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Policy

Should WP:Demonstrate good faith include mention of AI-generated comments?

Using AI to write your comments in a discussion makes it difficult for others to assume that you are discussing in good faith, rather than trying to use AI to argue someone into exhaustion (see example of someone using AI in their replies "Because I don't have time to argue with, in my humble opinion, stupid PHOQUING people"). More fundamentally, WP:AGF can't apply to the AI itself as AI lacks intentionality, and it is difficult for editors to assess how much of an AI-generated comment reflects the training of the AI vs. the actual thoughts of the editor.

Should WP:DGF be addended to include that using AI to generate your replies in a discussion runs counter to demonstrating good faith? Photos of Japan (talk) 00:23, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  • 100% Yes and sooner rather than later. Machine-generated material is not produced in "good faith" — it inherently wastes the time of actual editors. Having to sort through machine-generated responses is unacceptable and a growing problem. Passing off your a machine-generated response as your own, no matter how obvious or not it is, is not acceptable. :bloodofox: (talk) 00:39, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Update: I have recently had to respond to not one but two different instances of AI-generated slop on our articles and related talk pages (Talk:Herla#AI_Generated_Content & Talk:Böksta_Runestone#Clarification_on_Image_Caption_–_"Possibly_Depicting"_vs._"Showing"). This is a complete waste of my time and the time of any other involved human . I find it outright insulting. We need something done to either stop this or at least reduce and provide consequences for this when it happens. Some kind of disclaimer about not posting AI-generated nonsense to Wikipedia before allowing posting would also help. I did not sign up to Wikipedia around 20 years ago to sort through someone's prompt-generated garbage trained on who knows what (in fact, often trained on Wikipedia itself!). :bloodofox: (talk) 05:27, 1 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed. It's only going to become more common, so it's pressingly important that we figure out how to manage it until we have the guidance and the tools to deal with it properly. Technology is moving faster and unless we clarify what the new rules are, people will just assume the WP community is prepared, or worse, take advantage. I believe keeping good faith is part of what makes this place special, and the users are a part of that, but keeping that principal should not come at the cost of driving away everyone that wants to improve the project but aren't sure how to deal with, or identify, bots. Thanks and cheers. DN (talk) 06:15, 1 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think that putting a sentence in a "backstage" page is going to do any good. If nothing else, the odds are stacked against it. About 1,000 registered editors (and who knows how many IPs) make their first edit each day. That page gets about 150 page views per day. Even if we assume, to simplifying the math, that every single page view reads the whole thing and every single page view is a newly registered editor, that would still leave 85% of new editors not seeing this rule.
Putting this sentence there, and then expecting it to change people's behavior is like drawing chalk lines across an unlit rural road, and then wondering why the trucks didn't yield to you the middle of the night.
Your first example is irrelevant to this discussion, because it was article content and not discussion. Your second example has other problems: You are assuming it's AI-generated, but the comment accurately quotes the Swedish-language Wikipedia, which is not a typical ability of AI tools, and accurately describes the edits that the new editor made, which is also not a typical ability of AI tools. There are also misspellings, typos, and awkwardnesses ("storys", "sometimes seen as kind of as gods(Skaði)") that AI tools wouldn't produce, but non-native English speakers would. Ergo, I doubt that this is "AI slop" or "AI-generated crap".
More importantly for that second example, the editor says that the uncited caption is phrased overly strongly ("showing a Norse god") and recommends softening it to "possibly depicting a Norse god". You have demanded a source for the softer claim, but you aren't demanding a source for the existing claim. You should be treating the old, uncited caption as having been formally WP:CHALLENGED. Instead, one of you has reverted everything and declared that nobody should be talking to this editor because it's all just AI garbage.
Frankly, I think you're wrong in your guess that AI was used to generate these comments, and I think you and @Skyerise have been rude, and I think the other editor is actually correct that if we don't have a source saying that this old image definitely does show a Norse god on skis, then Wikipedia shouldn't have an uncited caption making that claim. We do have a policy about this, and the policy is that anyone wanting to keep old uncited claims has to add a source for it.
Perhaps the question the rest of us should be asking is: Do we want to have a policy that says editors get to ignore core content policies like WP:CHALLENGE if they instead claim that the editors telling them that they're wrong are using AI? WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:54, 2 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This is a funny response: You'd know it was AI-generated slop with at most mild adjustment immediately if you were at all familiar with the material. And then there are the usual LLM-generated text give-aways: the structure of the response and lack of references or citations (the fear among LLM-makers of lawsuits is omnipresent, after all). And that's another big problem: Prompt-generated text can be convincing to non-experts like yourself. The text caption matter is a red herring: it is clearly covered by WP:PROVEIT (and I've removed it).
That said, while you made this wall of text defending the use of generative AI-users on the site wasting my time and the time of other editors, you could have been proposing solutions to a rising tide of AI-spew that those of us here contributing to articles increasingly need to mop up. :bloodofox: (talk) 02:27, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
No. As with all the other concurrent discussions (how many times do we actually need to discuss the exact same FUD and scaremongering?) the problem is not AI, but rather inappropriate use of AI. What we need to do is to (better) explain what we actually want to see in discussions, not vaguely defined bans of swathes of technology that, used properly, can aid communication. Thryduulf (talk) 01:23, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Note that this topic is discussing using AI to generate replies, as opposed to using it as an aid (e.g. asking it to edit for grammar, or conciseness). As the above concurrent discussion demonstrates, users are already using AI to generate their replies in AfD, so it isn't scaremongering but an actual issue.
WP:DGF also does not ban anything ("Showing good faith is not required"), but offers general advice on demonstrating good faith. So it seems like the most relevant place to include mention of the community's concerns regarding AI-generated comments, without outright banning anything. Photos of Japan (talk) 01:32, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
And as pointed out, multiple times in those discussions, different people understand different things from the phrase "AI-generated". The community's concern is not AI-generated comments, but comments that do not clearly and constructively contribute to a discussion - some such comments are AI-generated, some are not. This proposal would, just as all the other related ones, cause actual harm when editors falsely accuse others of using AI (and this will happen). Thryduulf (talk) 02:34, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Nobody signed up to argue with bots here. If you're pasting someone else's comment into a prompt and asking the chatbot to argue against that comment and just posting it in here, that's a real problema and absolutely should not be acceptable. :bloodofox: (talk) 03:31, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for the assumption of bad faith and demonstrating one of my points about the harm caused. Nobody is forcing you to engage with bad-faith comments, but whether something is or is not bad faith needs to be determined by its content not by its method of generation. Simply using an AI demonstrates neither good faith nor bad faith. Thryduulf (talk) 04:36, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see why we have any particular to reason to suspect a respected and trustworthy editor of using AI. Cremastra (u — c) 14:31, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think the replies above look like anyone is automating this discussion using a chat bot. However let's maybe ease off on the "FUD" talk. Frankly when people start trying to sell magic beans, doubt is a good thing. Meanwhile it remains very uncertain what functionality these chat bots will actually be able to develop. And as for fear, I don't think those of us who dislike chatbots being used on Wikipedia are afraid of them. They're just kind of disruptive. Simonm223 (talk) 21:00, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm one of those people who clarified the difference between AI-generated vs. edited, and such a difference could be made explicit with a note. Editors are already accusing others of using AI. Could you clarify how you think addressing AI in WP:DGF would cause actual harm? Photos of Japan (talk) 04:29, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
By encouraging editors to accuse others of using AI, by encouraging editors to dismiss or ignore comments because they suspect that they are AI-generated rather than engaging with them. @Bloodofox has already encouraged others to ignore my arguments in this discussion because they suspect I might be using an LLM and/or be a bot (for the record I'm neither). Thryduulf (talk) 04:33, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think bloodofox's comment was about "you" in the rhetorical sense, not "you" as in Thryduulf. jlwoodwa (talk) 11:06, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Given your relentlessly pro-AI comments here, it seems that you'd be A-OK with just chatting with a group of chatbots here — or leaving the discussion to them. However, most of us clearly are not. In fact, I would immediately tell someone to get lost were it confirmed that indeed that is what is happening. I'm a human being and find the notion of wasting my time with chatbots on Wikipedia to be incredibly insulting and offensive. :bloodofox: (talk) 04:38, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
My comments are neither pro-AI nor anti-AI, indeed it seems that you have not understood pretty much anything I'm saying. Thryduulf (talk) 04:43, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Funny, you've done nothing here but argue for more generative AI on the site and now you seem to be arguing to let chatbots run rampant on it while mocking anyone who doesn't want to interface with chatbots on Wikipedia. Hey, why not just sell the site to Meta, am I right? :bloodofox: (talk) 04:53, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I haven't been arguing for more generative AI on the site. I've been arguing against banning it on the grounds that such a ban would be unclear, unenforceable, wouldn't solve any problems (largely because whether something is AI or not is completely irrelevant to the matter at hand) but would instead cause harm. Some of the issues identified are actual problems, but AI is not the cause of them and banning AI won't fix them.
I'm not mocking anybody, nor am I advocating to let chatbots run rampant. I'm utterly confused why you think I might advocate for selling Wikipedia to Meta (or anyone else for that matter)? Are you actually reading anything I'm writing? You clearly are not understanding it. Thryduulf (talk) 05:01, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
So we're now in 'everyone else is the problem, not me!' territory now? Perhaps try communicating in a different way because your responses here are looking very much like the typical AI apologetics one can encounter on just about any contemporary LinkedIn thread from your typical FAANG employee. :bloodofox: (talk) 05:13, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
No, this is not a everyone else is the problem, not me issue because most other people appear to be able to understand my arguments and respond to them appropriately. Not everybody agrees with them, but that's not an issue.
I'm not familiar with Linkedin threads (I don't use that platform) nor what a "FAANG employee" is (I've literally never heard the term before now) so I have no idea whether your characterisation is a compliment or a personal attack, but given your comments towards me and others you disagree with elsewhere I suspect it's closer to the latter.
AI is a tool. Just like any other tool it can be used in good faith or in bad faith, it can be used well and it can be used badly, it can be used in appropriate situations and it can be used in inappropriate situations, the results of using the tool can be good and the results of using the tool can be bad. Banning the tool inevitably bans the good results as well as the bad results but doesn't address the reasons why the results were good or bad and so does not resolve the actual issue that led to the bad outcomes. Thryduulf (talk) 12:09, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In the context of generating comments to other users though, AI is much easier to use for bad faith than for good faith. LLMs don't understand Wikipedia's policies and norms, and so are hard to utilize to generate posts that productively address them. By contrast, bad actors can easily use LLMs to make low quality posts to waste people's time or wear them down.
In the context of generating images, or text for articles, it's easy to see how the vast majority of users using AI for those purposes is acting in good faith as these are generally constructive tasks, and most people making bad faith changes to articles are either obvious vandals who won't bother to use AI because they'll be reverted soon anyways, or trying to be subtle (povpushers) in which case they tend to want to carefully write their own text into the article.
It's true that AI "is just a tool", but when that tool is much easier to use for bad faith purposes (in the context of discussions) then it raises suspicions about why people are using it. Photos of Japan (talk) 22:44, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
LLMs don't understand Wikipedia's policies and norms They're not designed to "understand" them since the policies and norms were designed for human cognition. The fact that AI is used rampantly by people acting in bad faith on Wikipedia does not inherently condemn the AI. To me, it shows that it's too easy for vandals to access and do damage on Wikipedia. Unfortunately, the type of vetting required to prevent that at the source would also potentially require eliminating IP-editing, which won't happen. Duly signed, ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 14:33, 15 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You mentioned "FUD". That acronym, "fear, uncertainty and doubt," is used in precisely two contexts: pro-AI propagadizing and persuading people who hold memecoin crypto to continue holding it. Since this discussion is not about memecoin crypto that would suggest you are using it in a pro-AI context. I will note, fear, uncertainty and doubt is not my problem with AI. Rather it's anger, aesthetic disgust and feeling disrespected when somebody makes me talk to their chatbot. Simonm223 (talk) 14:15, 14 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That acronym, "fear, uncertainty and doubt," is used in precisely two contexts is simply
FUD both predates AI by many decades (my father introduced me to the term in the context of the phrase "nobody got fired for buying IBM", and the context of that was mainframe computer systems in the 1980s if not earlier. FUD is also used in many, many more contexts that just those two you list, including examples by those opposing the use of AI on Wikipedia in these very discussions. Thryduulf (talk) 14:47, 14 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That acronym, "fear, uncertainty and doubt," is used in precisely two contexts is factually incorrect.
FUD both predates AI by many decades (indeed if you'd bothered to read the fear, uncertainty and doubt article you'd learn that the concept was first recorded in 1693, the exact formulation dates from at least the 1920s and the use of it in technology concepts originated in 1975 in the context of mainframe computer systems. That its use, eve in just AI contexts, is limited to pro-AI advocacy is ludicrous (even ignoring things like Roko's basilisk), examples can be found in these sprawling discussions from those opposing AI use on Wikipedia. Thryduulf (talk) 14:52, 14 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Not really – I agree with Thryduulf's arguments on this one. Using AI to help tweak or summarize or "enhance" replies is of course not bad faith – the person is trying hard. Maybe English is their second language. Even for replies 100% AI-generated the user may be an ESL speaker struggling to remember the right words (I always forget 90% of my French vocabulary when writing anything in French, for example). In this case, I don't think we should make a blanket assumption that using AI to generate comments is not showing good faith. Cremastra (u — c) 02:35, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yes because generating walls of text is not good faith. People "touching up" their comments is also bad (for starters, if you lack the English competency to write your statements in the first place, you probably lack the competency to tell if your meaning has been preserved or not). Exactly what AGF should say needs work, but something needs to be said, and AGFDGF is a good place to do it. XOR'easter (talk) 02:56, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Not all walls of text are generated by AI, not all AI generated comments are walls of text. Not everybody who uses AI to touch up their comments lacks the competencies you describe, not everybody who does lack those competencies uses AI. It is not always possible to tell which comments have been generated by AI and which have not. This proposal is not particularly relevant to the problems you describe. Thryduulf (talk) 03:01, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Someone has to ask: Are you generating all of these pro-AI arguments using ChatGPT? It'd explain a lot. If so, I'll happily ignore any and all of your contributions, and I'd advise anyone else to do the same. We're not here to be flooded with LLM-derived responses. :bloodofox: (talk) 03:27, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That you can't tell whether my comments are AI-generated or not is one of the fundamental problems with these proposals. For the record they aren't, nor are they pro-AI - they're simply anti throwing out babies with bathwater. Thryduulf (talk) 04:25, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'd say it also illustrates the serious danger: We can no longer be sure that we're even talking to other people here, which is probably the most notable shift in the history of Wikipedia. :bloodofox: (talk) 04:34, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
How is that a "serious danger"? If a comment makes a good point, why does it matter whether ti was AI generated or not? If it doesn't make a good point, why does it matter if it was AI generated or not? How will these proposals resolve that "danger"? How will they be enforceable? Thryduulf (talk) 04:39, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia is made for people, by people, and I like most people will be incredibly offended to find that we're just playing some kind of LLM pong with a chatbot of your choice. You can't be serious. :bloodofox: (talk) 04:40, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You are entitled to that philosophy, but that doesn't actually answer any of my questions. Thryduulf (talk) 04:45, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
"why does it matter if it was AI generated or not?"
Because it takes little effort to post a lengthy, low quality AI-generated post, and a lot of effort for human editors to write up replies debunking them.
"How will they be enforceable? "
WP:DGF isn't meant to be enforced. It's meant to explain to people how they can demonstrate good faith. Posting replies to people (who took the time to write them) that are obviously AI-generated harms the ability of those people to assume good faith. Photos of Japan (talk) 05:16, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The linked "example of someone using AI in their replies" appears – to me – to be a non-AI-generated comment. I think I preferred the allegedly AI-generated comments from that user (example). The AI was at least superficially polite. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:27, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Obviously the person screaming in all caps that they use AI because they don't want to waste their time arguing is not using AI for that comment. Their first post calls for the article to be deleted for not "offering new insights or advancing scholarly understanding" and "merely" reiterating what other sources have written.
Yes, after a human had wasted their time explaining all the things wrong with its first post, then the bot was able to write a second post which looks ok. Except it only superficially looks ok, it doesn't actually accurately describe the articles. Photos of Japan (talk) 04:59, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Multiple humans have demonstrated in these discussions that humans are equally capable of writing posts which superficially look OK but don't actually accurately relate to anything they are responding to. Thryduulf (talk) 05:03, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
But I can assume that everyone here is acting in good faith. I can't assume good faith in the globally-locked sock puppet spamming AfD discussions with low effort posts, whose bot is just saying whatever it can to argue for the deletion of political pages the editor doesn't like. Photos of Japan (talk) 05:09, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
True, but I think that has more to do with the "globally-locked sock puppet spamming AfD discussions" part than with the "some of it might be [AI-generated]" part. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:54, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
All of which was discovered because of my suspicions from their inhuman, and meaningless replies. "Reiteration isn't the problem; redundancy is," maybe sounds pithy in a vacuum, but this was written in reply to me stating that we aren't supposed to be doing OR but reiterating what the sources say.
"Your criticism feels overly prescriptive, as though you're evaluating this as an academic essay" also sounds good, until you realize that the bot is actually criticizing its own original post.
The fact that my suspicions about their good faith were ultimately validated only makes it even harder for me to assume good faith in users who sound like ChatGPT. Photos of Japan (talk) 08:33, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I wonder if we need some other language here. I can understand feeling like this is a bad interaction. There's no sense that the person cares; there's no feeling like this is a true interaction. A contract lawyer would say that there's no meeting of the minds, and there can't be, because there's no mind in the AI, and the human copying from the AI doesn't seem to be interested in engaging their brain.
But... do you actually think they're doing this for the purpose of intentionally harming Wikipedia? Or could this be explained by other motivations? Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity – or to anxiety, insecurity (will they hate me if I get my grammar wrong?), incompetence, negligence, or any number of other "understandable" (but still something WP:SHUN- and even block-worthy) reasons. WhatamIdoing (talk) 08:49, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The user's talk page has a header at the top asking people not to template them because it is "impersonal and disrespectful", instead requesting "please take a moment to write a comment below in your own words"
Does this look like acting in good faith to you? Requesting other people write personalized responses to them while they respond with an LLM? Because it looks to me like they are trying to waste other people's time. Photos of Japan (talk) 09:35, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia:Assume good faith means that you assume people aren't deliberately screwing up on purpose. Humans are self-contradictory creatures. I generally do assume that someone who is being hypocritical hasn't noticed their contradictions yet. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:54, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
"Being hypocritical" in the abstract isn't the problem, it's the fact that asking people to put effort into their comments, while putting in minimal effort into your own comments appears bad faith, especially when said person says they don't want to waste time writing comments to stupid people. The fact you are arguing AGF for this person is both astounding and disappointing. Photos of Japan (talk) 16:08, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It feels like there is a lack of reciprocity in the interaction, even leaving aside the concern that the account is a block-evading sock.
But I wonder if you have read AGF recently. The first sentence is "Assuming good faith (AGF) means assuming that people are not deliberately trying to hurt Wikipedia, even when their actions are harmful."
So we've got some of this (e.g., harmful actions). But do you really believe this person woke up in the morning and decided "My main goal for today is to deliberately hurt Wikipedia. I might not be successful, but I sure am going to try hard to reach my goal"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:17, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Trying to hurt Wikipedia doesn't mean they have to literally think "I am trying to hurt Wikipedia", it can mean a range of things, such as "I am trying to troll Wikipedians". A person who thinks a cabal of editors is guarding an article page, and that they need to harass them off the site, may think they are improving Wikipedia, but at the least I wouldn't say that they are acting in good faith. Photos of Japan (talk) 23:27, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Sure, I'd count that as a case of "trying to hurt Wikipedia-the-community". WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:10, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • The issues with AI in discussions is not related to good faith, which is narrowly defined to intent. CMD (talk) 04:45, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    In my mind, they are related inasmuch as it is much more difficult for me to ascertain good faith if the words are eminently not written by the person I am speaking to in large part, but instead generated based on an unknown prompt in what is likely a small fraction of the expected time. To be frank, in many situations it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the disparity in effort is being leveraged in something less than good faith. Remsense ‥ 论 05:02, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Assume good faith, don't ascertain! Llm use can be deeply unhelpful for discussions and the potential for mis-use is large, but the most recent discussion I've been involved with where I observed an llm post was responded to by an llm post, I believe both the users were doing this in good faith. CMD (talk) 05:07, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    All I mean to say is it should be licit that unhelpful LLM use should be something that can be mentioned like any other unhelpful rhetorical pattern. Remsense ‥ 论 05:09, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Sure, but WP:DGF doesn't mention any unhelpful rhetorical patterns. CMD (talk) 05:32, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    The fact that everyone (myself included) defending "LLM use" says "use" rather than "generated", is a pretty clear sign that no one really wants to communicate with someone using "LLM generated" comments. We can argue about bans (not being proposed here), how to know if someone is using LLM, the nuances of "LLM use", etc., but at the very least we should be able to agree that there are concerns with LLM generated replies, and if we can agree that there are concerns then we should be able to agree that somewhere in policy we should be able to find a place to express those concerns. Photos of Japan (talk) 05:38, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    ...or they could be saying "use" because "using LLMs" is shorter and more colloquial than "generating text with LLMs"? Gnomingstuff (talk) 06:19, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Seems unlikely when people justify their use for editing (which I also support), and not for generating replies on their behalf. Photos of Japan (talk) 06:23, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    This is just semantics.
    For instance, I am OK with someone using a LLM to post a productive comment on a talk page. I am also OK with someone generating a reply with a LLM that is a productive comment to post to a talk page. I am not OK with someone generating text with an LLM to include in an article, and also not OK with someone using a LLM to contribute to an article.
    The only difference between these four sentences is that two of them are more annoying to type than the other two. Gnomingstuff (talk) 08:08, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Most people already assume good faith in those making productive contributions. In situations where good faith is more difficult to assume, would you trust someone who uses an LLM to generate all of their comments as much as someone who doesn't? Photos of Japan (talk) 09:11, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Given that LLM-use is completely irrelevant to the faith in which a user contributes, yes. Of course what amount that actually is may be anywhere between completely and none. Thryduulf (talk) 11:59, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    LLM-use is relevant as it allows bad faith users to disrupt the encyclopedia with minimal effort. Such a user posted in this thread earlier, as well as started a disruptive thread here and posted here, all using AI. I had previously been involved in a debate with another sock puppet of theirs, but at that time they didn't use AI. Now it seems they are switching to using an LLM just to troll with minimal effort. Photos of Japan (talk) 21:44, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    LLMs are a tool that can be used by good and bad faith users alike. Using an LLM tells you nothing about whether a user is contributing in good or bad faith. If somebody is trolling they can be, and should be, blocked for trolling regardless of the specifics of how they are trolling. Thryduulf (talk) 21:56, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    A can of spray paint, a kitchen knife, etc., are tools that can be used for good or bad, but if you bring them some place where they have few good uses and many bad uses then people will be suspicious about why you brought them. You can't just assume that a tool in any context is equally harmless. Using AI to generate replies to other editors is more suspicious than using it to generate a picture exemplifying a fashion style, or a description of a physics concept. Photos of Japan (talk) 23:09, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
No -- whatever you think of LLMs, the reason they are so popular is that the people who use them earnestly believe they are useful. Claiming otherwise is divorced from reality. Even people who add hallucinated bullshit to articles are usually well-intentioned (if wrong). Gnomingstuff (talk) 06:17, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's rarely productive to get mad at someone on Wikipedia for any reason, but if someone uses an LLM and it screws up their comment they don't get any pass just because the LLM screwed up and not them. You are fully responsible for any LLM content you sign your name under. -- LWG talk 05:19, 1 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
No. When someone publishes something under their own name, they are incorporating it as their own statement. Plagiarism from an AI or elsewhere is irrelevant to whether they are engaging in good faith. lethargilistic (talk) 17:29, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment LLMs know a few tricks about logical fallacies and some general ways of arguing (rhetoric), but they are incredibly dumb at understanding the rules of Wikipedia. You can usually tell this because it looks like incredibly slick and professional prose, but somehow it cannot get even the simplest points about the policies and guidelines of Wikipedia. I would indef such users for lacking WP:CIR. tgeorgescu (talk) 17:39, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    That guideline states "Sanctions such as blocks and bans are always considered a last resort where all other avenues of correcting problems have been tried and have failed." Gnomingstuff (talk) 19:44, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    WP:CIR isn't a guideline, but an essay. Relevantly though it is being cited at this very moment in an ANI thread concerning a user who can't/won't communicate without an LLM. Photos of Japan (talk) 20:49, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I blocked that user as NOTHERE a few minutes ago after seeing them (using ChatGPT) make suggestions for text to live pagespace while their previous bad behaviors were under discussion. AGF is not a suicide pact. BusterD (talk) 20:56, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    ... but somehow it cannot get even the simplest points about the policies and guidelines of Wikipedia: That problem existed with some humans even prior to LLMs. —Bagumba (talk) 02:53, 20 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • No - Not a good or bad faith issue. PackMecEng (talk) 21:02, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yes Using a 3rd party service to contribute to the Wikipedia on your behalf is clearly bad-faith, analogous to paying someone to write your article. Zaathras (talk) 14:39, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Its a stretch to say that a newbie writing a comment using AI is automatically acting in bad faith and not here to build an encyclopedia. PackMecEng (talk) 16:55, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    That's true, but this and other comments here show that not a few editors perceive it as bad-faith, rude, etc. I take that as an indication that we should tell people to avoid doing this when they have enough CLUE to read WP:AGF and are making an effort to show they're acting in good faith. Daß Wölf 23:06, 9 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Large language model AI like Chat GPT are in their infancy. The culture hasn't finished its initial reaction to them yet. I suggest that any proposal made here have an automatic expiration/required rediscussion date two years after closing. Darkfrog24 (talk) 22:42, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • No – It is a matter of how you use AI. I use Google translate to add trans-title parameters to citations, but I am careful to check for Google's output making for good English as well as reflecting the foreign title when it is a language I somewhat understand. I like to think that I am careful, and I do not pretend to be fluent in a language I am not familiar with, although I usually don't announce the source of such a translation. If an editor uses AI profligately and without understanding the material generated, then that is the sin; not AI itself. Dhtwiki (talk) 05:04, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    There's a legal phrase, "when the exception swallows the rule", and I think we might be headed there with the recent LLM/AI discussions.
    We start off by saying "Let's completely ban it!" Then in discussion we add "Oh, except for this very reasonable thing... and that reasonable thing... and nobody actually meant this other reasonable thing..."
    The end result is that it's "completely banned" ...except for an apparent majority of uses. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:34, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Do you want us to reply to you, because you are a human? Or are you just posting the output of an LLM without bothering to read anything yourself? DS (talk) 06:08, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Most likely you would reply because someone posted a valid comment and you are assuming they are acting in good faith and taking responsibility for what they post. To assume otherwise is kind of weird and not inline with general Wikipedia values. PackMecEng (talk) 15:19, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • No The OP seems to misunderstand WP:DGF which is not aimed at weak editors but instead exhorts stronger editors to lead by example. That section already seems to overload the primary point of WP:AGF and adding mention of AI would be quite inappropriate per WP:CREEP. Andrew🐉(talk) 23:11, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • No. Reading the current text of the section, adding text about AI would feel out-of-place for what the section is about. —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 05:56, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • No, this is not about good faith. Adumbrativus (talk) 11:14, 9 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yes. AI use is not a demonstration of bad faith (in any case not every new good-faith editor is familiar with our AI policies), but it is equally not a "demonstration of good faith", which is what the WP:DGF section is about.
It seems some editors are missing the point and !voting as if every edit is either a demonstration of good faith or bad faith. Most interactions are neutral and so is most AI use, but I find it hard to imagine a situation where AI use would point away from unfamiliarity and incompetence (in the CIR sense), and it often (unintentionally) leads to a presumption of laziness and open disinterest. It makes perfect sense to recommend against it. Daß Wölf 22:56, 9 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed most kinds of actions don't inherently demonstrate good or bad. The circumspect and neutral observation that AI use is not a demonstration of bad faith... but it is equally not a "demonstration of good faith", does not justify a proposal to one-sidedly say just half. And among all the actions that don't necessarily demonstrate good faith (and don't necessarily demonstrate bad faith either), it is not the purpose of "demonstrate good faith" and the broader guideline, to single out one kind of action to especially mention negatively. Adumbrativus (talk) 04:40, 13 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yes. Per Dass Wolf, though I would say passing off a completely AI-generated comment as your own anywhere is inherently bad-faith and one doesn't need to know Wiki policies to understand that. JoelleJay (talk) 23:30, 9 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yes. Sure, LLMs may have utility somewhere, and it might be a crutch for people unfamiliar with English, but as I've said above in the other AI RfC, that's a competence issue. This is about comments eating up editor time, energy, about LLMs easily being used to ram through changes and poke at editors in good standing. I don't see a case wherein a prospective editor's command of policy and language is good enough to discuss with other editors while being bad enough to require LLM use. Iseult Δx talk to me 01:26, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Good faith is separate from competence. Trying to do good is separate from having skills and knowledge to achieve good results. Adumbrativus (talk) 04:40, 13 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • No - anyone using a washing machine to wash their clothes must be evil and inherently lazy. They cannot be trusted. ... Oh, sorry, wrong century. Regards, --Goldsztajn (talk) 01:31, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Using a washing machine still results in washed clothes. Using LLMs results in communication failures because the LLM-using party isn't fully engaging. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 04:50, 27 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    And before there's a reply of 'the washing machine-using party isn't fully engaging in washing clothes'—washing clothes is a material process. The clothes get washed whether or not you pay attention to the suds and water. Communication is a social process. Users can't come to a meeting of the minds if some of the users outsource the 'thinking' to word salad-generators that can't think. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 05:00, 27 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • No - As long as a person understands (and knows) what they are talking about, we shouldn't discriminate against folks using generative AI tech for grammar fixes or minor flow improvements. Yes, AI can create walls of text, and make arguments not grounded in policy, but we could do that even without resorting to generative AI. Sohom (talk) 11:24, 13 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
To expand on my point above. Completely AI generated comments (or articles) are obviously bad, but using AI should be thrown into the same cross-hairs as completely AI generated comments. Sohom (talk) 11:35, 13 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Sohom Datta You mean shouldn't be thrown? I think that would make more sense given the context of your original !vote. Duly signed, ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 14:08, 14 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • No. Don't make any changes. It's not a good faith/bad faith issue. The 'yes' arguments are most unconvincing with very bizarre analogies to make their point. Here, I can make one too: "Don't edit with AI; you wouldn't shoot your neighbor's dog with a BB-gun, would you?" Duly signed, ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 14:43, 13 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yes. If I plug another user's comments into an LLM and ask it to generate a response, I am not participating in the project in good faith. By failing to meaningfully engage with the other user by reading their comments and making an effort to articulate myself, I'm treating the other user's time and energy frivolously. We should advise users that refraining from using LLMs is an important step toward demonstrating good faith. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 04:55, 27 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yes per Hydrangeans among others. Good faith editing requires engaging collaboratively with your human faculties. Posting an AI comment, on the other hand, strikes me as deeply unfair to those of us who try to engage substantively when there is disagreement. Let's not forget that editor time and energy and enthusiasm are our most important resources. If AI is not meaningfully contributing to our discussions (and I think there is good reason to believe it is not) then it is wasting these limited resources. I would therefore argue that using it is full-on WP:DISRUPTIVE if done persistently enough –– on par with e.g. WP:IDHT or WP:POINT –– but at the very least demonstrates an unwillingness to display good faith engagement. That should be codified in the guideline. Generalrelative (talk) 04:59, 28 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • I appreciate your concern about the use of AI in discussions. It is important to be mindful of how AI is used, and to ensure that it is used in a way that is respectful of others.

