 14 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Do other editors agree with User:BD2412 that an AFD can continue running after the article is moved into another namespace? I think that is a very good idea, and would prevent the devious use of the move back into draft space. If so, that would mean that the author of a questionable article is taking the risk of an AFD, and, once properly started, the AFD can continue. Do other editors agree that moving an article out of article space does not stop an AFD that was validly started? Robert McClenon (talk) 23:57, 15 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

In other words, a page can only be nominated for AFD if it is in article space when nominated, but the AFD continues in any space. Is this correct? If so, administrators should be aware of this provision, so that they will know that draftifying cannot be used to stop an AFD.

As I said at the beginning, moving an article into draft space to stop an AFD is a relatively common abuse. It should be clarified that it doesn't work. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:57, 15 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I doesn't "sit" right with me to be having an AFD without a corresponding "article". I agree with the others who said Draftify during an AFD should be prohibited. AFD is a formal process that usually provides a clear answer and once started, should conclude. As with everything, there are exceptions. Hoaxes can be CSDed, which immediately ends the AFD. This same thing happens when one editor AFDs an article and subsequently someone else says CSD G11. But for the more routine case of a notability issue, there is no great rush. MB 00:49, 16 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

If the AfD is running, DO NOT move the article to draftspace without closing the AfD. If you are not competent to close the AfD (eg too inexperienced, or involved with the article) then do not Draftify, but instead !vote in the AfD your opinion for why it should be draftified. If consensus is to draftify, then the AfD can be closed per that consensus. Seven days is not strictly required, especially if consensus is for a non-deletion result. I can easily imagine that an AfD nominator may very easily agree with the first comment or two that advise to draftify, and the nominator withdraws the AfD and draftifys. This would be an AfD speedy close and subject to the WP:Draftify conditions. Alternatively, the AfD consensus may be SNOW Draftify, meaning the page can be draftified per consensus at AfD overcoming objections such as from the author.
Leaving the AfD running on a draftified page would be disruptive to the AfD process. The templates would go red, and scripts wouldn’t work, and later editors browsing AfD would be frustrated. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:43, 16 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
User:SmokeyJoe raises good points about why moving a page out of the article namespace during an AFD is a bad idea, and will mess up the scripts and templates. However, SmokeyJoe appears to be assuming that I am asking about a good faith effort, when he refers to whether the editor is competent to close the AFD. The instances that I am asking about are not good faith editing. The cases that I am asking about have to do with editors who have pushed a draft into article space, typically after it has already been draftified at least once. So then a reviewer nominates it for deletion. SmokeyJoe has been involved recently in other discussions about draftification, and we agree that an editor has the right to object to draftification, and to insist on keeping an article in article space. But SmokeyJoe has, I think, also agreed that in that case, the author is taking the risk that an AFD discussion will be started. The question is about a namespace two-step, in which the author first pushes the page into article space, and then tries to pull it back into draft space to defeat the AFD that is an appropriate response to pushing the article into article space.
So it isn't a matter of whether the author is competent to close the AFD; they are not only involved but are playing a game. The question is how should the community deal with an editor who tries to stop an AFD by hiding the article in non-article space. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:57, 17 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I have seen two different ideas. First, some editors think that moving the article out of article space should be forbidden. Second, some editors think that the move should be ignored and the AFD should go on anyway. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:57, 17 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think my answer silently covered the “bad faith” page proponent.

My answer implies that draftification is forbidden by an INVOLVED editor, as they aren’t able to closed the AfD. This means that the editor who ignored AfC negative responses and mainspaced the draft anyway can interfere if the AfD heading towards deletion. SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:23, 17 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- User:SmokeyJoe - I think that your last sentence is missing a negative, or something. Robert McClenon (talk) 05:55, 17 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  This means that the editor who ignored AfC negative responses and mainspaced the draft anyway can’t interfere if the AfD is heading towards deletion. SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:28, 17 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
An editor who breaks the rules and tries to shut down the AfD by draftifying should be reverted, warned, and blocked if they do it again.

G7 does not prevent an AfD from finding a consensus to delete.

Note that if an AfD determines a topic to be non-notable, this makes its non-notability a fact in any future MfD on future drafts. MfD does not examine notability, but it does pay attention to past AfD results. SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:28, 17 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

In the cases that I am discussing, the proponent isn't trying to shut down the AFD because it is "heading towards deletion", but tries to shut it down before it is heading anywhere, because they don't want an AFD. They just want what they want, and are playing a game. Robert McClenon (talk) 05:55, 17 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It appears that User:SmokeyJoe is either saying or implying that the article may not be draftified or otherwise moved during the AFD, because the AFD must be closed first. This comes back to the question of whether the template on the article should include a statement that it should not be moved during the deletion discussion. A page that is at MFD already says that it should not be blanked or moved. A page that is at AFD says that it should not be blanked.
It now seems that this is about the template. Sure, the AfD template should say “Do not move the page while the AfD is in progress”. In a separate process, an active AfD trumps the RM process.

I don’t think there is any need to ascribe motive to the draft mainspacer, whether they did it for this reason or that, once the mainspace page is AfD-ed, short of speedy deletion, the AfD has to play out. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:51, 17 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I am not attributing motive to the draft mainspacer as such. Anyone has the right to mainspace a draft. I am attributing motive to anyone who moves an article back into draft space after it has been tagged for AFD. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:42, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I see a lot of agreement that a page with the AfD tag should not be moved. So add this statement to the AfD tag. SmokeyJoe (talk) 13:53, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I certainly think AfDs should continue regardless of what enterprising participants do with the content. The point of my previous comment was that I think we should forbid NACs if the AfD is irregular because the content is moved. I'm open to us forbidding draftification once an AfD is started in addition. — Charles Stewart (talk) 06:15, 17 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Careful with the wording… Draftifying (or even re-draftification) is a perfectly legitimate result for an AFD… it just shouldn’t be used to bypass an AFD. Blueboar (talk) 14:19, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This is my thinking in suggesting rules:
- If the page is AfD tagged, do not move it.
- Do not remove the AfD tag while the AfD is open.
- Do not close the AfD if you are INVOLVED.
- CSD#G7 may not be used during an AfD, instead !vote as author agreeing to deletion.
- Draftify, instead of delete, is a perfectly acceptable outcome of an AfD, if that is the Consensus of the discussion. SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:53, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I have started an RFC to add an instruction not to move the article to the instructions not to remove the template or blank the article. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template_talk:Article_for_deletion#RFC:_Add_Instruction_Not_to_Move

(I can't unilaterally add a statement to the template, which is protected.) Robert McClenon (talk) 22:08, 22 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

By the way, probably the most recent example of an attempt to move an article to draft space to defeat an AFD can be seen at M Miraz Hossain. Robert McClenon (talk) 22:12, 22 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Concurring with Robert McClenon: Someone nominates it for AFD at this point. Then the proponent moves it back to draft space. If this sounds like gaming the system, that is because I think it is gaming the system. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:51, 22 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Applying Notability Tag to Article after No Consensus AFD[edit]

There is a tagging dispute currently at DRN in which a {{notability}} tag was applied to an article after an AFD was closed as No Consensus. (I will not mediate any tagging dispute, because I think that the purpose of dispute resolution should be to improve the article, but that is not the point.) The editors appear to be "dug in" on both sides, with some saying that the No Consensus close meant that there are questions about the notability of the subject, and some saying that the No Consensus close meant that there was not a consensus to delete the article. I think that the issue is really a policy question, which is whether No Consensus at AFD is a reason for tagging the article. Comments? Robert McClenon (talk) 20:59, 12 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

No Consensus means that there was not a consensus to delete the article. Since the only real point of a notability tag is to stimulate an Afd, & there shouldn't be another right now, it should be removed. Johnbod (talk) 04:01, 13 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I have to disagree, the fact that that it was no-consensus clearly means there are doubts that it is notable (assuming that's why an article was at risk of deletion). So its ongoing inclusion makes sense until more sources are added. Nosebagbear (talk) 11:54, 13 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Precisely. The purpose of tagging articles is to encourage people to fix potential issues. An AfD closing as 'no consensus' is clear evidence that a significant proportion of people think there are issues. The fix is to improve the article, not pretend there isn't a problem. AndyTheGrump (talk) 12:18, 13 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

How do you fix notability, which is supposed to be unrelated to the current state of the article, by editing the article? — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 13:19, 13 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I consider the tag to be an appeal for editors to demonstrate notability in the article sourcing, rather than a proclamation that the subject is not notable. If the latter was the case, there would be no reason for the tag since the tagger could instead just PROD or AfD it. JoelleJay (talk) 16:50, 1 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Assuming there was a discussion prior to the AfD, querying notability, then that would have been the time to tag, not after gng was discussed in an AfD. The discussion can continue with a view to resolution without the tag. Selfstudier (talk) 12:32, 13 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I always find a post-AfD notability tag pointy. AfD is where we debate notability. If you still think it's not notable, you can initiate a DRV or renominate it at some point. Otherwise, what, are we supposed to have articles tagged forever? (I supported deletion btw). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 13:19, 13 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Continued presence of notability tag can be 3 things:

An impetus to get the article improved
A visible indicator that there is an unresolved question/dispute over wp:notability
A precursor to AFD.

After a no-consensus AFD, with #3 temporarily off the table, you still have #1 & #2. IMO a recent no-consensus AFD should not preclude notability tagging. On #1, while in the ethereal sense notability relates to the topic/title, in reality it can be improved by including more (suitable) sources. Adding such sources (or failure to be able to do so after an effort) is also a way to resolve #2. North8000 (talk) 13:49, 13 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Additional note: The language right at Template:Notability make clear that the tag can be removed if you are certain that enough in-depth, independent sources have been published about the subject to overcome any notability issues and that The template must not be re-added. In other words, once someone feels notability has been addressed, the notability tag is done. The next step, if you don't think they've been addressed, is to AfD, request merge, etc. This is in line with my understanding of what this tag is for. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 14:15, 13 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Those template notes sound like good guidance for most situations but probably not for when there is a dispute. Because basically says that if one person says it's not needed and takes it off, it can't be put back. North8000 (talk) 14:33, 13 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that's what it says, and that's the way it should be. We shouldn't be having disputes over notability tags, and it's built into the documentation of the tag. The dispute is over notability, and one side of that dispute has a way to escalate: merge, afd, etc. Insisting on tagging because you didn't get your way isn't ok. Like it or not "no consensus" defaults to keep; if you still don't think it's notable, you can renominate, go to DRV, or find something else to do (like improving the article, removing low quality sources, removing unsourced/promotional content, stubifying if necessary, etc.). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 14:58, 13 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Many good & valid points there but I still stick with my view on categorical exclusion of the tag as outlined above. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 15:19, 13 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I advocate for even more use of {{Notability}} for articles that are still sitting in the WP:NPP queue. But I think that as soon as an article is nominated for deletion, the tag becomes pointless. I usually remove this tag as soon as an article gets nominated for deletion. I don't wait for the AfD result. Post-AfD, if the close was no consensus, {{More citations needed}} may be more appropriate, notability discussion can continue in the talk page, or a second AfD nomination can be done. MarioGom (talk) 18:54, 14 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
"More citations needed" would not be more appropriate. The purpose of this tag is described as the following: This template indicates that the article needs additional inline citations. This is not the issue with the article - the article does not make statements that require additional inline citations. The disputed article discusses a subject which may not be notable enough to be included on Wikipedia. Those are two different issues. BeŻet (talk) 09:52, 16 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The template should not be restored once it is removed. As Rhododendrites points out, improvement of the article is never an option, as notability is not affected by referencing or the state of the article. The template must not be re-added. Doing so is disruptive and a block should be considered. Our means of resolving notability issues is AfD, and that should be considered final. The use of this tag to obstruct an article is deplored. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 20:17, 14 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I have a proposal for change here: replacing the link to Help:Maintenance template removal with Template:Notability#Removing this tag Hawkeye7 (discuss) 18:27, 15 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
That doesn't seem necessary, as the help page already has a section about notability tags. The issue is, the help page straight up mischaracterizes the template. The template doesn't say, and doesn't require, adding citations to reliable sources (because notability doesn't require adding citations). All you have to do is read Wikipedia:Notability and Template:Notability to see that perspective doesn't follow from anything else. The template is an expression of doubt that such sources exist. To overcome it, you have to feel sufficiently confident they exist. Ideally, yes, you add them to the article, but we have other templates for insufficient citations ({{Refimprove}}, etc.). If you think the current citations are sufficient, you can just remove the tag. In a typical situation, though, you need to be careful when you do that, because the person who doesn't think it's notable can't restore the tags and has no other option but to escalate. We have a formal process for that. (Of course that's a typical case rather than someone making a point by adding it after an AfD was closed instead of following standard procedure for contesting a close or renominating). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 23:56, 15 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I closed the DRN case about the tagging dispute that prompted this inquiry. I was probably too polite in closing the dispute, and not sufficiently sarcastic, because I am in general disgusted by tagging disputes. Thank you for your comments. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:53, 17 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Reworded RfC on the addition of a stand-alone page creation criteria to the geography notability guideline[edit]

RFC to clarify that notable geographical topics do not need to have stand-alone articles. See Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)#Drafting of stand-alone page criteria for WP:NGEO, based on feedback at recent RfC. Previous proposal, withdrawn to reword it: Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#RfC_on_the_addition_of_a_stand-alone_page_creation_criteria_to_the_geography_notability_guideline

Background[edit]

Wikipedia has many very short geographical article stubs. This proposal is to add a section to WP:NGEO that will clarify, in line with the existing WP:NOPAGE guideline, that information on notable geographical topics may sometimes be best included in parent articles. The draft wording of the addition to WP:NGEO is given below:

RFC[edit]

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Should the following section be added to WP:Notability (geographic features)? — Ixtal ^{( T / C )} ⁂ Join WP:FINANCE! 10:34, 15 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

== Whether to create standalone pages ==
As stated in WP:NOPAGE, "Sometimes, understanding [of a notable topic] is best achieved by presenting the material on a dedicated standalone page, but it is not required that we do so. There are other times when it is better to cover notable topics, that clearly should be included in Wikipedia, as part of a larger page about a broader topic, with more context." For example, a majority of a river's tributaries may meet the notability criteria defined in this guideline, but there is little to be said about most of them. In this case, we may include a list of tributaries in the river's article, with standalone articles for some tributaries and redirect articles pointing to the list entries for other tributaries. A similar approach may be followed for hamlets or neighborhoods in a municipality, stations on a railway line, and other geographical features.
Merging a short stub about a notable topic into a parent article may improve the reader experience if it presents the topic in a broader context, as long as a redirect from the stub title is maintained, with suitable categories to assist navigation. The redirect target may be an entry in a stand-alone list or an entry in a list or sub-section within the parent article. The information may be formatted as a sortable table, a bulleted list, paragraphs, or sub-sections depending on the type of content. The redirect should point to the position in the parent article that holds the merged content, which may be identified by an {{anchor}} template. Maximum care should be taken to preserve the information that was part of the stub. Examples: MacDonald River (Côte-Nord)#Lakes and Alachua County, Florida#Historic communities in Alachua County.
It is important to follow the process described at Wikipedia:Merging when merging articles, with particular care to publicising controversial proposals at relevant WikiProjects. A merge does not preclude expanding the redirect back into a standalone page if more information comes to light.

— Ixtal ^{( T / C )} ⁂ Join WP:FINANCE! 10:34, 15 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Survey NGEO[edit]

Yes, as proposer Before outlining my vote, I will first mention some important aspects of Wikipedia policies and guidelines for context. Firstly, notability is not the same as stand-alone page creation criteria. From Wikipedia:Notability: [Presumption of notability] is not a guarantee that a topic will necessarily be handled as a separate, stand-alone page. Editors may use their discretion to merge or group two or more related topics into a single article. From Wikipedia:Notability#Whether_to_create_standalone_pages: Sometimes, understanding is best achieved by presenting the material on a dedicated standalone page, but it is not required that we do so. There are other times when it is better to cover notable topics, that clearly should be included in Wikipedia, as part of a larger page about a broader topic, with more context. A decision to cover a notable topic only as part of a broader page does not in any way disparage the importance of the topic. Secondly, there is no strong community consensus or policy argument against the existence of stubs, although guidelines support their existence if and when they are capable of expansion (WP:AVOIDSPLIT: If only a few sentences could be written and supported by sources about the subject, that subject does not qualify for a separate article, but should instead be merged into an article about a larger topic or relevant list., WP:STUB: A stub is an article that, although providing some useful information, lacks the breadth of coverage expected from an encyclopedia, and that is capable of expansion. bolding my own). Finally, WP:NGEO currently presumes all legally recognized places to be notable. This means that there are hundreds of thousands of articles (mostly stubs) that can be created off of a single source.
I will now provide some arguments for why I think having specific criteria for stand-alone geo pages would be useful. To begin with, the ratio of active geo editors to geo pages is almost negligibly small. This means that not only do geo editors need to patrol many articles for them to be kept up to date or prevent misinformation, but also that large-scale misinformation campaigns or long-standing mistakes are unlikely to be caught in a timely manner (the Abadi mistranslation issue being a particularly notable mistake requiring over 13,000 page deletions). Thus, there are practical issues for the community when it comes to managing the geo pages effectively based on the current NGEO guideline. Secondly, geography stubs are unlikely to be of much use to our readers in an encyclopedic manner. Confirming that a town exists or finding out there is a town in Turkey called Afşar gives our readers very little information. Having some criteria for when to merge geostubs into their parent article or some list article could greatly improve the context and breadth of information that readers receive, without removing the information that is currently accessible as a geostub article. Finally, having more guidance on when and how to create separate articles for geographical features would be useful to new editors who don't have the experience to understand the unspoken nuances in the notability guidelines or community expectations.
In conclusion, I think having a separate section of NGEO outlining criteria for when and how to create stand-alone pages for geographic features would be of significant benefit to the community in the future. — Ixtal ^{( T / C )} ⁂ Join WP:FINANCE! 10:34, 15 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support the principal - but the proposed language is TLDR… can we summarize? Blueboar (talk) 12:44, 15 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Blueboar open to suggestions :) — Ixtal ^{( T / C )} ⁂ Join WP:FINANCE! 20:06, 15 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support nothing new here. The proposal only collects existing information from other pages and adds it for user convenience. I have merged several geo stubs myself, following existing rules listed above. Venkat TL (talk) 12:54, 15 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose because it does not add anything to the global policies. This proposal seems to be motivated by the existence of many articles about geographical features that could be merged. It's not that I am against the objective of merging in this case—I trust that the editors know what they are doing, but the policy is independent of this particular situation and it should remain neutral, even within the particular domain of geographical features. The policy says that stand alone articles, even stand alone stubs, that are forked content are fine. It depends on the situation. How to organize a topic into many articles is not fixed by the policy. It should remain like that. (See comments and discussions). Dominic Mayers (talk) 13:30, 15 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support This is good guidance that represents current best practices, though I agree with the commenter below that it could be a bit more concise. Reywas92^Talk 19:45, 16 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. The sentence The information may be formatted as a sortable table, a bulleted list, paragraphs or sub-sections depending on the type of content is missing a comma after the word "or"; WP:NGEO is written with oxford commas.— Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 21:51, 16 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Fixed, thanks Mhawk10 :) — Ixtal ^{( T / C )} ⁂ Join WP:FINANCE! 22:38, 16 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Consistent with other guidelines and just reiterates what is already encouraged. JoelleJay (talk) 02:05, 17 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. After thinking about this more, I can't support the text because it's rather imprecise. A quick search through all of the Hamlets of Canada's territories (See: 1, 2, 3), appear to be either substantial articles or stubs where I get something out of it that is more than "X exists". I fear that the example using Hamlets will encourage inappropriate mergers of articles both where standalone stubs do a fine job covering the topic and where more-than-stubs may be pressured to be merged into county-level articles. On top of that, ordinary railroad stations need to pass WP:GEOFEAT#2 (require significant in-depth coverage by reliable, third-party sources to establish notability) or WP:GEOFEAT#3 (notable under Wikipedia's WP:GNG), each of which should make it more than reasonable that the article be expanded rather than lazily upmerged. The only real area where geostubs can actually have very little more published information than X exists and still be worthy of including in the encyclopedia (per WP:NGEO) is the clade of Populated, legally recognized places. If the proposal were going to simply give merging advice for those sorts of items, I might feel differently, but the proposal goes far beyond that limited scope in its merge recommendations. For the reason that I believe that the implementation of this language would be more likely to encourage editors to upmerge stubs to a parent rather than to expand existing stubs, I must oppose. — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 02:25, 17 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support, with no objection to concision or other wording tweaks suggested. Wikipedia articles should help readers first and foremost, and placing topics of which there is very little to say within a wider contextual framework does this. (Reducing editor burden for maintaining multiple pages is a plus.) While the proposed text does not create new policy, it usefully points out an application of existing policy. I am specifically inclined to support here as this practice reflects the current consensus of WP:PHILIPPINES, which after numerous AfDs and some discussion has agreed that barangays are not always best covered on standalone pages (ie. the "hamlets or neighborhoods in a municipality" example mentioned). CMD (talk) 02:28, 17 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose The proposed verbiage does not say anything useful as it's a vague case-by-case evaluation rather than some specific guidance. And its bias against specific articles about particular places is foolish. It is generally best to have tight articles about particular places because:
1. The scope of the topic is more likely to be clear when it's a particular place rather than an arbitrary assortment
2. The name of a particular place is more likely to be clear and unambiguous
3. The coordinates of a particular place are more likely to be clear and exact
4. A picture of a particular place will be easier to agree upon

See also WP:CREEP and the KISS principle.

Andrew🐉(talk) 09:56, 17 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Andrew, I'd appreciate some clarification on your arguments.

What do you mean by "arbitrary assortment".
I'm not entirely sure what names have to do with coverage of a notable location. Perhaps an example would be useful in this point.
Wikipedia is not a database so being against merging (for example) for the purpose of coordinate collection seems counterintuitive to me. Additionally, with the hundreds of thousands of geostubs that have never been checked by other editors (NPP will tend to check that it's sourced correctly and passes NGEO rather than fix coordinates), I actually believe the opposite is an issue. Having hundreds of thousands of articles with negligible oversight means coordinates, if wrong, will stay on the mainpage for years on end.
Why are pictures a key determinant when choosing to merge/create or not to merge/create articles? If they aren't, I fail to see the relevance of this point.
In regards to creep, I strongly disagree my proposal would result in creep. Which of the criteria in the CREEP page do you think the proposal fails? Because in my mind there (I) is a very real problem of an unsustainable and overwhelming amount of geostubs with little to no context that no one can or bothers to patrol for accuracy of information, (II) the proposal would clarify how NOPAGE applies to NGEO in a way that will result in more constructive discussions on geo content curation, (III) this RfC would satisfy the consensus requirement if passed (taking into account that NOPAGE is already strongly-supported policy and the proposal doesn't create new rules but rather clarifies the relation of NGEO to NOPAGE). — Ixtal ^{( T / C )} ⁂ Join WP:FINANCE! 13:40, 17 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- A good example of an "arbitrary assortment" is Alachua County, Florida#Historic communities in Alachua County. This details information about a random assortment of places in an arbitrary way while not doing the same for other places in the county such as Hogtown or Lochloosa. Such chaotic clutter does not seem helpful to the reader. It is much simpler and straightforward if there's a separate page for each place. These pages will have a natural title and the coordinates, pictures and other content will likewise cohere in a commonsense way. The proposed text provides no clear guidance about this and so has no value; it's just superfluous verbiage which will make writers less likely to read any of the existing guidance per WP:TLDR. This is the key point of WP:CREEP, "...bloated pages that new editors find intimidating and experienced editors ignore". Andrew🐉(talk) 07:46, 18 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  I agree that Alachua County might not be the best example. I think a good example would be something like New York City#Boroughs (assuming they didn't have their own pages). The mix of images, maps, and brief descriptions follows what I'd say would be close to ideal for describing subdivisions of a populated place (I don't see coordinate information as strictly necessary encyclopedic content). What type of guidance would you hope the guideline have if the proposal is updated, Andrew? — Ixtal ^{( T / C )} ⁂ Join WP:FINANCE! 08:29, 18 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  - Coordinates are expected in geographical topics and seem fairly fundamental. They support useful features such as the Special:Nearby function. If multiple places were forced together into arbitrary assortments then this would break that function. Andrew🐉(talk) 09:53, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose, per Andrew Davidson. Unfortunately vague text that lacks specificity, and which isn't likely to be of much help in real, contentious, situations. MichaelMaggs (talk) 10:16, 17 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. (1) As others have already said, this adds nothing useful to policy and is TLDS where a simple link to WP:NOPAGE would do. (2) It is a solution in search of a problem. I pay particular attention to GEOLAND articles nominated for deletion and I have rarely, if ever, seen opposition to merging a stubby village article when a suitable target exists. Much more often the problem is stubby village articles get nominated for deletion instead of doing the work of merging. The proposer has not given a single example of where a one line "it exists" page has been kept standalone rather than merged because of a misunderstanding of guidlelines. (3) The text as well as being overlong is factually wrong in a number of places. For instance, it is not true that "a majority of a river's tributaries may meet the notability criteria". Just the opposite in fact, the majority of named streams are entirely non-notable. Besides which, the guideline already gives the similar example of river islands as possible candidates for merging. The guideline also already has guidance on merging populated places. SpinningSpark 14:55, 17 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support: hamlets or neighborhoods in a municipality, stations on a railway line cause significant problems, particularly in New Page Patrol. How do these one-line articles get notability? Just because they exist? Not on your nelly. Merging into a parent article is a proper solution. --Whiteguru (talk) 21:06, 17 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Whiteguru: The guideline already recommends merging for one-line articles that "cannot be developed using known sources". Nobody (mostly) is arguing against that. The question here is whether this monstrous verbiage of an inaccurate addition is going to help. Also, can you please open a thread in the discussion section explaining why this is such a huge problem in NPP. To me it looks like tag with "notability" or "suggested merge" and job done. SpinningSpark 07:35, 18 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support, while I agree that it is redundant to already existing policies and guidelines, sometimes (as is the case in this field) it is necessary to be redundant in order to highlight the fact that geographic articles do not enjoy a privileged states with regard to various PAGs on article creation, notability, and the like. I like the addition because it brings into highlight what should be best practices that years have history have taught are not usually followed in this realm. --Jayron 32 14:43, 20 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose There is nothing here that isn't already covered in WP:FAILN. There are adequate procedures to discern which geographical topics are likely to be notable, and most neighborhoods and rivers are not notable enough even to be mentioned, let alone described, in an associated article. Case in point, not all of the lakes of MacDonald_River_(Côte-Nord) are covered in that section, just the ones where nontrivial information is available (and Lake Larry should also have its own subsection as it is associated with a national park).
On the other hand, ghost towns in the United States are usually notable if there is evidence that it was ever a legally recognized place, and this is implicity recognized in the current wording of NGEO, so the bullets in Alachua_County,_Florida, should be split finto their own articles, as is done for the vast majority of US counties. It is not clear that the content in the examples given was merged from elsewhere, or that they reflect an established practice.
Lastly, in some countries, very small communities are not called hamlets; for example, villages in Myanmar are below the usual cutoff of legal recognition for that country, and instead each township of Myanmar has a list of villages. –LaundryPizza03 (d c̄) 15:14, 1 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Good thoughts there but oppose IMO it is long essay-like advice / opinion which really doesn't add anything. Also the example given is non-typical of geo articles in an important way. For the example, the next level up (river vs. tributary) is invariably more real-world notable/ recognizable and also unique (a tributary goes only to one river). Regarding an inhabited place that passes NGEO, the next level up (e.g. a township or a country) is usually more abstract, often less real-world notable, and often not unique. For example, a small town may straddle the border between multiple townships or counties. A much better idea would be to prohibit mass-creation from mere database entries. A proposal for that a few months ago IMHO passed but in reality faded awary and got a stale no-consensus close. If an editor is going to spend real time creating a short geo article IMO that carries some weight and less likel to be any big problem compared to being just one of a set of 1,000 mass creations. North8000 (talk) 15:59, 1 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. There's nothing wrong with the proposed language, but experience suggests that adding this as a section of a Notability Guideline (cue theme music) will inevitably lead to it be turned into an all-caps shortcut and taken to unwise extremes. Merging is sometimes appropriate, and vastly better for the health of project than deletion. But it often has significant downsides both for user experience and article improvement. To take the proposer's example of Afşar: as a reader, even the existing two-sentence stub gives me easy access to information about the village's location and population that I would have a hard time finding if it were buried in a list. And as to article improvement, tr:Afşar, Bolu, while still quite minimal, has considerably more content than the English article. So the English article is capable of being expanded -- which would be unlikely to happen if the existing information were merged into a list of settlements. Good merging requires balancing these considerations, and even small amendments to guidelines can easily upset that balance. I think the existing policies provide sufficient guidance. It would not be an improvement to have something that editors could casually cite as authority, AFD-style ("Merging 500 stubs into a single list per WP:GEOMERGE"). -- Visviva (talk) 17:38, 1 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Discussions[edit]

I don't like survey in a RfC that are not complementary to a discussion. The most important in a RfC is the arguments, the discussion. The consensus is best obtained through a discussion. A survey is only there to help. It does not replace the discussion. Besides, in some RfCs, the outcome is more nuanced than a support or a reject. Dominic Mayers (talk) 13:57, 15 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Dominic Mayers calling the section "Survey" is commonplace on wiki, in my experience, and does not impede discussion. — Ixtal ^{( T / C )} ⁂ Join WP:FINANCE! 14:20, 15 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps it's only a question of terminology, but a separate section where people summarize their position is useful and is best kept separated from the discussion section. Dominic Mayers (talk) 14:25, 15 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps a simpler paragraph that simply says that the global policies Wikipedia:Summary style, Wikipedia:Content forking, Wikipedia:Article size, and Wikipedia:Merging, as summarized in WP:PAGEDECIDE, apply to geographic features as well would be more appropriate. My understanding is that a group of editors consider that a lot of small articles should be merged into larger articles. There is nothing wrong with that, especially if it is does not create a polemic. However, I don't see that we should duplicate what is already written in the policies to support that. It is paradoxical that the goal is to keep Wikipedia simple, but it accomplishes that by making its policy more complex with duplication. Dominic Mayers (talk) 13:57, 15 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
If the intention is to discourage systematically content forking in the context of articles on geographical features, then this is not the same as the global policy. It should not be presented as an application of this global policy. It becomes then a specific policy for articles on geographical features. Some rational that is specific to articles on geographical features would have to be given to justify this more specific policy. I have not seen this rational. Dominic Mayers (talk) 20:23, 16 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
What? I'm so confused as to what you interpret the proposed addition's impact/relation with content forking is, Dominic Mayers. — Ixtal ^{( T / C )} ⁂ Join WP:FINANCE! 21:25, 16 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know what confuses you. I don't see this in a complicated manner. When a topic is divided into many articles, this is content forking. It's natural and some times necessary, especially in large topics. There is nothing pejorative in the concept of content forking. It should not be confused with POV forking. Dominic Mayers (talk) 21:42, 16 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I understand what forking is, Dominic Mayers, I'm just confused as to what exactly in the proposed wording discourages systematically content forking as well as what "systemic content forking" is. You say "the global policy", but that may refer to any sections of the policies and guidelines. Perhaps rewording your initial comment to be less vague would be helpful in that regard. — Ixtal ^{( T / C )} ⁂ Join WP:FINANCE! 22:42, 16 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that the proposed wording does not discourage forking. In fact, it seems to repeat what the global policy says regarding forking and the global policy does not discourage forking. It's just that you described separately, in your comment, a problematic situation which requires merging as a solution. I agree that the situation is confusing, but this is because there is no connection between the objective that you describe and the policy: the policy does not encourage merging (nor discourage it) and merging seems to be your goal. Dominic Mayers (talk) 23:04, 16 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Dominic Mayers I personally do believe that the addition to NGEO encourages more frequent and widespread merging of geographic articles in cases where it makes sense. At the very least it clarifies it as a valid editorial decision so voting to keep a geostub in an AFD "per NGEO" demands a conversation on whether merging or keeping the stand-alone article is the best way to preserve the content, which would be a massive improvement over the current state of affairs where the de facto assumption is all articles that pass NGEO deserve their own pages. In the sense of PAGs not encouraging merging, the PAGs encourage editorial decisions that benefit our mission, our readers, and our ability as editors to continue our work on the wiki sustainably. When taking decisions regarding how to present content to our readers, I think guidelines that acknowledge the existence of merging as an option are helpful to the community, which is why I proposed the addition of the section to NGEO. — Ixtal ^{( T / C )} ⁂ Join WP:FINANCE! 23:30, 16 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
If you give the impression that a different policy is needed, when it's not the case, then you weaken your position: only a few people are here to discuss what you propose, the wording, etc. whereas the global policy has the support of the community at large. Unless you need to have a specific policy adapted to articles on geographical features, I don't see what is the purpose here. As a minimum, make it clear that you refer to the global policy. I still do not see the point of repeating it, but there will be no harm. What is clear is that, if you need a support from the community for merging many articles and the existing policy is sufficient, then the best way is to discuss the specific of the situation in the light of this policy, not confuse this with a discussion of the policy for the sake of improving it. Dominic Mayers (talk) 23:56, 16 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Dominic Mayers I'm not proposing entirely new policy but rather an addition to NGEO that brings it closer in alignment to NOPAGE, which is part of WP:N. The issue is that sometimes when you propose merging articles based on NOPAGE, editors will reply they believe the article should be kept separate based on NGEO (see one of the AFDs I started in line with WP:BLAR), completely ignoring NOPAGE. That is why specific guidance on the NGEO guideline would be beneficial. I'm happy to discuss this in more detail on my talk page if you wish to have a conversation about it, as we are taking up quite a bit of space here. — Ixtal ^{( T / C )} ⁂ Join WP:FINANCE! 13:52, 17 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
We are not taking too much space here at all. We are discussing exactly what needs to be discussed. Yes, I would support a clarification that passing the notability requirement is not at all a sufficient criterion for a stand alone page. That seems to be your main point. In fact, if it is not already clarified at the global policy level, it should be. You could then refer to that clarification, which is or would be provided at the global level. I suggest that you limit the proposal to that. Just have this single main point. Dominic Mayers (talk) 14:33, 17 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The proposal states For example, a majority of a river's tributaries may meet the notability criteria defined in this guideline, but there is little to be said about most of them. If this is an accurate description of the situation, the guideline is problematic: it's weird that it classifies as notable geographical features about which there is little to be said. Perhaps this is the real issue at stake here. Stubs are a different thing. We create a stub when we are pretty sure there is enough to be said about the subject. If we have many stubs with little to be said on the subject and the guideline supports that, it's a problem with the guideline. I admit that I do not know much about the history of the guideline. I was summoned at random by a bot to give my comment. If this has been discussed before and the guideline remained like that, then perhaps not enough people were involved in that previous discussion or the sentence above is not an accurate description of the situation. Dominic Mayers (talk) 12:54, 17 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
As I pointed out in my !vote, this is completely inaccurate. The guideline supports no such thing, it says "named natural features are often notable". It does not say they are always notable, and then goes on to give named river islands as candidates for merging into the river article. It is obvious to anyone reading the guideline that river tributaries will fall under the same principle. There is no need for this lengthy addition to the guideline to explicitly state that. SpinningSpark 07:44, 18 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

If you move article update it's name in lead and infobox. Don't do mess[edit]

"If you move article update it's name in lead and infobox" (don't forget about Wikidata) - can we have it signed and even bolded somewhere? Looks like 95% moves are without updating name in lead and infobox - they don't care. What about readers? Why doing mess and confusing readers? There is also Wikidata which should be updated too. Eurohunter (talk) 09:08, 16 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Latest example from my watchlist page moves? @A7V2: Don't move articles if you are not going to update name in lead. Don't do mess. Eurohunter (talk) 09:08, 16 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that's good advice, but not all good advice needs to be codified in policies and guidelines - we have too many of them already. Phil Bridger (talk) 10:08, 16 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Eurohunter: You didn't think to raise this on my talk page or just fix it yourself? As you should have been able to tell, the existing titles of those two articles (FIA Gold Categorisation and FIA Platinum Categorisation) were unsuitable since they are not about different FIA Drivers' Categorisation systems, but about two different categorisations within it. Both ledes are also completely unsuitable. I have done half of the work which needed to be done (since the titles violated guidelines), you can either do the other half and rewrite the unsuitable ledes, or stop complaining. "Don't do mess"? Seriously, get over yourself. A7V2 (talk) 11:20, 16 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@A7V2: There is hundrests of moves like yours. I would need to be a bot to tell everyone about simple obvious behavior such as update lead and infobox otherwise don't move anything - create thread on talk page, notify WikiProject or whatever. Eurohunter (talk) 11:58, 16 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It's worth noting that not all moves mean that names should be updated in the lede and infobox... And I'd say it was actually in the minority. The above example is one where it's either best to have a different title to meet the lede, or to have no bold in the lede. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 12:57, 16 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Both articles' ledes need to be rewritten since they do not summarise what the article is about. The fact that they were separate articles is why I moved them. I have changed the ledes a little bit but if these are to stay as two articles the ledes need to be changed completely. I had considered that the Gold article could be merged into the platinum one (deleting the list of drivers which is probably a WP:DATABASE violation) and then move it to just FIA Drivers' Categorisation, but that would require a discussion on the talkpage or the wikiproject, and I really don't care enough to bother with that. A7V2 (talk) 01:17, 17 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site was recently renamed Brown v. Board of Education National Historical Park, so I moved the page and updated its contents. Thanks to this reminder, I also edited its wikidata, which required manually changing its name in four languages (same in all), its statement, its native label, and its commons category (which I also just now moved, since that wasn't linked in the article before). Gotta say it's kind of a pain and I don't really intend to become a wikidata editor in addition to enwiki and occasionally Commons. I speak German so I guess I'll move the German article too, but I'm not going to waste time on the shitty Cebuano wp and its worthless bot-generated articles. Reywas92^Talk 19:59, 16 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This is mentioned in WP:POSTMOVE. It's also mentioned in the Summary Style summary of that page linked from WP:MOVE#Post-move cleanup. Though the fact that it's not mentioned in the post-move message at MediaWiki:Movepage-moved is probably an oversight. Colin M (talk) 20:27, 16 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Some editors have been arguing that we should continue to use the old name in the lede and infobox, which makes things harder. I've only seen this in relation to New Zealand Dual Names, but I expect it exists elsewhere as well, with editors trying to maintain the prominence of their preferred name. BilledMammal (talk) 00:06, 17 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I think the official names of geographic places are something of an exception to the rule here. Geographic articles conventionally highlight the place's official name in the infobox, even when it isn't the article title; this pattern is most immediately apparent in the articles for countries (United Kingdom, Argentina, Eswatini, etc). This precedent is also backed by WP:NCGEO, which states that The formal version of a name can be substituted for [the article title] in infoboxes. ModernDayTrilobite (talk • contribs) 21:30, 17 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

That is common when the article is at a COMMONNAME that is a shorter form of the official or full name. The lede and/or infobox generally use the longer official or full name, with a parenthetical "commonly known as" of necessary. With people the lede is typically their full name while the infobox reflects the page title, while with geographical places it's typically the opposite. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 15:17, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

What MEDRS is NOT[edit]

An editor has repeatedly claimed that attributed allegations - from Chinese CDC whistleblowers - about the Chinese government supressing COVID-19 infections and deaths, is a violation of WP:MEDRS [1] [2] [3]. There are literally tens of other Chinese and English language sources making these allegations, from as early as March 2020 [4] [5] [6], to recent weeks [7] [8] [9]. I have therefore created Wikipedia:What MEDRS is not, and attempted to update WP:MEDRS [10], and I am now posting here to build consensus on the proper application of this guideline, so as to prevent it being used as a carte blanche to delete content. This discussion is irrespective of WP:NPOV and WP:DUE concerns with the content in question. CutePeach (talk) 16:05, 17 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The editor involved insists on erroneous narrow reading of the guideline, but perhaps adding one more guideline is not the answer. There is nothing wrong with your essay. I just think that the current guideline is sufficient to deal with this issue, without having to legislate what imo should be, for most people, an obvious interpretation. 65.88.88.57 (talk) 18:21, 17 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Yet another asinine essay from a problematic editor trying to undermine Wikipedia's WP:PAGs . Best to ignore for now, and if such WP:POINTy stunts become too disruptive CutePeach can be removed from the Project. Alexbrn (talk) 08:23, 18 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Unhelpful. 172.254.222.178 (talk) 12:00, 18 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