I don't think that WP:DGF should be amended to specifically mention AI. However, I do think that it is important to be aware of the potential for AI to be used in a way that is not in good faith. When using AI, it is important to be transparent about it. Let others know that you are using AI, and explain how you are using it. This will help to build trust and ensure that others understand that you are not trying to deceive them. It is also important to be mindful of the limitations of AI. AI is not a perfect tool, and it can sometimes generate biased or inaccurate results. Be sure to review and edit any AI-generated content before you post it.

Finally, it is important to remember that AI is just a tool. It is up to you to use it in a way that is respectful and ethical. |} It's easy to detect for most, can be pointed out as needed. No need to add an extra policy JayCubby

  • Questions: While I would agree that AI may be used as a tool for good, such leveling the field for those with certain disabilities, might it just as easily be used as a tool for disruption? What evidence exists that shows whether or not AI may be used to circumvent certain processes and requirements that make Wiki a positive collaboration of new ideas as opposed to a toxic competition of trite but effective logical fallacies? Cheers. DN (talk) 05:39, 27 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    AI can be used to engage positively, it can also be used to engage negatively. Simply using AI is therefore not, in and of itself, an indication of good or bad faith. Anyone using AI to circumvent processes and requirements should be dealt with in the exact same way they would be if they circumvented those processes and requirements using any other means. Users who are not circumventing processes and requirements should not be sanctioned or discriminated against for circumventing processes and requirements. Using a tool that others could theoretically use to cause harm or engage in bad faith does not mean that they are causing harm or engaging in bad faith. Thryduulf (talk) 08:05, 27 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Well said. Thanks. DN (talk) 08:12, 27 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    As Hydrangeans explains above, an auto-answer tool means that the person is not engaging with the discussion. They either cannot or will not think about what others have written, and they are unable or unwilling to reply themselves. I can chat to an app if I want to spend time talking to a chatbot. Johnuniq (talk) 22:49, 27 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    And as I and others have repeatedly explained, that is completely irrelevant to this discussion. You can use AI in multiple different ways, some of which are productive contributions to Wikipedia, some of which are not. If someone is disruptively not engaging with discussion then they can already be sanctioned for doing so, what tools they are or are not using to do so could not be less relevant. Thryduulf (talk) 02:51, 28 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    This implies a discussion that is entirely between AI chatbots deserves the same attention and thought needed to close it, and can effect a consensus just as well, as one between humans, so long as its arguments are superficially reasonable and not disruptive. It implies that editors should expect and be comfortable with arguing with AI when they enter a discussion, and that they should not expect to engage with anyone who can actually comprehend them... JoelleJay (talk) 01:00, 28 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    That's a straw man argument, and if you've been following the discussion you should already know that. My comment implied absolutely none of what you claim it does. If you are not prepared to discuss what has actually been written then I am not going to waste more of my time replying to you in detail. Thryduulf (talk) 02:54, 28 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    It's not a strawman; it's an example that demonstrates, acutely, the flaws in your premise. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 03:11, 28 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    If you think that demonstrates a flaw in the premise then you haven't understood the premise at all. Thryduulf (talk) 03:14, 28 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I disagree. If you think it doesn't demonstrate a flaw, then you haven't understood the implications of your own position or the purpose of discussion on Wikipedia talk pages. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 03:17, 28 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I refuse to waste any more of my time on you. Thryduulf (talk) 04:31, 28 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Both of the above users are correct. If we have to treat AI-generated posts in good faith the same as human posts, then a conversation of posts between users that is entirely generated by AI would have to be read by a closing admin and their consensus respected provided it didn't overtly defy policy. Photos of Japan (talk) 04:37, 28 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    You too have completely misunderstood. If someone is contributing in good faith, we treat their comments as having been left in good faith regardless of how they made them. If someone is contributing in bad faith we treat their comments as having been left in bad faith regardless of how they made them. Simply using AI is not an indication of whether someone is contributing in good or bad faith (it could be either). Thryduulf (talk) 00:17, 29 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    But we can't tell if the bot is acting in good or bad faith, because the bot lacks agency, which is the problem with comments that are generated by AI rather than merely assisted by AI. Photos of Japan (talk) 00:31, 29 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    But we can't tell if the bot is acting in good or bad faith, because the bot lacks agency exactly. It is the operator who acts in good or bad faith, and simply using a bot is not evidence of good faith or bad faith. What determines good or bad faith is the content not the method. Thryduulf (talk) 11:56, 29 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    But the if the bot operator isn't generating their own comments, then their faith doesn't matter, the bot's does. Just like how if I hired someone to edit Wikipedia to me, what would matter is their faith. Photos of Japan (talk) 14:59, 30 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    A bot and AI can both be used in good faith and in bad faith. You can only tell which by looking at the contributions in their context, which is exactly the same as contributions made without the use of either. Thryduulf (talk) 23:12, 30 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Not to go off topic, but do you object to any requirements on users for disclosure of use of AI generated responses and comments etc...? DN (talk) 02:07, 31 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm not in favour of completely unenforceable requirements that would bring no benefits. Thryduulf (talk) 11:38, 31 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Is it a demonstration of good faith to copy someone else's (let's say public domain and relevant) argument wholesale and paste it in a discussion with no attribution as if it was your original thoughts?
    Or how about passing off a novel mathematical proof generated by AI as if you wrote it by yourself? JoelleJay (talk) 02:51, 29 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Specific examples of good or bad faith contributions are not relevant to this discussion. If you do not understand why this is then you haven't understood the basic premise of this discussion. Thryduulf (talk) 12:00, 29 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    If other actions where someone is deceptively appropriating, word-for-word, an entire argument they did not write, are intuitively "not good faith", then why would it be any different in this scenario? JoelleJay (talk) 16:57, 1 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    This discussion is explicitly about whether use of AI should be regarded as an indicator of bad faith. Someone deceptively appropriating, word-for-word, an entire argument they did not write is not editing in good faith. It is completely irrelevant whether they do this using AI or not. Nobody is arguing that some uses of AI are bad faith - specific examples are neither relevant nor useful. For simply using AI to be regarded as an indicator of bad faith then all uses of AI must be in bad faith, which they are not (as multiple people have repeatedly explained).
    Everybody agrees that some people who edit using mobile phones do so in bad faith, but we don't regard simply using a mobile phone as evidence of editing in bad faith because some people who edit using mobile phones do so in good faith. Listing specific examples of bad faith use of mobile phones is completely irrelevant to a discussion about that. Replace "mobile phones" with "AI" and absolutely nothing changes. Thryduulf (talk) 18:18, 1 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Except the mobile phone user is actually doing the writing. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 19:39, 1 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I know I must be sounding like a stuck record at this point, but there are only so many ways you can describe completely irrelevant things as completely irrelevant before that happens. The AI system is incapable of having faith, good or bad, in the same way that a mobile phone is incapable of having faith, good or bad. The faith comes from the person using the tool not from the tool itself. That faith can be either good or bad, but the tool someone uses does not and cannot tell you anything about that. Thryduulf (talk) 20:07, 1 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    That is a really good summary of the situation. Using a widely available and powerful tool does not mean you are acting in bad faith, it is all in how it is used. PackMecEng (talk) 02:00, 28 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    A tool merely being widely available and powerful doesn't mean it's suited to the purpose of participating in discussions on Wikipedia. By way of analogy, Infowars is/was widely available and powerful, in the sense of the exercise it influenced over certain Internet audiences, but its very character as a disinformation platform makes it unsuitable for citation on Wikipedia. LLMs are widely available and might be considered 'powerful' in the sense that they can manage a raw output of vaguely plausible-sounding text, but their very character as text prediction models—rather than actual, deliberated communication—make them unsuitable mechanisms for participating in Wikipedia discussions. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 03:16, 28 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Even if we assume your premise is true, that does not indicate that someone using an LLM (which come in a wide range of abilities and are only a subset of AI) is contributing in either good or bad faith. It is completely irrelevant to the faith in which they are contributing. Thryduulf (talk) 04:30, 28 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    But this isn’t about if you think its a useful tool or not. This is about if someone uses one are they automatically acting in bad faith. We can argue the merits and benefits of AI all day, and they certainly have their place, but nothing you said struck at the point of this discussion. PackMecEng (talk) 13:59, 28 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes. To echo someone here, no one signed up here to argue with bad AI chat bots. If you're a non native speaker running through your posts through ChatGPT for spelling and grammar that's one thing, but wasting time bickering with AI slop is an insult. Hydronym89 (talk) 16:33, 28 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Your comment provides good examples of using AI in good and bad faith, thus demonstrating that simply using AI is not an indication of either. Thryduulf (talk) 00:18, 29 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Is that an fair comparison? I disagree that it is. Spelling and grammar checking doesn't seem to be what we are talking about.
The importance of context in which it is being used is, I think, the part that may be perceived as falling through the cracks in relation to AGF or DGF, but I agree there is a legitimate concern for AI being used to game the system in achieving goals that are inconsistent with being WP:HERE.
I think we all agree that time is a valuable commodity that should be respected, but not at the expense of others. Using a bot to fix grammar and punctuation is acceptable because it typically saves more time than it costs. Using AI to enable endless debates, even if both opponents are using it, seems like an awful waste of space, let alone the time it would cost admins that need to sort through it all. DN (talk) 01:16, 29 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Engaging in endless debates that waste the time of other editors is disruptive, but this is completely irrelevant to this discussion for two reasons. Firstly, someone engaging in this behaviour may be doing so in either good or bad faith: someone intentionally doing so is almost certainly WP:NOTHERE, and we regularly deal with such people. Other people sincerely believe that their arguments are improving Wikipedia and/or that the people they are arguing with are trying to harm it. This doesn't make it less disruptive but equally doesn't mean they are contributing in bad faith.
Secondly this behaviour is completely independent of whether someone is using AI or not: some people engaging in this behaviour are using AI some people engaging in this behaviour are not. Some people who use AI engage in this behaviour, some people are not.
For the perfect illustration of this see the people in this discussion who are making extensive arguments in good faith, without using AI, while having not understood the premise of the discussion - despite this being explained to them multiple times. Thryduulf (talk) 12:13, 29 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Would you agree that using something like grammar and spellcheck is not the same as using AI (without informing other users) to produce comments and responses? DN (talk) 22:04, 29 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
They are different uses of AI, but that's not relevant because neither use is, in and of itself, evidence of the faith in which the user is contributing. Thryduulf (talk) 22:14, 29 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You are conflating "evidence" with "proof". Using AI to entirely generate your comments is not "proof" of bad faith, but it definitely provides less "evidence" of good faith than writing out a comment yourself. Photos of Japan (talk) 03:02, 30 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
No, it provides no evidence of good or bad faith at all. Thryduulf (talk) 12:54, 30 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Does the absence of AI's ability to demonstrate good/bad faith absolve the user of responsibility to some degree in that regard? DN (talk) 23:21, 6 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not quite sure I understand what you are asking, but you are always responsible for everything you post, regardless of how on why you posted it or what tools you did or did not use to write it. This means that someone using AI (in any form) to write a post should be treated and responded to identically with how they should be treated and responded to if they had made an identical post without using AI. Thryduulf (talk) 04:10, 7 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • No per WP:CREEP. After reading the current version of the section, it doesn't seem like the right place to say anything about AI. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 01:05, 29 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yes, with caveats this discussion seems to be spiraling into a discussion of several separate issues. I agree with Remsense and Simonm223 and others that using an LLM to generate your reply to a discussion is inappropriate on Wikipedia. Wikipedia runs on consensus, which requires communication between humans to arrive at a shared understanding. Putting in the effort to fully understand and respond to the other parties is an essential part of good-faith engagement in the consensus process. If I hired a human ghost writer to use my Wiki account to argue for my desired changes on a wiki article, that would be completely inappropriate, and using an AI to replace that hypothetical ghost writer doesn't make it any more acceptable. With that said, I understand this discussion to be about how to encourage editors to demonstrate good faith. Many of the people here on both sides seem to think we are discussing banning or encouraging LLM use, which is a different conversation. In the context of this discussion demonstrating good faith means disclosing LLM use and never using LLMs to generate replies to any contentious discussion. This is a subset of "articulating your honest motives" (since we can't trust the AI to accurately convey your motives behind your advocacy) and "avoidance of gaming the system" (since using an LLM in a contentious discussion opens up the concern that you might simply be using minimal effort to waste the time of those who disagree with you and win by exhaustion). I think it is appropriate to mention the pitfalls of LLM use in WP:DGF, though I do not at this time support an outright ban on its use. -- LWG talk 05:19, 1 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • No. For the same reason I oppose blanket statements about bans of using AI elsewhere, it is not only a huge over reach but fundamentally impossible to enforce. I've seen a lot of talk around testing student work to see if it AI, but that is impossible to do reliably. When movable type and the printing press began replacing scribes, the handwriting of scribes began to look like that of a printing press. As AI becomes more prominent, I imagine human writing will begin to look more AI generated. People who use AI for things like helping them translate their native writing into English should not be punished if something leaks through that makes the use obvious. Like anywhere else on the Internet, I foresee any strict rules against the use of AI to quickly be used in bad faith in heated arguments to accuse others of being a bot.
GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 19:12, 2 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hesitantly support. I agree that generative AI and LLMs cause a lot of problems on Wikipedia, and should not be allowed. However, I think that a blanket ban could have a negative impact on both accessibility and the community as a whole. Some people might be using LLMs to help with grammar or spelling, and I'd consider it a net positive because it encourages people with english as a second language to edit wikipedia, which brings diverse perspectives we wouldn't otherwise have. The other issue is that it might encourage people to go on "AI Witch hunts" for lack of a better term. Nobody likes being accused of being an LLM and it negatively impacts the sense of community we have. If there is also a policy against accusing people of using an LLM without evidence, I would likely agree without any issue Mgjertson (talk) 15:53, 6 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
We do have a policy against accusing people of using an LLM without evidence: WP:AGF. I don't think we should ban the use of LLMs, but because using an LLM to write your comments can make it harder for others to AGF, LLMs should be used with caution and their use should be disclosed. LLMs should never be used to gain the upper hand in a contentious discussion. -- LWG talk 21:17, 6 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@LWG We do have a policy against accusing people of using an LLM without evidence: WP:AGF this proposal would effectively remove that. Thryduulf (talk) 21:42, 6 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The only "evidence" required at the moment is "my personal belief". WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:33, 6 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This may be interpreted as a good example for both sides of the argument. Editors have and will always need to make personal judgements that affect how they participate in the topic or project, if at all. If we want to maintain faith in the project and encourage participation the core principles and policies should at least appear strong enough to adapt to AI. Some people don't mind it, others see it as spam, because it's subjective and based on "personal belief". DN (talk) 20:13, 4 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • No. Keep AI out of Wikipedia. Simple as that.
Thehistorianisaac (talk) 06:54, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