MEDRS should not be used to strike down news or facts or opinion where the primary "noun-verb" facet (for lack of a better way to describe it) is not one drawing from science or medicine, even if the facts supporting that "noun-verb" facet are elements that would clearly be covered by MEDRS. A mainstream discussion of the history of the "lab leak theory" itself can draw on MEDRS sources for that history, but it is far better covered by mainstream news reports, as long as they do not try to attempt to validate the lab leak theory, for example. --Masem (t) 12:25, 18 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
MEDRS is guidance on identifying reliable sourced for WP:Biomedical information. That's it. It doesn't "strike down" anything. We're really not going to do the lab leak thing again are we? The socks, trolls and political POV-pushers have already wasted enough time trying to compromise Wikipedia's well-established guidelines in furtherance of their agenda. If anybody has been mis-using WP:MEDRS (as is continually alleged) let the accusers take it up with the supposed miscreant or report it at an appropriate noticeboard. These WP:RANDYs and their enablers are otherwise just wasting the time of editors with better things to do. It wasn't even a year ago that a mega-RfC on this was closed[11] Alexbrn (talk) 14:00, 18 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
WP:MEDPOP does not disqualify news items out of hand. There is wide latitude to use non-expert sources, especially in the reporting of non-medical aspects of medical issues. Biomedical professionals and their forums should not be considered better than anyone else when discussing these non-medical aspects. The lab leak theory is an example. There may be biomedical evidence for and against; but there are obviously other considerations too. These other considerations can, and should be, within the purview of wider forums. As long as all aspects of the lab leak theory are presented neutrally, according to reliable, verifiable references any related Wikipedia article can benefit. 50.75.226.250 (talk) 15:04, 18 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I have seen editors argue that if the page topic is clearly a biomedical one, the all sources on it must be MEDRS compliant, which is my concern. A page on a biomedical topic should obviously heavily rely on MEDRS but there may be parts of that topic that do not directly about the biomedical aspects (such as the generic trademark of aspirin) that would be better covered by non MEDRS sources. Thers's only a handful of editors that take the extreme approach, and is good to have advice of where NEDRS doesn't apply to help. --Masem (t) 15:10, 18 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think it goes further. Neutrality may be compromised when only the views of experts in any subject are allowed. It is not as if medicine, or science in general, happens in a vacuum. Although the number of experts who consciously or unconsciously believe so may be considerable. In any case, this is going off-topic. As commented above, there is no real need for yet another clarification of WP:MEDRS. The current guideline is fairly clear in allowing non-expert sources, subject to constraints. 50.75.226.250 (talk) 15:17, 18 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Neutrality may be compromised when only the views of experts in any subject are allowed. Right, a neutral viewpoint should include ignorance as well as expertise. Levivich 15:21, 18 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Correct. For instance, peer-reviewed articles in The Lancet circa say, the 1990s (barely a generation ago) about coronaviruses could be shining examples of unreliability and ignorance in the light of today's widely accepted knowledge. It is fair to ask if today's knowledge won't be considered an example of ignorance 30 years hence. But it goes further: nothing happens in a vacuum and the narrow confines of expertise do not describe reality in full. 50.75.226.250 (talk) 15:31, 18 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
"A cherry-picked example of some thing that experts thought true years ago were later found to be false" is not a valid reason to cast any special doubt on what experts think now. There's probably some latin term for this logic-mistake, some sort of inverse of Sagan's quote about laughing at Bozo the clown. By policy, WP is a mainstream encyclopedia and not in the business of crystal-balling or second-guessing reliable sources. DMacks (talk) 15:52, 18 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Ofcourse it is not a valid reason to cast any special doubt on what experts think now. There is also not a valid reason to cast any special acceptance on what experts think now. It is supposed to be science, not religion. 50.75.226.250 (talk) 16:24, 18 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It's the fallacy of composition (the fact that experts were wrong about something else does not mean they are wrong about the relevant item) spiced with a large dollop of the historian's fallacy (assuming that experts would have reached the same wrong conclusion then even if they had the information we have now). SpinningSpark 16:08, 18 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think you are discussing something else. This is not the argument made here. The current pandemic is an example. There are various theories on the origin, and studies proposing explanations for the way it spreads and the way it mutates. Not all of those are in sync, but a rough or not so rough consensus among experts is reached. This is then used by public health authorities in their policy decisions. These policy decisions are then applied in some form or other, and have real consequences on every day life. Any comprehensive treatment (pun intended) of the pandemic in an encyclopedia should give proper weight to all these aspects. We can't just promote the current expert opinion and disregard its effects as if it exists in a vacuum. Especially since it is a historical, logical and evolutionary fact that "expert opinion" is subject to change, and the scope and effect of such change is uncear. 50.75.226.250 (talk) 16:40, 18 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I mean, there's the rub. The process used to guarantee expertise can also be the process that inculcates certain biases into those experts, or ensure that all potential experts belongs to a power structure that enforces certain opinions either explicitly (https://www.technocracy.news/nih-director-francis-collins-ordered-takedown-of-the-great-barrington-declaration/, https://unherd.com/2021/07/how-scientists-stifled-the-lab-leak-theory/) or implicitly through funding, or such assumptions being the basis of profession's legitimacy (see Abbot's System of Professions).

I'm not sure it is quite a problem that wikipedia can solve and some sourcing standards are clearly necessary.

At a societal level, My take on how you solve this at a social level is having broad scholarship on topics, and allowing for encouraging interdisciplinary work or experts moving between fields of study; and ensure that your process for producing reviews considers these papers fairly.

Within wikipedia it might consist of including perspective from multiple fields (e.g. medical, psychological, psychiatric, neurological, public health, philosophy, sociology, critical theories, economics...). Talpedia (talk) 19:41, 22 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- @Alexbrn: I realize that it's easy to get angry in discussions like this, but I don't think "yet another asinine essay from a problematic editor trying to undermine Wikipedia's WP:PAGs" is an appropriate comment to make (if this is true, you ought to open a thread on AN/I or AE, rather than casting aspersions). jp×g 23:30, 25 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Generally support these efforts as per Masem, I have run into the same type of consistently erroroneous allegations--that somehow news sources are inappropriate in the COVID-19 arena. We cannot risk undermining the efforts of the encyclopedia by excluding reliable sources for the wrong reasons. SmolBrane (talk) 15:49, 18 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- It's almost like there should be a section, "What is not biomedical information?", at WP:BMI. If editors actually read the WP:PAGs a lot of time could be saved. Discretionary sanctions apply to the whole COVID-19 area so anybody twisting policy can be taken to WP:AE. That doesn't ever happen because it's a fiction. In the past some editors, including Masem, have !voted to extend MEDRS to all aspects of COVID-19; that effort did not succeed (neither did the effort to rescind MEDRS from most aspects of COVID-19). These arguments do not need to be re-run. Alexbrn (talk) 16:29, 18 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  I don't recall !voting to expand MEDRS to all aspects of COVID (or why you are singling me out). I am just saying that even with BMI in place, some editors are overly aggressive on drawing a line to block nonMEDRS sources where BMI wouldn't apply. BMI and/or MEDRS and/or an essay could be used to explain that MEDRD is not a blood pact when any biomedical info touches an article. Just that any factual statement that falls within BMI must use MEDRS sourcing, and other appropriate RS (which can include DUE RSOPINION) can be otherwise used. --Masem (t) 16:39, 18 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  MEDRS only applies to content which, if a reasonable sane person were to read, may plausibly affect the medical tests, treatment or lifestyle changes they get for themselves, their minor children, their pets/livestock, or anyone else they may decide on medical treatment for. The question of whether or not China was supressing information about COVID 19 is clearly outside that scope. 93.172.252.36 (talk) 16:45, 18 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  
  "I don't recall !voting to expand MEDRS to all aspects of COVID" ← Apologies, you are correct and I am wrong. Your support was for stating that MEDRS should apply to disease and pandemic "origin", at this RfC.[12] Alexbrn (talk) 16:48, 18 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  
  WP:BMI is neither a policy nor a guideline, and has very recently been modified by a cabal of "scientific skepticism" editors to expand "disease" to "disease or condition" MarshallKe (talk) 17:10, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  A cabal eh? Sounds serious. Any actual evidence to make your comment not look idiotic? Alexbrn (talk) 17:33, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Although the draft-essay is rather pointy, there is a serious problem with MEDRS regarding its use to disallow useful information. For example in relation to biological agriculture. MEDRS should be rebalanced or narrowed in scope. The Banner talk 16:49, 18 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Doubt it. Certainly MEDRS helps prevent fringe POV-pushing in this area (GMOs spring to mind). Or do you have an example to back up your claim? Alexbrn (talk) 17:43, 18 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
A cursory look through OP's edits to COVID-related articles (an awful lot of which have been reverted) shows plenty of adding inappropriate sources and other problematic edits, all seemingly in the name of a particular POV or in pursuit of "balance". This includes an article on covid-19 naming which reads like an attempt to justify Trump's "Chinese virus" (going as far as saying he abandoned it in 2020, well before his continued use of it drew most of the criticism), and COVID-19 vaccine side effects, possibly a WP:POVFORK, with entire sections making biomedical claims with sources that fail WP:MEDRS. I've seen people revert "per MEDRS" when MEDRS doesn't apply, just like I've seen people revert "per NPOV" when NPOV doesn't apply. The context, however, makes me a little skeptical of the essay. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 16:55, 18 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I would be skeptical of assigning any particular context. The question posed can be resolved without theorizing about the motives of the OP or anyone else, or examining the editing history. The OP states that another editor disallows in kind of a blanket fashion, all non-medical sources in an article concerned with a medical issue, in contravention of the applicable guideline. The OP proposes an essay to clarify the associated guideline, for any such action, not just the present debated one. The question is whether such essay is necessary and/or appropriate. 98.7.66.30 (talk) 19:34, 18 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I have blanked and redirected COVID-19 vaccine side effects to an appropriate target. When we (eventually) come to a post-mortem on Wikipedia's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, the inability of the system to handle some damaging net-negative editors will doubtless be one of the chief considerations. Alexbrn (talk) 19:42, 18 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Rhododendrites:, please WP:AGF and refrain from WP:CASTINGASPERSIONS. Most of my COVID-19 related edits are live, and most of the reverted ones have to do with the subject of this discussion. I created the COVID-19 naming article as a target for a redirect discussion [13], and it is mostly a translation of the ZH:WP article zh:wikipedia:2019冠状病毒病名称争议, which I simply haven't gotten around to completing. I created the COVID-19 vaccine side effects article because it is a WP:NOTABLE, and the WHO just put out a statement with the ICMRA to encourage better communication with the public on the subject [14]. Alexbrn's WP:BLAR of the article demonstrates the need for a supplement to WP:MEDRS, and we might also have to clarify the WP:POVFORK assessment on WP:NPOV/N. The article does not make any biomedical claims that aren't attributed, which is a very important distinction, and the subject of this discussion. CutePeach (talk) 13:36, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It's not an important distinction, although WP:PROFRINGE editors have tried to pull this stunt many times in the past. We don't get to spout lots of antivaxx talking points just by putting "According to Andrew Wakefield ..." before them, nor do we get to include primary research by putting "Professor Xi and his team reported ..." (or similar) in front. WP:BMI applies to biomedical information, and attributing it does not magically transmute it into something else. Alexbrn (talk) 13:42, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It is a very important distinction, which is why I have restored the article [15], and if you insist on confounding between side effects and misinformation and continue to WP:CASTASPERSIONS against me, then we will have to take this discussion to WP:AE, as a case of twisting policy and incivility. There is no consensus here in favor of your WP:MEDRS interpretation, regardless of whether this subject is BMI or not, and I would advise you read WP:CONTEXTMATTERS. CutePeach (talk) 14:33, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The claim Most of my COVID-19 related edits are live made me curious, so I looked at Special:Contributions/CutePeach. It appears that you have made 332 undeleted mainspace edits in the last year. 35 were page creations (half redirects). That leaves 297 which are technically possible to revert, and 59 of those – 20% – were reverted. Having one out of five of your edits get reverted is very unusual for good editors. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:10, 21 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The redirect discussion you mentioned was closed as keep, suggesting the page you created as an alternate is now unnecessary. Bakkster Man (talk) 19:25, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I have a very simple concern. The essay doesn't delineate why non-BMI information doesn't need MEDRS, and more importantly how to ensure the non-BMI is placed in context of the accepted knowledge and mainstream positions on biomedical information. At a minimum, it really should make clear that the non-BMI claims should be portrayed in the context of the MEDRS-sourced BMI accepted knowledge, not in place of them. Bakkster Man (talk) 19:39, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Someone should probably write an essay entitled WIkipedia:What essays are not. It only needs to be brief. Simply explain that essays aren't policy. And if people misrepresent an essay as policy often enough, it should probably be nominated for deletion. AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:16, 18 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@AndyTheGrump:, my intention was to create a WP:SUPPLEMENT of WP:MEDRS. When Firefangledfeathers switched the supplement tag with an essay tag [16], it gave me the idea of posting here to build consensus. What do you think of MEDRS being used as a sourcing restriction for attributed claims such as Tinnitus as a COVID-19 vaccine side effect? CutePeach (talk) 13:06, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I think that the creation of essays, supplements etc as a means to continue a debate about specific content is a bad idea. AndyTheGrump (talk) 13:48, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Isn't WP:BMI already the relevant explanatory companion to MEDRS? And if that's not considered a supplement for lack of vetting, this brand new essay sure isn't going to be.

Why wouldn't MEDRS be applicable to tinnitus (a medical condition) being a potential side effect of a vaccine (a disease treatment)? That seems to be the default assumption, unless a very good reason is given to consider it an exception. Bakkster Man (talk) 02:09, 20 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, but essays can often supplement policy, or explain a certain applicability of policy, and when someone cites an essay in defending an interpretation of policy, it is VERY useful, as it obviates the need to rewrite the content of said essay every time someone needs to present that interpretation of policy. Saying "Per <insert essay>" here, that doesn't mean the essay has the weight of policy, it means "This essay explains the interpretation of policy that is relevant to the discussion at hand". A person could retype the entire essay every time, but why? Essays are supremely useful in that regard, and no one is ever saying, when citing an essay, that it holds the weight of policy. --Jayron 32 13:45, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

...no one is ever saying, when citing an essay, that it holds the weight of policy. I've seen it done far too often. AndyTheGrump (talk) 13:50, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

No, what you've done is seen people citing essays which reiterate their own interpretations of policy, which is valid. You've likely chosen to read these situations as treating essays as policy because they inconveniently don't align with your own interpretations of policy. --Jayron 32 14:31, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

What I've seen, on numerous occasions, are people citing essays and stating outright that they are policy. Some essays may indeed 'supplement' consensus about the interpretation of policy, or simply present a particular interpretation of policy. Both are valid. What isn't valid however is the creation of an essay which doesn't reflect policy at all, though it purports to, or one written in a manner that encourages misinterpretation. Which it think is what we are discussing here. Hopelessly vague, and clearly written to argue a point over specific content. AndyTheGrump (talk) 15:12, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

And editors in the various !voting processes use essays-as-policy, that's when the closing admins need to be aware of strength of policy arguments as policy-based arguments will always override those strictly based on essays. That's why its important they be tagged as essays with little consensus. --Masem (t) 02:33, 20 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The problem of editors declaring that BRD is policy is so common that WT:BRD now has a FAQ about it, complete with links to RFCs in which the community rejected proposals to make it a policy or guideline. It does happen. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:11, 21 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

if people misrepresent an essay as policy often enough, it should probably be nominated for deletion - If people misrepresent essays as policy often enough, the problem isn't the essays. Essays in projectspace shouldn't contradict policy, but there's a lot of leeway to interpret, apply, explain, elaborate, etc. in ways that conflict with other interpretations, applications, explanations, and elaborations. Some of the explanations are so in line with policy, without the need to become policy, that they make for a useful shortcut. WP:BRD is a canonical example of an essay with very wide-reaching support, but little interest in making it more than an essay. If people abuse essays, however -- especially essays that don't have such wide buy-in -- that's a behavioral issue. This section seems like an instance of flawed big picture arguments due to unusually problematic/pointy/controversial examples IMO. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 15:22, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Exactly, and the same goes for MEDRS. Jayron32 writes below "I think you can find many examples of people over-extending the applicability of MEDRS". But if that's so, the problem is with these "people" not with MEDRS. It should be raised with the errant editor and, if it persists, escalated to an appropriate venue (ANI, AE, etc.). But so far nobody's produced any convincing example of this "over-extension", instead producing examples which show how MEDRS has been applied exactly right (jiggly boobs, below). Alexbrn (talk) 05:32, 20 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, but if people have clearer policy to guide their actions, then a) there is a better chance they will better self-regulate and b) the rest of the community has a way to sanction and ultimately get rid of those people when they refuse to abide by PAGs. There is no way to violate something that doesn't exist. We need clearer boundaries. --Jayron 32 11:42, 20 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The guideline is clear. Mostly people querying it are POV-pushing or in some way working working against the interests of the Project. It's a fallacy to think that we can WP:CREEP towards perfect understanding by adding to already-long WP:PAGs (which people don't fully read anyway). If that were true we wouldn't have all the drama boards for dealing with when people "don't understand" WP:COI, WP:BLP, WP:NOR etc etc. Alexbrn (talk) 11:50, 20 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think this essay is actually likely to produce 'clearer boundaries'. WP:MEDRSISNOT is significantly less clear than the existing recommended boundaries in WP:BMI. That's the problem. Bakkster Man (talk) 14:16, 20 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The essay is not necessary as the information is covered adequately elsewhere. Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) [he/him] 17:11, 22 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Jiggly boobs are not a medical condition[edit]

A block of text in Sports bra describing research on breast motion control by sports bras removed by a well-known editor of medicine related articles with the comment "rmv. non-MEDRS" and I think it's a good example of the abuse/encroachment of MEDRS policy into all aspects of being a human. I have returned the text to an appropriate section so as not to imply it has anything to do with any medical condition of the breasts. MarshallKe (talk) 17:42, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia has a history of perv editors bollixing up its bra articles.[17] Please don't add unreliable primary sources to try and make a WP:POINT against your imagined "cabal". Alexbrn (talk) 17:48, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

My impression of single studies is that their conclusions are incorrect often enough that we should be hesitant to use them, and mentioning them is often WP:UNDUE. Replication crisis applies to many of them. This goes for any study, not just medical studies. Please use caution when citing studies, and in my opinion avoid if possible. Review articles (where experts survey a bunch of studies and decide for us which studies had useful, accurate conclusions) are much better. –Novem Linguae (talk) 18:07, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This should be discussed in the article talk page. This is also a terrible example as I think Alexbrn not only was correct in removing some of the content for MEDRS reasons but also from general editorial discretion. Let's not feed the perverts, shall we? — Ixtal ^{( T / C )} ⁂ Join WP:FINANCE! 18:08, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe there are other reasons for noninclusion of this information, but it's been well-established that Wikipedia values information above socially conservative agendas (or for that matter, any other social or religious norms). That kind of moralizing is utterly incompatible with Wikipedia's goals. Again, maybe that block of text is undue weight. Fine, good. But arguments for edits for furthering socially regressive agendas (or, indeed, progressive agendas) will fall on deaf ears. Oh no, Wikipedia described the motion of breasts. Give me a break. We have an article on futanari with an example image. MarshallKe (talk) 18:22, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