[tangent] If any of the people who have used LLMs/AI tools would be willing to do me a favor, please see the request at Wikipedia talk:Large language models/Archive 7#For an LLM tester. I think this (splitting a very long page – not an article – by date) is something that will be faster and more accurately done by a script than by a human. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:25, 29 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  • Yes. The purpose of a discussion forum is for editors to engage with each other; fully AI-generated responses serve no purpose but to flood the zone and waste people's time, meaning they are, by definition, bad faith. Obviously this does not apply to light editing, but that's not what we're actually discussing; this is about fully AI-generated material, not about people using it grammar an spellchecking software to clean up their own words. No one has come up with even the slightest rationale for why anyone would do so in good faith - all they've provided is vague "but it might be useful to someone somewhere, hypothetically" - which is, in fact, false, as their total inability to articulate any such case shows. And the fact that some people are determine to defend it regardless shows why we do in fact need a specific policy making clear that it is inappropriate. --Aquillion (talk) 19:08, 2 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • No - AI is simply a tool, whether it's to spellcheck or fully generate a comment. Labeling all AI use as bad faith editing is assuming bad faith. ミラー強斗武 (StG88ぬ会話) 07:02, 3 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yes unless the user makes it innately clear they are using AI to interact with other editors, per DGF, at least until new policies and guidelines for protecting our human community are in place. Wikipedia's core principals were originally designed around aspects of human nature, experiences and interactions. It was designed for people to collaborate with other people, at a time before AI was so readily available. In it's current state, I don't see any comments explaining how Wikipedia is prepared to handle this tool that likely hasn't realized it's full potential yet. I might agree that whether or not a person chooses to use AI isn't an initial sign of good or bad faith, but that is irrelevant to the core issue of the question as it relates to Wiki's current ability interpret and manage a potentially subversive tool.The sooner the better, before it's use, for better or worse, sways the community's appetite one way or the other. Cheers. DN (talk) 01:01, 7 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • No - A carefully curated and reviewed-by-the-poster AI generated statement is not a problem. The AI is being used as a tool to organize thoughts, and just because the exact wording came from an AI does not mean it does not contribute usefully to the discussion. The issue is not the use of the AI, the issue is in non-useful content or discussion, which, yes, can easily happen if the AI statement is not carefully curated and reviewed by the poster. But that's not the fault of the AI, that's the fault of the human operating the AI... and nothing has changed from our normal policy. This reply is not written by AI, but if it had been, it wouldn't have changed the points raised as relevant. And if irrelevant statements are made... heck, humans do that all the time too! Said comments should be dealt with the same way we deal with humans who spout nonsense. Fieari (talk) 06:23, 13 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • No - Outside of a few editors here I feel like most of the responses on both sides are missing what WP:DGF is about. First off, it is a postive rule about what editors should do. It is also a short rule. Expanding on this is unlikely to improve the rule. Additionally, beginning to talk about things an editor should not do because they imply a departure from godo faith opens the door to many other things that are not the best editing but are also not really what DGF is about. WP needs better guidleines on AI but this guideline does not need to be modified to encompass AI. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Czarking0 (talk • contribs) 07:30, 16 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yes Wikipedia was designed for humans. Until our structures are changed to accomodate AI, there needs to be reasonable safety measures to prevent abuse of a system that was designed for humans only. AI can impact every area of Wikipedia with great potential for distortion and abuse. This proposal is reasonable and needed. -- GreenC 19:51, 17 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yes but possibly with included clarification on the distinction between AI generated replies and the use of AI as a tool for spellcheck or translation. But someone who just asks an AI to spit out a list of talking points/generate an entire argument to support their predetermined position is not acting in good faith or seriously engaging in the discussion. I also think it is better to be cautious with this, then amend the rules later if needed, than the reverse. Vsst (talk) 06:22, 24 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • No-ish While I can see the possible issues with someone saying to ChatGPT "here's what I want to say, please give me a response that's as convincing as possible" I definitely don't think that this is a clear sign of bad faith. It is not likely to be productive, since ChatGPT isn't likely to be able to make a good policy-based argument here, but I could absolutely see someone doing this who genuinely wants to improve the encyclopedia and thinks the changes they are having ChatGPT argue for really good changes.
Which is to say, if we ban AI-generated comments we definitely shouldn't ban them as an WP:AGF issue. Someone AI-generating their comments doesn't mean they're not acting in good faith. "Good faith" is a very low standard and just means they're not actively WP:NOTHERE, which is why it's what everyone is supposed to assume as a baseline. It's very common to think that someone is acting in good faith but that they're wrong, their arguments are bad, and the changes they want would be harmful. Loki (talk) 22:56, 28 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weak support. But I'd prefer it to be added in a way that more broadly states that your opinions should be carefully considered, should be based on the responses/views of others (if there are any), and that you should understand your view well enough to be able to debate it civilly with others if they respond with questions or concerns. This isn't limited to LLM generated comments - it would also cover things like deliberately misusing essays, etc. I disagree with others that it's not a clear sign of bad faith. If someone is unable to articulate their view on a topic themselves based on policies, guidelines, or properly used essays, then they are not acting in good faith by contributing to the discussion. This would also not make it "default" bad faith to use a LLM for spell check, or grammar, or similar - because the person using the LLM in that manner would, by definition, be articulating their ideas to the LLM and having them edited in minor ways. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez | me | talk to me! 21:03, 2 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    @Berchanhimez, this proposal is to add a line to Wikipedia:Assume good faith. At some level, it's a proposal to say "You are a bad person if you use AI on talk pages". I wonder if you'd be more satisfied with a line in Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines that says something like "AI chat bots can be helpful with cleaning up grammar and spelling errors, but don't use them to completely generate a comment on a talk page." WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:11, 2 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Well, yes, it would be better to do that. But in any case, I don't think people should have to assume good faith of someone who is using an LLM to generate their ideas in the first place. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez | me | talk to me! 22:01, 2 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Why? What is it about LLMs that means we need to throw out one of the most fundamental principles (arguably the most fundamental principle) of interaction? How will this assumption of bad faith regarding something that cannot be proven either way improve the project? Thryduulf (talk) 23:39, 2 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't support any of that, because my support for AGF in general is because what it says is relatively weak. I don't think that the average editor (which includes IP editors) has a fully thought out policy-based justification for the average edit, and I don't think that's a reasonable expectation. I do think that it's reasonable to expect that editors think their edit is good and will make the wiki better, which is what AGF actually means. Loki (talk) 23:57, 2 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't necessarily mean that an editor has to be aware of all policies. But they should at least be understanding of their position enough to be able to understand objections to it that may be based on policies they were unaware of, and be willing to constructively discuss. A user that is using a LLM to generate their arguments, whether the LLM generates "proper" arguments or not, is not going to be able to understand the criticism of their arguments, because they don't understand their arguments in the first place. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez | me | talk to me! 20:08, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    A user that is using a LLM to generate their arguments [...] is not going to be able to understand the criticism of their arguments, because they don't understand their arguments in the first place. I don't think this is universally true. It is going to be true for some people but some people are going to understand the arguments (e.g. because they've read and understood the LLM output before posting it, blended the LLM output with their own words, been very careful with their prompting, or some combination). Whichever it is, it gives absolutely no indication of the faith in which the user is contributing. Thryduulf (talk) 20:30, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    @Berchanhimez, I wonder if you'd take a look at Talk:Böksta Runestone#Clarification on Image Caption – "Possibly Depicting" vs. "Showing". It appears to be a case of a non-native English speaker deciding to "use a LLM for spell check, or grammar, or similar" and getting insulted by editors for using an LLM to translate his own words – and the accusations keep coming, even after he's told them that he's stopped using an LLM for translation and is writing everything himself. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:58, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    The accusations of LLM use there seem to be based on the format the user chose to present their arguments in, which is comparable to a LLM (breaking points out into individual sections with titles, for example). I would agree with you that, if a LLM was used there, it's not to the point of generating the arguments involved, which should be fine. I believe that editors responding as if it was definitively LLM generated when it is at best unclear can be dealt with through normal civility policies. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez | me | talk to me! 20:05, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    The user admitted his response was generated from an LLM, although WhatamIdoing (talk · contribs) attempted to convince us otherwise. None of us signed up here to attempt interface with someone's LLM outputs. :bloodofox: (talk) 20:08, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    No that is not what happened. WAID said it wasn't obvious to her that the initial message was LLM-generated - that's not the same as trying to convince you (or anyone else) that it is or is not. Then later the the other editor said they had stopped using LLMs but you refused to believe them. Thryduulf (talk) 20:33, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    You're wrong: "I don't think this editor is using WP:LLM tools", "Have you ever seen a chatbot correctly..." — etc. All attempts to convince us that the user wasn't using generative AI. However, as two users, including myself, pointed out, it was obviously LLM-produced text, which the editor admitted. I'm not here to play games with prompt outputs and I'm certainly not litigating the matter with editors like yourself who openly claim that anyone who refuses to interact with prompt outputs is a victim of anti-AI propaganda. :bloodofox: (talk) 20:39, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    What is it with proponents of policies that compel them to tell falsehoods? Anybody can read the what was on that page and see that it does not accord with what you are saying here. You are refusing to engage with someone because they previously used a technology you dislike, regardless of everything else, even though they are no longer using that technology while asserting that it is everybody else who is contributing in bad faith. Thryduulf (talk) 20:49, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Translation: "Those darn users who refuse to sift through my prompt-generated AI spew. Darn their FUD!" :bloodofox: (talk) 21:24, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Looks like they used it for translation and grammar/spell. Both recently affirmed as okay to do. I mean your comments and actions are kind of the exact reason we should not carve out an exception to AGF. PackMecEng (talk) 22:43, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I would agree that one editor's actions and words shouldn't encapsulate or be used diagnose the entirety of the issue, so it seems best to avoid repeating or following that train of thought. Cheers. DN (talk) 20:43, 4 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I took the invitation to read the page for myself, and I think that accusing people of telling falsehoods is inappropriate here, since what happened on that page is pretty much as described by bloodofox. From what I read bloodofox could have and should have been more civil, but they have not told falsehoods. With that said, bloodofox, I also would suggest that we WP:DROPTHESTICK in that specific case, as the user who was correctly accused of using an LLM has since made what I would consider an very honest good-faith response in which they clarified their use of an LLM and agreed to your request to refrain from using it in that way in the future. When someone receives your criticism humbly and agrees to change their behavior accordingly, the correct response is to welcome and encourage them, not continue to condemn them. -- LWG talk 22:57, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I think that Bloodofox is making a material misstatement when he says his response was generated from an LLM. The user says that the first two (=not all) comments were LLM translated.
    Haven't we had multiple conversations in which everyone says that of course LLMs shouldn't create your list of reasons, but it's fine for non-native English speakers to use LLMs to translate their own original thoughts?
    And yet here we are, with an editor explicitly saying that he used ChatGPT only to get his English grammar correct, and we have an editor insisting that this is "AI generated". WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:35, 4 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't speak for anyone else here, but even if it's only being used as a translator, it would seem relevant to disclose that information from the start, if for no other reason than transparency in order to avoid miscommunication if the the AI makes a mistake. It could be something as simple as checking a box on the signature control panel. Cheers. DN (talk) 19:33, 4 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Such a requirement would have to come way to make people aware of it before they post for the first time, and would need to come with some assurances that other commenters will not fly off the handle at you for being honest (both for saying you've used AI when you have and for saying you have not used AI when you haven't) - something we currently cannot give. Thryduulf (talk) 19:49, 4 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Are you specifically referring to IP accounts? DN (talk) 19:54, 4 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    No, and I don't know why I would be. For any such rule or guidance to be of any benefit whatsoever it needs to apply equally to all editors. Thryduulf (talk) 20:08, 4 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Your first sentence was a bit confusing. DN (talk) 20:10, 4 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    If you want people to type "I used an LLM to translate this" (or "I used Google Translate to translate this") in their comments, then you have to tell them to type that before they post the comment. We don't want:
    • A: Posts hand-written but machine translated comment.
    • B: Pitches fit because the comment uses the The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint, which they believe is proof of using ChatGPT.
    • A: Why didn't anyone tell me that machine translation is banned?
    • B: You were just supposed to magically know that you have to type the secret code 'This is 100% original text from me, and I used ChatGPT to correct my grammar errors' when you post anything that has ever been touched by an LLM.
    It does not matter whether User 'A' (or 'B') is logged in. What matters is whether we blame them later for doing something most people think is reasonable, but that we never told them is a problem. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:07, 4 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    @WhatamIdoing This is not nearly so bad as you make it out to be. The answer is to insert a line into a guidelines saying that AI-generated text and translation must be disclosed and then for B to not pitch a fit. This is how literally all our guidelines work (except very, very serious ones). Cremastra (talk) 21:18, 4 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    "Insert a line into a guideline", when we know that Wikipedia:Nobody reads the directions? No. That's a path towards A not having any clue about the desired behavior, and B showing up to pitch a fit about how you are Violating the Holy Guideline™ 😱.
    If you want newcomers to do this, you have to put the message where they will see it. That means in the user interface.
    An abuse filter that says newcomer + more than 100 words = warn about undisclosed AI use might work most of the time.
    A line in the editing environment would probably work approximately as well as the one that says "Content that violates any copyrights will be deleted. Encyclopedic content must be verifiable through citations to reliable sources." (See Wikipedia:Copyright problems and related pages if you want to estimate how well that does/n't work.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:58, 4 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • No - The proposal here is not "should we stop people from using AI to generate comments" but "should we modify WP:DGF to address use of AI to generate comments. Those are not the same. There's a very easy answer to the latter: No, that's a section best stated simply, without overcomplicating it with specific cases. The other, underlying question which seems to be the basis for much of the drama and ad hominems in this thread (the second time in as many days I've seen ad hominems from the same people on the same subject). The problem is figuring out where to draw a line amid discussions where so many of the loudest participants seem determined to avoid nuance. Nobody wants users to tell an LLM "give me an argument to keep this article using Wikipedia policies" with no additional information, copy/pasting the output. The problem is, it's hard to figure out where to draw a line that doesn't also preclude or stigmatize, say, using an LLM as a to help them overcome interpersonal/communicative differences ranging from straight translation and fixing typos to softening language or checking logical consistency in the user's own arguments. With all of those, there are valid and inappropriate uses, and I'm yet to see a proposal that adequately takes both into consideration. That doesn't even get into the difficulty with detecting/proving this behavior, meaning the only people who will be punished are the newbies who don't realize how reactive some part of this community is on LLM issues. We fundamentally need loosey-goosey language around this, acknowledging its uses are extremely varied.
    Speaking as someone who frequently opposes these blanket rules but is also not a fan of people copy/pasting chatgpt content into talk pages, here's some draft text I could probably get behind (though for WP:TPYES or WP:SEMIAUTO rather than WP:AGF): "LLMs are powerful tools that can assist editing and communication on Wikipedia, but use caution when using them on talk pages. As a collaborative project, talk pages are where contributors converse with one another to determine how to improve an article. Avoid copy-pasting LLM-generated text without justification, and use caution when relying on an LLM to generate ideas, arguments, or evidence in talk page discussions. A pattern of overreliance on LLM-generated content may be viewed as disruptive to the deliberative process." FWIW. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 18:24, 4 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    That proposed text is the most constructive proposal by far that I've seen around LLMs and I could support something like that as guidance somewhere, perhaps with the addition of something around the benefits of concision. As you say WP:AGF is definitely not the right place for it, and I'm not certain WP:SEMIAUTO is either. WP:TPYES is the best of the locations you mention, but maybe we should have a central single page of guidance (not hard and fast rules) about the interaction of LLMs and Wikipedia?. Thryduulf (talk) 19:44, 4 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    A central page might be a good idea, but it would be a consensus-building challenge if these discussions are any indication. I know what I suggested above doesn't go far enough for some folks, but maybe it could work as a starting point to move from [no rules at all] to [some rough guidance]. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 19:52, 4 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I also could get behind this proposal, though I would like to also see something to the effect of "to avoid misunderstanding, it is best to disclose LLM use up front and ideally share the prompts used to generate any LLM text you contribute to a discussion." -- LWG talk 19:58, 4 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    That's not bad, but to the extent I have a concern with LLMs it's very similar to Berchan's, which is to say that I'm not really convinced that someone who has asked an LLM to generate arguments can really respond to counterarguments in the way we'd expect, and I'd ideally like any guideline about it to mention that specifically.
    Or I guess more broadly, I think that any guideline about this shouldn't just say that editors should "use caution" with LLMs, it should tell them what to be cautious about. Loki (talk) 20:00, 4 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
No. I don't think it would be possible to adequately express the objection, and we would be left with an even bigger problem than the one we had been trying to resolve. I suppose I'm invoking WP:CREEP in a sense. Apart from expressing the general sentiment that everyone should assume and demonstrate good faith, it is not an entity like vandalism (for example) that can easily be identified. We need to treat each case on an individual basis and, perhaps by consensus, decide if that specific action was done in bad faith and if this other specific action was justified. There are so many scare stories about AI, and how it will nuke sites like Wikipedia, that it is easy to assume bad faith where it is involved. As someone said above, AI itself is not the problem—its application is the problem. As with vandalism, that can can only be policed on a case-by-case or person-by-person basis. Spartathenian (talk) 11:55, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yes: Much of Wikipedia communication is based on trust, and a key aspect of good faith is asserting things that you claim are the truth to the best of your ability. If you're using chatbots to answer the key points in questions and make arguments for you, you cannot possibly be asserting the truth to the best of your ability, because you have outsourced that determination to a third party that can do more than offer an educated guess. Responses can't possibly be in good faith when using LLMs, because an LLM lacks the inherent ability to act in good or bad faith. All uses of AI that substantively make the arguments for an editor are basically meatpuppeting, but for predictive algorithms rather than people. This is true even if the LLM is 100% correct in the argument. If someone poses as a doctor when they are not, them making accurate diagnoses doesn't provide a good faith basis for their actions. Even if the community prefers a solution is less stringent on LLM use than I would be, undisclosed LLM edits ought to be forbidden. CoffeeCrumbs (talk) 17:01, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think such advice would fit better in WP:CIVIL. Most people who use LLMs to talk to us presumably do so because they feel it will enhance what they have to say in some way, i.e. in good faith. What needs to be explained is that others find not expressing yourself in your own words annoying and impolite. – Joe (talk) 17:48, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

RfC: Amending ATD-R

Should WP:ATD-R be amended as follows:

−
A page can be [[Wikipedia:BLANKANDREDIRECT|blanked and redirected]] if there is a suitable page to redirect to, and if the resulting redirect is not [[Wikipedia:R#DELETE|inappropriate]]. If the change is disputed via a [[Wikipedia:REVERT|reversion]], an attempt should be made to reach a [[Wikipedia:Consensus|consensus]] before blank-and-redirecting again. Suitable venues for doing so include the article's talk page and [[Wikipedia:Articles for deletion]].
+
A page can be [[Wikipedia:BLANKANDREDIRECT|blanked and redirected]] if there is a suitable page to redirect to, and if the resulting redirect is not [[Wikipedia:R#DELETE|inappropriate]]. If the change is disputed, such as by [[Wikipedia:REVERT|reversion]], an attempt should be made to reach a [[Wikipedia:Consensus|consensus]] before blank-and-redirecting again. The preferred venue for doing so is the appropriate [[WP:XFD|deletion discussion venue]] for the pre-redirect content, although sometimes the dispute may be resolved on the page's talk page.
Notified: Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion, Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy, Wikipedia talk:Deletion process, Wikipedia talk:Redirect, Wikipedia talk:Redirects for discussion, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Redirect. voorts (talk/contributions) 00:24, 25 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Support (Amending ATD-R)

  • As proposer. This reflects existing consensus and current practice. Blanking of article content should be discussed at AfD, not another venue. If someone contests a BLAR, they're contesting the fact that article content was removed, not that a redirect exists. The venue matters because different sets of editors patrol AfD and RfD. voorts (talk/contributions) 01:54, 24 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Summoned by bot. I broadly support this clarification. However, I think it could be made even clearer that, in lieu of an AfD, if a consensus on the talkpage emerges that it should be merged to another article, that suffices and reverting a BLAR doesn't change that consensus without good reason. As written, I worry that the interpretation will be "if it's contested, it must go to AfD". I'd recommend the following: This may be done through either a merge discussion on the talkpage that results in a clear consensus to merge. Alternatively, or if a clear consensus on the talkpage does not form, the article should be submitted through Articles for Deletion for a broader consensus to emerge. That said, I'm not so miffed with the proposed wording to oppose it. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez | me | talk to me! 02:35, 24 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't see this proposal as precluding a merge discussion. voorts (talk/contributions) 02:46, 24 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't either, but I see the wording of although sometimes the dispute may be resolved on the article's talk page closer to "if the person who contested/reverted agrees on the talk page, you don't need an AfD" rather than "if a consensus on the talk page is that the revert was wrong, an AfD is not needed". The second is what I see general consensus as, not the first. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez | me | talk to me! 02:53, 24 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • I broadly support the idea, an AFD is going to get more eyes than an obscure talkpage, so I suspect it is the better venue in most cases. I'm also unsure how to work this nuance in to the prose, and not suspect the rare cases where another forum would be better, such a forum might emerge anyway. CMD (talk) 03:28, 24 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support per my extensive comments in the prior discussion. Thryduulf (talk) 11:15, 24 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support, although I don't see much difference between the status quo and the proposed wording. Basically, the two options, AfD or the talk page, are just switched around. It doesn't address the concerns that in some cases RfD is or is not a valid option. Perhaps it needs a solid "yes" or "no" on that issue? If RfD is an option, then that should be expressed in the wording. And since according to editors some of these do wind up at RfD when they shouldn't, then maybe that should be made clear here in this policy's wording, as well. Specifically addressing the RfD issue in the wording of this policy might actually lead to positive change. P.I. Ellsworth , ed. put'er there 17:26, 24 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Moving to oppose. P.I. Ellsworth , ed. put'er there 17:23, 28 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support the change in wording to state the preference for AFD in the event of a conflict, because AFD is more likely to result in binding consensus than simply more talk. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:04, 25 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Per Thryduulf's reasoning in the antecedent discussion. Jclemens (talk) 04:45, 25 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. AfD can handle redirects, merges, DABifies...the gamut. This kind of discussion should be happening out in the open, where editors versed in notability guidelines are looking for discussions, rather than between two opposed editors on an article talk page (where I doubt resolution will be easily found anyways). Toadspike [Talk] 11:48, 26 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support firstly, because by "blank and redirect" you're fundamentally saying that an article shouldn't exist at that title (presumably either because it's not notable, or it is notable but it's best covered at another location). WP:AFD is the best location to discuss this. Secondly, because this has been abused in the past. COVID-19 lab leak theory is one example; and when it finally reached AFD, there was a pretty strong consensus for an article to exist at that title, which settled a dispute that spanned months. There are several other examples; AFD has repeatedly proven to be the best settler of "blank and redirect" situations, and the best at avoiding the "low traffic talk page" issue. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 18:52, 26 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support, my concerns have been aired and I'm comfortable with using AfD as a primary venue for discussing any pages containing substantial article content. Utopes (talk / cont) 22:30, 29 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - So as I see it, the changes proposed are simply to say that disputes should be handled at AfD in preference over the talk page, which I agree with, and also to acknowledge that a dispute over a BLAR could consist of something other than a reversion, which it can. Sounds like a good wording adjustment to me, and it matches what I understand to be already existing wikipedian practice anyway. I agree that it may be a good idea to expressly state in policy that a BLAR should not be deleted at RfD, ever... a BLAR could be retargetted at RfD, but if a BLAR is proposed for deletion it needs to go to AfD instead... but that's not at issue in this proposal, so it's off topic for now. Fieari (talk) 06:13, 13 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. I've made use of ATD-R, but it did occur to me that it is something of a back door option. If a redirect is reverted, that means we have a controversial article which must be brought before wider scrutiny. You can't achieve that on the article talk page, unless the redirect supporter concedes the point, and so it must go to AFD. Having said that, I see no reason to amend the words "via a reversion". Spartathenian (talk) 14:02, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose (Amending ATD-R)

  • Oppose. The status quo reflects the nuances that Chipmunkdavis has vocalized. There are also other venues to consider: if the page is a template, WP:TFD would be better. If this is long-stable as a redirect, RfD is a better venue (as I've argued here, for example). -- Tavix (talk) 17:13, 24 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    The intent here is to address articles. Obviously TfD is the place to deal with templates and nobody is suggesting otherwise. voorts (talk/contributions) 17:28, 24 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    The section in question is about pages, not articles. If the proposed wording is adapted, it would be suggesting that WP:BLAR'd templates go to AfD. As I explained in the previous discussion, that's part of the reason why the proposed wording is problematic and that it was premature for an RfC on the matter. -- Tavix (talk) 17:35, 24 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    As a bit of workshopping, how about changing doing so to articles? -- Tavix (talk) 17:46, 24 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Done. Pinging @Consarn, @Berchanhimez, @Chipmunkdavis, @Thryduulf, @Paine Ellsworth, @Tavix. voorts (talk/contributions) 22:51, 24 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Gentle reminder to editor Voorts: as I'm subscribed to this RfC, there is no need to ping me. That's just an extra unnecessary step. P.I. Ellsworth , ed. put'er there 22:58, 24 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Not everyone subscribes to every discussion. I regularly unsubscribe to RfCs after I !vote. voorts (talk/contributions) 22:59, 24 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't. Just saving you some time and extra work. P.I. Ellsworth , ed. put'er there 23:03, 24 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    considering the above discussion, my vote hasn't really changed. this does feel incomplete, what with files and templates existing and all that, so that still feels undercooked (and now actively article-centric), hence my suggestion of either naming multiple venues or not naming any consarn (speak evil) (see evil) 23:28, 24 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Agree. I'm beginning to understand those editors who said it was too soon for an RfC on these issues. While I've given this minuscule change my support (and still do), this very short paragraph could definitely be improved with a broader guidance for up and coming generations. P.I. Ellsworth , ed. put'er there 23:38, 24 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    If you re-read the RFCBEFORE discussions, the dispute was over what to do with articles that have been BLARed. That's why this was written that way. I think it's obvious that when there's a dispute over a BLARed article, it should go to AfD, not RfD. I proposed this change because apparently some people don't think that's so obvious. Nobody has or is disputing that BLARed templates should go to TfD, files to FfD, or miscellany to MfD. And none of that needs to be spelled out here per WP:CREEP. voorts (talk/contributions) 00:17, 25 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    If you want to be fully inclusive, it could say something like "the appropriate deletion venue for the pre-redirect content" or "...the blanked content" or some such. I personally don't think that's necessary, but don't object if others disagree on that score. (To be explicit neither the change that was made, nor a change to along the lines of my first sentence, change my support). Thryduulf (talk) 00:26, 25 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Exactly. And my support hasn't changed as well. Goodness, I'm not saying this needs pages and pages of instruction, nor even sentence after sentence. I think us old(er) farts sometimes need to remember that less experienced editors don't necessarily know what we know. I think you've nailed the solution, Thryduulf! The only thing I would add is something short and specific about how RfD is seldom an appropriate venue and why. P.I. Ellsworth , ed. put'er there 00:35, 25 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Done. Sorry if I came in a bit hot there. voorts (talk/contributions) 00:39, 25 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Also, I think something about RfDs generally not being appropriate could replace the current footnote at the end of this paragraph. voorts (talk/contributions) 00:52, 25 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    @Voorts: That latest change moves me to the "strong oppose" category. Again, RfD is the proper venue when the status quo is a redirect. -- Tavix (talk) 01:00, 25 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm going to back down a bit with an emphasis on the word "preferred". I agree that AfD is the preferred venue, but my main concern is if a redirect gets nominated for deletion at RfD and editors make purely jurisdictional arguments that it should go to AfD because there's article content in its history even though it's blatantly obvious the article content should be deleted. -- Tavix (talk) 01:22, 25 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    this is a big part of why incident 91724 could become a case study. "has history, needs afd" took priority over the fact that the history had nothing worth keeping, the redirect had been stable as a blar for years, and the ages of the folks at rfd (specifically the admins closing or relisting discussions on blars) having zero issue with blars being nominated and discussed there (with a lot of similar blars nominated around the same time as that one being closed with relatively litte fuss, and blars nominated later being closed with no fuss), and at least three other details i'm missing
    as i said before, if a page was blanked relatively recently and someone can argue for there being something worth keeping in it, its own xfd is fine and dandy, but otherwise, it's better to just take it to rfd and leave the headache for them. despite what this may imply, they're no less capable of evaluating article content, be it stashed away in the edit history or proudly displayed in any given redirect's target consarn (speak evil) (see evil) 10:30, 25 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    As I've explained time and time again it's primarily not about the capabilities of editors at RfD it's about discoverability. When article content is discussed at AfD there are multiple systems in place that mean everybody interested or potentially interested knows that article content is being discussed, the same is not true when article content is discussed at RfD. Time since the BLAR is completely irrelevant. Thryduulf (talk) 10:39, 25 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    if you want to argue that watchlists, talk page notifs, and people's xfd logs aren't enough, that's fine by me, but i at best support also having delsort categories for rfd (though there might be some issues when bundling multiple redirects together, though that's nothing twinkle or massxfd can't fix), and at worst disagree because, respectfully, i don't have much evidence or hope of quake 2's biggest fans knowing what a strogg is. maybe quake 4, but its list of strogg was deleted with no issue (not even a relisting). see also quackifier, just under that discussion consarn (speak evil) (see evil) 11:03, 25 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I would think NOTBURO/IAR would apply in those cases. voorts (talk/contributions) 02:41, 25 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I would think that as well, but unfortunately that's not reality far too often. I can see this new wording being more ammo for process wonkery. -- Tavix (talk) 02:49, 25 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Would a footnote clarifying that ameliorate your concerns? voorts (talk/contributions) 02:53, 25 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Unless a note about RfD being appropriate in any cases makes it clear that it strictly limited to (a) when the content would be speedily deleted if restored, or (b) there has been explicit consensus the content should not be an article (or template or whatever), then it would move me into a strong oppose. This is not "process wonkery" but the fundamental spirit of the entire deletion process. Thryduulf (talk) 03:35, 25 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    ^Voorts, see what I mean? -- Tavix (talk) 03:43, 25 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    See what I mean this attitude is exactly why we are here. I've spent literal years explaining why I hold the position I do, and how it aligns with the letter and spirit of pretty much every relevant policy and guideline. It shouldn't even be controversial for blatantly obvious the article content should be deleted to mean "would be speedily deleteable if restored", yet on this again a single digit number of editors have spent years arguing that they know better. Thryduulf (talk) 03:56, 25 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    both sides are on single digits at the time of writing this, we just need 3 more supports to make it 10 lol
    ultimately, this has its own caveat(s). namely, with the csd not covering every possible scenario. regardless of whether or not it's intentional, it's not hard to look at something and go "this ain't it, chief". following this "process" to the letter would just add more steps to that, by restoring anything that doesn't explicitly fit a csd and dictating that it has to go to afd so it can get the boot there for the exact same reason consarn (speak evil) (see evil) 10:51, 25 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks. That alleviates my concerns. -- Tavix (talk) 23:45, 24 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • oppose, though with the note that i support a different flavor of change. on top of the status quo issue pointed out by tavix (which i think we might need to set a period of time for, like a month or something), there's also the issue of the article content in question. if it's just unsourced, promotional, in-universe, and/or any other kind of fluff or cruft or whatever else, i see no need to worry about the content, as it's not worth keeping anyway (really, it might be better to just create a new article from scratch). if a blar, which has been stable as a redirect, did have sources, and those sources were considered reliable, then i believe restoring and sending to afd would be a viable option (see purple francis for an example). outside of that, i think if the blar is reverted early enough, afd would be the better option, but if not, then it'd be rfd
    for this reason, i'd rather have multiple venues named ("Suitable venues include Articles for Deletion, Redirects for Discussion, and Templates for Discussion"), no specific venue at all ("The dispute should be resolved in a fitting discussion venue"), or conditions for each venue (for which i won't suggest a wording because of the aforementioned status quo time issue) consarn (speak evil) (see evil) 17:50, 24 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. The proper initial venue for discussing this should be the talk page; only if agreement can't be reached informally there should it proceed to AfD. Espresso Addict (talk) 16:14, 27 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose as written to capture some nuances; there may be a situation where you want a BLAR to remain a redirect, but would rather retarget it. I can't imagine the solution there is to reverse the BLAR and discuss the different redirect-location at AfD. Besides that, I think the intention is otherwise solid, as long as its consistent in practice. Moving forward it would likely lead to many old reversions of 15+ year BLAR'd content, but perhaps that's the intention; maybe only reverse the BLAR if you're seeking deletion of the page, at which point AfD becomes preferable? Article deletion to be left to AfD at that point? Utopes (talk / cont) 20:55, 27 January 2025 (UTC), moving to support, my concerns have been resolved and I'm happy to use AfD as a primary venue for discussing article content. Utopes (talk / cont) 22:29, 29 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - the first part of the new wording makes it more vague than before. "If the change is disputed via a reversion" was clear. "If the change is disputed, such as by reversion" is vague. What other ways of dispute other than reversion are there? I am assuming "reversion" here implies reversion to pre-redirect content. If the intent of the change in wording to is incorporate scenarios where an editor prefers a redirect target of "Article B" instead of "Article A", or a dab page, or sees no appropriate target, where it is not a reversion, but a bold edit or an RfD nomination, then the accompanying phrase "before blank-and-redirecting again." does not make sense.
I oppose the second part of the new wording as well. The current wording gave editors an equal choice of forum - talk page vs XfD. Why should XfD be the preferred venue, and the talkpage be the forum only "sometimes". I see what Berchanhimez says. If an editor wants to revert and add a {{mergeto}} as a better alternative to BLAR, and all parties are agreeable to in the talk page, why force them to go to XfD. Although, I won't go as far as Espresso Addict in saying the talk page "should" be the proper initial venue, the current wording of giving equal choice of venu goes better with me, than forcing a preference. If editors do not agree on a talk page, it is understood one of them, or a neutral party will take to AfD/XfD.
I support the third part of the change, courtesy Thryduulf, of "appropriate deletion discussion venue for the pre-redirect content" which resolves Tavix's concern of AfD/TfD/MfD.
Note that I haven't touched upon RfD at all, or the prior heated discussions around it, because I don't see the current or new wordings addressing anything about Rfd. It would require a separate RfC to resolve the RfD concerns.
In summary, retain current wordings for part 1 and part 2. Go ahead with new wordings for part 3. Jay 💬 16:37, 28 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The first part was intended to make clear that if someone doesn't revert, but nonetheless contests the BLAR, they should still bring it to the appropriate non-RfD XfD. The second part doesn't limit anyone from going to talk to discuss things first. It merely makes clear that if something can't be resolved, it should go to the appropriate XfD. voorts (talk/contributions) 19:02, 28 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
How can a nomination can be made at the appropriate (non-RfD) XfD without first reverting to the pre-redirect content? To repeat my question from the earlier comment - what other ways of dispute other than reversion are there? One way to contest the BLAR is to go to RfD to state that turning the article to a redirect was not an acceptable ATD, and that the page should be completely deleted. Someone could overwrite the page with new article content, or non-article content (disambiguation, SIA, for example), but that wouldn't be seen as contesting the BLAR, more like overwriting the BLAR.
For the second part, why will editors use the talk page, if policy sets the preference to XfD? Why do you want XfD to become more preferable over the article talk page discussion? What is the basis for that? Jay 💬 13:36, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose per editor Jay above pretty much word for word, an eloquent positional description! I'm slayed and swayed, and that doesn't happen much. P.I. Ellsworth , ed. put'er there 17:23, 28 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose; while we'd like consistency with the WP:BRD cycle, we'd also like less bureaucracy and less work distracting from building the encyclopedia, so it should be rewritten to explicitly prefer the talk page over XFD. ミラP@Miraclepine 04:19, 1 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose in strongest possible terms. XFD is a process-heavy, red-tape-filled procedure that is used solely for two reasons; first, because deletion is impossible for regular editors to implement or reverse; and second, because the WMF requires that we have a way to remove things from where ordinary editors can see them. A blank-and-redirect meets neither of these criteria - it is inappropriate to send it to XFD. I would in fact support language specifically discouraging taking such disputes to AFD, where they waste time and energy and involve far more bloated red tape than such discussions ought to have, while also creating a bias towards retaining newly-added disputed material that goes against WP:BRD, WP:BURDEN, and WP:ONUS. Making it possible to send a redirect to AFD implies that an editor can add something on which there is no consensus, then respond to any attempts to remove it by demanding a hearing at AFD, leading to it being retained if discussions there fail to reach a consensus; this is inappropriate and against our other practices and policies, which normally result in new additions that fail to obtain a consensus getting removed. If anything we should therefore prohibit sending redirects to AFD in situations where an actual deletion is not being requested, or make it clear that if the article is newly-created and was redirected prior to being sent to AFD, an AFD outcome of no consensus leads to it remaining a redirect, such that editors cannot abuse AFD to turn WP:BURDEN on its head like this. --Aquillion (talk) 12:19, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion (Amending ATD-R)