MarshallKe I'm not sure you want to be equating sports bra content and its relevance to MEDRS with japanese porn genre articled. It's really not the galaxy-brain argument you think it is. The idea that we're bending over social conservativism by finding issues with your description of people's breasts is absurd. Wikipedia won't collapse because you can't rely on badly sourced primary research to write cruft on breast cups. — Ixtal ^{( T / C )} ⁂ Join WP:FINANCE! 18:44, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Per all of the above, I think you can find many examples of people over-extending the applicability of MEDRS, but this is a really shitty example, and all you are doing MarshallKe is screwing it up for the rest of us, who also want to see MEDRS reigned in, but now have to contend with looking like your ridiculous example speaks for all of us. Great. --Jayron 32 18:18, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It adds to MarshallKe's problematic pattern of editing (already sanctioned), and probably brings them a little closer to the end of the runway. As written above, if any editor is repeatedly "twisting" policy the solution is to report it an appropriate venue. The rest is gaslight. Alexbrn (talk) 18:27, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Since COVID and ~~'Jiggly Boobs'~~ sports bras do not seem to provide the best representation of areas where MEDRS should be set aside, can you help those on the fence and provide examples of articles/subjects/topic areas where toning down MEDRS requirement would benefit the encyclopedia, as I am not seeing mentions above of anything beyond those two topic areas.Slywriter (talk) 18:29, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Well, we did have[18] some editors arguing a while ago that recreational drugs weren't actual drugs dude, and so descriptions of their effects on the body were exempt from MEDRS (Why is there no "Benefits" section at Crystal Meth I hear you cry!). So taking it all-in-all, the reasons for relaxing MEDRS hinted at so far seem to be for (1) Airing antivaxx talking points; (2) Lab leak conspiracy theory stuff; (3) For writing how evil GMO food is; (4) To highlight the benefits of recreational drug use and of course (5) Jiggly boobs. Funnily, the more I see editors arguing for a relaxation of MEDRS the more apparent it becomes how it has helped hold back a tidal wave of crap on Wikipedia. Can we all go back to writing articles now? Alexbrn (talk) 05:09, 20 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It's not that COVID is a bad example; the medical aspects of COVID (what it does to the body, how to treat and prevent it, etc.) are ABSOLUTELY covered by MEDRS. That's biomedical information. There are things, such as economics, politics, sociology, etc. which are related to the COVID-19 pandemic, and which are NOT biomedical in nature. It's people insisting that, for example, when a political scientist analyzes how various governments have handled the COVID-19 pandemic in their country, people push back on that and say "not MEDRS compliant!". But it shouldn't need to be, because this isn't medical information. There needs to be an assessment of how a particular bit of information applies to human health; sometimes MEDRS is not appropriate. How far does it go? Do I need MEDRS compliant sources to discuss the chart positions of "Level of Concern", a song about COVID-19? --Jayron 32 11:18, 20 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Do I need MEDRS compliant sources to discuss the chart positions of "Level of Concern", a song about COVID-19? ← No, you do not. Alexbrn (talk) 11:28, 20 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It sounds ridiculous, but there are people who make equivalent ridiculous invokations of MEDRS, and those should be addressed. For example, when a politician makes a notable, uneducated, and incorrect claim about something of a medical nature, we shouldn't need to either a) note that they made such a claim or b) note that the claim is bullshit. Standard WP:RS considerations are all that is needed. The original intent of this thread is to better define the scope of MEDRS, so that users know not only when it does apply, but also when it doesn't. Having boundaries on policy only works when all boundaries are adequately delineated. the OP's essay is a good start; I think it lacks in many ways, but conceptually, we do need to overtly let users know not only when something IS covered by MEDRS, but where it ISN'T so that we can better reign in over-applications of the guideline.--Jayron 32 11:38, 20 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The OP's essay is junk, and wrong (the practical application of the beliefs it carries can be seen in the snow-like deletion ongoing at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/COVID-19 vaccine side effects). The supplement to MEDRS you are seeking is WP:BMI, which now has had a fair amount of scrutiny and does everything you ask for. There will always be edge cases but ultimately WP:CLUE cannot be legislated. Alexbrn (talk) 11:43, 20 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I fully agree with Alexbrn's take on the matter. My perspective is that if editors are trying to violate the spirit of a guideline and wikilawyer to get content removed or added, there's not much an essay can do nor is weakening the wording in a guideline beneficial. The OP's cite this essay to correct and educate editors on the proper application of Wikipedia's sourcing policy displays the wrong way of engaging with contentious policy and seems almost like a way to create pseudo-policy. TBH I'd move to userfy the essay. — Ixtal ^{( T / C )} ⁂ Join WP:FINANCE! 12:59, 20 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for that essay. Yes, it is exactly what is needed; much better fit for the purpose than the OP's essay. --Jayron 32 13:05, 20 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Upon reviewing my run-ins with this, it was actually an inappropriate deference to academic sources, at the expense of non-academic sources, not MEDRS specifically that was the issue that I ran into. I don't want to point fingers at editors that haven't commented here on the village pump but I will mention I recently removed a 'medref' banner that was inappropriately added to an article that isn't at all reasonably constrained to medical issues[19]. This sort of improper assessment may not be resolved by writing an essay and it's probably not a large enough issue to provoke any sort of arbitration or enforcement. SmolBrane (talk) 13:11, 20 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Bad move removing that banner. That article still has problems, like the (problematic) claim that omicron COVID is more mild, cited to a newspaper. Alexbrn (talk) 13:22, 20 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
If the prime minister of Singapore(for instance) thinks COVID is treatable enough to manage endemically(“has become a treatable, mild disease for most of us”), then we should inform our readers of this, especially in the context of other considerations(from the Singapore section:maintaining restrictions would impact the economy and mental health of the country). SmolBrane (talk) 14:51, 20 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Those two items are not mutually exclusive. Most of the information on the page is not WP:BMI, and does not need MEDRS sources. It's policy decisions and documentation of recommendations. But there is what I would consider WP:BMI, or at least information that's toeing that line, without secondary sources. I've made an edit along what Alexbrn mentions, is Omicron actually mild, or is it perceived as mild. The former requires MEDRS for a concrete claim, but clearly indicating perception does not. And the tagging of the article with the banner would be appropriate as long as some of the content is inadequately sourced, it does not mean all of the content must have MEDRS.

To put this another way, this is not a medical article does not mean the article does not include some BMI, in the same way that articles about medical topics can have non-biomedical information as well. The two solutions are either to remove each biomedical claims (where they exist, only part of the article), or source them to MEDRS. Bakkster Man (talk) 17:09, 20 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
In re If the prime minister of Singapore(for instance) thinks COVID is treatable enough to manage endemically(“has become a treatable, mild disease for most of us”), then we should inform our readers of this

Should we? Imagine that the sentence instead said "If the prime minister of Singapore(for instance) thinks influenza is treatable enough to manage endemically(“has become a treatable, mild disease for most of us”)". Would we still feel like it's important to inform our readers of this? Or would we all wonder why readers would actually care what that particular politician thinks about this subject? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:23, 21 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Look at Fauci's recent comments(COVID-19_pandemic_in_the_United_States#Transition_to_endemic_stage), that the US is “out of the pandemic phase”, only to be 'clarified' the following day that “we are still experiencing a pandemic”. Does this mean that Fauci is a gold standard MEDRS and also a fringe disinformationist dogwhistling to conspiracy theorists? Seems like questionable expertise when this individual is not sure if the US is in a pandemic or not. This is the issue with MEDRS deference in a sociopolitically affected area. SmolBrane (talk) 15:37, 20 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Politicians say nonsense things about health all the time, and individual expert comments are not generally good MEDRS. If a politician's nonsense is to be quoted at all (e.g. the ZA AIDS denial stuff, or Trump's bleach injections) it needs to be contextualized with a sane source. That's just basic WP:NPOV. Alexbrn (talk) 16:59, 20 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not entirely sure this question is very applicable. Wikipedia shouldn't really be changing the status of the pandemic in the US from one day to the next based on a press release, nor is someone making mistakes from time to time mean they are generally unreliable, nor is Fauci's comments the gold standard in MEDRS. — Ixtal ^{( T / C )} ⁂ Join WP:FINANCE! 16:59, 20 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
So Fauci misspoke when he said that “‘we are certainly, right now, in this country, out of the pandemic phase” and “"Namely, we don't have 900,000 new infections a day and tens and tens and tens of thousands of hospitalizations and thousands of deaths. We are at a low level right now. So, if you're saying, are we out of the pandemic phase in this country? We are”? Which he then clarified with “I probably should have said the acute component of the pandemic phase, and I understand how that can lead to some misinterpretation”? Is this supposed to be coherent? How do we know when he is mis-speaking? As far as MEDRS goes, Fauci is the director of NIAID and a resident expert for the Biden administration on COVID-19. He is not described on wiki as a politician. I doubt his quotes have ever been reverted for being non-MEDRS but you are welcome to prove me wrong. SmolBrane (talk) 19:36, 20 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The comments of individual experts are generally not WP:MEDRS obviously. In general, it's a hallmark of high-quality sources that they do self-correct. It's the ones that never do which are more usually rubbish. Alexbrn (talk) 20:05, 20 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
WP:RS even says that "the publication of corrections" is a sign that a source engages in fact-checking, which is one of the things that suggests it will be a useful source. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:26, 21 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Not at all. Fact-checking is supposed to happen before publication. Corrections indicate problems with the source. Maybe the fact-checking editors were asleep or careless or partisan. Maybe other editorial guidelines were not followed. Maybe the story's impact would be diminished while waiting for the checking to conclude and they decided to wing it anyway, and deal with any repercussions later, at low cost. Because the story may have a front-page headline, but a small bottom paragraph "correction" in page 3. Maybe they were just caught in a fake news item, and have no other option (especially when it may involve potential lawsuits). No source can be called reliable when it corrects itself. The simple fact is that whatever has to be "corrected" is by definition unreliable. If the correction is material, Wikipedia cannot base reliable references on that item. Don't try to "patch up" the damage of an ex-post-facto corrected reference by referencing the correction, remove the unreliable (corrected) reference. Unless that is, the Wikipedia article is discussing sources' handling of the item, as distinct from the item itself.71.245.250.98 (talk) 00:43, 22 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
That's quite the suggestion for changing a fundamental policy (though it's worth noting, that's meant to apply to news organizations, not individuals). You seem to be conflating reliability with perfection. Key here is a reputation for accuracy, and that reputation is maintained by corrections being made when necessary (which should be rarely). Considering any source which makes any correction unreliable would leave us with either no sources, or only crackpot sources who never cared about the truth in the first place. Bakkster Man (talk) 01:14, 22 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
What was described regarding sources and corrections is factual. What is reputed, as in "reputation for accuracy", is not: when it involves the next reference from any source it is a guess, actually an expectation based on hearsay and/or (reliable?) analyses of past performance. It may or may not apply to the next reference, and one cannot make blanket statements of reliability a priori. That is why any one reference must stand on its own. There can be reliable references. But there is no such thing as "reliable sources". Wikipedia doesn't need to parrot the ways the media establishes its myths of reliability or objectivity. Isn't there enough parroting by pundits and academics whose jobs and careers depend on ruminating on such distinctions? Like most people, the media are biased. Subtly and craftily in the case of the established mainstream, more crudely so at the fringes. To stay in business, they target certain demographics with distinct preferences. They will not, in the great majority of the product offered, contradict these preferences. So facts are "explained", spun, and massaged. But just because sources are unreliable does not mean that citations based on these sources must be. 23.246.74.210 (talk) 03:25, 22 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think I forgot to wear my tinfoil hat because I don't understand your argument. What do you mean by spun by the media? You seem to be implying there is an organized and all-encompassing campaign to misinform the public on medical topics, which is a wild abd highly doubtable accusation. I'd appreciate an "explanation". — Ixtal ^{( T / C )} ⁂ Join WP:FINANCE! 13:31, 22 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
No, that is not what was stated at all. The language used was plain, and the rationale uncomplicated. Nothing was "implied": it is all laid out clearly, because the objective was others' understanding, not befuddlement. Your interpretation is something else. If there is something specific that needs clarification, I will be happy to attempt it. 71.105.141.131 (talk) 00:45, 23 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

To the IP: Post-hoc fact checking is still fact-checking. ;-) WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:49, 22 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I assume you jest. Any news organization worth its name has a fact-checking department. Its function is to check the purported facts of work submitted for publishing by the organization's own journalists, or other contributors. This happens before publication, and it is not/should not be trivial or avoidable, although it may be less rigorous for say, opinion pieces. This internal fact-checking happens for the reasons stated in the posts above, and others. Simply put anything that is published is understood to have cleared "fact" (i.e. the fact-checking editors). The organization fact-checking their story after the fact is called "correction". It is an obvious example if non-reliability. 71.105.141.131 (talk) 00:58, 23 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
A correction is a fact check, and a publication that publishes corrections when necessary is more reliable than one which doesn't. Bakkster Man (talk) 01:38, 23 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
What is accurately reported (i.e factual) needs no correction. Correcting published work is not an example of reliability but proof of its absence. The correction may happen for a number of reasons, the majority of them likely self-serving. Whether this makes the source less unreliable than others is irrelevant. Only reliability is relevant when citing sources on another unreliable platform such as Wikipedia. 64.18.11.68 (talk) 12:48, 23 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
And what is intentionally inaccurately reported receives no correction, yet is clearly less reliable than the outlet which made an error. This is entirely relevant with the core policy of WP:V, and best of luck if you seek to change that interpretation.

That said, we're entirely off topic related to the correction above, as we're referring to a public health official clarifying a public statement, not a news organization whose article went through a process of editing and fact checking before publication. And there the idea that "any public figure who ever misspeaks is unreliable on the topic" is even more risible. Bakkster Man (talk) 14:12, 23 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Well, Wikipedia is an unreliable platform. It needs reliable citations, not less-unreliable ones. What difference does it make to the Wikipedia reader that a source is unreliable intentionally? The important thing is that the citation is unreliable and should be removed. Again, do not add the correction to patch things up, this is not about a source's acrobatics or the desire to justify a reference. Unless the original erroneous reporting had materially influenced the subject of the article. Moving to a less important user segment, how do Wikipedia contributors know a source intentionally reported anything inaccurately? Did they consult other sources who may have intentionally reported so inaccurately? See how ridiculous this becomes. 68.132.154.35 (talk) 23:12, 23 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

So what is an example of a "reliable news organization", then? JoelleJay (talk) 02:19, 23 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Finally. For Wikipedia citation purposes, that is a fantastic entity, mainly given form by practitioners/associated professionals and repeated constantly, an easy operation when one always has access to the horn. Some of the reasoning has been given in posts above, so I will not repeat it. To repeat another point also made above, it doesn't follow that reliable individual citations cannot exist. That is the entire point, that each citation should be considered on its merits. 64.18.11.64 (talk) 13:09, 23 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
That's wrong. WP:V says readers must be able to check citations are to reliable sources, not unreliable sources that Wikipedia editors have decided are "right this time". For assertions about biomedical content, news sources are not reliable, so WP:V, a core policy, can never be satisfied. Alexbrn (talk) 13:16, 23 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
All sources must be judged about whether they're reliable "this time". There is no source that's reliable for every possible sentence in Wikipedia; there are few enough that are reliable sources for even half the contents of a single article. Reliable source = accepted in this article, for this material, not accepted for something. That said, news sources are never ideal for biomedical information. They've either got it wrong (in which case, you shouldn't be putting that content in the article at all), or they've got it right (in which case, you should be citing a {{better source}} anyway). The original dispute that prompted this, however, is really about apples and oranges. It's about scientific facts and trying to use politicians' self-serving statements to debunk or contradict those facts. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:02, 23 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This is the boundary between 'generally reliable' (what WP:RS/P attempts to track) and 'reliable in a particular instance'. Conflation between the two may be what IP is confused about. Bakkster Man (talk) 16:50, 23 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yes. They miss the point that many sources are never reliable for anything (e.g. Daily Mail), or for specific areas (e.g. CNN for WP:BMI), even though they might be "right" according to genuine RS - in which case use the genuine RS. Alexbrn (talk) 17:17, 23 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I sometimes wish that we could have a different name for "the kind RSP is talking about" and "the kind that the top of RSN is talking about, when it says that you need to supply 'The exact statement(s) in the article that the source supports.'" Then we could have less "If a source falls in the forest, and nobody hears it, is it reliable?" and have more "Sure, it's reputable enough in general, but you can't rely on it for that statement". WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:46, 23 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia citations will never be reliable when editors make statements like many sources are never reliable for anything, that are simultaneously vague and unverifiable. Or when useless further distinctions are made between "genuinely"(?) reliable sources and presumably less-genuine ones. Or when the undefinable, and therefore meaningless for citation purposes, concept of "generally reliable sources" crops up. The idea that no source (including your favorite ones) may be a priori reliable seems to be putting people out of their comfort zones. It doesn't need to. Wikipedia does not have to designate any sources as a priori reliable or as a priori more-reliable in order to produce reliable citations. Editors can keep their beliefs about the source being otherwise reliable or unreliable, just don't insert these beliefs in the examination of the present citation. "Reliability lists" (see for e.g. WP:RS) are enablers of lazy or bad-faith editors. Their criteria of inclusion may be inexact, arbitrary or opaque, part of the so-called "general reliability" fog. You want to help Wikipedia? Do the hard work of reliable, context-based verification for each and every reference used. 68.132.154.35 (talk) 23:54, 23 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Quite often you can save time of "doing the hard work" by deleting obvious rubbish without reading it. E.g.: Predatory journal used to support claims in the "Effectiveness" section of an article about a drug? Delete. Other times it's trickier and I've had to use libraries or even buy expensive books to do verification. Technically it's true that "everything is reliable for something" but for many junk sources that "something" will never be included on Wikipedia for other policy reasons. I still not sure whether RSP does more harm than good. Alexbrn (talk) 05:14, 24 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The guidelines and policies assume there is such a thing as a "reliable source". This is basically a religious view i.e. one based on belief or faith. The related priesthood (people who profit from such views) will of course be pushing the otherwise useless distinction. There is also the issue of gullibility: past performance of any source is no guarantee that the next item of information will follow the trend, if any. To use both common sense, and the first rule of logic (A is always A): A reliable source must always be reliable: it can not be reliable "most of the time". The information conveyed, all of it, must be reliable: the content can not be "mostly reliable". Does anyone know of any such source? If not the source is unreliable, and the specific citation based on it must be scrutinized. Assume a source is unreliable 1% of the time: how does a Wikipedia contributor know that the information they intend to cite does not fall in that 1%? Play spot-the-facts roulette? Or, say a source's content is 99% factual. How does a Wikipedia contributor know that the inline citation used does not refer to the unreliable 1%? Don't agonize over it, it is easy. Disregard all you've heard about general source reliability and fully examine each citation on its merits. And if you are uncertain about the accuracy, the citation is unreliable and should not be used. There may be a very small loophole in using citations whose reliability is uncertain, when you declare such uncertainty in wikitext. But even that should be carefully weighed. Since Wikipedia doesn't have an editorial board to make all these decisions, every contributor should be fully responsible for their citations and do the work themselves. An important point is not to take into account a source's so-called "reputation". The origin of such quality is always nefarious and can distract from objective evaluation. If one insists on giving weight to reputation then the implications of such weight should be prominent. If The Lancet and the NEJM are "reputed" to be reliable journals with impeccable peer-review credentials then the status of such reputation in the end of June 2020 deserves its own article. Probably, a lot of people will be interested to know how the publishing process failed at the time. [20] [21]. 71.247.146.98 (talk) 14:12, 26 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds like you should make your case at Wikipedia talk:Reliable sources. Good luck. Bakkster Man (talk) 14:24, 26 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

As an encyclopedia (tertiary source) Wikipedia is just a handy summary of accepted knowledge, as found in what it deems to be "reliable sources" for that knowledge. There's no big attempt to be "right" about things in any way that deviates from that objective. If scholarship is wrong, Wikipedia is wrong in lock-step with it. This is by design. Alexbrn (talk) 15:06, 26 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This exactly. We can't exactly right the great wrongs of academia/RS, nor should we attempt to. — Ixtal ^{( T / C )} ⁂ Join WP:FINANCE! 16:00, 26 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The insistence on the fantasy of "reliable sources" itself is an all-encompassing "righting great wrongs" position that should be put to rest. There are no a priori reliable sources, and there have never been any, at anytime. This includes BMI sources such as The Lancet and NEJM. Adjusting WP:RS and WP:MEDRS to this reality could be a step in making Wikipedia itself more reliable. The exciting part about this is that editors don't have to wait for these misleading guidelines to change: simply ignore the nonsense parts dealing with so-called "reliable sources", and focus on reliable references instead.

Recognizing that there are no reliable sources impacts more severely sources that are now falsely considered reliable. The examples from The Lancet and NEJM linked to in the previous post are not accidental: they were selected (among other retractions about other topics) because these sources may be accepted unquestioningly as reliable, and because the subjects of retraction had to do with Covid-19. They are examples of inaccurate reporting, (probably?) caused by failures in the journals' operating norms & procedures. The naturally arising question: what are the chances that a study, supposedly peer-reviewed and published in the next issue of either journal, will be retracted? Anyone who observes this objectively will say "I don't know" or "I am not certain". One cannot say "based on some historical record, this rarely happens". Citations are not the result of statistical constructs. In practical terms, all this makes these sources a priori unreliable, since one cannot assume their reporting will always be accurate in advance. The given examples are related to Wikipedia's coverage of Covid-19, and tangentially, to this thread: if The Lancet or NEJM are used as sources in Wikipedia's Covid-19 coverage their track record on the subject is pertinent; including their instances of inaccurate reporting and repercussions in the medical field and the world at large. It is likely that non-BMI sources are best for this particular information in Wikipedia. Certainly the journals themselves would be primary sources on the subject of their own "mistakes". And the rest of the biomedical establishment should be handled lightly on this issue. After all, publishing on these journals can do wonders for one's career and/or their standing among their peers. 4.30.91.142 (talk) 00:20, 28 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia aims higher than that, and its sourcing policy is recognized as one of the reasons why it has been successful in its coverage of COVID-19.[22] The sourcing policy is flexible enough to resist dodgy claims even if they appear in nominally reputable sources - see WP:EXCEPTIONAL. For example, Wikipedia avoided the buying into (what turned out to be) the academic fraud and scientific misconduct around ivermectin precisely because of its high sourcing standards. Alexbrn (talk) 04:40, 28 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Being defensive regarding Wikipedia's reliability and sourcing is a waste of energy and time. This is an unreliable platform, and this has to be recognized before there is any hope of remedy. Wikipedia contributors praising their contributions is neither useful nor relevant. To clarify one thing, the study linked to above should not be used to draw inferences about Wikipedia's coverage of Covid-19. It is an analysis of a certain class of citations in a selected minority of Wikipedia Covid-19 articles. It has a very narrow scope defined by rigid qualifiers. In addition some of the premises of the analysis (both implicit and explicit) are either non-applicable or may rest on shaky foundation. Within these parameters, the article set covered by the analysis receives positive marks. It is like examining a car's wheelbase and determining that it consists of high-quality parts. The determination cannot be used to infer the car's performance. 24.168.24.89 (talk) 19:10, 29 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

MEDRS vs DUE as the explanation[edit]

This kind of problem reappears in regular cycles. I don't think we have a good page that explains it, but perhaps someone will provide a link soon. Wikipedia:Why MEDRS? covers at least some of the territory.

The situation usually looks like this:

The article says something that is generally accepted as a fact, cited to a plausible medical(ish) secondary source: Scaryitis is an acquired medical condition that develops mainly in children who stay indoors all day.^[1] Primary prevention involves sending children outside to play for at least two hours per day, especially before the age of 7.^[1]
An editor adds something that says someone disagrees with this claim, cited to the news: Paul Politician told The News that the main cause is children not eating enough foods rich in Vitamin A, such as carrots.^[2]^[1]
A passing editor reverts it, citing MEDRS.
Drama ensues.

The problem isn't verifiability or RS. WP:V and WP:RS are concerned with individual claims. Is there at least one decent source (any decent source) that says Scaryitis exists, is a medical condition, is acquired/non-congenital, develops over time, affects children who stay indoors, can be prevented by going outdoors, etc.? Then WP:V and WP:RS are Done.

Is there also a decent source (any decent source) that says Paul Politician was flapping his gums at the press again? If so, then WP:V and WP:RS are Done.

This is because the problem is not verifiability, which means – to quote the first sentence of the policy – "other people using the encyclopedia can check that the information comes from a reliable source." For both the original and the new text, you can do that. The original description really can be found in a decent medical source, and the politician really did say that. All of it is verifiable.

The problem is that the text violates WP:NPOV. Specifically, it violates DUE, WP:BALASP, and WP:GEVAL.

WP:DUE says Undue weight can be given in several ways, including but not limited to the depth of detail, the quantity of text, prominence of placement, the juxtaposition of statements, and the use of imagery.
WP:BALASP says (in its entirely relevant entirety) An article should not give undue weight to minor aspects of its subject but should strive to treat each aspect with a weight proportional to its treatment in the body of reliable, published material on the subject. For example, a description of isolated events, quotes, criticisms, or news reports related to one subject may be verifiable and impartial, but still disproportionate to their overall significance to the article topic. This is a concern especially for recent events that may be in the news.
WP:GEVAL says While it is important to account for all significant viewpoints on any topic, Wikipedia policy does not state or imply that every minority view or extraordinary claim needs to be presented along with commonly accepted mainstream scholarship as if they were of equal validity.

MEDRS is kind of the wrong page to be citing in these situations, but it does have one very relevant rule at WP:MEDPRI: Primary sources should not be cited with intent of "debunking", contradicting, or countering conclusions made by secondary sources.

This is the problem that we keep encountering. We have some sort of biomedical information, but someone disagrees with it. So an editor who disagrees will attempt to improve the article by using a WP:PRIMARYNEWS source to debunk, contradict, or counter the mainstream views on a medical condition through the juxtaposition of a quote that gives undue weight to minor aspects, namely whatever one politician said yesterday, which is disproportionate to their overall significance to the article topic and tends to result in his minority view or extraordinary claim [being] presented along with commonly accepted mainstream scholarship as if they were of equal validity.

See how all those underlined words line up with what the policy says editors must never do? That's what's going on in these disputes. It's not a question of whether you can verify the exact, specific claim in some source that's reliable for that purpose. The question at hand is whether that particular statement from that particular politician actually matters overall. It is a problem of DUE and BALASP and GEVAL and using primary sources to debunk secondary sources. It is not really a problem of simple verifiability. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:30, 21 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Great post. Since this is a perennial issue and you do a good job of explaining it, perhaps you or someone might want to copy the above post verbatim into an existing essay or its own essay. –Novem Linguae (talk) 00:10, 22 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Since you and others have asked, I've put this comment at Wikipedia:Don't use today's news to contradict medical sources. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:13, 23 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I'll add one additional situation I've seen frequently. As the guideline itself mentions, the goal is to present prevailing medical or scientific consensus. This is the real reason for preferring secondary sources, and why popular news coverage tends to get it wrong. Both of which are well summarized by this relevant XKCD. Bakkster Man (talk) 01:53, 22 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I love the jelly bean XKCD! WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:51, 22 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, WhatamIdoing's post is very helpful. I have often found that when editors want to argue "MEDRS does not apply" in order to push a fringe POV, then it is helpful to argue instead about WP:WEIGHT (or WP:DUE, same thing). Although MEDRS appears to be a sourcing guideline and so you might think it is an application of WP:V policy, it is actually a guideline on choosing sources so you don't break WP:NPOV policy. The WP:What MEDRS is not essay is unhelpful (and should be deleted) as we already have WP:Biomedical information that has a long "What is not biomedical information?" section. This seems to be nothing more than a POV fork by an editor who has a long track record in pushing conspiracy theories. It is rooted in the idea that if your POV-pushing is reverted "per MEDRS" and you can claim MEDRS does not apply, then you can push your POV. It suggests you can give undue weight to whatever POV you want to push as long as you can attribute it in-text and suggests that WP:BALANCE requires you to cite Dr Crank as well, because an MD or PhD makes him an "expert" in whatever he wants to say. I would, however, advise editors to consider enhancing their edit summary revert with "per WP:MEDRS and WP:DUE" to avoid this kind of timewasting. -- Colin°^Talk 09:29, 22 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Also agreed. This is a really good explanation, and would be a valuable essay (generalised to all articles, as the issue is by no means restricted to medicine). MichaelMaggs (talk) 10:29, 22 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I'm much more familiar with how this phenomenon manifests in medical subjects. I'm not sure that I could give an equally convincing example in non-science subjects (e.g., BLPs or international relations). Perhaps you have one in mind that you could share? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:59, 22 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

References

^ For bonus points, guess which real medical condition I've just described.

+1 This isn't just a pattern in medicine, too - POV-pushing and recentism also tend to have this issue on contemporary articles. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 09:34, 22 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This isn't a great steelman, the bigger issue is when biomedical issues and sociopolitical issues conflict, causing an a priori imbalance. A good example here is this MEDRS RSOPINION [23] that is regarded as fringe on the Great Barrington Declaration article. And here is another non-med RS that questions "whether the public health establishment can ever recover from ongoing revelations of incompetence, malfeasance, and politically motivated decision-making."[24] How do we reconcile RSes vs. MEDRSes? It is conceivable that MEDORGS can become unreliable, if only on specific matters. If RSes conflict with MEDORGs, or describe them as incompetent or malfeasant etc, we will have NPOV issues since MEDORGs are deferred to. SmolBrane (talk) 15:35, 22 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It's not always, or even usually, sociopolitical. There's a lot of "Cancer is deadly, but a special soup will cure it" spam that really has nothing to do with sociopolitical issues. (Yes, that's a real-life example. He was going to spend $200 a week to buy some vegan soup that all but promised to cure Stage 4 lung cancer for his relative.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:04, 22 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Something that has not been discussed yet is that one purpose of essays is to express and explain disagreement with consensus. This is especially true when the disagreement is over policy interpretation (as opposed to the actual language of the policy). This is why we don’t give essays any official Weight (except, perhaps, the weight that comes from a well reasoned argument). Blueboar (talk) 18:16, 22 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Blueboar, the purpose of this disputed essay is not to "express and explain disagreement with consensus" or to highlight some wrong "policy interpretations" but to make false claims about how our policy and guidelines require editors to source and write article content. Fine if someone wants to write "In my opinion, NPOV is too restrictive and Wikipedia should be a free-for-all for any random opinions, suitably attributed" but if you actually claim an approach is compliant with consensus policy/guideline yet really isn't, then that's just plain dishonesty (or at best, complete lack of clue). While technically essays have no official weight, everyone here knows they do carry weight, and are often cited by shortcuts as though they were official (e.g., "restore text per WP:MEDRSNOT"). I don't think your post was helpful to the discussion: the idea of essays being just essays has been discussed many many times, and I think everyone in this discussion is more than aware of their purpose and practical effects. It is exactly for that reason that an essay masquerading as policy clarification, written by a POV pusher for the purpose of pushing fringe POVs is not helpful to Wikipedia. -- Colin°^Talk 20:11, 22 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
As a cold case of somewhere where perhaps WP:MEDRS did not help us get it just quite right (or did it?), can I offer Liverpool Care Pathway for the Dying Patient as a possible study. This was a protocol for managing end-of-life care, that was rolled out nationwide across the UK. It came under sustained attack in 2009 and 2012 spearheaded by pieces in the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail. Following a review, this led to the pathway being withdrawn in 2013 (or, allegedly, retained but locally rebranded to something less visible). Unfortunately not all the edit history is available due to a later rev-del'd copyvio; but as one can see from some of the edits up to 2012, WP found it difficult to present the controversy. On the one hand there were earlier academic papers introducing the pathway, which satisfied MEDRS. But the material raising the controversy in most detail (particularly questions stirred up about end-of-life hydration; and whether people were sometimes inappropriately being given a one-way ticket to die) was typically in populist or agenda-grinding newspapers, which did not. (And indeed, in the case of the Daily Mail article by a doctor with an agenda, that really launched the controversy, was in a publication designated by WP to hunted down and shot on sight). The article was gutted to such an extent that even to this day (when more academic sources may now be available?), the article really fails to cover in any comprehensible way the media panic that ultimately killed the pathway, or what the issues were that became so sensitised.

I still don't know what the right way should have been in this case. For full understanding, should reference links be given to the DM pieces that launched the furore? An extreme case of a publication that is not just not MEDRS, but so consitently unreliable partisan and agenda-mongering that we hold it should never be used at all? Or, when a WP:PRIMARY has had a key role in shaping a mass-perception, is it important to give at least a link to see what it actually said. (In the way that a WP:PRIMARY source can be usedul, even if partisan, if contextualised with appropriate WP:SECONDARY and WP:TERTIARY sources) And more widely, at the time when the issue had reached a level of wide public concern, was it right that even broadsheet newspaper coverage was removed, as not being MEDRS compliant?

On the one hand MEDRS is in part there to protect us from undue weight to questionably reliable material, and repeating unreliable content, often specifically against media storms and the material thrown up in them. On the other hand, that media storm itself can be an important part of the topic. Given that it's now substantially history, that we can look back at now from almost 10 years on, the LCP may be an interesting case study to consider. Jheald (talk) 20:40, 22 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Surely if in 2022 we are to discuss the "furore" in the press at the time, we should be citing modern texts that examine the now historical event. This is true of any subject, whether a footballers' wives court case, or a medical treatment. I don't see how citing the Daily Mail for its contemporary stories is anything other than trying to make a story about the media attack using primary sources. You mention giving a link to the DM so readers can see what was said, but as you note, the actual sources for our text would need to be appropriate secondary/tertiary sources, so that isn't really a sourcing question, but whether to provide a link for convenience.

There is a pattern perhaps with that story and covid, where at the time editors think every new development in the story is encyclopaedic and every controversy is historically notable. Surely bloat-now and cull-later is a normal pattern? I wonder perhaps if Wikipedia is now the only contemporary publication that is remotely interested in a care pathway that was killed off nearly a decade ago.

The article currently says that the criticism was controversial, with some professional bodies and other newspapers arguing the criticism was incorrect. Surely citing the newspaper stories at the time would be little more than a he says / she says battle conducted on Wikipedia.

You say "the article really fails to cover in any comprehensible way the media panic that ultimately killed the pathway, or what the issues were that became so sensitised." That is also a general problem with current affairs stories on Wikipedia. Editors are over-interested in it at the time, but don't hang around to fix it up afterwards. Would it be better if the 2022 article was a random mix of Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph and Times headlines (most now either expired or behind a paywall) that contradict and fight each other and leaves the reader clueless about whether any of the claims were true or unfounded. Is it perhaps better to say nothing than to say something that is likely quite incorrect. -- Colin°^Talk 07:54, 23 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The Liverpool Care Pathway interests me quite a bit: it is to a substantial extent about the ethics of suicide and mercy-motivated homicide. I would say that rare cases exist where television and newspaper channels aren't reporting a story, but creating it. My position would be that the Liverpool Care Pathway is one of those, and we should disfavour the reporting media as sources ---- I feel we should insist on what Wikipedia wrongly and frustratingly miscalls "secondary sources" about it.

I would differ from Colin because I think we absolutely should be interested in historical care pathways. Wikipedia quite rightly has millions of articles about topics that are of purely historical interest. To someone who's mostly concerned with medical practice now, I would say that the phenomenon of link rot means that we, as in Wikipedians, have a role in maintaining the world's institutional memory about care pathways and the reasons why they were changed.—S Marshall T/C 11:14, 23 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Should we care about it more than we care about the current approaches? Because I can't find those on Wikipedia. Does Wikipedia have a NICE Guideline 31: Care of dying adults in the last days of life (2015) article? It seems that a named protocol that attempted to cover many things, was replaced with five wordy priorities, and left up to hospitals and trusts how to implement them. Having a name for something sure helps when writing an article (and also when complaining about it in the media). So we've got this weird thing where Wikipedia has more information about the protocol used when your gran died than it does about the care your mum can expect.

A quick google found [25] and [26] which mention the LCP as a historical pathway in less detail than we do. And [27] and [28] which are serious academic discussions about the pathway and its failings (the former by the author of the official report). Both could be used to create a solid comprehensive article from reliable sources that examine a historical protocol/event from a historical perspective. I don't know why we'd think that in 2022 we'd want our Wikipedia article to be based on newspaper stories from 2013. -- Colin°^Talk 13:19, 23 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I think the fact that our information about the history is better than our information about nowadays is partly because editors work on the stuff that's in the newspapers rather than the stuff that's important, and partly about Wikipedia's various problems with editor retention.—S Marshall T/C 16:16, 23 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect, though, if the Liverpool Care Pathway was superseded by the Manchester Care Pathway, we'd have an article on that. It might be a bit stubby and boring but we'd have it. I'm suspicious that those deciding new policies deliberately chose to not give it a name. It eliminates a point at which to attack and all you are left someone writing to The Telegraph "Sir, I'm writing to alert you to issues with Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust's policy on end of life care (2018-2022) 2nd ed. In my view they have incorrectly interpreted NICE Guideline 31 and as a result, three patients received less than optimal ...." -- Colin°^Talk 16:40, 23 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Fair. Want to collaborate on End of life care in the United Kingdom? :)—S Marshall T/C 17:55, 23 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

One note on the topic of 'do we cite a highly unreliable source when it is the topic of the article' that I've seen utilized is to instead cite reliable WP:SECONDARY sources, which may themselves link directly to the problematic source. Particularly in circumstances where the source is so potentially problematic (disinformation, hit-piece, etc) it's hard to think of a way to maintain core principles if it's cited directly. I'm not familiar enough with the British rags to know if they'd rise to this level, but I've seen it used for a case of a widely-circulated pre-print of an extremely low-quality study, funded by political activists, which was not submitted for peer-review because the author claimed a cabal sought to censor the information. There's just no value to citing the papers themselves on the author's page, instead of citing the plethora of reliable sources thoroughly debunking their validity. Bakkster Man (talk) 14:30, 23 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I think Jheald posted a good example. On the general problem, I have wondered whether we would benefit from an "anniversary reminder" system. That is, if an event happens on 12 Octember 2021, then the editors involved in creating the article should all be encouraged to show up on (for example) the first, second, and fifth anniversary of the event to bring the article up to date. An hour every year for a while, times a couple of people, could do really good things for articles about time-specific subjects. WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:56, 23 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Improving the essay[edit]

I have taken some of the gracious, and not so gracious feedback from editors above and rewritten the essay. I would to clarify that this essay does not negate WP:MEDRS or WP:BMI, as some editors here are suggesting. It is meant only to guide good faith editors when encountering POVEDITORS who habitually abuse the guideline when deleting WP:DUE content related to political and scientific controversies where there is scientific uncertainty. Thanks. CutePeach (talk) 14:56, 23 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry but it is WP:CLUEless in almost every paragraph (Though kudos on the humour of having an essay which contains both the exhortation "Editors must always WP:AGF" and the warning "Some editors go by an ultra orthodox approach to implementing MEDRS ... These editors will sometimes employ nefarious tactics"!). Why you've taken it upon yourself to try to lay down the law in this area is very suspicious. I would support an extension of your TBAN to all medicine (or a total block/ban) and think the essay should be deleted. This whole initiative is disruptive. Alexbrn (talk) 15:06, 23 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

"that even the most adamant MEDRS roused DELETIONISTS", were you standing on a soapbox when you wrote that? I thought the original had a couple of problems, but the rewrite is a joke. - LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 22:51, 23 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The whole thing is also transparently sub-posting about the whole COVID lab leak nonsense (which I prudently blanked and redirected early on in the piece). Wikipedia editors are WP:NOTDUMB and at some point this oh-so-clever TBAN edging will get what it deserves. Alexbrn (talk) 05:19, 24 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Example: Havana Syndrome[edit]

Talk:Havana_syndrome#Why_is_so_little_weight_given_to_mainstream_science? Notice the difference in behavior between editors in that topic, and certain other topics where POVEDITORS insist that only MEDRS can be used, even for attributed opinions. This demonstrates that it is a behavioral issue, and this is why an essay is required. CutePeach (talk) 15:05, 23 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
MEDRS is generally required for biomedical information. The fact that load of conspiracy theorists are all over so-called "Havana syndrome" makes it even more important we ignore the WP:FRINGE froth. As others have said above, your wheeze that "attributing content means we can use unreliable sources!" is completely wrong. Alexbrn (talk) 15:09, 23 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I guess it's the monthly Havana syndrome namedrop. CutePeach stop arguing that disagreement on sourcing policy is inherently a behavior issue, especially in such a grey area. I'm honestly getting pretty concerned about your ability to edit the medical topic-area and would suggest you take some time to really learn to see it as less of a black-or-white me-against-POVEDITORS type of situation. — Ixtal ^{( T / C )} ⁂ Join WP:FINANCE! 20:55, 23 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Ixtal when editors engage in ad hominem and make threats instead of furthering our application of policy, differences on sourcing policy become a behavioral issue. Take, for example, Alexbrn's skepticism of Havana syndrome, which a CIA expert panel has determined is real, albeit for a far smaller number of victims, in a report that has quite radically altered the story reported up till now. In the same sentence, he presents an example of how the association fallacy is applied, saying that because conspiracy theorists believe in it, we should cast it aside. In the same phrase, he mentions WP:FRINGE, a policy that is frequently misused in tandem with WP:MEDRS, which, as I explain in my essay, describes a spectrum rather than a binary set of alternatives. But returning to the topic at hand, what do you think of Havana syndrome? Would you support a blank and redirect of the page? Do you think the CIA panel is a WP:MEDORG and its report a MEDRS? How should MEDRS apply to this topic? CutePeach (talk) 12:45, 24 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The CIA is not a medical organization, and not reliable for anything beyond the fact they said it. WP:PARITY would be useful for Havana syndrome, some sensible skeptic has surely written stuff to put the conspiracies back in their box? Alexbrn (talk) 12:53, 24 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

There's a whole book on it from Springer : Havana Syndrome: Mass Psychogenic Illness and the Real Story Behind the Embassy Mystery and Hysteria. The article does mention it, but attributes it in such a way as to make it sound like just another viewpoint instead of the mainstream view. MrOllie (talk) 13:25, 24 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, and that rubbishy JAMA article (despite failing MEDRS) gets top billing, despite the fact it's been received with a contemptuous snort by other academics.[29] Methinks some WP:PROFRINGE-ifying has been going on at this article! This is in fact a textbook example of why MEDRS should have been applied; because it wasn't we ended up with a ~3,000 views/day article, saying in Wikipedia's voice that scientists had "found evidence that the diplomats had significant brain neuroimaging differences", when subsequent secondary scholarly reaction has found this to be at best incompetent work and at worst scientific misconduct. I have started filleting the junk out of the article but it really needs a ground-up rewrite to assert mainstream scholarship and contextualize all the James Bond stuff as the minority political silliness it is. Alexbrn (talk) 13:28, 24 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

AfD alerts[edit]

CLOSED

The result of the discussion is a clear consensus against the suggestion; in fact, it's nearly unanimous. Many thanks to all the participants who offered constructive input. -The Gnome (talk) 07:51, 20 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