  • not entirely sure i should vote, but i should probably mention this discussion in wt:redirect that preceded the one about atd-r, and i do think this rfc should affect that as well, but wouldn't be surprised if it required another one consarn (speak evil) (see evil) 12:38, 24 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • I know it's not really in the scope of this discussion but to be perfectly honest, I'm not sure why BLAR is a still a thing. It's a cliche, but it's a hidden mechanism for backdoor deletion that often causes arguments and edit wars. I think AfDs and talk-page merge proposals where consensus-building exists produce much better results. It makes sense for duplicate articles, but that is covered by A10's redirection clause. J947 ‡ edits 03:23, 25 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    BLARs are perfectly fine when uncontroversial, duplicate articles are one example but bold merges are another (which A10 doesn't cover). Thryduulf (talk) 03:29, 25 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    It is my impression that BLARs often occur without intention of an accompanying merge. J947 ‡ edits 03:35, 25 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes because sometimes there's nothing to merge. voorts (talk/contributions) 16:01, 25 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I didn't say, or intend to imply, that every BLAR is related to a merge. The best ones are generally where the target article covers the topic explicitly, either because content is merged, written or already exists. The worst ones are where the target is of little to no (obvious) relevance, contains no (obviously) relevant content and none is added. Obviously there are also ones that lie between the extremes. Any can be controversial, any can be uncontroversial. Thryduulf (talk) 18:20, 25 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    BLARs are preferable to deletion for content that is simply non-notable and does not run afoul of other G10/11/12-type issues. Jclemens (talk) 04:46, 25 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm happy to align to whatever consensus decides, but I'd like to discuss the implications because that aspect is not too clear to me. Does this mean that any time an redirect contains any history and deletion is sought, it should be restored and go to AfD? Currently there's some far-future redirects with ancient history, how would this amendment affect such titles? Utopes (talk / cont) 09:00, 29 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    see why i wanted that left to editor discretion (status quo, evaluation, chance of an rm or histmerge, etc.)? i trust in editors who aren't that wonk from rfd (cogsan? cornsam?) to see a pile of unsourced cruft tucked away in the history and go "i don't think this would get any keep votes in afd" consarn (speak evil) (see evil) 11:07, 29 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    No. This is about contested BLARs, not articles that were long ago BLARed where someone thinks the redirect should be deleted. voorts (talk/contributions) 12:42, 29 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    then it might depend. is its status as a blar the part that is being contested? if the title is being contested (hopefully assuming the pre-blar content is fine), would "move" be a fitting outcome outside of rm? is it being contested solely over meta-procedural stuff, as opposed to actually supporting or opposing its content? why are boots shaped like italy? was it stable as a redirect at the time of contest or not? does this account for its status as a blar being contested in an xfd venue (be it for restoring or blanking again)? it's a lot of questions i feel the current wording doesn't answer, when it very likely should. granted, what i suggested isn't much better, but shh
    going back to that one rfd i keep begrudgingly bringing up (i kinda hate it, but it's genuinely really useful), if this wording is interpreted literally, the blar was contested a few years prior and should thus be restored, regardless of the rationales being less than serviceable ("i worked hard on this" one time and... no reason the other), the pre-blar content being complete fancruft, and no one actually supporting the content in rfd consarn (speak evil) (see evil) 13:54, 29 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Well that case you keep citing worked out as a NOTBURO situation, which this clraification would not override. There are obviously edge cases that not every policy is going to capture. IAR is a catch-all exception to every single policy on Wikipedia. The reason we have so much scope creep in PAGs is becaude editors insist on every exception being enumerated. voorts (talk/contributions) 14:51, 29 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    if an outcome (blar status is disputed in rfd, is closed as delete anyway) is common enough, i feel the situation goes from "iar good" to "rules not good", at which point i'd rather have the rules adapt. among other things, this is why i want a slightly more concrete time frame to establish a status quo (while i did suggest a month, that could also be too short), so that blars that aren't blatantly worth or not worth restoring after said time frame (for xfd or otherwise) won't be as much of a headache to deal with. of course, in cases where their usefulness or lack thereof isn't blatant, then i believe a discussion in its talk page or an xfd venue that isn't rfd would be the best option consarn (speak evil) (see evil) 17:05, 29 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I think the idea that that redirect you mentioned had to go to AfD was incorrect. The issue was whether the redirect was appropriate, not whether the old article content should be kept. voorts (talk/contributions) 17:41, 29 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    sure took almost 2 months to get that sorted out lol consarn (speak evil) (see evil) 17:43, 29 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Bad facts make bad law, as attorneys like to say. voorts (talk/contributions) 17:45, 29 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Alright. @Voorts: in that case I think I agree. I.e., if somebody BLAR's a page, the best avenue to discuss merits of inclusion on Wikipedia, would be at a place like AfD, where it is treated as the article it used to be, as the right eyes for content-deletion will be present at AfD. To that end, this clarification is likely a good change to highlight this fact. I think where I might be struggling is the definition of "contesting a BLAR" and what that might look like in practice. To me, "deleting a long-BLAR'd redirect" is basically the same as "contesting the BLAR", I think?
    An example I'll go ahead and grab is 1900 Lincoln Blue Tigers football team from cat:raw. This is not a great redirect pointed at Lincoln Blue Tigers from my POV, and I'd like to see it resolved at some venue, if not resolved boldly. This page was BLAR'd in 2024, and I'll go ahead and notify Curb Safe Charmer who BLAR'd it. I think I'm inclined to undo the BLAR, not because I think the 1900 season is particularly notable, but because redirecting the 1900 season to the page about the Lincoln Blue Tigers doesn't really do much for the people who want to read about the 1900 season specifically. (Any other day I would do this boldly, but I want to seek clarification).
    But let's say this page was BLAR'd in 2004, as a longstanding redirect for 20 years. I think it's fair to say that as a redirect, this should be deleted. But this page has history as an article. So unless my interpretation is off, wouldn't the act of deleting a historied redirect that was long ago BLAR'd, be equivalent to contesting the BLAR, that turned the page into a redirect in the first place, regardless of the year? Utopes (talk / cont) 20:27, 29 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't think so. In 2025, you're contesting that it's a good redirect from 2004, not contesting the removal of article content. If somebody actually thought the article should exist, that's one thing, but procedural objections based on RfD being an improper forum without actually thinking the subject needs an article is the kind of insistence on needless bureaucracy that NOTBURO is designed to address. voorts (talk/contributions) 20:59, 29 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I see, thank you. WP:NOTBURO is absolutely vital to keep the cogs rolling, lol. Very oftentimes at RfD, there will be a "page with history" that holds up the process, all for the discussion to close with "restore and take to AfD". Cutting out the middle, and just restoring article content without bothering with an RfD to say "restore and take to AfD" would make the process and all workflows lot smoother. @Voorts:, from your own point of view, I'm very interested in doing something about 1900 Lincoln Blue Tigers football team, specifically, to remove a redirect from being at this title (I have no opinion as to whether or not an article should exist here instead). Because I want to remove this redirect; do you think I should take it to RfD as the correct venue to get rid of it? (Personally speaking, I think undoing the BLAR is a lot more simple and painless especially so as I don't have a strong opinion on article removal, but if I absolutely didn't want an article here, would RfD still be the venue?) Utopes (talk / cont) 21:10, 29 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I would take that to RfD. If the editor who created the article or someone else reversed the BLAR, I'd bring it to AfD. voorts (talk/contributions) 21:16, 29 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Alright. I think we're getting somewhere. I feel like some editors may consider it problematic to delete a recently BLAR'd article at RfD under any circumstance. Like if Person A BLAR's a brand new article, and Person B takes it to RfD because they disagree with the existence of a redirect at the title and it gets deleted, then this could be considered a "bypassal of the AfD process". Whether or not it is or isn't, people have cited NOTBURO for deleting it. I was under the impression this proposal was trying to eliminate this outcome, i.e. to make sure that all pages with articles in its history should be discussed at AfD under its merits as an article instead of anywhere else. I've nommed redirects where people have said "take to AfD", and I've nommed articles where people have said "take to RfD". I've never had an AfD close as "wrong venue", but I've seen countless RfDs close in this way for any amount of history, regardless of the validity of there being a full-blown article at this title, only to be restored and unanimously deleted at AfD. I have a feeling 1900 Lincoln Blue Tigers football team would close in the same way, which is why I ask as it seems to be restoring the article would just cut a lot of tape if the page is going to end up at AfD eventually. Utopes (talk / cont) 21:36, 29 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I think the paragraph under discussion here doesn't really speak to what should happen in the kind of scenario you're describing. The paragraph talks about "the change" (i.e., the blanking and redirecting) being "disputed", not about what happens when someone thinks a redirect ought not to exist. I agree with you that that's needless formalism/bureaucracy, but I think that changing the appropriate venue for those kinds of redirects would need a separate discussion. voorts (talk/contributions) 21:42, 29 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Fair enough, yeah. I'm just looking at the definition of "disputing/contesting a BLAR". For this situation, I think it could be reasoned that I am "disputing" the "conversion of this article into a redirect". Now, I don't really have a strong opinion on whether or not an article should or shouldn't exist, but because I don't think a redirect should be at this title in either situation, I feel like "dispute" of the edit might still be accurate? Even if it's not for a regular reason that most BLARs get disputed 😅. I just don't think BLAR'ing into a page where a particular season is not discussed is a great change. That's what I meant about "saying a redirect ought not to exist" might be equivalent to "disputing/disagreeing with the edit that turned this into a redirect to begin with". And if those things are equivalent, then would that make AfD the right location to discuss the history of this page as an article? That was where I was coming from; hopefully that makes sense lol. If it needs a separate discussion I can totally understand that as well. Utopes (talk / cont) 21:57, 29 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In the 1900 Blue Tigers case and others like it where you think that it should not be a redirect but have no opinion about the existence or otherwise of an article then simply restore the article. Making sure it's tagged for any relevant WikiProjects is a bonus but not essential. If someone disputes your action then a talk page discussion or AfD is the correct course of action for them to take. If they think the title should be a red link then AfD is the only correct venue. Thryduulf (talk) 22:08, 29 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Alright, thank you Thryduulf. That was kind of the vibe I was leaning towards as well, as AfD would be able to determine the merits the page's existence as a subject matter. This all comes together because not too long ago I was criticized for restoring a page that contained an article in its history. In this discussion for Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of cultural icons of Canada, I received the following message regarding my BLAR-reversal: For the record, it's really quite silly and unnecessary to revert an ancient redirect from 2011 back into a bad article that existed for all of a day before being redirected, just so that you can force it through an AFD discussion — we also have the RFD process for unnecessary redirects, so why wasn't this just taken there instead of being "restored" into an article that the restorer wants immediately deleted? I feel like this is partially comparable to 1900 Lincoln Blue Tigers football team, as both of these existed for approx a day before the BLAR, but if restoring a 2024 article is necessary per Thryduulf, but restoring a 2011 article is silly per Bearcat, I'm glad that this has the potential to be ironed out via this RfC, possibly. Utopes (talk / cont) 22:18, 29 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There are exactly two situations where an AfD is not required to delete article content:
  1. The content meets one or more criteria for speedy deletion
  2. The content is eligible to be PRODed
Bearcat's comment is simply wrong - RfD is not the correct venue for deleting article content, regardless of how old it is. Thryduulf (talk) 22:25, 29 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Understood. I'll keep that in mind for my future editing, and I'll move from the oppose to the support section of this RfC. Thank you for confirmation regarding these situations! Cheers, Utopes (talk / cont) 22:28, 29 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Utopes: Note that is simply Thryduulf's opinion and is not supported by policy (despite his vague waves to the contrary). Any redirect that has consensus to delete at RfD can be deleted. I see that you supported deletion of the redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 September 17#List of Strogg in Quake II. Are you now saying that should have procedurally gone to AfD even though it was blatantly obvious that the article content is not suitable for Wikipedia? -- Tavix (talk) 22:36, 29 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm saying that AfD probably would have been the right location to discuss it at. Of course NOTBURO applies and it would've been deleted regardless, really, but if someone could go back in time, bringing that page to AfD instead of RfD seems like it would have been more of an ideal outcome. I would've !voted delete on either venue. Utopes (talk / cont) 22:39, 29 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Utopes: Note that Tavix's comments are, despite their assertions to the contrary, only their opinion. It is notable that not once in the literal years of discussions, including this one, have they managed to show any policy that backs up this opinion. Content that is blatantly unsuitable for Wikipedia can be speedily deleted, everything that can't be is not blatantly unsuitable. Thryduulf (talk) 22:52, 29 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Here you go. Speedy deletion is a process that provides administrators with broad consensus to bypass deletion discussion, at their discretion. RfD is a deletion discussion venue for redirects, so it doesn't require speedy deletion for something that is a redirect to be deleted via RfD. Utopes recognizes there is a difference between "all redirects that have non-speediable article content must be restored and discussed at AfD" and "AfD is the preferred venue for pages with article content", so I'm satisfied to their response to my inquiry. -- Tavix (talk) 23:22, 29 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Quoting yourself in a discussion about policy doe not show that your opinion is consistent with policy. Taking multiple different bits of policy and multiple separate facts, putting them all in a pot and claiming the result shows your opinion is supported by policy didn't do that in the discussion you quoted and doesn't do so now. You have correctly quoted what CSD is and what RfD is, but what you haven't done is acknowledged that when a BLARed article is nominated for deletion it is article content that will be deleted, and that article content nominated for deletion is discussed at AfD not RfD. Thryduulf (talk) 02:40, 30 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • I requested closure at WP:CR, but that was a week ago. Fortunately, I changed the "do not archive" date to two more weeks before the bot does something. Is one closer sufficient? If so, why hasn't the closure been done yet? George Ho (talk) 02:02, 28 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Is one closer sufficient? Yes. This discussion is not that complicated. If so, why hasn't the closure been done yet? First, there's a backlog and closers try to close older discussions first. Second, see WP:NORUSH. Third, see WP:VOLUNTEER. voorts (talk/contributions) 02:08, 28 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Well, we'll agree to disagree then. From what I learned so far, having two or more closers is more efficient and quicker than waiting for just one who usually understands the policies very lot. Usually, a two-person closure is (unofficially) reserved mostly for more complex cases. Nonetheless, I think it would resolve backlogs. But your wishes and decision then. George Ho (talk) 02:42, 28 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I close a lot of discussions. It is much faster to read a discussion and write a close than it is to work on a close, send it to another person for additions/edits, wait for them to send it back, ad nauseam. voorts (talk/contributions) 02:53, 28 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    For example, this discussion would probably take me about half an hour to an hour to read, then write a close I'm happy with. If I then had to have a back-and-forth with another editor until we were both happy with the close, things would take much longer. voorts (talk/contributions) 02:54, 28 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Or, if we decided to write it together over google docs or something simultaneously, we'd both have to first read the discussion, schedule a time to chat or post messages back and forth on wiki to determine that we're on the same page (and if we're not, then neither of us should probably close it), and then actually write the close. voorts (talk/contributions) 02:56, 28 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    For better understanding, I found one example: this one from 2017, which I requested such closure... well, against initiator's wishes. But the closure was somewhat criticized: Sept 2018. Tried to find other discussions containing such criticisms, but just found 2017 post-RfC discussion and past user talk discussion for better understanding, hopefully. George Ho (talk) 03:04, 28 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    We only request two or three closers when:
    • the result is not obvious to everyone and
    • the result is going to make some (i.e., a lot of) people very unhappy.
    The idea with having multiple closers is that the larger number will silence some complaints (sure, you didn't get what you wanted, but multiple admins said you lost, so complaining's probably a waste of time) and spread out some of the others (each unhappy person yells at a different closer, instead of everyone yelling at a single person).
    If you are not expecting drama, you don't need multiple closers. In fact, if the answer is completely obvious, and even the people who are "losing" agree that the consensus is against them, then you don't need any uninvolved closers. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:07, 28 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    we're at 11 supports, meaning my throwaway joke about waiting to close until there were 10 has been fulfilled. though i still disagree with how that's written, that's really the one worry i had about closing the discussion consarn (prison phone) (crime record) 10:52, 28 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • I take issue with the fundamental position some people are taking, above, that BLAR is some sort of loophole around the AFD process. It's the AFD process that is unusual - our normal way of handling disputed additions is covered by WP:BRD, WP:ONUS and WP:BURDEN. That is to say that if someone creates a new article, and I immediately BLAR it, the default if there is no consensus ought to be that remains a redirect. They boldly added new material, I removed it, now they must demonstrate consensus for it before restoring it. AFD inverts this for complicated reasons that are hard to change; but the idea that even edits that don't require actual AFDs ought to be required to go through that simply to... cause that inversion is absurd. If anything, I would take the opposite tack and forbid BLAR disputes from being sent to AFD. It's a normal content dispute, and should be handled in the normal way - which includes, crucially, the presumption that if there's no consensus for a recently-created article, it must remain a redirect. It's the person who attempts to send it to AFD who is abusing process to force through new material without consensus in violation of WP:ONUS / WP:BURDEN, not the person who objected and redirected it. --Aquillion (talk) 12:25, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    By your logic, as an admin, I should be able to unilaterally delete a new page per ONUS/BURDEN even if it meets none of the CSD criteria and then insist that the editor who created the article satisfy me that it should be undeleted. voorts (talk/contributions) 13:25, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Also, what evidence do you have that XFD favors keeping pages. It's been my experience that redirects are often retained at AfD on contested BLARs, but both of our experiences are anecdotal and this is a factual question. voorts (talk/contributions) 13:32, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    admittedly, i think an editor who blars something should have the burden of explanation as well, and the policy could try to cram that in somewhere. granted, it's a burden they can fulfill in edit summaries, talk pages, or, and hear me out because this is something that has never ever been said before ever by anyone ever[citation needed], rfd, so it's not a hard criterion to fill if it's done in good faith. then again, if an edit war happens over it, i do think a page should be restored to its pre-war diff (which might even not be a redirect), but that's probably besides the point since other policies have that covered consarn (prison phone) (crime record) 13:39, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

RFC: Allow for bots (e.g. Citation bot) to remove redundant URLs known to not host a full freely-accessible version.

Should bots like Citation bot be allowed to remove redundant 'raw' PubMed URLs, and raw OCLC URLs when pmid/oclc identifiers are present. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 09:25, 17 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Details

Following the last, extremely frustrating discussion about the behaviour of bots wrt to links, the consensus that 'emerged' from it was that Citation bot was to leave urls alone, unless it was replacing them with a free alternative (e.g. |url=https://paywall.com → |doi=10.1234/654321 + |doi-access=free or |url=https://paywall.com → |url=https://freetoread.com).

However, there are two corner case I would like to establish consensus for the removal of a link.

The reason is that those links will never contain free versions of articles, they will link to either the PubMed database, which only contain abstracts (free versions would be hosted at PubMed Central instead), or the OCLC database, which formerly held google book previews (then deemed useful), but no longer does.

This means that these urls make it look like a free version is accessible, when really none are, making readers click through links that lead them to nowhere useful. Note that this isn't a proposal to removal any URL covered by an identifier (e.g. |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/123456 → |jstor=123456) that may or may not be free, only these two, known to never host free versions.

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 09:25, 17 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion (bot removal of redundant URLs)

  • Number of articles with PubMed links: 7.6k
  • Number of articles with OCLC links: 32.6k
Nobody (talk) 09:39, 17 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

!Vote (bot removal of redundant URLs)

  • Support as proposer. These link are reader-hostile. They also discourage the addition of free links because it makes it look like there already are such links. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 09:25, 17 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • I have no particular assessment of PubMed, but I would oppose this for OCLC because a lot of citations to OCLC for articles on books aren't citing the work attached to the OCLC, but the bibliographic data in OCLC itself. Links to it when that is not the case should be removed, but the bot cannot tell those apart. PARAKANYAA (talk) 09:41, 17 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Then that would be a {{cite web}} with an OCLC url, not a {{cite book}} with a url pointing to OCLC. The RFC concerns the latter, not the former. E.g., the bot would cleanup
    • Carlisle, Rodney P.; Golson, J. Geoffrey (2007). Manifest destiny and the expansion of America. Turning Points in History Series. Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO. p. 238. ISBN 978-1-85109-834-7. OCLC 659807062.
    to
    • Carlisle, Rodney P.; Golson, J. Geoffrey (2007). Manifest destiny and the expansion of America. Turning Points in History Series. Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO. p. 238. ISBN 978-1-85109-834-7. OCLC 659807062.
    Not
    to
    Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 10:46, 17 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    If it can distinguish between the two use cases then I have no opposition. PARAKANYAA (talk) 11:43, 17 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    What about the use of {{citation}} template in a similar fashion? Espresso Addict (talk) 23:12, 17 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    It's just as easy to detect a {{citation}} where |work=Worldcat (or equivalent) than a {{cite web}} with |work=Worldcat (or equivalent). Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 05:33, 18 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Assuming that Headbomb's description of the situation is accurate (it does fit with my knowledge of PubMed and OCLC, but my knowledge esp. of the latter is limited), I support this proposal. Toadspike [Talk] 13:31, 17 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support per nom -- GreenC 19:35, 17 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support per WP:SURPRISE. When we link to a title, readers expect to find the linked reference at the link. No information will be lost because the discussed cases always involve an id containing the same link. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:46, 17 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support utterly reasonable. Regards, --Goldsztajn (talk) 03:33, 18 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support makes sense and the link is still present at the end of the citation. Rjjiii (talk) 05:28, 18 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support title-links give the false impression to readers. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 15:08, 18 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think this Double-barreled question needs separate answers. If I'm looking at a citation for a book and have a choice between:
  • then I don't want the version whose link on the title takes me to https://search.worldcat.org/title/1079344976 But if I'm instead looking at a citation for a WP:PAYWALLED article, and I have a choice between:
  • then I'd actually prefer having a link on the title take me to the abstract on PubMed (or at least not object to it). Those of us who are familiar with the literature and our citation conventions know that this is a "duplicate" or "redundant" link, but ordinary people don't know what all those acronyms mean. They expect that clicking the link on the title will take them to some useful place, so it should do that. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:10, 19 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support per the discussion and limits per PARAKANYAA Jeepday (talk) 13:49, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support The WorldCat links clearly add nothing helpful there. Nobody (talk) 10:36, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

URLs with utm_source=chatgpt.com codes

Hi, certain articles replicate sources recommended by ChatGPT, which may not always be entirely accurate. I think Introducing a new policy could effectively address this issue. Regards Riad Salih (talk) 19:52, 1 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Why do we need a new policy for this? If source A simply republishes or quotes source B, one we determine the reliability based on how reliable source B is. If a source is simply replicating ChatGPT then the replication is exactly as reliable as ChatGPT (which is of wildly inconsistent accuracy, ranging from completely correct in all regards to the exact opposite and everything in between). Replicating an unreliable AI chat bot is no different to replicating an unreliable human source. If what you are talking about is not using ChatGPT as a source but using a third party source suggested by ChatGPT, then ChatGPT is completely irrelevant to the reliability of the source: ChatGPT recommends both sources of the highest reliability and sources that are utter garbage (as well as sources that don't exist). All sources suggested by ChatGPT should be checked for reliability and relevance, but then all sources added to articles should be checked for reliability and relevance. Thryduulf (talk) 20:07, 1 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You have been quite busy doing your best to try and keep Wikipedia from having any kind of policy on generati AI, haven't you? If there's a thread on this, you're there defending generative AI. The reality is that many of us are now dealing with the ramifications of machine-generated text, which is almost always just outright garbage trained on who-knows-what, from editors and we clearly need policies on it. We didn't sign up to sort through someone's prompt-generated misinformation and it is a total waste of every editor's time here to even engage with machine-generated text. :bloodofox: (talk)
I'm not defending generative AI, I'm defending Wikipedia from short-sighted policies that are unnecessarily redundant to existing policies and/or will do more harm than good. If text is garbage it's garbage regardless of the source, if it isn't garbage then it isn't garbage regardless of the source. Thryduulf (talk) 21:59, 1 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Are there any specific instances of disruption through AI that aren't already covered by existing P&G? Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 05:03, 2 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The simple answer: The ease of use of this new technology needs new policies to deter its use to disrupt the site and waste the time of human editors. The site is being flooded by machine-generated text which has only recently been a possibility for anyone to produce with ease and Wikipedia editors are now having to deal with it on a daily basis. No doubt we even have new users who don't even realize it's a problem. Making the issue and its ramifications crystal clear would help. :bloodofox: (talk) 23:19, 2 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Making the issue and its ramifications crystal clear would help yet in all the discussions nobody has yet managed to make it clear why existing policies and guidelines are unable to deal with the problems. Lots of people have tried and everybody has failed. Thryduulf (talk) 23:30, 2 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
While I'm sure tech companies like OpenAI appreciate your constant and full-throated defense of all things generative AI on Wikipedia whenever the matter arises, those of us who have to clean up after it don't appreciate it. As anyone even vaguely familiar with the topic knows, machine-generated text takes seconds to produce and a tremendous amount of time to attempt to correct by we human editors. We have no meaningful policies on machine generated text at the moment and anyone watching this page knows it is in part due to your 24/7 attempts at defending the status quo of 'we shouldn't do anything about generative AI on the site' and obfuscating change in the matter. :bloodofox: (talk) 00:14, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
As I have explained to you and others in pretty much every discussion we shouldn't do anything about generative AI on the site' is not my position and I really would appreciate it if you would stop repeating the falsehood that it is. My position is that whether text is AI-generated or not is completely irrelevant to and a distraction from the actual problems. If the AI-generated text is a copyvio then the problem is that the text is a copyright violation not that it is AI-generated, and we have existing policies for how to deal with copyright violations that apply regardless of whether the text is AI-generated or human-generated. The exact same is true for every other actual problem anybody has listed. Thryduulf (talk) 02:11, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not buying it. Everything you've said on these threads has been nothing more than a complete and total defense of the use of machine-generated text on the site, a total defense of the matter with zero criticism and absolutely no concern about associated problems. The makers of these companies couldn't have been more full-throated about it than yourself. Let's not play pretend here. :bloodofox: (talk) 02:50, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Either you are not reading what I'm saying, you're not listening to what I am saying, you are so blinding by your point of view that you are ignoring what I am saying, or you have some ulterior motive (although this last seems the least likely the evidence doesn't allow me to rule it out). Regardless of which it is there is clearly nothing I can say that will convince you that when I say "X" I actually do mean "X" and not "Y", ao engaging with you is clearly a waste of everybody's time. Thryduulf (talk) 03:03, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
As a debate, you win because anyone can post anything and its source is not relevant. However, that pollyanna approach assumes there is an infinite supply of good editors who are able and willing to spend hours investigating and correcting AI text that was generated and added in a minute. That may be correct at the moment, but the trend of recent months shows that the supply will outpace human editors very soon. A rational discussion of AI in Wikipedia needs to account for the fact that it will drive away good editors. Johnuniq (talk) 04:07, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
A rational discussion of AI on Wikipedia needs to confine itself to sober discussion of facts and not hyperbolic FUD. If you want to solve a problem, on Wikipedia or elsewhere, you need to identify the actual problem and implement solutions that address that rather than introducing more problems by focusing on irrelevances. AI-generated text can be both good and bad, bad text can be bother AI-generated or human-generated. The problem is that bad text is bad, not that AI-generated text is AI-generated. What we need is solutions for dealing with bad text regardless of the source. Thryduulf (talk) 04:20, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
And now we have this editor referring to anyone who objects to cleaning up masses of AI slop on Wikipedia as 'buying into manipulative anti-AI propaganda'. See Fear, uncertainty, and doubt. For those of you haven't encountered it yet, today you're likely to encounter it in pro-AI and "effective accelerationism" circles where true believers dismiss those who for example 'stand in the way of' "the Singularity" and/or on Tech company blogs and posts like this one from Microsoft encouraging mass embrace of generative AI. :bloodofox: (talk) 04:52, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Denialism occurs when trillions of dollars are bet on a technology with adverse consequences. Similar with global warming denial, the most frequently used logical fallacy is the reduction fallacy (which is the argument that because climate has changed naturally in the past, current climate change must also be entirely natural). The same argument presented here (because current policy works for human editors, it also works for bot produced text). AI text is not equivalent to human generated text, it is different enough to create problems. This is very obvious, but then, not everyone has tackled an AI written article. Yet. -- GreenC 06:55, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If text is garbage it's garbage regardless of the source That is not true. Equating problems with AI text as equivalent to human generated text is seriously misguided. -- GreenC 23:28, 2 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I really need a citation on that. How is AI-generated text so categorically different to human generated text that existing policies can't deal with the issues? How does AI-generated text-soup differ from human-generated text soup that means we need a policy for AI-generated text-soup that is different to our policy for all text-soup? Thryduulf (talk) 23:32, 2 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Just off the top of my head, potential answers to this question that I have seen offered in previous discussions include:
  • the ease with which AI slop can be created versus the effort required to vet and assess it.
  • the tendency of AI text to be very good at mimicking the style of high-quality text (so the normal patterns that provide a cue to low-quality human contributions are harder to spot).
  • the difficulty in assigning responsibility and assessing intent with AI-text.
  • the actual current outcomes of AI use (which some have argued are poor).
  • the argument that Wikipedia's benefit to society lies in its human qualities, and that pasting ChatGPT content into the Wiki doesn't provide a benefit to readers who could have just queried ChatGPT directly if that is what they wanted.
  • The concern that because Wikipedia is used as a major source of training data for LLMs, the inclusion of LLM-generated content in Wikipedia creates a potentially-pathological loop situation.
I understand that these aren't convincing reasons for you, and I respect your position (I'm somewhat in the middle ground on this issue myself), but let's not pretend that the people opposed to AI use haven't voiced coherent concerns. -- LWG talk 23:46, 2 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Everything listed by LWG is correct. Until you encounter one of these animals, and spent days trying to untangle, you probably won't understand. It's not at all like working with human created text. -- GreenC 04:47, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The gist is that it falls in a different place with regard to good faith. AI hallucinations often aren't like human errors and aren't the kind of thing that humans would make up in good faith.
For instance, someone might make a typo and write that the dotcom bust in March 2020 put Pets.com out of business, rather than March 2000. But there's not really a plausible way that a well-meaning human would write a detailed paragraph analyzing how the COVID-19 pandemic, which happened in March 2020, resulted in Pets.com going out of business, unless that person was deliberately creating a hoax. But a well-meaning human might use ChatGPT and have that output be generated and be none the wiser. Or with regard to ChatGPT-generated URLs, LLMs often just make up an article title or URL that doesn't exist, which is not something a human is going to do in good faith. All this affects how the edit should be treated -- someone creating a hoax is vandalizing the encyclopedia and knows it, someone producing a comparable AI hallucination is likely just misguided.
I still think an edit filter is better than a policy, to just stop this stuff at the root, though. Gnomingstuff (talk) 20:01, 4 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't understand how any of that is any indication of the faith that the person prompting the LLM is acting in? Someone using an LLM to create a hoax is acting in bad faith by creating a hoax, not by using an LLM. Someone posting LLM content that they believe improves an article is acting in good faith, even if the content is riddled with errors. Someone posting LLM content with the goal of introducing misinformation is acting in bad faith, even if the content doesn't contain errors. Thryduulf (talk) 20:14, 4 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Right, exactly, that's my point. If someone posts a made-up article title and URL there are basically only two ways that can happen:
1) They're deliberately inserting a fake citation
2) They're using a LLM that hallucinated a fake citation
Both of these result in the same fake citation getting added to an article, but editor #1 is obviously not acting in good faith, while editor #2 likely is. Moreover, editor #1 knew what they were doing, while editor #2 probably didn't. So while the fake citation should be still removed either way, editor #2 probably shouldn't face the same consequences that editor #1 would. This is technically covered under WP:VANDALISM already but I don't think it's a bad idea to add a specific note about LLM-generated misinformation there. (or, better yet, just filter them out) Gnomingstuff (talk) 03:45, 5 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, absolutely. Wikipedia is now plagued with machine-generated text that the few human editors here have to contend with. Recently I have had to deal with two of such instances full of misinformation and other nonsense. Without action this problem is only going to spread and get worse. We need policies on this yesterday: we're well on our way to becoming overwhelmed by AI slop that takes two seconds to produce and much longer to correct in every nook and cranny of the site. :bloodofox: (talk) 20:17, 1 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
User:Bloodofox: Yup. It's a huge waste of time, just dealing with one short AI generated article has taken days of research to untangle, only to conclude the entire thing should be redirected and summarized into a single paragraph. AI makes much out of nothing .. then gets it wrong anyway! -- GreenC 23:17, 2 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Any sources may not be entirely accurate. While people should definitely not rely on ChatGPTs description of the source, it may be a worthwhile tool for finding sources with reliable and usable content... much as Wikipedia itself is not a reliable source, but one of its great uses is finding the sources it uses on a given topic, which themselves may be reliable. So if the policy change you're suggesting is that you can't use sources suggested by ChatGPT, I don't see it... but if it's some sort of policy that you cannot use a source until you actually verify what the source says, that's at the very least a good guideline no matter where you find the source. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 20:23, 1 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Are these fake sources? Sources that are real but don’t support the content? Or what?
Blueboar (talk) 20:28, 1 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I did check just two of these, and in one of them I found real problems. In this paragraph claiming controversy about a living subject, there were two sources -- one which was a tweet from the subject (which did not thus show "controversy", although it was certainly a statement that could have generated such), and one which covered a controversy without mentioning the subject. Plus, it had the biggest Wikipedia sin of all: curly quotes. So that definitely looks like ChatGPT generating things that are not up to our standards, but also something that could have been caught if a good faith editor generating such material had checked the sources and understood BLP sourcing requirements. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 01:47, 2 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Editors have the responsibility of using citations to sources that they read to craft the text they wrote. They also are responsible to evaluate the reliability of sources and their suitability for the content being added. What additional guidance are you proposing? isaacl (talk) 22:47, 1 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There is a proposed edit filter to track these additions. Of course, the filter is not going to capture all uses of llms, just the ones where the llm helpfully appends a tag to the url and where the editor does not delete those tags. Last time I checked some they were riddled with problems, but you can revert them under current policies. CMD (talk) 03:18, 2 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds like a good way to catch an editor's LLM use early before they rack up thousands of edits adding AI text. That's the sort of thing we should be focusing on. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 05:05, 2 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
To make sure I understand this properly: this thread seems to be about links added in refs where the link's UTM source parameter is ChatGPT. Apparently ChatGPT adds that now when it references a URL in output.
I think an edit filter in articlespace is the best solution here, it's a great, unambiguous smoking gun for AI-generated text. Gnomingstuff (talk) 08:15, 2 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
To test how unambiguous, there is a trial filter at Special:AbuseFilter/1346. CMD (talk) 13:02, 2 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see a need for a new policy here when the problem is just one of countless possible ways to violate current policies with inappropriate sourcing. But there's little doubt that one of the things chatgpt is worst at is identifying sources (it would be bad for business to too easily connect specific sources with its output). Since the only way we'd be able to identify these sources to enforce this hypothetical policy is if they carried through the referral in the url, this is a case for an edit filter, not a new policy. I've talked to many people who mistakenly think that because chatgpt is decent at summarizing sources you feed it, it must be helpful with a literature review -- they're not fiends trying to ruin Wikipedia but people trying to improve an article using a popular new tool. This is a case for an edit filter, not a new policy. If someone adds a source with that chatgpt referral (and presumably other tools have something similar), we should explain to them that chatgpt stinks at connecting information with sources and flag the edit for others to look at. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 15:12, 2 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
With the caveat that a LinkedIn post is not a reliable source and I don't trust this guy at all, apparently other tools do. Gnomingstuff (talk) 19:21, 2 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
[Tangent] What I really want right now is a list of links to prior discussions about AI rules. I'm imagining a transcludable list, so every time someone posts yet another idea for yet another rule, we can ask them to read the previous discussions and give them a link to WP:Nobody reads the directions. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:17, 2 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
A partial list of AI-related discussions is at Wikipedia:Artificial intelligence#Discussion timeline. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:41, 4 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. I was wondering the same thing, a central place to track the discussions. Now, we need AI to summarize each discussion for salient points. It would have to be in userspace, but its nature. Then a meta-analysis. This is IMO a good application of AI, which is essentially statistics based summation. -- GreenC 18:38, 4 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Wikimedia Global Search shows a total of 2716 articles with this URL parameter. Riad Salih (talk) 22:40, 2 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Editors need to verify the sources themselves, as they are ultimately responsible for the edits they make. But as long as they have done so there's no issue with using sources that an LLM suggests. Editors just adding text and sources created by LLMs without checking are already covered by guidance on disruptive editing. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 22:04, 7 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's also worth noting that the presence of the url parameter is not an indication that the sources have or have not been checked. Even someone who knows about the existence of the parameter (which is likely to be a minority of people using LLMs in this manner) is unlikely to specifically remove it - if the source is OK they're most likely to just leave it as is, if it isn't they'll remove the whole thing. Thryduulf (talk) 22:45, 7 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In cases where the source is good we probably should be removing the utm_source parameter since otherwise we are causing any clickthroughs of Wiki references to appear on site analytics as ChatGPT referrals. -- LWG talk 02:22, 11 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I wasn't saying we shouldn't remove them if they are added, just that them being added is not an indication that the source is good or bad or that the URL has or has not been checked. Thryduulf (talk) 03:55, 11 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with others that existing policy seems sufficient here. I do think it would be reasonable to add an edit filter with a reminder to verify the content of added sources (or, perhaps, a new custom edit tag). Cheers, Suriname0 (talk) 23:26, 15 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Where is this Wiki policy?

I remember reading a resonating policy page/section/essay whose thesis was don't exhaust people by pretending like your argument has gone unaddressed and repeating it over and over, and it had a picture of a head with hands over its ears. I can't seem to find it on w:Wikipedia:Etiquette or w:Wikipedia:Vandalism#Types_of_vandalism Lumbering in thought (talk) 16:20, 2 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT maybe? Anomie⚔ 16:28, 2 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That's the one. Lumbering in thought (talk) 17:03, 2 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps you're thinking of Wikipedia:Drop the stick and back slowly away from the horse carcass. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 16:32, 2 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I may have read that essay, but I for sure read in the See Also there, Wikipedia:It's_not_the_end_of_the_world, Wikipedia:Let_it_go and Wikipedia:Wikipedia_is_not_about_winning (almost perfectly relevant) for what it's worth. Also sorry you replied before viewing my minor edit. Lumbering in thought (talk) 17:11, 2 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There's also WP:SATISFY which is part of WP:BLUDGEON. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 22:09, 7 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Rate-limiting new PRODs and AfDs?

Hi, I was recommended to post this at the village pump by a a comment here.

There has been a recent issue where dozens of PRODs and AfDs (about 80 of them last month) of pre-Internet-era track and field Olympians were all created in a short timespan. For comparison, the usual rate that these get created is one or two per week. The rate is of particular importance here because unlike most processes on Wikipedia, there is a one-week deadline for most PRODs and AfDs, so when many are created all at once it can be difficult to properly address them in time.

While it's true that some of these articles were created by User:Lugnuts without SIGCOV references, it's also true that significant coverage exists for most of them -- to quote User:WhatamIdoing at the above linked thread, At some level, we all know that there is local coverage on every modern Olympic athlete, because (a) local newspapers always run the 'local kid does well internationally' kinds of stories, because articles that combine national pride, local people, and good news sell well, and (b) every time someone has actually done the work of getting access to paper copies, they've found these sources.

A similar situation happened about four months ago, and the solution was just to procedurally revert all of the PRODs: User_talk:Seefooddiet/Archive_1#109 proposed deletions in a couple of hours?

Because finding pre-Internet newspaper sources for non-English speaking countries can be labor intensive, is there a policy solution to the above problem? --Habst (talk) 20:45, 2 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think this is something we can solve with more rules.
Making 109 PRODs in one hour is just silly, and there's no amount of regulation that will stop people from doing silly things. I do understand this kind of rate is frustrating, but I think creating and enforcing rules about the rate of nominations will create unforseen problems. You can't stop people from being silly, but you can trout them after the fact. Cremastra (talk) 21:56, 2 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You can also WP:TBAN them after the fact. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:30, 2 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
109 PRODs in one hour sounds like a WP:MEATBOT issue. There is no way you can evaluate that many articles in that amount of time, so the first step would be to deprod with the summary that no WP:BEFORE was done and the article needs a full evaluation. Thryduulf (talk) 23:36, 2 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Note it's possible, if unlikely, that the tagger spent significant time researching the 109 articles individually before tagging them all at once. A single rapid tagging session does not by itself indicate WP:MEATBOT. Anomie⚔ 13:23, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
For small groups of closely related articles that is possible, but it's not at all plausible that you'd research that many before nominating them - you'd tag them as you go. Especially if you are not doing a group nomination. Thryduulf (talk) 14:34, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This is mostly something that can be dealt with informally through current P&G (disruptive editing applies to all sorts of things). For larger deletion projects, it would be preferable to either bundle them or start a community discussion, depending on the nature of the articles. With that said, note that per WP:NSPORTS2022 Proposal 5 there's already consensus to delete any sports bios that do not currently have significant coverage in the article, overriding WP:NEXIST and WP:BEFORE. These deletions aren't indefinite, they're just until someone gets around to finding significant coverage. I'd also ask about whether local coverage is "significant" as opposed to routine; if all athletes have local coverage regardless of notability, it's unlikely to be significant. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 00:23, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I have a relevant discussion open at WT:NOT about the definition of 'routine'. We're just getting started, so things may change, but from early comments, it appears that 'routine' is frequently understood to have no particular relationship to 'significant coverage'. SIGCOV is how many (encyclopedically useful) words/facts were written. 'Routine' is that if every ____ automatically gets (e.g.,) one article printed about it the next morning, then that is the routine. ("____" is a relevant large category, like "film" or "sports game" or "election", not a small category like "films starring Joe Film" or "FIFA World Cup finals").
With these two models, it is possible for routine coverage to provide SIGCOV. And if you agree or disagree with that, then I invite you to join that discussion and tell us so. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:39, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This sort of thing in general is a matter of good old common sense, no ammount of policy will help here. If you need one, WP:BULLINACHINASHOP would be it. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:37, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Absolutely not, not unless a similar rate limit is applied to article creation. At the moment an editor can mass-create a ton of articles very rapidly; to avoid a WP:FAIT situation, it is obviously necessary for another editor to be able to challenge those articles equally-rapidly. Regarding the evaluation of articles, above - often when people do this, it's in response to discovering such a mass-creation. In that case all the articles can reasonably contain the same crucial flaw that means they shouldn't have been created; I continue to assert that WP:BEFORE is advisory and optional (otherwise it would invert WP:BURDEN, which obviously places the burden to search for sources on the people who add or wish to retain material - you can't add something and then insist other people do that search before deleting it.) But even for people who try to insist that it is mandatory, it only requires "reasonable" searches, and when dealing with mass-created articles it is reasonable to simply evaluate the method they were created by and therefore examine them all at once before mass-prodding or mass-AFDing them. Obviously such mass actions are meant to be taken cautiously but we can't forbid them here, since they're sometimes clearly necessary. --Aquillion (talk) 12:36, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Editors can't mass-create more than 25–50 articles per day without getting written permission (and nobody's actually done that for years). If the goal is to mirror creation limits, then that suggests a rate limit of 25–50 AFDs per day. WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:55, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Years, huh. —Cryptic 15:39, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Redirects aren't articles. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:57, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    That's a limitation of the data available. Manual inspection of the results reveals plenty of instances where the created pages are mostly non-redirects. Example. —Cryptic 16:29, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Disambiguation pages aren't articles, either. BeanieFan11 (talk) 16:32, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Can Quarry filter by Special:Tags or edit summaries? Excluding any edit with "Tags: New redirect" or an edit summary containing words like redirect or disambiguation would help. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:00, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    On the very rare occasions it is actually desirable (it's never "necessary") to mass-delete articles then we have processess for that - namely group AfDs and in extreme cases RFCs. PRODs should never be used en-mass because PRODs are explicitly only for uncontroversial deletions, and mass deletion is always controversial. And anyway it should never be easier to delete an article than create one - our goal is to build an encyclopaedia not to delete one. Thryduulf (talk) 15:02, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    mass deletion is always controversial Is that a guideline or your opinion? I was reading this because in December I proded a bunch of articles a single editor had made in a short period of time and I think most of them were deleted. I do not recall anyone mentioning this to me at the time Czarking0 (talk) 04:29, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    How many is "a bunch"? On 18 December 2024, I see five articles that you prod'd but that did not get deleted. They were by two different editors, writing about two unrelated subjects. Two or three articles per editor/subject is not "mass deletion". Something like 25–50 articles, all on the same subject, and especially if it were all of the articles on that subject or if the prod statement had a lousy rationale (such as "No ____ is ever notable" – something an experienced editor like you would never claim) would be mass prodding.
    Reasonable people could disagree on exactly where to draw the line between those two extremes, but I don't think that, say, five articles on the same subject would count. And if the article is unsourced and qualifies for WP:BLPPROD, then any editor who runs across it should either promptly make it ineligible (i.e., add a source) or prod it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:26, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think there needs to be proportionality here, and specifically that the effort required to delete an article should be proportionate to the effort spent in its creation. Lugnuts stubs were created at extremely high rate, often several per minute, from databases. Therefore they should be proddable at an extremely high rate; but they aren't, because we have editors who insist on laborious and time-intensive processes that have the practical effect of making them ludicrously difficult to get rid of.
Per policy, we're expected to be very firm about the use of high quality sources for biographies of living people. Lugnuts' creations very largely consist of undersourced, unmaintained, unwatchlisted BLPs and in my view they represent the most ghastly risk to the project. I continue to feel that the best thing we could do with Lugnuts articles is purge them all. In due course, good faith editors who will actually curate and maintain them will be ready to bring the appropriate ones back.
Of course, on the day that happens, I'll be hitting the slopes with my good buddy Satan.—S Marshall T/C 23:08, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think this is a fairly specific issue that is better addressed on a case by case basis
Czarking0 (talk) 04:32, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The current WikiProject infrastructure was set up around 2006 with the Wikipedia:WikiProject Council and its Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Guide. This system defines a WikiProject as "a group of people" and "a social construct" as opposed to a resource for the community. Per Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals: A WikiProject is a group of editors who want to work together. A WikiProject is not a subject area, a group of pages, a banner on talk pages, or any of the infrastructure used to support the group. I don't believe this lines up with how they're currently used or how the community sees them.

Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Guide has guideline status but is relatively obscure and reflects how Wikipedia worked in its early days. Note that it also has additional guideline-style subpages at Guide/WikiProject, Guide/Task forces, and Guide/Merging WikiProjects, as well as a Proposals subpage. Given how much Wikipedia has changed in the 15–20 years since this system was established, and the growing opposition to insular groups on Wikipedia since then, I'm asking the community whether everything regarding the WikiProject Council and its guidelines still has sitewide consensus. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 04:14, 5 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

TBUA, it's customary to discuss changes to a guideline at the talk page for that guideline. You already started a discussion there. Why did you create this WP:TALKFORK? WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:21, 5 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That's not a guideline talk page, that's a WikiProject talk page, and the fact that you want to constrain it there instead of get community feedback kind of proves my point. Especially since you've been the editor enforcing the current system more than anyone else. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 04:25, 5 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's both, because Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Council/Guide redirects there. There are thousands of centralized talk pages on wiki, and this is one of them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:55, 5 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
On the subject of WikiProject resources, I have raised a couple of times, including as a response to a request by the WMF for collaboration ideas, that the WMF explore the separation of the tools that rely on WikiProjects from the rigid WikiProject system. It would be great if others do the same, if they also feel that the use of WikiProjects has diverged from their original design. CMD (talk) 04:35, 5 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
How else would we define these projects? Moxy🍁 04:46, 5 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
My hope is not to redefine WikiProjects, but to have ways to use tools such as WP:Article alerts without requiring they be linked to a dead noticeboard. CMD (talk) 04:49, 5 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Chipmunkdavis, I've not spent much time with the Wikipedia:Article alerts system, but I don't believe it actually requires a WikiProject. You can set up an alert page several different ways. I believe it would be possible, for example, to set up an alert based on Category:Featured articles or {{infobox book}} (giving you notifications about all actions affecting FAs or all actions affecting articles containing that infobox, respectively). It's possible that its |maincategory= would even let you get alerts to articles within a chosen content category like Category:Italian artists. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:04, 5 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes there are a few options, but there is a limit to the flexibility. CMD (talk) 06:59, 5 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I do think the community views a WikiProject as a group of editors collaborating on a shared area of interest, without any special powers beyond those of any group of collaborating Wikipedia editors. I think the statements at Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Guide § What is a WikiProject? continue to be an appropriate description of the roles currently filled by active WikiProjects. isaacl (talk) 05:52, 5 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm mostly active in one project (organised labour) and drop in and out of a number of others, but I'm really not clear what is the problem being called to attention here? If it is about the tools projects use, no problem, wish we could develop more, but I think generalising in toto about projects rather than pointing to specific projects with problems seems to be throwing the proverbial baby out with the bathwater. Regards, --Goldsztajn (talk) 10:37, 5 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not opposed to evolving the WikiProject system but the statement, the current [X] infrastructure was set up around 2006 could apply to pretty much any process X. It's not in itself a reason to overhaul things – when a guideline remains unchanged for many years, we usually take that as a sign of more consensus, not less. – Joe (talk) 11:40, 5 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That guidance lines up pretty well with how I see the role of Wikiprojects. In what way do you believe that it does not line up with how they're currently used or how the community sees them? Phil Bridger (talk) 13:45, 5 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The Wikimedia Foundation is definitely prioritizing new tools to be agnostic from WikiProjects, for example the mw:Help:Extension:CampaignEvents (recently enabled on English Wikipedia in Event namespace. You can read more about Wikimedia's broader research on WikiProjects at Meta:Campaigns/WikiProjects. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 01:33, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Was there a dispute that led to this? What is broken that we are trying to fix? The only problem with WikiProject is that they're just not really popular. There are a handful of active ones, a handful that are just a labor of love for one or two people, and a slew of inactive projects. There have been multiple efforts to reinvigorate them (see WP:WikiProject X for one that involved developing new tools), but I don't think any have been terribly successful (or perhaps haven't been funded long enough to evaluate successfulness after the short-term?). I'm all for tools that help with things like article alerts, assessments, etc., whether or not they're connected to a WikiProject, but ultimately WikiProjects are just handy ways to divide up millions of articles into topics/themes. Strong disagree with growing opposition to insular groups on Wikipedia since then being applicable here - WikiProjects aren't insular. Anyone can join, and they're fully transparent. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 02:51, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
but ultimately WikiProjects are just handy ways to divide up millions of articles into topics/themes This is what I'm proposing. Right now, the editors who maintain WP:WikiProject Council insist that this is not what they're to be used for. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 02:55, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Rhododendrites, if WikiProjects were merely the division of articles into topics/themes, then it wouldn't actually be possible for any WikiProject to be inactive. Groups of people can become inactive; dividing lines cannot.
Mainspace categories, starting with Category:Main topic classifications is the way to divide articles into topics/themes. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:00, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Not "merely". And yes, categories also divide articles by topics/themes. The WikiProject approach to dividing comes with categories as well as a space to put information, communicate, and coordinate about those articles. I'd call them a topical or thematic grouping of articles with space to coordinate rather than a group with space for grouping articles. I'm not sure what real difference that makes, though, or what point you're making. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 14:17, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
One requires constant maintenance, one doesn't. So when editors create dozens of inactive WikiProjects, it falls on other editors to clean up. Gonnym (talk) 15:06, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
What cleanups do inactive WikiProjects require? Thryduulf (talk) 17:14, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In the easiest cases, it just needs a trip to Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion. In most cases, it needs a fairly cumbersome merge process, including a trip to Wikipedia:Templates for discussion to get templates deleted and a bot to merge them.
A couple of us have been picking at the edges of this to figure out how to describe the process. At the moment, I estimate the problem to need a few thousand hours of hands-on time to resolve. This cannot be done by simple bot. For example, Wikipedia:WikiProject Chinese in New York City is defunct. It was doomed from the beginning due to choosing an overly narrow subject area, and there has never been a group behind it. But should it be merged to Wikipedia:WikiProject New York City or to Wikipedia:WikiProject China or to Wikipedia:WikiProject Immigration or to Wikipedia:WikiProject Ethnic groups or to Wikipedia:WikiProject Asian Americans or to something else? Or would the editor who created it just prefer to have it disappear via MFD?
Addressing these can have some benefits. For example, the WikiProject banner on an article's talk page is a false promise for former groups: "You can join the discussion" – only nobody's home, so you can't actually get your question answered. Similarly, if obvious sub-groups get merged up (e.g., Wikipedia:WikiProject New York City → Wikipedia:WikiProject New York (state) → Wikipedia:WikiProject United States – though at the moment, the NYC group may be stronger than the other two), then editors will spend less time trying to find and add all the banners. It will be easier to find a relevant subject, and when you do find a relevant subject, you'll be more likely to find an actual group of editors there. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:43, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The current guidance has it right, and if anything the problem is implementing it more broadly. WikiProjects are Wikipedia-side entities; they are not the same as Categories, which are on-encyclopedia ways of divvying up content. We don't need Categories, Again. And we don't need people creating shell, phantom Wikiprojects that cover some category but don't actually have a population of editors discussing things, maintaining standards & structure suggestions for a topic, tracking recent articles in the topic, etc. Inactive Wikiprojects also have the problem that there's nobody to define their scope - which will result in well-meaning editors spamming it on loosely related articles and there not even being anyone to clarify if that was useful or not. There are lots of Wikiprojects that probably should be deleted precisely because they represent broken promises - they don't actually have a community behind them and that is unlikely to change, and were instead created because someone felt that their favorite sports team / band / etc. "deserved" one. SnowFire (talk) 18:45, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Recent deaths.