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

Greetings, all. I suggest that, after an AfD proposal has been tabled, it should be forbidden to alert editors en masse by posting up in groups to which they may belong (e.g. the group dedicated to articles on royalty about a king's biography AfD) or groups that are in general dedicated to "rescuing articles" (e.g. the Squadron). On the other hand, such appeals should be considered entirely acceptable when the article is simply tagged with warnings about its lack of sources or about other weaknesses that might lead to its deletion. Constructive assistance should be not just accepted but encouraged, but, as soon as the AfD appears, we cannot allow even the possibility of indirect canvassing. The percentage of active Wikipedia editors who contribute to the AfD process in any capacity seems to be small enough that the potential for canvassing presents a disproportionate threat to the integrity of the process. Of course, nothing can stop individual group-members from watching over AfD proposals and acting, per policy, to improve articles. But we should remain vigilant against organized action in article management. Thoughts? -The Gnome (talk) 18:10, 18 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree. Notifying related projects about AfD nominations is a useful way to engage editors who are interested in that topic area so they can weigh in on the nomination, and encourages a wider range of viewpoints than just the editors who regularly participate in AfDs. Schazjmd (talk) 18:16, 18 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, Schazjmd. If we were to leave related-project alerts as they are, what would you suggest about alerting specifically the Squadron against imminent deletions? -The Gnome (talk) 19:39, 18 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- The Gnome, the ARS project has been a point of contention for a long time, and there has never been consensus to do away with it, so I don't think about it. Schazjmd (talk) 19:52, 18 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- The purpose of ARS is not to save non-notable articles meant for deletion, but to save articles that can be edited from misplaced AFD tagging: The project is not about making policy to ensure that nothing is deleted or casting keep votes in AfD discussions. The project ensures that articles that can be written to follow Wikipedia policies do not get deleted when they can be rescued through normal editing. Pyrrho the Skipper (talk) 19:57, 18 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  - What you're doing there is mistaking what the "Squadron" (good grief) likes to say about itself, with what it historically does. There's a reason why it's been a locus of disruption. Alexbrn (talk) 20:03, 18 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  - Thanks, Alexbrn. It has all the makes for a back-door invitation to inclusionism. As a former enabler, though not for long, of corporate camouflage I ammost admire; yet I abhor. Take care. -The Gnome (talk) 20:16, 18 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    I think issues with the "Squadron" were dealt with (eventually) by sanctioning the worst-offending squadron personnel. On the face of it, there's no reason why "article rescue" shouldn't be a laudable goal. Alexbrn (talk) 20:25, 18 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Judging by these two sentences you just wrote, I fail to see the problem with "the squadron" (why are we using scare quotes?) Pyrrho the Skipper (talk) 20:59, 18 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Because calling a Wikipedia group a "squadron" is silly. But yes, as I wrote already, the problems with "the squadron" were historically problems in the ranks (bad faith votestacking to save unworthy articles, basically), not with the stated goal. Search the ANI archives if you're interested. These days it's "mostly harmless". Alexbrn (talk) 03:04, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Also disagree. Flagging a deletion nomination about a subject to the people who are best suited to find/assess sources for that subject is a good thing. That does mean that some people who are passionate about the subject, and have lower standards for the subject than a general reader, will also show up, but it's a trade-off that, I think, we have to accept. If anything was going to get shut down, it's ARS, which prioritizes a particular outcome, but many proposals to do that have failed over the years. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 18:29, 18 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I agree on your latter point, hence the proposal. As to group-think, to also respond to Pyrrho the Skipper's query, yes, I've seen this happening, specifically in royalty-related articles. A lot of editors seem keen to have Wikipedia as a directory of royal subjects. No pun intended. -The Gnome (talk) 19:39, 18 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I also disagree, but would ask, are there particular instances you've seen of this happening? Pyrrho the Skipper (talk) 18:38, 18 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
A precautionary suggestion, formulated a little after I was made aware of the Squadron's existence. -The Gnome (talk) 19:39, 18 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I oppose this, because this would pretty much effectively ban one of the primary uses of WP:AALERTS. The best people to address the AfD of Optical field are people familiar with optics, in this case WP:PHYS. Forbidding these notices would mean both less participation at AfD and less informed opinions at AfD. This is not a win. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:11, 18 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, Headbomb. If we were to leave related-project alerts as they are, what would you suggest about alerting specifically the Squadron against imminent deletions? -The Gnome (talk) 20:17, 18 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I suggest nothing, because I don't considered the squadron to be a meaningful issue. It's effectively a 2-person show these days (Dream Focus and 7&6=thirteen), and I don't see any obvious problematic behaviour from either. Tag articles with relevant WikiProjects, make sure people with relevant expertise/knowledge get involved, and that's usually the best outcome for everyone. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:19, 18 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Is there actually any issue here - any example of a problem ever having occurred? Could the OP provide anything? Alexbrn (talk) 20:15, 18 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Well there were a long-running set of issues with ARS being notified and by its nature of being a group who inherently want to retain articles, affecting AfDs beyond simply improving articles. There's a string of conduct discussions on the matter.

With groups I'd be interested - it's harder to determine whether, say, the relatively recent issues with cricket and football article AfDs (which ultimately crystallised into the NSPORTS-revocation RfC), however I don't know if there's evidence that that happened because of the project notifications or just because they were active on AfD. Nosebagbear (talk) 09:01, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think the list of project related deletion discussions is an issue, but there is an issue when editors notify the project directly. For example, the project was notified of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Marcel Rewenig directly, and that resulted in a flood of keep votes that didn't consider whether the player was actually notable, and resulted in the article being kept despite none of the dozens of editors being able to find significant coverage. Even today, months later, only one example of WP:SIGCOV has been found. BilledMammal (talk) 09:23, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Non problem. The ARSpeople have been effectively hamstrung recently by the community in that topic bans were issued to some of the worst offenders. Those who got away with it are fully aware of the Hubble Telescope of concern gazing down at them, and the notification non-issue has been a good and transparent way of informing the community of potential clean up of the project. No action required imho. -Roxy the grumpy dog. wooF 20:43, 18 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- Thanks, Roxy the dog. Your contribution alone justifies my worries and suspicions, irrespective of how this discussion goes. (I see arrogant sarcasm has already surfaced, unsurprisingly. ) When the Wikipedia community decides to impose topic bans to "ARSpeople" it means a serious problem did and possibly still does exist and merited at the time serious punitive measures. Take care. -The Gnome (talk) 15:00, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  A pleasure. The brouhaha around this topic was really really difficult to miss. You need to keep up. -Roxy the grumpy dog. wooF 16:28, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. I don't have a problem with the standard, automatic listing of AfDs on a relevant project's page. But I do think it's an issue when someone involved in an AfD posts an alert on a project's discussion page if the project is specifically dedicated to increasing coverage of its topic. I think there's a difference between a project where members are interested in a particular field (like optics) and seek to improve the quality of articles, and a project where a major goal is to create new articles in/enhance representation of its field. This is especially true if members have historically overwhelmingly !voted keep in AfDs. JoelleJay (talk) 23:09, 18 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. As the editor who is being obliquely chastised by the above comment, I think we need to remember that this is an encyclopedia-building project; anything that contributes to building an encyclopedia is positive. If a weak article is improved, and kept, that is a win. If a weak article that could be improved is deleted because it is forbidden to notify editors who are able and willing to improve it, that's a loss akin to the proverbial shooting oneself in the foot. Espresso Addict (talk) 02:20, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I was definitely not referring to you with the above comment! While I can see why you might have thought I was obliquely referencing the Shaku Atre alert, I actually didn't have an issue with your wording -- it was the followup discussion that I considered vaguely non-neutral (I consider any followup discussion at a project-level alert to be risking non-neutrality). My frustration is overwhelmingly with project notifications in the arena 90% of my AfD/RfC participation is focused, which is sportspeople. @BilledMammal and @Nosebagbear, if they read my comment, would almost certainly have recognized I was referring to the NSPORT discussion and various athlete AfDs. I've actually pointed to WiR as a model for article improvement and effective resource use that should be employed by sports projects. JoelleJay (talk) 18:38, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. WP:CANVASS already applies; if a group is partisan in certain discussions (and WP:ARS is not the only partisan group, and WP:AFD is not the only area this partisanship can affect) then it should not be notified to those discussions. However, I don't see an issue with notifying groups that will fairly and without bias consider the notability of the topic, like WP:PHYSICS. This is a problem, but it is one that can be solved with better enforcement of our current guidelines. BilledMammal (talk) 09:08, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think you're going to have difficulty arguing that (say) WP:FOOTY is partisan and WP:PHYSICS is not. The assumption is that WikiProjects attract editors of all kinds acting in good faith in accord with the WP:PAGs. As with ARS, problem editors need to be dealt with specifically at the individual level. Alexbrn (talk) 09:22, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I don't actually know whether WP:PHYSICS is not partisan, but I believe they are the project referred to in JoelleJay's example, and as their goals include Making sure all articles are properly referenced, I think it is likely they are not partisan in deletion discussions. In general, partisanship of groups can be determined the same way the partisanship of individuals can be determined. If you can reasonably expect an individual to have a predetermined point of view, then they are partisan and shouldn't be notified - the same applies to groups. BilledMammal (talk) 09:29, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think that's right. If there's a BLP problem (for example) I seek out the folks at BLPN because they are savvy. I can usually predict which way a discussion there will go too (the PAG-compliant way). Likewise with groups like those at WT:MED, WP:FTN or WP:NPOV. Alexbrn (talk) 09:34, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
That isn't the same; the editors at BLPN don't have a predetermined point of view for the problem you bring to them, they examine the problem and apply policies and guidelines to it. The issue is that some WikiProjects do have a predetermined point of view, and apply that point of view without considering policies and guidelines. It is those WikiProjects that we need to ensure are not notified to avoid distorting the discussion. BilledMammal (talk) 09:45, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Disagree VOTESTACKING by not notifying the interested projects is another form of canvassing. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 09:54, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I mean, my main problem with AfD as that OK articles are deleted more often than I'd like to see. Most articles sent to AfD are not OK, but many are, and I'd rather see ten marginal articles kept than one good article deleted. There's a lot more to say about that, but I mean I'd favor anything that puts more eyes into these discussions, especially eyes attached to brains that are able to work on an intellectual level higher than "Delete per nom". This proposal seems to want to do the opposite, so I can't support it, no. Herostratus (talk) 11:08, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Alternative proposal. This doesn't go far enough. I propose we start holding AfDs in secret to finally put an end to the canvassing of people with opinions. – Joe (talk) 11:52, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I suggest we make a new tier of permissions called "Deletioneers" who just get to decide if an article subject is notable or not. One opinion involved, zero canvassing possible. It's really the cleanest, easiest way to do it. I furthermore propose that I be made Lord High Deletioneer. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 11:55, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- I suggest, Joe & ScottishFinnishRadish, that you refrain from counter-productive input, such as sarcastic comments. Were you to read carefully what I've written, you'd noltice I support contributions ("opinions") from everyone and everywhere, and I welcome constructive disputes. What I abhor is canvassing. If I can be accused of something that would be that I ignore the Squadron's rather sorry history, which many editors here have brought forth. When the community imposes topic bans on ARSpeople, I do not think the penalties were due to them "having opinions." -The Gnome (talk) 15:10, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Not happening. Neutral posts about AfDs to noticeboards and WikiProjects are, almost by definition, not canvassing. Rather, it is a practice to be encouraged. Alexbrn (talk) 12:03, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This has already happened. Posts to partisan groups are forbidden by WP:VOTESTACKING.

Note that noticeboards are not partisan, and no one has suggested they are - the issue is with a small number of WikiProjects. BilledMammal (talk) 13:01, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Which? Alexbrn (talk) 13:14, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think that focusing on specific examples will derail this discussion; can we first agree that if a WikiProject is partisan, it should not be notified? BilledMammal (talk) 13:15, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Who will draw up the naughty list of "partisan WikiProjects". I don't believe any WikiProject can be treated as "partisan" as a whole, that is unfair to its members. Alexbrn (talk) 13:18, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
WP:CANVASS already acknowledges that groups can be partisan. WikiProject's aren't special in this regard, and not notifying project members of a discussion isn't unfair to them - they have no WP:OWNERSHIP of the articles within the scope of their project, and they can discover and participate in the discussion through the same methods non-members discover and participate in the discussion.

And it is not "naughty" for a WikiProject to be partisan; it just means that a notification is inappropriate for certain topics, and editors need to keep the possibility in mind before providing the notification. BilledMammal (talk) 13:35, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
WP:CANVAS recommends posting to an appropriate WikiProject; it cannot be canvassing. Alexbrn (talk) 13:47, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose No. Just no. This takes an objectively WP:BATTLEGROUND approach to AFDs. Every corner of Wikipedia should be dedicated towards improving articles, and if an article avoids being deleted because it is sufficiently improved by interested parties during the course of an AFD, no one loses. There is no WAY that we should be banning requests for help during an AFD, it isn't a battle to be won, it's a discussion about the possibility of deleting an article, and if it turns out that the article didn't need to be deleted, there are no losers. Not just no. Hell no. This proposal is wrongheaded to the point of being offensive to the Wikipedia mindset. --Jayron32 13:40, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- Why do I have to explain so many times that the discussion I started does not aim to discourage requests for help (to improve articles, etc)? I suggested that we might have a problem with canvassing when we bring an AfD into a group whose very title even suggests that their primary objective is to save an article from deletion! (The issue with project groups is secondary; I have encountered enough instances of indirect canvassing to be prompted to table this proposal. But the main issue is the all-encompassing, generic group of the squadristi.) Since almost all contributors oppose pre-emptive measures such as the one I proposed, and bearing in mind the current state of affairs (I learn that, thankfully, the group is largely dormant), I'll proceed with a closing. -The Gnome (talk) 15:19, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  - Why would we not want to save articles by improving them? Out one side of your mouth you claim to be okay with improving articles to avoid deletion, and out of the otherside object to people doing just that. Furthermore, as an equally valid objection to your proposal is that a difference of opinion, which arrives at a different conclusion than you did, is not a priori invalid merely because it arrived at a different conclusion. Perhaps, in an assessment of an article, editors arrive at the conclusion that it should be kept even without improvement. Why should those votes be invalid? Can users not arrive at such a conclusion based on their own assessment of the evidence? Ignore the objection regarding improvement. If that's not what you meant, fine. An equally valid problem with your proposal is that it presumes that, once nominated for deletion, any assessment of the article that determines that in its current state, it shouldn't be deleted, is suspect? Why so? --Jayron 32 15:53, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    I think what The Gnome is getting at is that members of some projects, rather than saving an article by improving its referencing, will follow an AfD/discussion alert and !vote keep en masse to generate a numerical advantage. I see this happen sometimes at sports AfDs/RfCs (where the vast majority of !votes garnered this way are essentially contentless), and back when ARS was more influential it would happen alongside trivial REFBOMBING as well. JoelleJay (talk) 18:51, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) (forgot to click enter) @Jayron32 that's not what The Gnome is proposing (or, more accurately, not the reasoning why). I have no doubt they'd be fine if the article was kept because it was improved because of a group being made aware. His concerns are where a group, especially ARS, as an unbalanced awareness (that is, if you message 20 ARS editors, it's different to 20 random wikipedia editors in terms of effect on the !vote), can lead to an incorrect outcome without the intermediary improvement of an article.

And before you suggest that I am myself an ardent advocate of deletionism, a read through the interaction log suggests that The Gnome is the editor I have disagreed with on the most AfDs. Nosebagbear (talk) 15:30, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I've never called you anything. You introduced that word into the conversation, not me. I would never do such a thing as call you a word other than your username, and I would thank you for not accusing me of doing so, when I clearly have not.--Jayron 32 15:54, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose'. First of all, it is ridiculous to put a general ban on project notifications when (apparently) only the ARS is being targetted. Secondly, there is nothing wrong with rescuing articles. Thirdly, WP:NEXIST means that it is perfectly ok to vote keep without improving anything if sources can be named. Fourthly, a ban would be pointless as it is entirely straightforward to circumvent by a project merely by tracking the relevant category. SpinningSpark 18:31, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Are there examples of AfD that went off the rails because of canvassing? Ones more recent than, let's say, Halloween? ApLundell (talk) 19:46, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose WP:CANVAS already exists, and I can't possibly imagine how having more people look at an article would be a bad thing? Happy Editing--IAm Chaos 20:09, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose AFD alerts have a long history of helping to make Wikipedia better. It promotes involvement and interest from enthusiastic editors and helps to bring a more informed resolution.--Paul McDonald (talk) 02:36, 20 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, let's keep editors who are dedicated to improving things in the loop. BD2412 T 03:01, 20 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Agree with Oppose ....best to have content editors involved. Moxy- 03:06, 20 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose 9 previous failed attempts to ban ARS (now 10). I think people just need to assume good faith more. The canvassing thing is essentially a POV that assumes bad faith. It never has traction when faced with the reality of good positive work ARS does saving articles. -- GreenC 05:46, 20 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

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

Is there an official set of guidelines for how to format articles on animal species?[edit]

A quick look at different good/featured articles on various living species shows wildly different formatting. The "lion" article's layout (etymology → taxonomy → description → distribution and habitat → behaviour and ecology → conservation → interactions with humans → cultural significance) or some close variation of it ("tiger", for instance, is very nearly the same) seems to be most common overall and is the style I personally prefer, but even within this general layout, there is a lot of inconsistency (sometimes headings are put in a different order, sometimes etymology and taxonomy are merged, sometimes "behaviour and ecology" is written as "ecology and behaviour", sometimes phylogeny and evolution have their own section, etc.) and some articles have a radically different design (alligator gar, willow ptarmigan, American bullfrog, etc.). If possible, I think it would be best to reorganize many articles to follow one clear set of guidelines so information is easier to find. --An anonymous username, not my real name (talk) 19:48, 21 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@An anonymous username, not my real name Is MOS:ORGANISMS of any help? It seems the short answer is "no." Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 08:36, 22 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. You appear to be right. --An anonymous username, not my real name (talk) 23:33, 23 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of Life or one of the many daughter projects thereof may have some guidance. Perhaps asking at the Wikiproject talk page may generate some responses on where to find more information. --Jayron 32 16:00, 23 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Stricter policies at Articles for deletion[edit]

I have been participating in AfDs more, and have seen things that I feel need to be addressed. Three AfDs have spurred me to propose new reforms to this community process:

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Marina Ovsyannikova - I !voted to delete and redirect the article in question. If you read the AfD, you will see that there are many "keep" !votes, many of them using arguments we should avoid using in deletion discussions, mainly based on personal point of view. Those !votes all came from IPs and accounts whose only purpose was to "save" the subjects article. Ultimately, the article was kept, even though it wasn't because of the SPAs. As someone who rarely gets over the past, I felt that things had to change in AfDs.

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Let me solo her1 - While patrolling recent changes, I came across this article again, which had been nominated for deletion by a new user. I commented on the AfD because I got suspicious of the fact that newly registered users were able to find a Wikipedia process that I feel can only be found by new accounts when they are pointed to them. Haleth wrote an amazing "keep" opinion, mentioned that they share my concerns about the nominator potentially being a single-purpose account, and said,
PS: On a side note, why do we even allow random editors below autoconfirmed or extended confirmed status the capability to conduct drive-by AfD nominations, especially when this is a topic area is notorious for rampant bad faith actions from block evading sockpuppets?

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Victoria Asher - I did not participate in this one, but it reinforces why I think the AfD process should be reformed. In fact, Deepfriedokra protected the page due to the problems I have addressed.

I am thankful that us experienced Wikipedians know about the policies and guidelines, and resist ineffective outside pressure. As ScottishFinnishRadish said when an IP confronted him about his nomination of Victoria Asher for deletion,

melecie covered the rest pretty well. My actions have nothing to do with Asher, and everything to do with how we ascertain notability on Wikipedia.

Now, for my actual reforms:

!votes that are based on certain arguments to avoid in deletion discussions, such as arguments without arguments and personal point of view, can and should be "thrown out" (removed), which should be followed with a message to the !voter explaining why. We should make a warning template for that purpose.

!votes from identified single-purpose accounts/IPs should be removed because they will never affect consensus and constitute disruptive editing (this is the reason DFO gave to protect Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Victoria Asher). I know that there are some AfDs that have gotten public attention, so people come to the discussion and push their POVs, a form of advocacy. I also think this constitutes meatpuppetry because it involves recruiting people for disruptive purposes. Meatpuppetry is not allowed because it is a form of sockpuppetry. To prevent bad-faith editors from trying to alter consensus, all AfDs should be pending changes protected (preferably by a bot), allowing IPs and newly registered users to participate while their !vote is reviewed. A pending changes reviewer will be able to take a look at the user's activities on WP and decide if the !vote should be accepted or "rejected".