Recent deaths often omits celebrities who have recently reported died even those who have a Wikipedia page. How recently is recent? 2A0C:4F41:1C13:6800:10A1:649C:E601:63CD (talk) 16:51, 6 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  • Recent deaths are nominated at WP:ITNC where they are reviewed for quality purposes, and if they don't reach sufficient quality in 7 days, the nomination fails. Most celebrities (particularly actors and musicans) do not have quality articles due to unsourced filmography or discography tables, nor get improved, so many of these are not posted. — Masem (t) 17:12, 6 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • It also sometimes happens that people are not nominated, although this is uncommon with people likely to be described as a celebrity. Unsourced or partially sourced filmographies and discographies is by the most common reason but the whole article needs to be fully cited and free of orange maintenance tags and other significant issues. By far the best thing to do if there is someone you really think should be featured is to make sure their article is of good quality - and you don't need to wait until they die to start doing this.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Thryduulf (talk • contribs) 17:53, 6 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remember that this is an encyclopedia, not a news site. The idea of this section is to show what encyclopedic content we have about the person who has died, not to report that fact. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:22, 6 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Clicking on the "Recent deaths" link leads to Deaths in 2025, which is more comprehensive.—Bagumba (talk) 06:43, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Testing the waters: Overturning USPLACE

Yes, I know this is at perennial proposals, which is why I'm not jumping straight ahead to an RFC, but WP:USPLACE, the guideline that determines the titles of settlements in the United States, is fundamentally at loggerheads with the five criteria:

  • Recognizability: Large cities that are not usually associated with their state may astonish readers who see the page name connected to the state (for instance, when I hear Louisville, I don't think of it being in Kentucky). Yes, this is a double-edged sword, as people with no knowledge of the city might not know of it, but this can easily be solved with textual disambiguation. For instance, 2022 Ürümqi fire says in its lead sentence: On 24 November 2022, a fire broke out... in Ürümqi, Xinjiang, China, because the average reader will not recognize Ürümqi as being in Xinjiang or China, yet no disambiguation is present in the Ürümqi article. We could easily use this in the lead sentences of articles concerning these cities. Also, the short descriptions and previews of the articles with USPLACE disambiguation, which include the state, are redundant to the disambiguation in the title.
  • Naturalness: Readers are likely to search Louisville instead of Louisville, Kentucky just because of typing efficiency, and in articles, the short form is usually linked to (example: in Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport). This satisfies both subcriteria in the Naturalness section.
  • Precision: In cases where there is a primary redirect, such redirect is unambiguous if a hatnote is added, as is present on Boston, Cleveland, and most of the other 26 undisambiguated city articles. If the title was ambiguous in any way, there would be no primary redirect.
  • Concision: Raleigh, North Carolina is almost three times longer than just plain old Raleigh, which redirects there already, so moving the much longer name to the shorter name breaks nothing and makes Wikipedia more efficient.
  • Consistency: Another double-edged sword. The argument for consistency is clear: not a single other country uses USPLACE. Yes, consistency has been used by supporters of USPLACE to argue that it goes against consistency to have some articles using commas while others don't. However, we don't worry about that in any other country: we have Valence, Drôme but Biarritz not Biarritz, Pyrénées-Atlantiques. There's no reason we need to treat the US different from literally every other country.

The argument is that appending the state is part of American English. That is not even remotely true. No source describes American English as such (see American English, which does not mention the comma convention at all) and other articles that use American English, such as Agua Prieta, whose article uses American English and with the town just across the border, even so, the article is not titled Agua Prieta, Sonora, which would be the title if the comma convention were part of American English. Yes, the AP Stylebook recommends the comma convention. But if we followed the AP stylebook, then we'd be ending quotes with ." instead of "., our article on the Salem witch trials would have to be moved to Salem Witch Trials, and our article on Gulf of Mexico would have to be moved to Gulf of Mexico/Gulf of America. Simply put, USPLACE violates our guidelines on article titles.

Furthermore, many editors oppose USPLACE, as can be shown by the three RMs opened in the last month, all of which unfortunately failed, on removing the state name from Brownsville, Lubbock, and Redmond. Even some of the oppose !votes in those RMs and others expressed dissatisfaction with USPLACE, with one editor calling it peculiar and another saying they were personally opposed to it. Consensus can change, especially when consensus is determined to be in conflict with policy. Thank you for considering my request.

—🐔 Chicdat  Bawk to me! 19:11, 7 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I can't see what the arguement is. We gave naming conventions for most of the world. In the case of Brownsville there us clearly two places on wikipedia with that name, so we need to distinquish them and the US has a lot of places with the same name. If we didn't have these conventions, based upon some of the arguments raised, Boston, Lincolnshire should be just plain Boston as it is the original - which is just silly. Davidstewartharvey (talk) 19:48, 7 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, but that's true of lots of topics. Having the larger area name is something we do for disambiguation, and like anything that we disambiguate, there can be a primary name. We even do that geographically; we have an article on Paris and don't feel the need to specify it's the one in France and not Paris, Texas. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 19:57, 7 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
But we should not have "Primary pages", as how can we determine what is primary? Boston, Lincolnshire or Boston, Massachusetts, or the 16 places in the US or the 34 other places around the world? Paris should be Paris, France. Even Britannica has it as Paris (national capital, France) so we are following normal conventions. Davidstewartharvey (talk) 20:17, 7 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Interesting viewpoint, however, it is not the consensus of Wikipedians, who believe that it is much more convenient to have a primary topic, with such a high consensus that it became one of our policies and guidelines. Feel free to open an RM at Paris asking to have it moved to Paris, France, however, in accordance with the primary topic guideline, it will likely fail. 🐔 Chicdat  Bawk to me! 20:22, 7 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Concensus? In Bios it isn't. Take John Smith, there is no primary article. What is the primary article is conjecture, which leads to edit wars. Clearly making something clear and simple is easy, and falls in line with what Encyclopedias have done for years. Davidstewartharvey (talk) 20:28, 7 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Not everything has a primary topic. John Smith is such a vague, common name, that of course there isn't one. But Boston, Mass., not Boston, Lincolnshire, is clearly the primary topic and thus does not need a disambiguator. voorts (talk/contributions) 22:30, 7 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
So how is Boston MA the primary? The tea party may have taken place their, but that is a page on its own? Boston, Lincolnshire has a history of over 1000 years, while Boston MA is named after the UK town by settlers from their? I would say neither are primary, as they are amongst how over 40 world wide. Davidstewartharvey (talk) 02:05, 8 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'd say that having 15 times as many residents in the city and 70 times as many in the surrounding area is good evidence towards being primary. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:32, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
We do it all the time in bios, when there's a clear "primary" topic -- i.e., the one that most of the people entering the name are looking for. Consider, say, Robin Williams, which takes you right to the comedian, even though Robin Williams (disambiguation) shows you eleven other Robins Williams. Over 13,000 page views a day for the comedian's page, and less than a quarter of one percent of those end up on the disambiguation page looking for the other Robin Williams they were looking for. See WP:DETERMINEPRIMARY for how we judge this. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 05:58, 8 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not going to go into why Boston is the primary topic, but you can read WP:DETERMINEPRIMARY and then do the analyses between the former and the latter. In any event, Boston isn't a great example since we have an exception for major US cities that don't require disambiguation. voorts (talk/contributions) 02:26, 8 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think Zzyzx11 has the right idea Czarking0 (talk) 04:40, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You might want to first look at all the archived discussions and proposals listed near the top of Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (geographic names). I count almost 30 dating back to May 2004 discussion, with the last one in February 2023. Even getting the AP Stylebook exception for the 28 or so for the larger cities seemed to be a hassle. I think it had gotten to the point in that last discussion, with over 20 years and 30 discussions with this disputed issue, that the titles are "stable" now and it would be more of a disruption for a massive change rather than keep retaining this existing style. Zzyzx11 (talk) 19:52, 7 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) Admin recall was soundly rejected for two decades before passing in 2024. Consensus can change, and it does. To Davidstewartharvey, the proposal is only for articles such as Louisville, Kentucky, to which Louisville redirects. If this proposal were to pass, Louisville, Kentucky would be moved to Louisville. And once again, no evidence that this is the style in American English. 🐔 Chicdat  Bawk to me! 20:04, 7 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Well thats just plain wrong! Louisville should redirect to Louisville (disambiguation) as there is more than Louisville in the US - 8 in the US alone plus 1 in Belize! Davidstewartharvey (talk) 20:23, 7 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Oh and I forgot to say, what do American reality programs for food and property do when they go anywhere? They normally flash the name up in the convention i.e. Boston, MA, which is just an abbreviation of what USPLACE is doing so it is used in American English Davidstewartharvey (talk) 21:14, 7 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's not plain wrong. That is not how we deal with ambiguous names. If something is the primary topic (that is, it is either the most likely reference of that topic that someone is looking for or "itt has substantially greater enduring notability and educational value than any other topic associated with that term"), then the article is placed at that page, and a hatnote to a disambiguation page is provided. voorts (talk/contributions) 22:36, 7 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That would make the disambiguation page malplaced. If you think this primary redirect is incorrect, you can request that Louisville (disambiguation) be moved to Louisville. jlwoodwa (talk) 19:33, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If Americans want to be excpetional then let's let them do it somewhere relatively harmless, like this. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:41, 7 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Chicdat, WP:ADMINRECALL finally passed in 2024 partly because it was initially identified as part of the larger urgent need to reform RFA. I did not see that sense of urgency in that last 2023 USPLACE discussion -- everybody basically repeats all the same arguments as in the previous discussions, and it ends with no consensus. I do not think you bring anything significantly new to the table that has not already been discussed repeatedly. Zzyzx11 (talk) 20:53, 7 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Fully concur with User:Zzyzx11's assessment. Also keep in mind that for many American attorneys and other legal professionals, the first Louisville they think of when they hear Louisville is Louisville, Colorado, because that is where the National Institute for Trial Advocacy is currently based. Most people who have heard of Louisville, Kentucky think of it only because they are fast food fans, and of course, all true fast food fans around the world love Yum! Brands. --Coolcaesar (talk) 05:13, 8 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Which is my point about Primary that I raised, you dont instantly think Louisville, Kentucky but one of the others! Davidstewartharvey (talk) 06:17, 8 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I had no idea NITA was based in Louisville or Colorado. We also don't base a primary topic or decision to disambiguate on whether a small population of people associate something with a place. voorts (talk/contributions) 17:37, 8 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I strongly disagree with that last point. There are over 1.3 million lawyers in the United States, and that's not counting allied legal professionals like paralegals, assistants, and secretaries, many of whom have also heard of NITA because the lawyer they work for ran off to attend a NITA learning-by-doing program. --Coolcaesar (talk) 11:47, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I would definitely be in favor of allowing more specific exceptions to USPLACE, for additional large or particularly famous cities, and for unambiguously named state capitols. BD2412 T 03:43, 11 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Reminder that someone should post an announcement at WP:USCITY too, because this topic affect far more editors than just those who watch the WP:USPLACE article. • Sbmeirow • Talk • 00:44, 11 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Notified: Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (geographic names). jlwoodwa (talk) 02:13, 11 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Taiwan MOS

In WP:NC-CN, We can clearly see when to use "China," "PRC," and "Mainland China." However, there are only a few sentences regarding "Taiwan" and "ROC." Due to the Political status of Taiwan is much more sensitive—for example, calling Taiwan a "country" may be controversial, while saying that "Taiwan belongs to the ROC" and that "the ROC is a country commonly known as Taiwan" is broadly acceptable—I believe it is necessary to establish a MOS for Taiwan and ROC, similar to that for China.

I think WP:NC-TW is a good solution, but it didn't work due to lack of consensus or other reasons. ?8 (talk) 16:30, 11 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Would you mind articulating the specific points you had in mind that require additional guidance? The one example offered is not terribly helpful, given that (as you have been told repeatedly) we refer to Taiwan as a country because that is what our sources do, regardless of what one feels to be controversial about it. There's nothing based in policy (which region-specific guidelines still have to obey) that allows one to circumvent that reality. Remsense ‥ 论 16:42, 11 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
No, I just think that PRC has a detailed MOS and ROC should have one too. ?8 (talk) 03:21, 12 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
We do not write guidelines simply because there are no guidelines – that's instruction creep. We write guidelines to record consensus if an issue arises and is discussed repeatedly. If you insist on pursuing this further, I would appreciate an example that does not contradict itself and illustrates an actual gap in the MOS. Toadspike [Talk] 12:52, 12 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Use ROC in my opinion. Thehistorianisaac (talk) 16:18, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That has clearly not been an option on the table for decades. Remsense ‥ 论 23:17, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Happy 22nd birthday (roughly), notability!

Further information: User:Uncle G/On notability § A tiny bit of history

It has been 22 years and 9 days since MartinHarper made an edit that quite a lot of people have missed since. I wrote Special:Diff/1278668922 on the 22nd anniversary, entirely coincidentally since someone was talking about the history and I thought that I should write it up. I didn't even spot the date when I was doing it.

(I'm not aware that this came up on the mailing list prior to that, although memory is hazy and I'd have to pore over the archives to refresh it. However, there is context in the form of m:What to do with entries related to September 11 casualties, which was a contemporary issue. c.f. Special:Diff/715056 on the policy talk page the day before.)

Uncle G (talk) 16:27, 12 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for this. It is sometimes difficult to trace the history of our rule and processes, but knowing the history can help understand why things developed the way they did. I hope that you left a note at Wikipedia talk:Notability about this as well. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:36, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Please see discussion of IPBE

Please see the latest talk page entry of WP:IPBE. I added in that users from a censored country such as China could apply for it as an explicit mention on the page itself, but an editor objected. Please feel free to provide your views. Félix An (talk) 16:40, 12 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Two ideas to improve wikipedia

I have two ideas to improve the current situation with wikiprojects and users

Idea 1: Limiting the edit count of IP users

Limiting the amount of edits IP users can make(ideally to something between 50-250) has several benefits:

  1. It incentivizes people to make accounts, which makes it better to incorporate people in the community. See Wikipedia:Why create an account? for more details.
  2. It can be useful to prevent vandalism. The vast majority of vandalism in my experience in the CVU comes from IP editors(though vandalism from registered accounts still exist), and limiting the amount of edits can stop vandals using IP accounts from vandalizing too much before admins react.
  3. This may sound counter-intuitive, however linking back to reason 1, people with accounts are more likely to edit wikipedia. If we make people have accounts, they will have better incentive to edit wikipedia(I also used to be an IP user, but now I have an account and I am more motivated.)

Idea 2: Automatic invites to Wikiproject upon making the first few edits

My Idea is that, when a registered editor makes a new account and does his or her 10th-20th edits, the Wikiprojects which his or her first edited articles fall under will send invites to join the wikiproject.(e.g. A new registered editor's 10th edit is on an article that is under the scope of WikiProject China and WikiProject Military history, so both of those wikiprojects send invites to the editor.).

This idea would work best with Idea 1, but could work on it's own.

The most obvious advantage here would be recruiting new editors to Wikiprojects, and potentially saving semi-active wikiprojects. Though I would still suggest that if you are experienced and like editing certain articles, do join a related wikiproject if you haven't already; i would rather have experienced editors than amateurs saving semi-active wikiprojects and expanding active wikiprojects. Thehistorianisaac (talk) 17:12, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Idea 1 sounds like an interesting thing to test and see what happens. However, I wonder if "people with accounts are more likely to edit wikipedia" is factually true (it might be). An IP-editor always has at least one edit (and may have more under other IP:s), but there are WP-accounts with very few or any edits at all. And this would be more like a technical limitation than a policy, perhaps. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 19:05, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The way I interpreted "people with accounts are more likely to edit Wikipedia" is that because the user managed to spend enough of their time crossing the 50 to 250 edit threshold, the fact they went out of their way to create their own account means they want to edit past the limit for the future, making them more likely to contribute than someone who didn't want to contribute in the first place. Tarlby (t) (c) 21:37, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think many people might create an account but then don't edit for some reason, or make one to get away from the fundraising banners. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 22:06, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
When Vector 2022 was deployed, we saw a small, temporary uptick in the number of accounts created. That aligns with the idea that some fraction of people create accounts to get access to various settings.
Template:Registered editors by edit count has the data on account activity. Most accounts never make an edit; of the ones that do make an edit, most never edit on a second day. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:22, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I can't speak for anybody else, but the rollout of Vector 2022 is what caused me (not to create an account) but to log back into this one. I didn't edit, of course, because it turns out a full set of courses in topology, discrete maths, and real analysis does not free time create, but if anybody's looking for anecdotal evidence that Wikipedians are created by a desire to get rid of trivial things that annoy us... GreenLipstickLesbian (talk) 05:51, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
My first edit (which was as an IP) was probably to fix a punctuation error. There is a user mw:persona among Wikipedia editors that aligns with https://xkcd.com/386/. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:36, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
What I mean is, having an account is a huge motivation to edit wikipedia. Thehistorianisaac (talk) 00:10, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In the way I meant it? Tarlby (t) (c) 00:13, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe wanting to edit Wikipedia is a huge motivation to create an account. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:21, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It looks like time to pull out the mantra, "correlation is not causation". Phil Bridger (talk) 13:54, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Perennial proposal. Even then, why? Not everyone will want or be able to invest time into the encyclopedia. Most IP editors correct a mistake they see or add info. Also abuse filters and Cluebot ng is a thing. DotesConks (talk) 21:23, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • I like idea 2 in particular. My concern with idea 1 is that it would catch IPs for schools and other places from which multiple individuals might edit. You don't become a Wikipedian if you are first ever attempt to edit from an IP is already blocked because others have made innocuous edits from that IP. BD2412 T 21:30, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Yeah I agree slightly with your point; However cases are pretty rare overall from my experience Thehistorianisaac (talk) 00:06, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    From informal discussions, about half of existing editors first edited as an IP. A behavior that can be seen in the logs (but not publicly connected) is an edit from an IP, followed by Special:CreateAccount from that same IP. Another behavior that can be seen is an IP opening a [View source] page, and then giving up. That isn't necessarily a lost edit (e.g., it could be an established editor who was going to fix one quick thing, but doesn't want to put their real login information into a school/work/public computer), but it sometimes is. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:27, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
i think the assumptions implied by both of those need to be examined. Why is it a good thing to have more people editing Wikipedia (I know it sounds like heresy to even ask that question)? There are good edits and bad; it is not self-evident that we would get more good edits than bad by following your first proposal. And do editors who are engaged with Wikiprojects make any better edits than those who are not? Again, this is not self-evident. I don't know the answers to these questions, but before entertaining any policy proposals I would need to. Phil Bridger (talk) 21:45, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think the more people edit wikipedia, even though there would be some more problems, two heads are better than one, and it could help to solve many issues.
As for wikiprojects, Wikiprojects are a great resource to help new editors. Linking back to why 1 and 2 would be best added together, I am currently part of wikiproject law enforcement, a semi-active wikiproject, where I notice many major edits are done by IP editors/new editors. Would be very useful if there was some way to automatically invite them, as currently the wikiproject is struggling to some extent. Thehistorianisaac (talk) 00:30, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If you're willing to do some manual work, then you might see User:WhatamIdoing/WPMED invitations. I use it occasionally to find promising new editors and invite them to WP:MED. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:29, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds like a useful proposal to me. Cheers. DN (talk) 00:03, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm OK with #1. Not so keen with #2. If done, it should not include any new IPs posting to CTOPs as we have an enormous amount of difficulty with new users in those articles nearly all pushing a POV, and many probably brought from external forums. O3000, Ret. (talk) 00:12, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That's why I propose the user's 10th-20th edits instead of 1st-10th.
By their 10th edit, most users will have some basic knowledge of at least part of the guidelines. Additionally people's first edits often tend to have many issues, often in good faith.(just see my first few contributions)
Additionally, certain wikiprojects may have specific guidelines, and the invite link could help lead new users to them if they are interested in that aspect. Thehistorianisaac (talk) 00:24, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thing is, many of the new folks that have been "sent" to CTOPs are here to "fix" evil Wikipedia they believe is paid by communists. Some appear knowing a long list of our polices used in Wikilawyering. I like ideas to get IPs to register. Not so much with getting them to join projects in the contentious arena, particularly before they are EC. O3000, Ret. (talk) 00:36, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I also agree with this, again i would suggest the invites being sent on the 10th-20th edits, because that gives us some time to see if they are paid editors, vandals or working in bad faith. It also filters out the people only doing 1-2 edits. Thehistorianisaac (talk) 00:39, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You could just skip the invitations to people editing any sort of CTOP article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:40, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I know, but some wikiprojects lack invite templates, and most of the time, it takes quite some time Thehistorianisaac (talk) 01:42, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
2, on any sort of an automated basis, sounds like a way to let people know were tracking them, like when Amazon tells you that you've been buying lots of tissues and lotion, maybe you'd like the ebook Naughty Busty Cowgirls (oh, okay, some less spicy equivalent of that.) I'm not sure it will generate any reasonable embracing of the goal. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 01:07, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I mean at some point you have to realize you are getting tracked
I'm part of the CVU and I have monitored potential bad-faith editors before(and I am sure I also get monitored at times)
Additionally the contributions page is public, I'm sure everyone will eventually find out. Thehistorianisaac (talk) 01:38, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, but there's a difference between "there's a record of what I did" and "automated systems are using that to make assumptions about me". There's a creepiness factor that occurs. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 01:46, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Sort of agree yeah
Maybe we could add an opt out option for people when they make accounts Thehistorianisaac (talk) 02:02, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There are probably more important things to do with people's attention when they create their accounts. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:39, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps a compromise... after someone has been editing a while, an automated message that promotes project management and has a link that will, at their request, generate some project suggestions for them. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 04:51, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Further compromise idea(which also basically destroys the idea as a whole):
Maybe allow wikiproject pages be more accessable? Maybe when someone creates and account, there is a banner showing the list of wikiprojects to possibly join, OR, maybe on the welcome message, add links to wikiprojects Thehistorianisaac (talk) 05:02, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That assumes active WikiProjects, which is not at all a given. Directing new users to the WP:TEAHOUSE, which I believe our welcome messages generally do, is the right way to get them advice. CMD (talk) 05:37, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You could limit the invitations to known-active groups, or even to known-newbie-friendly groups. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:41, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That sort of consideration is going to be fluid, so even if was automated it would need manual maintenance. At that point, manual responses on TEAHOUSE serve the same function. CMD (talk) 05:45, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
When someone is new, our main communication goal is:
  • Please add a source.
After that, we have a large number of things we want them to learn, like:
  • Next time, try adding a source that's actually reliable.
  • Unfortunately, a source published by this person/business/event does not prove that this person/business/event is notable.
  • No copyvios.
  • Please do not use promotional language. Every single word you have written, except "is an author" and "published a book in 2013", is an example of promotional language.
  • If you need help, please try the Wikipedia:Teahouse, where more than half of the editors make an attempt to be nice to newbies.
  • That's not a reliable source for "everybody thinks A" because that source actually says "everybody thinks either A or B".
  • Welcome to Wikipedia. No, you're not actually welcome at articles about Wikipedia:Contentious topics. See you in six months at minimum.
  • If you keep trying, you'll eventually qualify for access to Wikipedia:The Wikipedia Library, which will help you find reliable sources.
Points like:
  • There are various ways to hang out with other Wikipedia editors.
  • If you know something about website coding, you can do some fun stuff here.
  • There are occasional contests.
are really far down the priority list. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:40, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I was about to argue against 1, but it's a moot point – enwiki will get temporary accounts in a few months. jlwoodwa (talk) 10:26, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Temporary accounts will function like IP accounts in terms of not being able to access account-specific tools like newcomer features. Those using cookie-based temporary accounts will still have to be encouraged to create an account, the same as those who currently use IP-based accounts. CMD (talk) 13:20, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Oh ok thanks Thehistorianisaac (talk) 13:20, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, but temporary accounts aren't tied to IPs, so the limit mechanism proposed here wouldn't make much sense. jlwoodwa (talk) 05:15, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
They're tied to cookies, so you could implement a similar mechanism, to similar effect (or lack thereof). CMD (talk) 07:36, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
At the moment, they're only going to last for 90 days, so it might not be pointful. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:53, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion at Wikipedia talk:User pages § RfC: allowing editors to opt-out of seeing floating decorative elements

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:User pages § RfC: allowing editors to opt-out of seeing floating decorative elements. HouseBlaster (talk • he/they) 23:03, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]


Question About Merge Proposal

I have what may be a two-part question about the procedure for a merge discussion. An editor, Editor A, proposed that two articles be merged, and put a {{merge from}} on the proposed target article, and a {{merge to}} tag on the proposed source article. Another editor, Editor B, thought that the merge proposal was misguided. So the first question is: What is the proper procedure for Editor B to follow? Is removing the merge tags an appropriate response? The second question is: If Editor B removes the merge tags, is there a way for Editor A to discuss? Robert McClenon (talk) 23:52, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  1. No. Editor B should start a merge discussion.
  2. Editor A should follow the instructions for starting a merge discussion and replace the tags. If Editor B disrupts the process by removing the tags again, they should be brought to AN/I.
voorts (talk/contributions) 23:55, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Exactly what voorts said. If you disagree with a proposed merge, you need to discuss it. If someone objects to a merge you've proposed, you need to discuss it. Thryduulf (talk) 00:13, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. That is what I thought, but I wanted to be sure that I wasn't mistaken, and didn't want to worsen a mess. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:00, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That is the advice that I have given them at DRN, User:Voorts, User:Thryduulf. You probably knew I wasn't asking a hypothetical question. Robert McClenon (talk) 05:05, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Electoral Results and local governance divisions

Hi. I recently took to AFD three articles Chalkwell (Southend-on-Sea ward), Westborough (ward) and Milton (Southend-on-Sea ward). All three pages, in my belief, did not meet WP:NPLACE and as per discussions at Wikipedia talk:Notability (geographic features) and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK geography. In addition, these articles are just results of the ward elections which dont meet WP:NOTSTATS. All three were kept, 2 as keep and one as no concensus, even though I pointed out in one discussion that ward results were already recorded on Southend-on-Sea City Council elections page.

My question is this, do we or should we have a policy on electoral results? We state that wikipedia is not a Gazetter but has elements of a Gazetter, so should we have lists of results? Davidstewartharvey (talk) 09:21, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Should Wikipedia's editing standards require editing guidelines to be consistent across articles?

OP blocked by Yamla for violating editing restriction. No need to continue with this. voorts (talk/contributions) 15:15, 20 March 2025 (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.

I think it should since without consistent guidelines, editors with a bias (conscious or subconscious) can adhere to certain rules for some articles and not others, giving the article a one-sided showcase of information that can skew readers' understanding of the particular issue. Adding a rule of cross-article consistency (or stronger enforcement of any requirements for consistency already in place) would mitigate bias and maintain Wikipedia's ability to provide accurate, non-partisan information. LordOfWalruses (talk) 23:27, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

What you are saying is unclear; are you saying that the editors on one article need to be constricted and controlled base on the edits of some other article, whether or not they are editing it or even aware of it? We do have guidelines which generally apply to all articles (some topics have topic-specific guidelines.) -- Nat Gertler (talk) 00:16, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
We already have policies and guidelines that apply to every aspect of the encyclopedia. People are allowed to disagree on what they mean or how to apply them. That's how we reach consensus. voorts (talk/contributions) 00:17, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It is not very clear what you are saying here; "Editing standards and guidelines" ARE consistent across all articles. It is just that some editors do not follow them, which is why you have this misconception.
However, different Wikiproject do have different notability guidlines, which makes sense. Thehistorianisaac (talk) 06:52, 20 March 2025 (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.

We have thousands of links to Amazon via the {{ASIN}} template. This seems to me to be entirely inappropriate. There is a neutral and globally unique identifier (ISBN) which every book from a serious publisher carries. If you use the {{ISBN}} template, we will help the user find the book in their own region, from a library or a choice of bookstores. An ASIN is a link directly (and only) to the Amazon sales page. I strongly believe that we should not permit the use of a vendor-specific product SKU and sales link, through a template, in this way. And, as a matter of policy, I believe we should ban the use of sales links as references generally. Guy (help! - typo?) 13:35, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Technical

Search text box on Timeless doesn't format correctly

the formatting (search icon in the text)

So on timeless the search bar doesn't format correctly, when on the search bar specifically:

Vector works correctly however, and the search bar is correct when typing in top, only on while on a search page does the bug occurs. Des Vallee (talk) 07:18, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I was 95% this has a task but it seems not to. Izno (talk) 05:26, 12 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Is this going to be fixed? I deal with it constantly and it can make it hard to see the text I typed. It also seems like a pretty easy fix. Des Vallee (talk) 09:57, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Izno: Des Vallee (talk) 07:54, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You may file a task for it, see WP:Bug reports. Izno (talk) 17:35, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Done. Des Vallee (talk) 13:18, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

ParserFunction errors

I'm just terrible at tracking down the cause of ParserFunction errors. Can anyone fix whatever's causing the problem in Template:Data world#Derived data? Whatever it is, its causing similar errors in the same place in other template pages of the form "Template:Data [country]". The error message says that it's an error in Template:Nts; but that template hasn't been edited in nearly five years, and these errors have popped up only recently. Deor (talk) 00:53, 12 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Use "Related changes" for stuff like this. I reverted a recent edit at Template:Order of magnitude with a grumpy edit summary. Johnuniq (talk) 08:54, 12 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
As a template editor with almost 20 years' experience, I don't appreciate the grumpy revert summary. The issue here (as Snævar explained) wasn't with my edit to {{Order of magnitude}}, but with other templates attempting to pass it non-numeric input, which may be buried deeply in template call stacks (see User talk:Pppery#Template:Order of magnitude). {{Order of magnitude}} has over 200 thousand transclusions, as its documentation states, and these breakages cannot be reasonably tested for (if you disagree, feel free to add example testcases to the testcases page - for the record, my change passed all current testcases without issue). 「ディノ奴千？！」☎ Dinoguy1000 17:58, 12 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed with Dinoguy1000 here. * Pppery * it has begun... 19:30, 12 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  1. land area is text, not a variable
  2. Template:Data world returns three curly brackets on each side, which can not be used for calculation
  3. You are doing an calculation with the total area and land area numbers, so you need mw:Help:Extension:ParserFunctions##expr. It does not calculate without you asking it to.
So once that data world no longer gives curly brackets, you end up with this: {{ppm|{{sigfig|{{#expr:({{{total area}}}/{{data world|pst2|{{{land area}}}}})}}|3}}}}. Snævar (talk) 09:07, 12 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I have installed User:Anomie/previewtemplatelastmod. After installation, the technique is to go to the problem page, click the "Edit" tab for the whole page, and scroll down to the part after the edit box, publish/preview/etc. buttons, below which there is a line reading "Pages transcluded onto the current version of this page" - if this is preceded by a right-pointing triangle, click that to expand the list. The topmost entry (or entries) should be the most likely candidate for the problem. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:25, 12 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I have a forked version of that script at User:Ahecht/Scripts/previewtemplatelastmod.js, which keeps the default sort order (which can be useful since it's sorted by namespace) unless you click the "sort" link. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 15:45, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Stopped receiving email notifications of changes to an article on my watchlist

In late 2024, I expanded someone else’s Start-class article called Bombardment of Greytown,  which after some extensive changes was declared a B Level article by Hawkeye7. In the course of the run-up to that B level bestowment, I had received, thanks to my watchlist, no less than 13 email notifications alerting me to changes made, ending on 7 December 2024.

Having received the B Level imprimatur and having ceased to receive any more email alerts as to further activity, I assumed no more changes were being made. But, recently, I glanced at the article, and I noticed substantial additions have been made to it in 2025 by Historyguy1138 and a warning template added to the top by Grutness that, “This article's tone or style may not reflect the encyclopedic tone used on Wikipedia. etc.” (I am now in contact with both these Wikipedians.)

My watchlist never alerted me that any of this was happening. I checked my watchlist settings recently and it said: “Your watchlist has 11 pages (and their talk pages). Email notification is enabled.” My watchlist list included the Bombardment of Greytown page.

Why do you suppose I stopped receiving email notifications after 7 December 2024 when changes continue to be made after that date? Will-DubDub (talk) 20:54, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Because you failed to visit the page after receiving the 7 December 2024 email notification. Watchlist email notifications only get sent if you visit the page after each email. Graham87 (talk) 21:54, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for telling me this! I asked Grutness this question and he had no idea and referred me to Village Pump. And he’s one of the longest serving administrators on Wikipedia. Can you refer me to where this is written? Thanks! Will-DubDub (talk) 22:50, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The mail should be based on MediaWiki:Enotif body which says: "There will be no other notifications in case of further activity unless you visit this page while logged in." PrimeHunter (talk) 23:05, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I went to the link above, MediaWiki:Enotif body, and at the top it says: “This page does not exist. The deletion, protection, and move log for the page are provided below for reference.” But below that seems to be some solid information.
I went to my preferences and changed my watchlist and notifications. I said: Email me when a page or a file on my watchlist is changed. And increased the “Days to show in watchlist” from 3 to 30.
Bottom line: Once I missed that email notification on 7 December 2024 did that mean I can now never get another email notification again about changes to that article? It seems there should be a workaround to restart those email notifications after a single lapse. Will-DubDub (talk) 00:27, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In Special:Preferences do you have your language (in the Internationalization section) set to anything other than 'en - English'? — xaosflux Talk 00:32, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah that isn't a good idea, as you'll miss custom messages like that. There's also relevant information at Help:Email notification; as it says there, watchlist email notifications weren't enabled here until April 2012, by which time most experienced editors (including Grutness and I) had gotten used to checking our watchlist manually. I think most experienced English Wikipedia editors only use the email notification system for non-English wikis or places like Wikimedia Commons. Graham87 (talk) 01:22, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Ignore the red box at MediaWiki:Enotif body. Do you not see the text I quoted below the box and in the mail? After visiting Bombardment of Greytown while logged in, you get an email about the next edit. It doesn't matter whether you made earlier visits. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:30, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you PrimeHunter and Graham87!.
I’m still confused, but less so than before.
I find this statement by Graham87:
“Watchlist email notifications only get sent if you visit the page after each email.”
To be in conflict with this statement by PrimeHunter:
“After visiting Bombardment of Greytown while logged in, you get an email about the next edit. It doesn't matter whether you made earlier visits.”
Hewing to PrimeHunter's for now, I believe I did visit the article periodically (and while logged in) during the period those changes were being made! Could it be I missed them because my “Days to show in watchlist” was only set for 3 days (the default, I'm guessing) and the vagaries of my visits and the change notifications never synched up helpfully because that three-day window was too short? (I’ve now set “Days to show” to 30 days.) Will-DubDub (talk) 21:27, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think PrimeHunter's explanation is more technically correct. But the number of days setting has nothing to do with the watchlist email ffeature; it's related to vieweing your watchlist on Wikipedia using Special:Watchlist. Graham87 (talk) 23:15, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, Graham. I hope you can see where that ”Days setting” looked logically promising. Thanks for setting me straight. I’ve set up a bookmark to my Special:Watchlist, so I can check it regularly. (And thanks PrimeHunter!) Will-DubDub (talk) 19:36, 15 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Semi-protected talk pages crash

Whenever I press Add topic on a semi-protected talk page(the talk page itself is protected, not the origin page) the browser crashes with error code Aw Snap SIGSEGV. This implies that the page was trying to edit a part of restricted memory. This does not happen on non-protected pages. I am using a Chromebook model name CR1104CGA updated to the latest version, and with browser version 126.0.6478.265 It seems that the computer that you are doing this on matters a lot as other computers, and even other Chromebooks do not give the same outcome. Caleb's World11 (talk) 19:39, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Start with the instructions at Google Support and report back. Izno (talk) 21:56, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Caleb's World11 I'm having the exact same issue, except it's happening pretty much everywhere, including creating pages and protected non-talk pages. Gaismagorm (talk) 12:54, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
it looks like it doesn't always crash when creating pages, but it does always crash when editing protected articles Gaismagorm (talk) 13:22, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Issue with editing any protected pages on Chromebook.

Hello, I have been having issues with editing any protected articles on my Barla chromebook. Whenever I attempt to edit it, it gives the "oh snap" error screen, with the "SIGSEGV" error code. I have tried shutting off my Chromebook, changing Wi-Fi, signing in and then out, clearing my cache/cookies, making sure my Chromebook version is up to date, and switching from visual to source editor. None of it worked. Some options are unavailable as this chromebook is run by an administration, so some features are not available.

P.S. Yes, I know that @Caleb's World11 posted on this forum with the same issue. It appears that discussion kind of went stale, so I'm relisting this. Gaismagorm (talk) 12:50, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Have you tried freeing up space? And a hardware reset? Polygnotus (talk) 17:41, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I tried freeing up space, didn't work. I'm gonna procrastinate on the second one since it will be a major hassle to deal with getting everything back to order once I reset the Chromebook, since, like I said, it is administration ran. Gaismagorm (talk) 18:02, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Polygnotus @Caleb's World11 I found a solution. If you switch from desktop to mobile view, editing works. Gaismagorm (talk) 18:09, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Polygnotus @Caleb's World11 it seems like the issue has been resolved. My best guess was that the server maitinence fixed it. Gaismagorm (talk) 15:14, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
nevermind, it's not fixed. I don't know why I thought it was. Gaismagorm (talk) 15:15, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Looking for how to set Infobox mapframe maps and Location map maps in infoboxes to viewer's thumb size

I haven't had any luck at the templates' talk pages, so I'm posting links here in case there are any technical folks who might be able to tell me how to set Infobox mapframe maps and Location map images in infoboxes to the viewer's thumb size (per MOS, as Module:InfoboxImage can do) instead of using fixed pixel sizing.

Please respond at the original threads, not here. Thanks. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:15, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You were answered approximately 30 minutes ago at infobox mapframe. Izno (talk) 22:26, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
An answer saying "it looks like you can't do it" is only marginally helpful. As a template editor, my favorite answer to "how do I do this" questions at a template's talk page is "you can't do it yet, but I have tweaked the sandbox to make it possible; does that meet your needs?" I'm hoping someone will find a way to help these templates comply with the guidelines at MOS. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:40, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
His answer was correct, however. You cannot do what you want to do. Izno (talk) 17:43, 15 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Talk template formatting help

I made Template:MEDRS evaluation. But it's hard to use on a talk page, because it doesn't line up properly inside the :::indented comments. How do I fix that? WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:44, 15 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

WhatamIdoing, {{block indent}}? — Qwerfjkltalk 12:11, 15 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The colon is indenting only the first line. You need to force that indenting to continue through the template. I put one possible way in the sandbox and tested it on the page where it is transcluded. It indents and does not cause Linter errors. It should be tested further to make sure that all of the parameters work properly. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:27, 15 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Use Template:Bulleted list instead. Izno (talk) 17:44, 15 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Wide equations no longer scrollable on mobile site

Until recently, equations that extend beyond the width of the page in the mobile browser version of Wikipedia were horizontally scrollable. However, a recent update has removed this functionality, making such equations partially unreadable unless users switch to desktop mode. This affects articles with large LaTeX-rendered formulas, breaking accessibility for mobile users.

Steps to reproduce:

1. Open a Wikipedia article with wide equations (e.g., physics/math pages) in a mobile browser (Chrome, Safari, etc.).

2. Observe that the equation does not scroll and is cut off instead.

3. Switch to desktop mode, where the full equation becomes visible.

Expected behavior: Equations should be horizontally scrollable as they were before.

Could this be reverted or fixed to restore readability for mobile users? 204.144.182.17 (talk) 22:27, 15 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't remember the past behaviour but I can confirm visiting Navier–Stokes_equations#General_continuum_equations displays cut-off equations that I can't scroll on mobile. The long ones half way down that section. Commander Keane (talk) 23:47, 15 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This one has been looked at in T201233, and there's a patch up for review that should help with specifically wide Math content.
There's also a more general issue with wide content that's tracked in T361737, which is going to be more pronounced on mobile since the change last week that suppressed horizontal scrolling on the main content area. DLynch (WMF) (talk) 15:24, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Auto format dates in non-CS1 templates

The Citation Style 1 (CS1) templates will automatically format dates on a page that invokes {{use dmy dates}} or {{use mdy dates}}. This works for all of the most common citation templates, but there are {{cite xxx}} templates that are not related and do nothing to dates, like {{cite patent}}, {{cite court}}, {{cite comic}}, and so on.

Would it be a good idea and would there be interest in working out a standard way to auto-format dates for those unrelated wikitext citation templates? There is an example in {{cite comic/sandbox}} that is calling {{date}}. You can see it in action at User:Rjjiii/sandbox8.(permanent link) This is slightly slower. Kraven the Hunter which calls {{cite comic}} 70 times will go from "Post‐expand include size: 373992/2097152 bytes" to "Post‐expand include size: 385280/2097152 bytes". {{Date}} is less strict than the CS1 dates. If it cannot parse a date, it will just display the input as written. Rjjiii (talk) 02:28, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think we should create more modules that read and parse the whole page every time a particular template is encountered. Perhaps I shouldn't worry about performance but the idea seems fragile and hard to maintain. I would prefer a technical solution such as a shared Lua table that can be set when the current editing section or page is rendered, and read by other modules. That might never happen but some planning might be useful. Johnuniq (talk) 03:13, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Isn't it likely that articles using the templates you mention also employ at least one cs1|2 template? That being the case, why not have your module fetch the format from Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration? The code that loads the page source, searches for a {{use xxx dates}} template, and determines which format to use will execute only once for all cs1|2 templates and your modified other templates in the article.
Taking that thought a bit farther, I hacked an example: Module:Sandbox/Trappist the monk/df. That example fetches the global_df variable from ~/CS1/Configuration and then reformats and returns the date, minding the value of |cs1-dates= in the {{use xxx dates}} template. There are two functions exported by ~/df; one for publication dates and the other for access / archive dates. Examples can be seen at my sandbox (permalink).
—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:25, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I imagine pretty much any article using a niche citation template will use at least one of the main four CS1 citation templates or {{citation}}. I went with a really basic solution from things that already exist, but don't let my lack of knowledge or skill here get in the way if you have a better plan. I tested out the sandbox module above and it seems to work well, even with weird dates. Rjjiii (talk) 02:07, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Archiving a source that verifies human before opening

There is schism between the governing bodies in the sport of kabaddi, and this article: https://www.dhakatribune.com/sport/other-sports/371289/a-kabaddi-world-cup-sans-bangladesh does a good job at explaining it. Thus, it's been used at multiple kabaddi-related articles and is vital to understanding the schism. Unfortunately, it does a human-check before you're able to access it, which means that no archiving website is able to make an archive out of it. I previously tried to find a solution at Help desk but it didn't help. So, is there any trick to go around the website's restrictions? —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 16:47, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You could just download it yourself, passing the human verification and then upload it to the text portion of archive.org. Snævar (talk) 19:20, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I have no idea how that works. @Snævar: Could you help? —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 09:44, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I can’t sign on my pc

So I type my password it’s says that I didn’t do the letter thing and when I copy and paste my real password and do the letter thing it says that I don’t have the right password so I do that 5 times and then it’s says that I have to wait 5 minutes like what? Therealbubble (talk) 21:54, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

What do you mean that you cannot sign on your PC? ‹hamster717🐉› (discuss anything!🐹✈️ • my contribs🌌🌠) 23:02, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
They probably mean sign-in, log-in, enter their account... for that matter 'the letter thing' sounds like a CAPTCHA.
The page Special:Captcha says a CATPCHA may show if you try to login soon after typing your password incorrectly, so it certainly seems like you (Therealbubble) might be typing your password incorrectly - but I don't have an account, so cannot confirm that there isn't always a CAPTCHA when logging in. – 2804:F1...95:6EBB (::/32) (talk) 01:37, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
They logged in using their mobile, their edit tag says so, but they have a problem logging in on pc. Snævar (talk) 10:22, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Recently, the login system was changed, see mw:MediaWiki Platform Team/SUL3
Check if you are allowing cookies from auth.wikimedia.org, logins go through there now. Check your password manager, if you have one, and set the password to auth.wikimedia.org. Also open up your browser console and paste the contents from there. Snævar (talk) 10:25, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Some password managers are now more proactive in offering passwords you use on other Wikimedia sites (see recent Tech News entry). Maybe you have different passwords on different wikis, and they have now become easier to mix up accidentally.
(Generally, the login system is still in the process of being changed. Most logins still happen via the old domains, but that will change very soon.) Tgr (WMF) (talk) 21:33, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

On mobile view, Infobox shows ahead of first paragraph for this particular article

On mobile view with a narrow width (like on my Android phone), the Infobox shows ahead of the first paragraph for the article https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_of_Mahmoud_Khalil. All other articles I can find work properly.

I see a 2017 archived version of the Village Pump (Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 155#Infobox location) which says there was a server side technical issue that was resolved, but not all pages were fixed, such as https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisenhower_dollar. But now the Eisenhower_dollar article also seems to be fixed.

I have tried to look for hidden characters, but there don't appear to be any (I could be wrong). What could be the problem with the Detention_of_Mahmoud_Khalil article? ReferenceMan (talk) 02:09, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It's caused by {{pp-extended|small=yes}}. On that article it includes <p class='PIA-flag' style='display:none; visibility:hidden;'>This page is subject to the extended confirmed restriction related to the Arab-Israeli conflict.</p>. The text is hidden but mobile still interprets it as a lead and displays the infobox right after it. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:20, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Now reported at Module talk:Protection banner#Mobile places infobox incorrectly for WP:PIA notice. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:37, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Can no longer edit articles

Hi,

I’m having trouble editing existing Wikipedia pages. When I try to edit, I only see the "Edit source" option and not the regular "Edit" button. This issue affects all pages I’ve tried, and I can’t make any changes to existing articles.

I have 29 edits on my account, and I haven’t edited for about 7 months, but I was previously able to edit normally

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks! Vickylizholmes (talk) 11:05, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Vickylizholmes Go to Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing and set "Editing mode" to "Show me both editor tabs". --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 15:29, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Template calling to Wikidata with several parameters

Hi,

I have created this template and am trying to improve it (by changing the structure), but I am not quite getting the structure for several parameters, despite checking the relevant help pages.

Basically, I would like the template to be called as follows {{SeatsEUPPs|EC|EPP}} to get the number of seats of the EPP in the European Commission, which would be {{wikidata|property|Q208242|P1410|P208=Q8880}}, where Q208242 is for the EPP and P208=Q8880 is for the European Commission.

The exact expressions won't always be the same, as sometimes I want to replace the name of the party with special terms, such as "allparties", "noparties" or something similar, and then provide a calculated expression. For instance;

  • {{SeatsEUPPs|EC}} would just give the number of seats in the European Commission, which is {{wikidata|property|Q8880|P1342}},
  • {{SeatsEUPPs|EC|allparties}} would give the sum of seats for all parties in the European Commission, which is {{#expr: {{wikidata|property|Q208242|P1410|P208=Q8880}} + seats of all other parties}}, and
  • {{SeatsEUPPs|EC|noparties}} would give the number of seats not assigned to a European party, which is {{#expr: {{wikidata|property|Q8880|P1342}}-the sum of seats for all parties}}.

I think I have to hard-code the formula/expression for every possibility and that is fine. However, I am not really fine how to use "switch" in this case to basically: 

  IF param1=EC 
  THEN 
     IF param2=EPP 
     THEN formula-for-seats-of-EPP-in-EC
     ELSIF param2=PES
     THEN formula-for-seats-of-PES-in-EC
     ...
  ELSEIF param1=EP
     IF param2=EPP 
     THEN formula-for-seats-of-EPP-in-EP
     ELSIF param2=PES
     THEN formula-for-seats-of-PES-in-EP
     ...

I am sure it is rather simple, but I just can't wrap my head around it. Thanks! Julius Schwarz (talk) 11:41, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Julius Schwarz Complex logic like this is often better handled in WP:Lua, but as a standard template it would be something like
{{#switch: {{{param2|}}
 | EPP
 | AlternativeNameForEPP = {{#ifeq:{{{param1|}}}|EC|formula-for-seats-of-EPP-in-EC|formula-for-seats-of-EPP-in-EP}}
 | PES
 | AlternativeNameForPES = {{#ifeq:{{{param1|}}}|EC|formula-for-seats-of-PES-in-EC|formula-for-seats-of-PES-in-EP}}
 | ...
 | #default = {{#ifeq:{{{param1|}}}|EC|formula-for-total-seats-in-EC|formula-for-total-seats-in-EP}}
}}
--Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 15:27, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the reply and pointer to Lua. I will ask for support on that too! Julius Schwarz (talk) 19:33, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Email address change error

I'm trying to change my email address and get an error that says, Unknown error in PHP's mail() function. Does anyone know how to fix this? Thanks! Danaphile (talk) 14:49, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Could possibly be related to the ongoing PHP 8.1 upgrade, tracked in phab:T383845. Just a guess tho. NightWolf1223 <Howl at me•My hunts> 15:04, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Can you try again? I just tried and didn't fail, got "A confirmation email has been sent to the specified email address. Before any other email is sent to the account, you will have to follow the instructions in the email, to confirm that the account is actually yours.". — xaosflux Talk 15:30, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks! It went through. Danaphile (talk) 16:32, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Gadget proposal: Citation Watchlist

I would like to propose adding the Citation Watchlist script as a new gadget. The purpose of Citation Watchlist is to add visual indicators in recent changes feeds, watchlists, page histories, and user contributions pages when links to certain domain names are added. These domain names are often considered unreliable sources or otherwise require closer examination; this script makes it easier to identify when and where such links are added. New lists can be added to Wikipedia:Citation Watchlist/Lists and existing lists can be updated there. If you can edit a wiki page, you can create and update a domain list.

Citation Watchlist is under active development by the nonprofit Hacks/Hackers, with support from Wikimedia Switzerland. New versions are initially tested on test.wikipedia.org, then staged on English Wikipedia for additional tests before being released, to ensure that the script does not randomly break. To run through the requirements for gadgets:

  1. Gadgets must work if just included with no further configuration. They can be configurable via personal common.js, but must work unconfigured.
    Citation Watchlist works out of the box with no further configuration required.
  2. Gadgets must be compatible with all major browsers, i.e., they must not terminate with errors.
    Citation Watchlist has been tested and confirmed to work on Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge, and Safari.
  3. Gadgets should be functional in most major browsers (cross-browser compatibility). Exceptions must be clearly stated.
    As stated above, Citation Watchlist works in all major browsers. Note that on mobile devices, you can't hover over indicators to get additional information, as mobile devices lack a hover action.
  4. Duplication of gadgets should only be made if it is reasonable.
    Citation Watchlist provides functionality not available in other gadgets. While there are other gadgets that deal with references and source reliability, they do not operate in the same parts of the interface as Citation Watchlist, which focuses on revision log pages: page histories, watchlists, recent changes, and user contributions.
  5. Collections of scripts should be split if they have disparate functions.
    Citation Watchlist is not a collection of disparate scripts.
  6. Gadgets requiring permissions must be marked and must fail gracefully if the permissions aren't present.
    Citation Watchlist requires no special permissions.
  7. Gadgets only working in some skins must be marked as such if that data is available.
    Citation Watchlist has been tested and confirmed to work in Vector 2022, Vector 2010, Monobook, Minerva, and Timeless.

I am happy to answer any questions you have. If you would like to make changes to the code, I recommend doing so on Test Wikipedia so changes can be properly tested before altering the experience for existing users. Harej (talk) 18:50, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Gadgets usually require a large usage; this one is used by only about 50 people. Izno (talk) 20:28, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Meh seems fine to me. More wondering why the url is hardcoded, when we have wgScriptPath and wgArticlePath config variables available. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:18, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Which URL are you referring to? Harej (talk) 16:06, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, I am working on implementing the SHORTDESC template in Persian Wikipedia, based on the English Wikipedia version. The template itself is functional, but there is an issue: the section edit link (blue "[edit]" button) does not appear next to the short description. What we have done so far: The SHORTDESC template correctly displays the short description. It uses a <span> or <div> to store the text, which is likely why the edit button does not appear. On English Wikipedia, the section edit link appears correctly next to the short description, but in Persian Wikipedia, it does not. Questions: How does English Wikipedia ensure that the edit link appears next to the short description? Is there a CSS or JavaScript function that enables this? Would wrapping the short description in a specific tag (like h2 or another container) help, or is there a more elegant solution? Any guidance on fixing this issue in Persian Wikipedia would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance! 😊 Arbabi second (talk) 19:56, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You have enabled Wikipedia:Shortdesc helper. Izno (talk) 20:31, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Izno
Thanks for your response! It seems that English Wikipedia uses the Shortdesc Helper tool, but Persian Wikipedia does not have it enabled. We would like to ensure that the edit link appears next to the short description without relying on this tool.
Currently, our code is:
<span class="shortdescription">{{{1|}}}</span>
However, the edit button does not appear next to it.
  • Is there a way to modify this template so the section edit link appears naturally?
  • Should we wrap the text in a different tag like h2 or div?
  • If the edit link is added via JavaScript or CSS in English Wikipedia, how can we replicate that?
Any guidance would be much appreciated. Thanks again! 😊
---- Arbabi second (talk) 21:22, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Can Shortdesc Helper be enabled on Persian Wikipedia

Question:

We are working on implementing the SHORTDESC template on Persian Wikipedia. One of the main differences we noticed is that English Wikipedia has Shortdesc Helper, which makes it easier to edit short descriptions.

  • Is this tool available globally, or is it specific to English Wikipedia?
  • If it can be enabled on Persian Wikipedia, what steps should we take to request its activation?
  • If enabling it is not possible, is there an alternative method to achieve the same functionality?