Let me know if you have other ideas dedicated to stopping bad faith editing on Articles for Deletion. --LPS and MLP Fan (Littlest Pet Shop and My Little Pony Fan) 22:06, 23 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I have not participated at AfD in a long time. Too contentious. --Deepfriedokra (talk) 22:19, 23 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Okay. PackMecEng (talk) 22:32, 23 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Concern .....simply not the place for content editors Moxy-

19:49, 24 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I think the percentage of AfDs that have these issues is pretty small, and generally closers are more than willing to discount obvious meat and sock violations. It's also not too difficult to get protection if it's needed.

The only issue I had with how the Asher AfD went was that someone restored a number of obvious meat !votes I had removed after the page was semi'd. Even that didn't effect the outcome, though. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 22:35, 23 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Pinging Graeme Bartlett, as I mentioned them. [30] and [31] are the removal and restoration. Since AfDs are not votes, but discussions on how policy applies, being unfamiliar enough that you don't know where to contribute seems like it should be disqualifying. There should be a fair amount of leeway for removing non-constructive obvious meat-puppet contributions from discussions. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 22:51, 23 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Votes should not be removed because they are poorly formatted or obviously due to canvassing. There is a danger that deleting comments is removing valid votes, and mainly because the remover disagrees. Someone who does not like the comments should instead add a comment about them. Later the closer should consider what they say. If their argument is valid, then it should be considered. And if out of policy then it can be ignored. We have two important things here: an encyclopedia that we are trying to build, and people who want something. The purpose is not to serve the bureaucracy. In the case of Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Victoria_Asher the page should not have been semi protected, as it resulted in votes going on the talk page, making it even more difficult for the closer, than if they had gone on the main page. And once someone put a vote in the wrong place, others followed the wrong example. Most of these votes are not bad faith and are not actually disruptive if they are voting to keep. Disruptive votes from actual socks or trouble makes are much more likely to be delete votes. You are right be be suspicious of delete nominations from a SPA. But they can be speedily kept if obviously bad faith. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 23:27, 23 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Most of these votes are not bad faith and are not actually disruptive if they are voting to keep. Disruptive votes from actual socks or trouble makes are much more likely to be delete votes. You are right be be suspicious of delete nominations from a SPA.

?? I see way more SPA keep !votes trying to promote non-notable subjects than I see !votes for delete driven by off-wiki disputes. Most of those keeps are from COI/UPE/agenda-based accounts and are inherently disruptive. JoelleJay (talk) 06:07, 24 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Graeme Bartlett: I hope you are having a good day and I apologize for not replying sooner. Why do you think that votes from people who came to an AfD with an agenda are good faith? Even though ignorance of the law may excuse when dealing with newcomers, bad faith is evident if they come with an agenda. I don't think that single-purpose editors will follow Wikipedia rules (this is why I do not like them). If you look at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Marina Ovsyannikova, there is a single-purpose account who !voted keep, HansClumsy. That account was blocked for making disruptive edits, such as removing the AfD tag of the article, assuming bad faith from other editors, and bothering an admin, Ponyo, over the matter. Their talk page contains proof that canvassed SPAs may have more bad-faith intentions than just attempting to alter the result of an AfD. This AfD had lots of people who came with the intent of having it kept, so it means that it must have been shared online. This makes HansClumsy and the other SPAs and IPs who came to the discussion guilty of a form of sockpuppetry, meatpuppetry. However, I don't think blocking them for meatpuppetry would do much because it's not likely that they would come back after fulfilling their purpose. (pinging ScottishFinnishRadish as they pinged Graeme to the discussion) LPS and MLP Fan (Littlest Pet Shop and My Little Pony Fan) 13:51, 25 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Isn't it more likely that the many editors who came to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Marina Ovsyannikova saw her action in the main headlines of most Western news outlets, came to Wikipedia to see if there was any further information about her, and saw that her article was nominated for deletion? "It means that it must have been shared online" and the subsequent accusations of sockpuppetry and meatpuppetry are themselves assumptions of bad faith. Phil Bridger (talk) 16:55, 25 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

These kinds of proposals come up fairly frequently, but fail to find consensus for a change. That's not to say you can't try again, but you may want to dig through the various village pump and AfD archives to see where they went wrong. I agree that canvassing and meat puppetry are nontrivial problems for AfD. Ideally, closers don't give them much weight, but that's not actually consistent practice. Ultimately, even though it's a !vote, few closers are willing to close against the majority (and go through the inevitable challenges, allegations of supervoting, and DRVs). Only when abuse is egregious and obvious, or when comments are way off the mark, is it uncontroversial to discount them. But it's not clear what a better system would be. We could semi-protect AfDs (or even ECP) by default, but what about new users who bring lots of good sources to the debate -- ok to relegate them to the talk page? What about article creators who are not yet autoconfirmed or extended confirmed? How would we create an exception to them? Canvassing, meat puppetry, etc. can be really hard to prove, so it would also be hard to build rules around degree of certainty... — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 00:01, 24 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It's really the job of the closer to disregard weak votes, but the closer should not be mandated to do certain things because it doesn't leave room for compelling arguments and other context specific things. If you feel the closer didn't do the right thing ask them about it, and if they don't give a reasonable reply, see WP:DRV. -- GreenC 00:24, 24 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
There was just a similar issue at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Coco Bandicoot. Half of the redirect votes were either just WP:PERNOM or WP:JUSTAVOTE. Then when I brought up new sourcing, most of those still in favor of a redirect didn't actually give a reason for their stance, while another editor voted keep based on that sourcing. Hence, I think this discussion should have at least been relisted. I don't think consensus was clear based on the new sourcing I provided. MoonJet (talk) 04:14, 24 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Feel free to take any of these to WP:DELREV. That's what it's for. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 04:19, 24 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Number 2 is a non-starter, IMO. When we say Wikipedia is the encyclopedia anyone can edit, we really mean it. If someone without an account comes across an article with an AfD banner at the top and follows the link to the discussion, they should be welcome to engage in that discussion (though if their arguments are not compatible with policy, they should be disregarded).
Number 1 is a recipe for strife. It sounds reasonable on the surface, but the big question is who decides which arguments to strike as non-policy-based? And what happens when editors inevitably disagree about it? Are we going to have sub-discussions to form consensus about whether a particular comment should be struck? That sounds like a nightmarish fractal of infinite bureaucracy. As others have said, it's up to the closer to judge the strength and policy-compliance of each argument. Colin M (talk) 17:43, 24 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Colin M: I understand your concerns. I think I should clarify what I said in my reforms (pinging Rhododendrites as they expressed a similar concern). I suggested that AfDs should be given pending changes protection in order to allow IPs and newly registered users to participate. After reading my statement again, I think it could be interpreted as shutting them out of the process.

To answer the big question, experienced users, preferably people active in AfDs, should be able to decide which arguments are non-policy-based. However, some arguments that can be struck out are blatantly non compliant with policy. Anyone with some experience will be able to cross those out. For example, if a slew of newly registered users came to an AfD of a non-notable band in order to !vote "keep" with reasons along the lines of WP:ILIKEIT, anyone can strike out their votes because they obviously do not use any policies/guidelines and they could have found the AfD because they were told to (canvassing/meatpuppetry). I don't believe that any reasonable editor would disagree with restoring those kinds of !votes, but like you said, the closer will be the ultimate judge of deciding which !votes get counted.

Thank you for participating in this discussion. LPS and MLP Fan (Littlest Pet Shop and My Little Pony Fan) 21:31, 24 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for clarifying. I misinterpreted "!votes from identified single-purpose accounts/IPs should be removed" as (single-purpose accounts)/(IPs), rather than single-purpose (accounts/IPs). Still, I disagree with using PCP in this way for the same reason I disagree with reform #1. Colin M (talk) 16:22, 25 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps the !votes of editors who support redirecting and deletion at the same time - which may not be technically possible and is certainly not compliant with policy - should be "thrown out" (removed), which should be followed with a message to the !voter explaining why. That seems reasonable. Newimpartial (talk) 18:11, 24 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It's merge and delete that are incompatible without effort (see WP:MAD), not redirect and delete, but they should obviously be done in the reverse order. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:36, 24 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
In what situation is "delete and redirect" more compliant with policy than "merge and redirect"? Newimpartial (talk) 22:13, 24 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
When there's no mergeable content. This happens often when the existing content is riddled with copyright infringements, or isn't sourceable. Or the best target for the redirect is unrelated to the subject except for having a similar name. Reyk _YO! 22:27, 24 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, COPYVIO was the one limit case where I already saw the potential benefit of a page delete before recreating the page as a redirect. And I suppose where the best redirect target isn't related to the content at AfD, that might also mandate a page delete in some cases.

But where content "isn't sourceable" (the much more common scenario), what problem is there in retaining it in the page history? I get that "merge and redirect" doesn't apply where there is literally no content to merge, but that doesn't mandate a "delete" (which always means a page delete, no?). Newimpartial (talk) 12:55, 25 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
My comment was simply to point out that deleting and redirecting does not violate any policy, if that is the outcome of a discussion. Deleting and merging does unless a lot of care is taken (per WP:MAD) to avoid a copyright violation. Phil Bridger (talk) 16:38, 25 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
While "delete and redirect" may not necessarily violate policy, there ought to be a good reason for the page history to be deleted (such as COPYVIO, or COI editing, or if the page history concerns a different topic entirely). For the vast majority of AfDs that result in a redirect, the page history should be retained, and any DUE, permissible content should be merged to the redirect target per WP:PRESERVE. Newimpartial (talk) 20:08, 25 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think we agree about that issue. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:19, 25 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
AFD as presently constituted does far more harm than good to the project (the presence of bad content being far less of a problem than the absence of good content; after all these years we still have amazingly little good content, and most of what we have grew slowly from bad content). AFD has been a source of massive toxicity for many years. It would be impossible to tally the damage it has caused or to number the editors it has driven away. I myself can only stand a few days in that atmosphere every few years. Unfortunately, a significant amount of that toxicity can be attributed to people using the WP:ATA essay/wishlist as if it were policy. Low-effort !votes and comments based on handwaving invocations of WP:ATA, or (to get to the nub of the problem) that place the onus on the article's creators/defenders rather than the nom, should be given no weight. (For that matter, IMO, deletion arguments not based on the purposes of the encyclopedia should be given very little weight, recognizing that the notability guidelines are merely a means to an end and applying them indiscriminately can do enormous damage.) In any event, this proposal would take things in exactly the wrong direction. -- Visviva (talk) 02:55, 25 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Either a sock/meatpuppet vote is clear enough that someone should label it as such, and therefore will be obvious to the closer (it would usually be obvious even without the post) or it's not clear, in which case we risk removing viable !votes. Thus too, blatant ILIKEIT/IDONTLIKEIT votes. Labelling is also better than deletion because it avoids the risk of GF errors, or at least helps get more eyes on doing such. I've never known an AfD get the wrong result by a clear issue with such, and this proposal is not designed for the less than clear examples. There are reasons non-AC users should participate in AfDs, but I grant that the use-cases for a non-AC user needing to nominate an article would also usually make it easy for them to find another editor to request it for them. Nosebagbear (talk) 10:02, 25 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

One idea is wording at the AFD that urges and creates an expectation that arguments should be made based on the guidelines/policies involved in the nomination criteria. For example, if nominated based on notability that arguments be in terms of GNG and/or relevant SNG guideline. And maybe to go further to say that closes take into account only such arguments. North8000 (talk) 16:33, 25 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

If it were up to me, all XfD discussions would automatically be semi-protected. There is virtually nothing of use that IPs and newbies can offer in such discussions. I realize that some IPs are longstanding contributors, but this will encourage registration in order to better insure that the IPs we deal with are consistently the same editors. BD2412 T 18:25, 25 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This is absurd. Usually when an XfD is being brigaded/canvassed offsite, those doing so register accounts anyways in an effort to be taken more seriously. —Jéské Couriano v^_^v ^{a little blue Bori} 19:05, 25 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Semi-protection extends to excluding registered accounts as long as they are less than four days old and have fewer than ten edits. Perhaps we need another intermediate level of protection for a somewhat longer period (figuring that a relisted AfD will run for about two weeks), and requiring somewhat more previous editing. BD2412 T 19:32, 25 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@BD2412 and Jéské Couriano: Thanks for participating in the discussion. I agree with BD's idea, though I also think that we should allow IPs and newly registered accounts to participate as well. This is why I suggested that pending changes protection be applied to AfDs. Note that I did not say XfDs because AfDs are about articles, so they serve the most interest to the public. Requiring previous experience will help weed out !voters who came for a reason unrelated to Wikipedia maintenance, but how difficult would that be to enforce? LPS and MLP Fan (Littlest Pet Shop and My Little Pony Fan) 21:59, 25 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
CRASHlock actually is not an option here (and if it were I'd stop participating in AfDs altogether). The install used by en.wp limits it to mainspace specifically. —Jéské Couriano v^_^v ^{a little blue Bori} 20:40, 26 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Jéské Couriano: This is not true. Notwithstanding policy considerations, PC may be applied to pages in Wikipedia space (and that includes AfDs), as evidenced by this list. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:46, 26 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

A Few Comments[edit]

I started one of the discussions about Articles for Deletion in asking about a particular abuse that I see (moving the article to draft space to defeat the AFD). I will also comment on a few of the points in this thread and offer another suggestion.

I strongly disagree with any rule that !votes should be removed or deleted. It is the job of the closer to decide what !votes should be discounted, so that the removal of material before the close is pseudo-closing, which we should not do. Purely disruptive material is of course a special case. It can be redacted as RD3, and so can instead be blanked without redaction. But the original issue was the deletion of stupid !votes, not disruptive material. Leave the stupid stuff on the record. Maybe it should be stricken, but not removed. Robert McClenon (talk) 05:43, 26 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

On the one hand, I agree that AFDs should be semi-protected. One editor asks about article creators who are not yet auto-confirmed. Article creators must be auto-confirmed. The rare exception would be an editor who submits a draft that is approved by a reviewer before the editor has four days and ten edits. An admin should confirm them; it won't happen that often. If we do semi-protect AFDs, we should also specify that talk page requests will be ignored. On the other hand, if we do not routinely semi-protect AFDs, we should have a guideline about the occasional semi-protection of AFDs, and it should specify that talk page requests are ignored. Robert McClenon (talk) 05:43, 26 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

General Sanctions[edit]

There are a few editors who either disrupt AFDs, or inject a toxic atmosphere into AFD discussions. Such editors should be sanctioned. The community has a mixed record about disciplining editors who disrupt the AFD process. I would suggest that we ask the community to impose Community General Sanctions, authorizing expedited administrative action, for editors whose participation in AFDs (whether to Keep or to Delete, or simply to insult other editors) is disruptive. The Manual of Style already has ArbCom sanctions. Deletion is a process that is disrupted often enough that expedited administrative action should be authorized. Robert McClenon (talk) 05:43, 26 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I think I could support some form of this -- it seems like every couple weeks there is another huge thread on AN/I about someone (or multiple someones) being extremely rude on AfD. Of course, the sanctions themselves would have to be crafted rather carefully. jp×g 07:02, 26 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I absolutely support this as an effective way to reform AfD. LPS and MLP Fan (Littlest Pet Shop and My Little Pony Fan) 20:29, 26 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I can support general sanctions for XfDs in general - not just AfD - and I say this knowing full well I've had previous interactions on XfDs that would have led me to getting sanctions were they in place at that point. To me, the points that need to be addressed are both the rudeness and repeatedly bringing up points that have already been dispensed with by multiple XfD commentors, which often results in rudeness (either from the IDHT user or the frustrated people having to reply to the same points over and over). —Jéské Couriano v^_^v ^{a little blue Bori} 20:46, 26 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Robert McClenon: Would you be willing to provide examples of times when the community has failed to protect Wikipedia against future disruption by failing to sanction a particular editor (or set of editors) relating to AfD behavior? I recall there was some ANI thread a few months back regarding the Article Rescue Squadron, but I'm generally not familiar with the history here. — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 20:53, 26 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Every ARS thread before the last one. Levivich 01:03, 29 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Status of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion[edit]

Related to #Stricter policies at Articles for deletion above, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion (hereinafter referred to as WP:AFD) is not marked as either a policy or a guideline. Yet it is the description of the process for deleting articles where speedy criteria and "Proposed deletion" do not apply, and is linked from both Wikipedia:Deletion policy (a policy) and Wikipedia:Deletion process (a guideline). An ongoing RfC at Template talk:Article for deletion#RFC: Add Instruction Not to Move seeks to change the text of Template:Article for deletion/dated in a way that would make it differ fundamentally from WP:AFD - specifically, that the template would explicitly prohibit page moves during an AFD, whereas WP:AFD would continue to explicitly permit them.

Should the pages describing a process (whether policy, guideline or other) themselves drive, or may they be driven by, the text of a template used in that process? Where they differ, which one has precedence?

I would like the status of WP:AFD clarified. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:22, 24 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

AFD is more a workspace for the implementation of the policy for deletion, and neither is a policy or guideline. It is expected that editors follow the filing process at AFD as given to make it easy, but we aren't going to take action against those that accidentally misfile or go outside the instructions there. --Masem (t) 20:42, 24 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I think that all of the XfDs (including RM) aren't tagged as either policy, guideline, information page, etc, so that might be of interest as well. 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 04:13, 25 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think any 'process' pages (XfD, AN, arbitration, the noticeboards, etc.) are marked as policies or guidelines, are they? Policies and guidelines are about editing; these are just descriptions of how the process works. And if you're going to use a process, it seems obvious that you should follow the instructions unless there's a good reason not to. We have processes to make it easier to work together on common tasks—often ones like AfD that have to handle hundreds of discussions every week—and if someone decides they don't want to follow them just because the page doesn't have a particular template at the top, frankly they're just being a dick. – Joe (talk) 10:13, 25 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It might be worthwhile to create a template for such process pages that can sit at the top of such pages, something like "This is a process page that supports the implementation of (policy or guideline). It itself is not a policy or guideline, and these instructions should not be used to directly guide content or behavioral decisions of the community." , since we do have so many of these. --Masem (t) 12:33, 25 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

You don't make WP:WIKILAWYERing go away by coddling the trolls. You make it go away by ignoring it; best practices are best practices, and those that argue that we can ignore best practices because of a label on the page where the best practices are written are not people we need to consider in these matters; they need to be stopped at all costs, not catered to with more faux-legalise to act as weapons in their arsenal of bullshit. This is just further WP:CREEP, and not useful. We need less, not more, of this kind of thing. --Jayron 32 13:07, 25 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Redrose64 created this thread in response to a question/discussion she and I were having on another page. She called something a guideline that wasn't labeled a guideline and I told her I found this confusing. I'd appreciate it if you guys would be a bit nicer and stop calling me a dick, a troll, telling people to ignore me, etc. This idea that we shouldn't clearly label things because it's too bureaucratic... I find it strange. It is a general principle of good documentation that documentation should be clear and accurate. People shouldn't have to read between the lines, discover something through experience, etc. If a page is regarded to be as strong as a policy or guideline, and it is not labeled as such, then why leave good faith readers to guess how strong it is when we can just tell them? This seems illogical, counter-intuitive, etc. If anything, the wikilawyering here is not me asking the question "should this be labeled as a guideline?", but rather folks trying to say that things that have not passed an official RFC giving them the strength of a policy/guideline are a policy/guideline, shortcutting our system for gathering consensus and allowing the argument that any random page is some kind of secret PAG. How confusing. –Novem Linguae (talk) 19:24, 25 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

My comment wasn't directed at you (or anyone specifically). I have no idea what prior discussions you were having with Redrose64. – Joe (talk) 21:41, 25 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Damn dirty trolls aside -- AfD (as well as MfD, TfD, CfD etc) drive the majority of Wikipedia:Deletion policy and Wikipedia:Deletion process (a P and a G, respectively). A lot of what these pages say is along the lines of "the policy is that you follow what it says at WP:AFD". jp×g 17:28, 25 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
WP:AFD and the other "process pages" like it ought to be made into guidelines, but only after being substantially rewritten and condensed. The reason I think they should be guidelines is to prevent WP:CREEP--to make it so that consensus is required for substantive changes--because otherwise, we end up with a page like what WP:AFD is today: bloated and full of statements that probably don't have consensus, are outdated, and that few people probably read or follow. (I would oppose the promotion of the current pages to guidelines, for the same reason.) Levivich 16:01, 29 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I disagree that all process and procedure pages should be approved as guidelines. The main distinguishing characteristic between policies, guidelines, and general "ways of working" guidance is the degree of consensus support underlying them. For all day-to-day operating procedures to become guidelines would mean we would require a high degree of broad community support for each one and every subsequent change. This would be onerous and inflexible, and for many procedures, unnecessary: for the most part, the editors most interested in a given area should have the ability to quickly revise and refine their ways of working, as they are the ones most directly affected. Where there is conflict between ways of working and community-approved guidelines or policies, there should be a discussion to bring them back into alignment.

I sympathize with the problem of changes to guidance pages which do not reflect consensus practices or views. However this is an ongoing issue regardless of the label on the page, and I think the ensuing discussions proceed in much the same way regardless of how the page is categorized.

I also sympathize with the problem of guidance pages becoming bloated. For better or worse, English Wikipedia's collaborative environment and consensus-based decision-making traditions make it really hard to copy edit ruthlessly. The path of least resistance is to try to keep everyone happy by letting them add their viewpoints. Most editors just want to get on with editing articles instead of debating how to keep guidance concise and organize it in a way to support this. (Trying to write something in a group conversation is just very difficult.) isaacl (talk) 21:30, 29 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The XfDs are process pages, and they derive authority from Wikipedia:Deletion policy. As process pages, they work to keep discussions in a central, well-known, and easily-found place. Where XfD pages produce outcomes that are not deletion, then the outcome relies on WP:Consensus. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:01, 1 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It's not "marked" as a policy or guideline because Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy. WP:AFD in itself literally functions as a policy/guideline even without being marked as such and is a supplement of the deletion policy. Using common sense, anyone reading WP:AFD should already be able to infer that whatever is stated on that page should be followed the same as any policy/guideline and is itself documented community practice. I don't see any reason to change the status just for the sake of changing it. —Mythdon (talk • contribs) 08:26, 1 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Mass deletion of footballers[edit]

WRONG VENUE

This is the wrong place for discussing a behavioral issue with a single user. If you do wish to start a discussion, WP:ANI is the correct venue. If there are issues which need to be addressed regarding deletion policy in general, please start a new thread. --Jayron 32 17:28, 24 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

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

User:Sportsfan 1234 has nominated every Tuvaluan footballer for deletion. While it is true that most articles are 1-2 line stubs, there are several (Alopua Petoa especially) who have fairly established careers and decently-sized, well-sourced articles listing out their activities accomplishments in detail. Basically, the rationale is that we the editors cannot find many detailed sources, but this is common for smaller and less-developed countries. I really don’t see how anyone can argue that deleting an article like Alopua Petoa just because Tuvalu doesn’t have good Internet access is helping Wikipedia. There really should be a policy to help avoid this kind of systematic bias and removing good, valuable content. 172.58.30.172 (talk) 08:40, 24 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

They nominated ten articles in the space of 17 minutes. There is no way a proper WP:BEFORE was performed for each one. NemesisAT (talk) 12:47, 24 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I do my research on a MASS basis first (if I know a lot of articles in a particular topic are leaning towards delete), then proceed with the nominations. With the BOTS doing most of the work, its no surprise 10 were done in 17 minutes. Sportsfan 1234 (talk) 15:41, 24 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

"has nominated every Tuvaluan footballer for deletion." I will stop you right there. That is a lie. Sportsfan 1234 (talk) 15:40, 24 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

All but three you've nominated (Okilani Tinilau, Etimoni Timuani, Joshua Tui Tapasei). BeanieFan11 (talk) 16:22, 24 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

There isn't really anything that should be done policy wise. If they had done like 50, then perhaps we should be putting something in place to allow editors to evaluate the sources for each AfD. However, provided a BEFORE is done, 10 seems fine. If you believe this is done in bad faith, then there are other places to get help, but policy change isn't required. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 17:21, 24 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Lee Vilenski: They did nominate 50 (see every blue link (besides the three I listed above) at List of Tuvalu international footballers). BeanieFan11 (talk) 17:27, 24 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

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

Guidance at WP:NCEVENTS out of step with application of it[edit]

I'm not sure if this is the right place for this or not. Happy to close and move it if it's not. TLDR version; the guidance for naming events is out of step from how we actually name those articles. Do we update the guidance, or fix the article names?

At WP:NCEVENTS we have guidance for how to name articles on how to name articles that typically involve significant loss of life. Mass shootings, military and political conflicts, natural disasters, terrorist attacks, transport or industrial accidents, that sort of thing. That guidance has a few conventions for how to name an article when there is a lack of a common name for it. When that is the case, it says that articles should be named using a When, Where, What convention. Examples given in the guidance are 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami and 1993 Russian constitutional crisis. However, if you take a look at Category:2022 mass shootings, as well as its subcategories, half of those articles (18 following NCE, 18 not, 36 total) are not following this pattern. If you look at Category:2021 mass shootings and subcategories, we see similar (19 following NCE, 25 not, 45 total). However I think for 2021 mass shootings, that may be expected as with approximately a year having passed, there has been time for a common name to develop.

My attention was drawn to this by two move discussions happening at Talk:2022 Laguna Woods shooting#Requested move 21 May 2022, and Talk:2022 Buffalo shooting#Requested move 19 May 2022. While I have made an opinion on the merits of both of those moves, having looked deeper I see that this particular issue goes beyond whatever local consensus is established at those two articles. At both move requests, a number of editors have stated that the naming convention for events like mass shootings, is to use Where and What only, excluding When, feeling that When as a disambiguator is only needed whenever there is more than one event at a given Where. If Where, What is indeed the convention, then do we need to update the text at WP:NCE to reflect this? Or is there perhaps instead some extrapolation of a local consensus to a wider set of articles? If so, do we need to rename a subset of articles in categories like 2022 mass shootings, where no common name exists to match the guidance? Or is neither of these appropriate, and perhaps instead we should soften the language at NCE to something like In the majority of cases, it is recommended that the title of the article should contain the following three descriptors:?

Oh and because it may come up, I don't want this to be read as WP:FORUMSHOPPING the name of those two articles. Instead I want to focus on the broader issue of inconsistency between the guidance on naming this set of articles, and the practice of how we're actually naming those articles. Sideswipe9th (talk) 23:13, 24 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I think in general, Year, Place, Event is descriptive and helpful to readers. Looking at the examples at WP:NCE that do not follow the normal convention, 2 of the 4 have notes distinguishing the article from other similar events at the same location. --Enos733 (talk) 05:02, 25 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, though my issue isn't with the examples at NCE, but the discontinuity between what the guidance says these types of articles should be named, and how we're actually naming these articles in practice.

Another example appeared around the time I posted this thread. Robb Elementary School shooting. Let me walk you briefly through the page name history there. The article was created at 20:09, 24 May 2022 (UTC) with the name "2022 Uvalde shooting". Three minutes later, at 20:12, 24 May 2022 (UTC) it was moved to "Robb Elementary School shooting", with an edit summary of moved page 2022 Uvalde shooting to Robb Elementary School shooting: per other school shooting articles. It remained there for about forty minutes, before being moved again at 20:51, 24 May 2022 (UTC) to "2022 Robb Elementary School shooting", with no edit summary. Before being moved one last time, at 20:53, 24 May 2022 (UTC) back to "Robb Elementary School shooting" with an edit summary of moved page 2022 Robb Elementary School shooting to Robb Elementary School shooting over redirect: only one such incident occurred here, date unnecessary. Emphasis in both of the quoted edit summaries is mine.

This brief move war is similar to the ones that took place at the Buffalo and Laguna Woods shooting pages. Not withstanding editors who are unfamiliar with WP:NCE, I would suggest that these edit wars have occurred because of the difference between what the guidance tells us these articles should be named, and what editors are actually naming these articles when the events occur. As such, either we have a not insubstantial number of incorrectly named articles, because they do not follow the convention as lain out at NCE, or we have a naming convention at NCE that is fundamentally out of step with how editors are actually naming this type of article. So how do we address this? Sideswipe9th (talk) 23:02, 25 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It's standard to not include the year when there's only one event of that type at that location. School attacks are usually named after the school.

A more common dispute & inconsistency is that most articles about mass shootings in the US include the victims' names, because most American editors of those articles want them included. However, mass-casualty incidents of other types &/or in other countries usually don't include victims' names because most editors of other nationalities don't want them included. Jim Michael 2 (talk) 10:12, 26 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Jim, you've been beating this drum repeatedly over the past couple of weeks, but the consensus just isn't with you on this one. In the discussions we've had, at 2022 Buffalo shooting and other venues, the general feeling (which I also share) has been that the year is mostly useful in identifying these things. In a few cases, such as Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, the event is so firmly etched on in the public memory that adding a year isn't necessary, but that's the exception rather than the rule. There was a time when I used to argue the opposite, that we should omit the year per WP:CONCISE, but I have been persuaded otherwise, and from a reader-centric point of view it's definitely very valuable to include it.

As an aside, I'm wondering if "Robb Elementary School shooting" is actually the best sort of name for that incident at all. The press seem to be mostly referring to it as simply the "Texas school shooting" or similar.[32][33] If I were God of the Wiki I'd probably name this article 2022 Texas school shooting, because at the end of the day it's WP:COMMONNAME that should be guiding our naming first and foremost, not adhering to some nebulous convention. — Amakuru (talk) 11:23, 26 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It might be best to wait a few weeks and look at news sources again to see how they routinely call it. In the short term a reasonably neutral name should be selected and I can see either of "2022 Uvalde school shooting" or "Robb Elementary School shooting" right now, but in 2-3 weeks we probably will have a better idea what the media will routinely call it and then it can be moved, as necessary. --Masem (t) 12:21, 26 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The problem with "2022 Texas school shooting" is that there is almost certainly bound to be more than one school shooting in Texas in 2022. -Indy beetle (talk) 05:25, 27 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

While I can sympathise with the point, at least one of those examples is counter to the guidance at NCE. How do we reconcile that with text that says In the majority of cases, the title of the article should contain the following three descriptors: When the incident happened. Where the incident happened. What happened? Emphasis from the page.

Also I'm not sure if 2-3 weeks is really anywhere near long enough when considered against WP:10YEARTEST. How long was it after the Sandy Hook shooting before Sandy Hook became the COMMONNAME for that event? Sideswipe9th (talk) 03:00, 29 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Another week, another shooting. This time 2022 Warren Clinic shooting. Article move history is similar to Robb Elementary School shooting. It was created at "Warren Clinic shooting". I moved it to "2022 Warren Clinic shooting" citing NCE. Another editor moved it back twenty minutes later to "Warren Clinic shooting".

Serious question, given how frequent these mass shooting are, what can we do to ensure consistent article naming in the immediate to mid-term aftermath of an event such as this? Do we need an RfC to establish whether or not the guidance at NCE should be followed? Sideswipe9th (talk) 01:31, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

If we're seriously considering renaming articles like Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting and Virginia Tech shooting to 2012 Newtown shooting, 2007 Blacksburg shooting, and the like, then we're way out of line. Those are WP:COMMONNAMEs and that is that. Love of Corey (talk) 02:07, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

That is a false equivalence. Articles like Sandy Hook and the Virgina Tech shooting quite clearly have a COMMONNAME. The When, Where, What part of NCE explicitly does not apply to those. What is actually an issue however is articles like the aforementioned Robb Elementary School shooting, 2022 Warren Clinic shooting, 2022 Buffalo shooting, and 2022 Laguna Woods shooting being named or having RMs to be named in a way that is non-compliant with how the guidance states these articles should be named in a lack of COMMONNAME. That is where the When, Where, What naming convention should be used, according to WP:NCE.

Either our guidance is wrong, and needs updating. Or we have a number of articles that are named wrong, and need updating. Sideswipe9th (talk) 02:14, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Robb Elementary School shooting is clearly the WP:COMMONNAME, though. Love of Corey (talk) 02:17, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, Robb Elementary School shooting only returns about 19.1 million results. Uvalde school shooting however returns about 33.2 million results. Though given that we primarily use the WP:10YEARTEST assessing recentism issues, we shouldn't be trying to guess what the COMMONNAME is for at least a year. Until that point, I would argue we should roughly follow what our sources do while also following the When, Where, What pattern and call the article 2022 Uvalde school shooting. Sideswipe9th (talk) 02:22, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

And go against years of precedent with literally every U.S. school shooting article we've got? I don't think so. Love of Corey (talk) 02:26, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

If that is the case, then why is the guidance at NCEVENTS entirely at odds with this years of precedent? Why did the RM at the Buffalo article close with a no consensus to move finding if there is consensus against the When, Where, What pattern? Why too is the RM at the Laguna Woods article looking like it may close in the same way? And where was the consensus for that established? Sideswipe9th (talk) 02:30, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

If so, it needs to be reformed to reflect what we've been doing. Love of Corey (talk) 02:36, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Given that it would require an RfC to change that text, what if the consensus is instead that the guidance is correct and it is the articles are named incorrectly? Sideswipe9th (talk) 02:40, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The article titles are good just the way they are. Love of Corey (talk) 02:43, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Clearly there is some significant disagreement over that. Sideswipe9th (talk) 02:43, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Clearly. Love of Corey (talk) 02:46, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

UCoC Revisions Commitee[edit]

I am pleased that the UCoC Revisions Committee has adopted Chatham House rules. This means I can discuss what happens in those meetings more publicly and so I have decided to start a blog of sorts where I highlight things that I find important from the meetings. They are not going to be complete summaries of what happened. I will also say that while I am exercising editorial discretion about what I note in those summaries, I am going to attempt to factually convey what happened rather than give my opinion about it. I hope members of this community find it useful. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:29, 25 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Reporting IPs for sockpuppetry[edit]

A month or two ago, I found a user on the enwiki who was blocked for sockpuppetry on another Wiki. I filed an SPI report after they evaded a temporary block by using one of their checkuser-confirmed sockpuppets, and now both accounts are globally blocked.

An Ipv6 address blocked for sockpuppetry on their home wiki is now editing on the enwiki. They are not editing articles they had been edit-warring on beforehand, but it is very clearly the same person. Should I continue to ignore them? Painting17 (talk) 16:47, 27 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I think you should take this to WP:ANI. GTNO6 (talk) 16:29, 28 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

WP:AIV or ANI for block evasion. Preferably the former, I think. Izno Public (talk) 18:04, 28 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

No, not AIV. Sometimes, admins are kind and deal with block evasion at AIV, but it's not really designed to handle such matters. It really should be only used for the kind of blindingly obvious vandalism, like inserting poop jokes into article text, and not for anything that requires any prior knowledge or investigation. Please keep AIV clean from inappropriate reports, and use ANI. --Jayron 32 18:07, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

AIV is only appropriate if a person, with zero background on the topic, can recognize each edit separately as inappropriate. Anything more complex doesn't belong there. Of course, if an admin does recognize a specific report as belonging to a specific sock farm, the admin may block as a sock per WP:NOBURO. 93.172.252.36 (talk) 03:55, 1 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Next steps on the Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC) Enforcement guidelines[edit]

Hello all,

I’d like to share an update on the work on the Enforcement guidelines for the Universal Code of Conduct.

In 2022 May, the Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC) project team completed a report on the 2022 March ratification vote about the guidelines. Voters cast votes from at least 137 communities. At least 650 participants added comments with their vote. A report is available on Meta-Wiki. (See full announcement)

Following the vote, the Community Affairs committee (CAC) of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees asked that several areas be reviewed for improvements. A Revision Drafting Committee will refine the enforcement guidelines based on community feedback.

To help the Revisions committee, input from the community is requested. Visit the Meta-wiki pages (Enforcement Guidelines revision discussions, Policy text revision discussions) to provide thoughts for the new drafting committee. (See full announcement)

Let me know if you have any questions about these next steps. Xeno (WMF) (talk) 17:12, 27 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

NOTCENSOR, Controversial information, and Potential Vandalism[edit]

Can (and shall) controversial information about non-BLP subjects — with no concerns about sourcing or due-ness — be avoided from discussing in article-leads, simply because they are controversial and might escalate vandalism? How does NOTCENSOR apply in such cases?

Opinions are welcome at this discussion. TrangaBellam (talk) 12:37, 1 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

From my experience, anything relating to castes is potentially controversial. Figuring out what information should and should not go in the lead is a matter of editorial consensus. Nothing “must” be included in the lead, but nothing is barred from the lead. NOTCENSOR applies to whether information should be discussed (somewhere) in an article, not whether that something is highlighted in the lead. Blueboar (talk) 13:00, 1 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Ditto that it's editorial consensus, and NOTCENSOR and vandalism aren't the primary considerations. I tend to find the two main factors in the lede decision are a high degree of notability regarding the article topic suggesting inclusion in the lede, and a high degree of complexity and nuance to depict the controversy in an NPOV way suggesting absence from the lede. Bakkster Man (talk) 14:15, 1 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Agree with the other two. Consider an article like Gary Glitter, a famous musician who was convicted of child sex offences. There was quite a lot of discussion around how much focus needed to be given to it in the lede. I appreciate that that article is a BLP, but the same principle applies to any article that it's subject-specific and should be conesnsus driven by the editors working on that particular article. Blanket rules are likely to be abused by those trying to downplay controversy that does deserve mention. Theknightwho (talk) 21:24, 1 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Simply assuming that there are no concerns about due-ness or sourcing is a pretty big leap. I'm also generally cautious about people invoking WP:NOTCENSORED for the purposes of arguing for inclusion - it runs the risk of derailing arguments by effectively focusing on the weakest opposition (or violating WP:AGF by ascribing that motive to absolutely all opposition.) Looking at the discussion at Talk:Baidya#Lead, there were several objections raised, not just the fact that it went against a longstanding (local) consensus. For one thing it seems like your edits clearly went against WP:LEADFOLLOWSBODY, which to me is often a red flag that they were WP:UNDUE (since if nobody previously thought it was due to even mention this in the body, how can you reasonably make the argument that it's due to add it directly to the lead?) Or, in other words - at best, NOTCENSORED only allows you to include something; it doesn't require it, so the WP:ONUS is still on you to get consensus, even in a situation where you think everyone's reasons for disagreeing with you are terrible. Because of that, you would be better off focusing on reasons why you think it is leadworthy (its importance to the topic, etc) instead. Also, since you implied the edits reverting you could be vandalism - it's important to understand that an edit made in good faith is never vandalism. No matter how strongly you believe that their arguments are wrong and invalid, as long as they sincerely believe them and sincerely believe they are improving the article or Wikipedia a whole by making them, it at least passes the very low threshold of not being vandalism. --Aquillion (talk) 03:01, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

[1] For bonus points, guess which real medical condition I've just described.

[1]

Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)

Contents

WP:NSONG and covers[edit]

Summary[edit]

Discussion NSONG[edit]

Moving Article to Draft Space During AFD[edit]

Applying Notability Tag to Article after No Consensus AFD[edit]

Reworded RfC on the addition of a stand-alone page creation criteria to the geography notability guideline[edit]

Background[edit]

RFC[edit]

Survey NGEO[edit]

Discussions[edit]

If you move article update it's name in lead and infobox. Don't do mess[edit]

What MEDRS is NOT[edit]

Jiggly boobs are not a medical condition[edit]

MEDRS vs DUE as the explanation[edit]

Improving the essay[edit]

Example: Havana Syndrome[edit]

AfD alerts[edit]

Is there an official set of guidelines for how to format articles on animal species?[edit]

Stricter policies at Articles for deletion[edit]

A Few Comments[edit]

General Sanctions[edit]

Status of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion[edit]

Mass deletion of footballers[edit]

Guidance at WP:NCEVENTS out of step with application of it[edit]

UCoC Revisions Commitee[edit]

Reporting IPs for sockpuppetry[edit]

Next steps on the Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC) Enforcement guidelines[edit]

NOTCENSOR, Controversial information, and Potential Vandalism[edit]

Navigation menu

Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)

WP:NSONG and covers[edit]

Summary[edit]

Discussion NSONG[edit]

Moving Article to Draft Space During AFD[edit]

Applying Notability Tag to Article after No Consensus AFD[edit]

Reworded RfC on the addition of a stand-alone page creation criteria to the geography notability guideline[edit]

Background[edit]

RFC[edit]

Survey NGEO[edit]

Discussions[edit]

If you move article update it's name in lead and infobox. Don't do mess[edit]

What MEDRS is NOT[edit]

Jiggly boobs are not a medical condition[edit]

MEDRS vs DUE as the explanation[edit]

Improving the essay[edit]

Example: Havana Syndrome[edit]

AfD alerts[edit]

Is there an official set of guidelines for how to format articles on animal species?[edit]

Stricter policies at Articles for deletion[edit]

A Few Comments[edit]

General Sanctions[edit]

Status of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion[edit]

Mass deletion of footballers[edit]

Guidance at WP:NCEVENTS out of step with application of it[edit]

UCoC Revisions Commitee[edit]

Reporting IPs for sockpuppetry[edit]

Next steps on the Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC) Enforcement guidelines[edit]

NOTCENSOR, Controversial information, and Potential Vandalism[edit]

Navigation menu

Search