Thanks for any guidance! 😊 Arbabi second (talk) 21:38, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@اربابی دوم: The edit links you see at short descriptions are added by Shortdesc helper. Its code is at the English Wikipedia but can be called from other wikis. See Wikipedia:Shortdesc helper#Installation on another wiki. It requires an interface administrator (list)PrimeHunter (talk) 22:45, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@PrimeHunter
Thank you very much for your detailed response. I have filed a request to install the tool, on
Persian Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard.😊 Arbabi second (talk) 00:23, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2025-12

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Weekly highlight

Updates for editors

  • The improved Content Translation tool dashboard is now available in 10 Wikipedias and will be available for all Wikipedias soon. With the unified dashboard, desktop users can now: Translate new sections of an article; Discover and access topic-based article suggestion filters (initially available only for mobile device users); Discover and access the Community-defined lists filter, also known as "Collections", from wiki-projects and campaigns.
  • On Wikimedia Commons, a new system to select the appropriate file categories has been introduced: if a category has one or more subcategories, users will be able to click on an arrow that will open the subcategories directly within the form, and choose the correct one. The parent category name will always be shown on top, and it will always be possible to come back to it. This should decrease the amount of work for volunteers in fixing/creating new categories. The change is also available on mobile. These changes are part of planned improvements to the UploadWizard.
  • The Community Tech team is seeking wikis to join a pilot for the Multiblocks feature and a refreshed Special:Block page in late March. Multiblocks enables administrators to impose multiple different types of blocks on the same user at the same time. If you are an admin or steward and would like us to discuss joining the pilot with your community, please leave a message on the project talk page.
  • Starting March 25, the Editing team will test a new feature for Edit Check at 12 Wikipedias: Multi-Check. Half of the newcomers on these wikis will see all Reference Checks during their edit session, while the other half will continue seeing only one. The goal of this test is to see if users are confused or discouraged when shown multiple Reference Checks (when relevant) within a single editing session. At these wikis, the tags used on edits that show References Check will be simplified, as multiple tags could be shown within a single edit. Changes to the tags are documented on Phabricator. [1]
  • The Global reminder bot, which is a service for notifying users that their temporary user-rights are about to expire, now supports using the localized name of the user-rights group in the message heading. Translators can see the listing of existing translations and documentation to check if their language needs updating or creation.
  • The GlobalPreferences gender setting, which is used for how the software should refer to you in interface messages, now works as expected by overriding the local defaults. [2]
  • Recurrent item View all 26 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the Wikipedia App for Android had a bug fixed for when a user is browsing and searching in multiple languages. [3]

Updates for technical contributors

  • Later this week, the way that Codex styles are loaded will be changing. There is a small risk that this may result in unstyled interface message boxes on certain pages. User generated content (e.g. templates) is not impacted. Gadgets may be impacted. If you see any issues please report them. See the linked task for details, screenshots, and documentation on how to fix any affected gadgets.
  • Recurrent item Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

MediaWiki message delivery 23:45, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Toolhub spam

https://toolhub.wikimedia.org/tools/seourltool

Why is the toolhub being spammed? Is there something that can be done? Polygnotus (talk) 02:09, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@BDavis (WMF) can definitely help with this. – DreamRimmer (talk) 03:14, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks DreamRimmer! @Bryan can we get a rel=nofollow for those fields? Polygnotus (talk) 03:31, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I would imagine any of the administrators listed at https://toolhub.wikimedia.org/members?groups_id=1 (such as JJMC89) should be able to help. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 19:14, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
JJMC89 has been inactive for about a month and a half, so they're probably not the best person to talk to. * Pppery * it has begun... 19:25, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
SStefanova (WMF) no longer works for the WMF and their account is locked, yet they are still a toolhub admin. Polygnotus (talk) 23:28, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I deleted that particular toolinfo record. I also put admin and crat hats on @TheresNoTime after they kindly volunteered to help in Toolhub. -- BDavis (WMF) (talk) 16:18, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

From the spam page, I particularly like "Fuck writing SEO content manually—this AI powerhouse mass-produces high-ranking, viral, and clickbait-infused content at scale." I suspect Wikipedia will be seeing more of that in due course. I just indeffed RickAndMortyOnNewsbreak (talk · contribs) who has two reverted edits here plus a deleted spam user page. If anyone is in the mood, can you work out what newsbreak.com is (the spammer apparently has a webpage there) and why there are 241 links to newsbreak.com here. Johnuniq (talk) 04:02, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

(I took care of a few sleepers now also.) Izno (talk) 04:11, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This search is probably a good one to sort out. It apparently hits a few more spammy looking names too. Izno (talk) 04:12, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The current "templates for discussion"-warnings make some reference sections close to unreadable

The template:Unbulleted list citebundle is currently for discussion. As a result, there is a warning for every single reference where it or a related template is used, making some reference sections close to unreadable. For example, Philosophy#Citations looks something like the following to me:

1.

‹ The template below (Unbulleted list citebundle) is being considered for merging with Multiref2. See templates for discussion to help reach a consensus. ›

Pratt 2023, p. 169

Morujão, Dimas & Relvas 2021, p. 105

Mitias 2022, p. 3

2.

‹ The template below (Unbulleted list citebundle) is being considered for merging with Multiref2. See templates for discussion to help reach a consensus. ›

Hoad 1993, p. 350

Simpson 2002, Philosophy

Jacobs 2022, p. 23

3.

‹ The template below (Unbulleted list citebundle) is being considered for merging with Multiref2. See templates for discussion to help reach a consensus. ›

...

Is that the intended behavior? As far as I can tell, this affects many high-traffic articles. If there is an automatic warning message, it would make sense to have it only for one instance per page, not for every single instance. Phlsph7 (talk) 10:33, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I've added |type=tiny to both templates, so it looks a whole lot better than before. --rchard2scout (talk) 13:03, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Rchard2scout: Thanks, that's much better. However, I think it's still far from ideal. Some articles have 100 or more references. Do we really need to inform all readers 100 times per page about this discussion?
I'm not even sure that we should inform readers on article pages at all. Especially in the case of this discussion, which is a rather technical matter not of interest to most general readers. Phlsph7 (talk) 13:10, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I went ahead and disabled the warning function by setting |type=disabled, which seems to have solved the problem. Phlsph7 (talk) 15:04, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It was the warning which alerted me to the discussion, which I then joined in. Without the warning, I would never have known.   ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 16:08, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If hundreds of warning messages appear on high-traffic articles, thousands or even hundreds of thousands of readers see them within a very short time and have no idea what they are supposed to mean. This type of issue concerns a specific group of editors, so there is no need to warn all readers repeatedly. Phlsph7 (talk) 17:25, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The reason these tags display is because editors want them to display. We can remove that from Template:Tfd, but the price is that people may not know a template is about to be deleted. It is not about "a specific group of editors", it is about any editor who thinks they may have a reason to support or oppose that template's deletion. Izno (talk) 17:37, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not opposed to warning editors. I'm just opposed to presenting hundreds of warnings to a high volume of readers who are not affected and don't understand them. What about posting a message on the talk page of each affected article instead? Phlsph7 (talk) 17:52, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Do you read every article's talk page before you edit it? I don't. I'd be very surprised if more than a mere handful of editors (if any) actually do.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:00, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
... and which would lead to thousands to millions worth of messages.... that mostly go unread. Izno (talk) 18:09, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm a little surprised that I'm the only one concerned about presenting hundreds of warnings per article page to a high volume of readers who don't understand them. Is there no better alternative? Phlsph7 (talk) 18:17, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hundreds of messages may not be optimum, but neither is potentially deleting a popular template because no one was notified in advance. At least the message won't be displayed any longer than the discussion that is taking place (usually not more than a week). And how many readers do you think actually scroll through reference sections.   ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 19:51, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Some high-volume articles with this template have around 100000 views per month. That makes about 25000 views for one week, and this is just for one of those articles. For each of those visits, over 100 warning messages are displayed. According to https://linkcount.toolforge.org/ , the templates Multiref, Multiref2, and Unbulleted list citebundle are directly transcluded to 816, 1292, and 507 articles, respectively. Not all of them are as high-volume, but you still get a feeling for how many readers you would reach with those warning messages–they are easily in the hundreds of thousands. And we do this only to reach a handful of editors who will participate in the template discussion. I think we do a lot more damage than good here. Having about 2500 talk page messages instead would be the lesser evil. If that's not acceptable, the alternative suggestion of displaying the warning message only once per article for the first occurrence would at least do less damage. Phlsph7 (talk) 20:37, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Which is not possible.
Having about 2500 talk page messages instead would be the lesser evil. The community is likely to disagree, and clearly today that is not how it works. Similar was done when IA bot first rolled out when it added archives. It did not take long for the community to come to the conclusion that talk page messages were clear and obvious and totally unnecessary noise. Izno (talk) 00:34, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Izno It is possible using CSS tricks, but undesirable because it can't distinguish between multiple messages for one template or one message each for multiple templates. As a compromise, the CSS does prevent more that one tag from appearing within the same parent element (usually a paragraph or list entry). --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 18:48, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
During a recent case of a disruptive RFD notice, an editor at Template talk:Redirect for discussion suggested that RFD notice be made visible only to those wish to see it, similar to CS1 errors. For some classes of TFD nominations, those which don't directly impact the average reader, it may be a potential solution. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 19:24, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This has been suggested before, several times, and rejected each time. We want to increase participation in XfDs, not reduce it. Too many of them get relisted for lack of !votes. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 06:34, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Problem using section: on Persian Wikipedia

I am encountering an issue using the {{#section:}} magic word on the Persian Wikipedia (fa.wikipedia.org). I am trying to transclude the section titled "پانویس‌ها: گروه‌های پیش‌تعریف‌شده" (which translates to something like "Footnotes: Predefined Groups") from the page "راهنما:پانویس‌ها" (which translates to "Help:Footnotes") into my user sandbox page: "کاربر:اربابی دوم/تمرین۳". I have confirmed that the section title is copied correctly from the source page. However, nothing is displayed in my sandbox page. Could there be a specific configuration or known issue with the {{#section:}} extension on the Persian Wikipedia that might be causing this? Any insights or suggestions for troubleshooting would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.Arbabi second (talk) 20:53, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@اربابی دوم: You need {{#section-h:}} for a named section made with == ... ==. {{#section:}} is for labeled sections marked with special tags in the source. See more at Help:Labeled section transclusion. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:25, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@PrimeHunter
Thank you very much, the problem is solved. Arbabi second (talk) 21:51, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Trouble staying logged in?

Anyone else having issues today with randomly finding themselves logged out? Just had that happen a couple of times when opening pages in new tabs, and had it happen earlier once on Commons while uploading. - The Bushranger One ping only 00:37, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

And just had it happen again on Wikidata, between adding variables to a page. Quite weird. - The Bushranger One ping only 01:02, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
And again on Commons. Just refreshing makes it "log back in". Maybe it's something with my connection... - The Bushranger One ping only 01:17, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I've been having the same issue for several hours. I'm guessing it's either a Firefox thing or something related to the SUL work. Jay8g [V•T•E] 03:42, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@The Bushranger If you use cookie / ad blockers, you might have to allowlist the domain auth.wikimedia.org now. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:53, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This is probably the same issue that has been reported at T389159 (and maybe the same as #I need help with my Ip address? though that's a bit vague). It's probably caused by the SUL3 changes in some way or another (sorry!). Some information that would help:
  • your browser (and whether you use non-standard privacy/security settings, like incognito mode, an ad filter, third-party cookie blocking in Chrome)
  • if you have an idea exactly when this started happening
  • whether you are browsing multiple wikis at the same time and the behavior seems related to that (e.g. when you visit a page on wiki 1, you get logged out on wiki 2)
  • whether getting logged out seems to correspond with inactivity (specifically, not doing anything on a specific wiki for 5 or 10 minutes)
  • whether fully logging out and logging back in helps
Thanks! Tgr (WMF) (talk) 21:50, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Have Firefox (136.0.2), NoScript and uBlock Origin. There have been occasional, very very rare, instances of this for awhile but it happened "regularly" yesterday. Was happening mid-editing on single pages on Wikis - for instance opening a page from my Watchlist on en. in a new tab logged it out once. Another time I was logged out on Wikidata in between entering parameters on the same page back to back. Another time on Commons I was uploading an image, hit upload, sat uploading for a bit and then said "cannot upload because you're logged out". Seemed to get better later on though? Note that the first one described there I was logged out completely until I clicked "log in" - where I did not have to enter any data, it just logged me right back in - but all the other times simply refreshing the page saw me recognized as loggedin. - The Bushranger One ping only 22:19, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Can you maybe reconstruct from your edit history when exactly it started happening? Tgr (WMF) (talk) 10:21, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"Beginnings"

A recent CFD discussion, Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2025 February 21#Beginnings by decade 1-1499, kiboshed "YYYY beginnings" categories for years before 1500, on the grounds that their only actual contents were "YYYY births" subcategories — however, because the beginnings category is automatically transcluded by the {{Decade births or deaths category header}} template, that's left over 200 beginnings categories sitting on the latest run of Special:WantedCategories as redlinks.

However, because "beginnings" categories do still exist from 1500 on, we don't want to completely disable that category generation, but I don't know enough about complex template coding to change this myself without messing things up. So could somebody with more skill in that area than I've got edit {{Decade births or deaths category header/core}} to make the beginnings category #ifexist? Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 16:56, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Looking. I attempted to update that template, but something seems to have gone wrong. * Pppery * it has begun... 18:11, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Fixed now. Sorry for the mess. * Pppery * it has begun... 18:13, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Actually it looks like I broke something else there too. I've fallen into the trap where I've been doing everything too fast and making too many mistakes and I think that means I need to take a break from editing. * Pppery * it has begun... 18:27, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

MediaWiki:Loginprompt ?

Should we temporarily put a note in MediaWiki:Loginprompt about the need to allow auth.wikimedia.org for logons? Seeing multiple reports. This text appears above the logon box. — xaosflux Talk 17:55, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds like a good idea — is there a pre-existing info page (why/how, etc.) we could link to in the message? — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 18:03, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
mw:SUL3 * Pppery * it has begun... 18:14, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
OK, added for now, if any issues feel free to revert. — xaosflux Talk 19:29, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

 You are invited to join the discussion at User talk:Cabayi § How can I find out if Nonie Darwish is covered in any way by ARBPIA?. Sdkb talk 18:14, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi,
A reader of the Oberon book asked me to add at the top and bottom of each page, navigation buttons similar to the "← previous" "↑ top" "next →" links of some Web based documents. A reasonable request and I've put two mock-ups in my sandbox. In Wikipedia the button templates work except for the style attribute. According to the table at the bottom of the button document style is available. Seems my syntax is wrong. Furthermore, the template is unavailable in Wikibooks?

In the div box mock-up, the text is linked; not the whole box. The person asking for navigation insisted the box be clickable. He noted "... really frustrating to click a box, only to find out that you have to click the link." I agree but couldn't make the markup work. Help to fix either of these arrangements appreciated. Thanks, ... PeterEasthope (talk) 18:31, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You might find {{Skip to top and bottom}} useful. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:43, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Error message

Just for documentation, in case it is a bigger problem:

MediaWiki internal error.

Original exception: [c946df9e-af42-4d60-87c9-0136bcf9d82d] 2025-03-19 20:28:25: Fatal exception of type "Wikimedia\RequestTimeout\EmergencyTimeoutException"

Exception caught inside exception handler.

Set $wgShowExceptionDetails = true; at the bottom of LocalSettings.php to show detailed debugging information.

— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 20:33, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

What were you doing when this occurred? — xaosflux Talk 22:03, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Xaosflux I've been getting the same error, mostly when visiting Special:MyContributions.
The most recent one (approx 5 mins ago).
MediaWiki internal error.
Original exception: [c2b93251-f505-4c5f-9026-64c87b61f28c] 2025-03-20 11:03:13: Fatal exception of type "Wikimedia\RequestTimeout\EmergencyTimeoutException"
Exception caught inside exception handler.
Set $wgShowExceptionDetails = true; at the bottom of LocalSettings.php to show detailed debugging information.
I think they've just moved dumps generation back to the main database Phab:T368098#10641387, I seem to recall that dumps generation was causing similar disruption in the past? 86.23.109.101 (talk) 11:11, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Broken archive title at Talk:2024 Spanish floods/Archives/ 1

No archive shows up in the {{talk header}} at Talk:2024 Spanish floods. 

{{User:ClueBot III/ArchiveThis
| age                 =2160
| archiveprefix       =Talk:October 2024 Spain floods/Archive
| numberstart         =1
| maxarchsize         =75000
| header              ={{Archive}}
| minkeepthreads      =5
| format              = %%i
}}
<!-- Template:Setup cluebot archiving -->

I see nothing in the config that would add the 3 characters "s/ ". There was a move but no redirect, so I'm surprised at what User:ClueBot III is doing. 216.58.25.209 (talk) 21:31, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

216.58.25.209, probably the space before %%i? — Qwerfjkltalk 21:34, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. I copied and adapted a working config from another page, and temporarily disabled it while waiting for my RMTR. I assume the 2 letters "s/" are from the wrong |archiveprefix= after the move. 216.58.25.209 (talk) 21:49, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I've moved the archive and re-enabled the archiving. This is indeed what happens when the archiveprefix doesn't match the page title with ClueBot III. lowercase sigmabot III silently ignores such cases and Aidan9382-Bot fixes some of them. Graham87 (talk) 04:25, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

invalid returnUrlToken?

My bot just started getting an error "invalid returnUrlToken" when it tries to edit. Anybody know what this is related to? Presumably there's been a recent change to Mediawiki, because this only started happening a few days ago. —scs (talk) 03:38, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm. Per a question just above, there's a good change it has something to do with SUL3. —scs (talk) 03:43, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Bots should generally use either OAuth or bot passwords, not the web interface for login.
That said, can you check what URLs your bot is hitting (including redirects)? Tgr (WMF) (talk) 10:37, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Tgr (WMF): Oh, don't I know it. (Over the years I've made several desultory attempts to use the API, like a regular botherd. Pretty sure now's the time to do that for real.)
Yup, that's my next step, when I have time to dig into it. (My bot uses a crufty old framework that I can barely remember the details of.)
Thanks very much for the pointers to OAuth and bot passwords. One of those is probably just what I need. —scs (talk) 11:53, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Keep in mind, oauth/bot passwords are certainly a good idea, but the main change would be to use the api vs screenscraping the webui. — xaosflux Talk 12:46, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
FWIW returnUrlToken is used for top-level autologin, a chain of redirects when you visit Special:Userlogin. It's not SUL3 related per se but there have been some small changes to its behavior recently. As a quick workaround, you can avoid autologin by setting the CentralAuthAnonTopLevel=1 cookie or the centralAuthAutologinTried=1 URL parameter when visiting Special:Userlogin. The login UI and workflow is changing in other ways, though, and will probably break your bot soon anyway if it uses web scraping. Tgr (WMF) (talk) 12:54, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Proposals

"WP:PROPOSE" redirects here. For proposing article deletion, see Wikipedia:Proposed deletion and Wikipedia:Deletion requests.

RFC: Officeholder infoboxes

Should we delete order numberings from infoboxes of office holders?
See previous related discussions:

GoodDay (talk) 18:58, 9 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Survey (Officeholder infoboxes)

  • Yes - We have the numberings in the pros & that's enough. GoodDay (talk) 18:58, 9 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Mostly yes, as the numberings in most offices are done by WP editors counting and adding that information, and rarely is a numbering system used by reliable sources. But where the numbering is frequently used by reliable sources (such as in reference to the US presidency), it does not make sense to hide that. So numbering should only be used when it is clear that it is a common mention within the reliable sources. --Masem (t) 19:04, 9 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    We should indeed not hide the numbers from the US presidents. We should present them when we are writing about the presidents themselves, such as in the lead sentences; but the infobox and the succession box parameters present the office. See the messy "45th & 4th president of the United States" heading with different data underneath at the Donald Trump page. In any case, leaving the numbers in the US infoboxes guarantees that they will creep back into all the other infoboxes, because monkey see, monkey do. Surtsicna (talk) 20:16, 9 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Sometimes, only delete them if there is no (consistent) numbering used by reliable sources. I don't think we need to have a majority of reliable sources using the numbering (after all, no source is complete and information isn't excluded just because it isn't present in most sources). However, we still want sources to use a numbering, and that numbering to be consistent, to avoid OR. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 19:44, 9 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Sometimes for reasons laid out by Chaotic Enby ꧁Zanahary꧂ 20:08, 12 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yes, because the way they are presented in the infobox does not make sense. The numbers are not part of the office. The number 46, for example, refers to Joe Biden specifically, not to the office he held. Name him 46th in the lead sentence, but not in the infobox or in the succession box, because in those templates we are talking about the office, not Biden personally. And of course, these numbers inevitably creep into topics where they are not used at all. Surtsicna (talk) 20:09, 9 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yes, but they should be elsewhere, the current spot makes no sense. Maybe a specific Number field? I don't have any good ideas, but agree they don't belong where they are currently. --JackFromWisconsin (talk | contribs) 23:03, 10 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • No, though it certainly isn't mandatory to use them. Officeholding is often sequential. Sometimes, the ordinal is part of the title itself, as in certain titles of nobility. Sometimes, that fact is also verifiable (per ChaoticEnby's argument) and sometimes it isn't. Sometimes it's irrelevant, as in the overlapping terms of US Senators. If, for a given office, order is relevant and verifiable, there is no better place to put in than in the infobox, since it provides readers with a clear navigational feature, along with preceded by and succeeded by. Of course editors on the given topic can make the decision as to whether it's relevant, meaningful, and verifiable, but taking it out of the template removes valuable information in all case.
The concerns raised by Surtsicna and JackFromWisconsin—"George W. Bush was not preceded by Bill Clinton in the role of '43rd President of the United States'"—refer to a visual interpretation that had never occurred to me before I read it. I would suggest that most people read the linked text different and understand that the ordinal isn't part of the title.--Carwil (talk) 00:34, 11 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If the ordinals are not part of the office, we should not present them as if they were. Surtsicna (talk) 00:46, 11 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion (Officeholder infoboxes)

I realize that their may be resistance to 'deletion', concerning American, Australian, Canadian & New Zealand officeholders. But, perhaps we can eliminate the numberings from most (if not all) officeholders' infoboxes. GoodDay (talk) 18:58, 9 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I believe that numbering can be important, and I believe this extends further than american, australian, canadian and NZ officeholders to most of the world. Thehistorianisaac (talk) 06:56, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Should other groups be able to use 2FA by default?

Should other groups be able to use 2FA by default? ~/Bunnypranav:<ping> 16:13, 11 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Background

In Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 216#Allowing page movers to enable two-factor authentication, many people advocated for other advanced and even that all used should be able to use 2FA by default. This RfC clearly asks which groups should get 2fa. This is asking for them to have the permission/ability to turn 2FA on, i.e. have the oathauth-enable right, not require these group holders to use 2fA. This will allow these users to enable 2FA themselves and not have to ask stewards at meta. Feel free to choose one or more options:

~/Bunnypranav:<ping> 16:14, 11 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Survey (2FA for more groups)

  • Support option 2, since that adds a basic barrier of I know what I'm doing. As said by me in the previous discussion, the responsibility and accountability of protecting your account lie on you and not WMF. Yes, they can assist in recovery, but the burden should not lie on them.~/Bunnypranav:<ping> 16:13, 11 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose 1 and 2 - what this really would do is allow people to enroll in 2FA without asserting that they know what they're doing, which seems bad. Weak oppose 6, since rollback doesn't really grant you the ability to do anything you couldn't already, so it shouldn't be a distinguisher here. Weak support the others, I guess. * Pppery * it has begun... 16:45, 11 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support 2 and weak support 1. We don't need to put a barrier to make sure people know what they're doing if they choose to set up 2FA. If they activate it, we can presume that they have an idea of how it works, and any consequence for their mistakes only affects them. Only weak support for 1 as the presumption of "they have an idea of what they're doing" is a bit lower for very new editors who might not be as familiar with the interface, but we can still presume that a new user finding the 2FA setting didn't do it fully by accident. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 16:54, 11 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • I was the person who made the original page mover 2FA proposal. I think that out of these groups, only file movers have a significant need for 2FA access, since that right allows for the ability to make rapid changes that could affect tens of thousands of pages (similar to template editors). However, I'm not opposed to allowing all autoconfirmed users to enable 2FA, as long as they must turn on a preference where they accept the risks of using it. This is similar to how the IP Information tool works. JJPMaster (she/they) 17:02, 11 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I would also be fine with encoding in PHP the current process with a preference checkbox, since that's all the stewards ask for as it stands. * Pppery * it has begun... 17:08, 11 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose all until Special:Manage Two-factor authentication (MediaWiki:Oathauth-ui-general-help) is rewritten in non-technical language that clearly explains the benefits and risks of enabling 2FA and links to the detailed help at WP:2FA. Once that has been rewritten then I'll consider which if any of the above groups should have access by default. Thryduulf (talk) 17:49, 11 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I written up a draft at User:Bunnypranav/Oathauth-ui-general-help, and also posted an edit request at MediaWiki talk:Oathauth-ui-general-help. I am open to anyone editing my sandbox to create a more detailed and descriptive message. ~/Bunnypranav:<ping> 12:34, 12 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Thryduulf, gentle reminder if you would be willing to reconsider your decision, now that the message has been updated. Thanks! ~/Bunnypranav:<ping> 12:22, 27 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Oppose all. Despite the improved message, I'm convinced by the arguments below that the whole system is still not robust enough for casual adoption. It's true that going to meta to make a request is a small, arguably tedious hurdle, but it forces turning on 2FA to be a considered, conscious action which serves to reduce the number of people who will get locked out of their account accidentally. Thryduulf (talk) 14:29, 27 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose all. There is already insufficient support for those who currently must or may have the WMF 2FA. The software is not yet properly supported, the planned-for upgrades are not yet complete, the documentation for the software is incomplete and not intuitive, and the only people who can turn off 2FA in case of loss of device are the very very small number of people with shell access. None of the roles listed above have the ability to adversely affect any project any more than an average user, unlike those few roles that today are required to have 2FA. Risker (talk) 19:01, 11 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    This might sound a bit blunt, but why should WMF care so much about recovering account who lost 2FA. If a user with no email given loses their password, its their own fault, WMF need not take any responsibility it tediously recovering it. Then can try and help, but they are not liable. Also, as SD has said below, the most newbie and non-techie friendly version a 2FA app, at least on android, is Google Authenticator, which drastically minimizes risk of losing by automatically syncing to a google account. Other platforms also offer such easy to use solutions. ~/Bunnypranav:<ping> 12:20, 12 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Because people mess this up all the time, then start using up volunteer and staff time complaining about it. — xaosflux Talk 15:41, 12 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    How many people will even take the time and effort to enable 2FA? One has to install an authenticator app (probably with cloud backup enabled by default), scan the code, and enter a verification code from the app before even turning it on. This is not something like I clicked a button and now I'm locked out account level easy to mess up; those people who manage to enable this, and lose access to it should be less than people without an email who lost the password and now did a clean start. We can advise these limited people to do the same as well (fresh start, with a CU verify if they need advanced perms early). ~/Bunnypranav:<ping> 07:29, 13 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Trust me, a shockingly high number of people screw up 2FA. There are 2 solutions to this problem. Either a) we don't care. We put a big warning, and if you mess it up you are permanently locked out. Or b) we decide its acceptable to use a lower level of validation for unprivleged accounts. Something like we send an email and wait 7 days and unlock the account if nobody responds. This defeats some of the point of 2FA, as an attacker can now attack this weaker process, but perhaps is a reasonable compromise. It all comes down to what you want to protect against with 2FA. There is a certain sense that in practise the real thing 2FA protects against is people reusing passwords (credential surfing), because in essence its a fancy password that wikipedia chooses for you. Bawolff (talk) 12:51, 13 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    "The software is not yet properly supported, the planned-for upgrades are not yet complete" – as far as I know, and based on ACN's comment at the last discussion, 2FA is not being actively worked on. If we are waiting for upgrades, we will likely be waiting years.
    "None of the roles listed above have the ability to adversely affect any project any more than an average user" – Autopatrolled and NPP can bypass article review processes and are highly coveted by promotional scam rings like Orangemoody, which you should be very familiar with. In my opinion, these groups are, right behind governments, the largest and most organized threat to Wikipedians. Toadspike [Talk] 07:48, 18 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose all per Risker above. If someone really really wants to test 2FA they can already opt-in after being warned about risks. — xaosflux Talk 19:09, 11 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose I am an admin and I don't use 2FA. The reason for that is that the implementation is (as Risker says above in far more polite language that me) a pile of crap, and I don't think the devs want an ever-increasing list of people who have managed to lock themselves out. Black Kite (talk) 19:13, 11 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support 3–6 Like I mention in the reply below to Risker, a lot of the opposition to 2FA arises out of ignorance of how 2FA works. People seem to assume that the "multitude of commercial and free 2FA software" are incompatible with Wikimedia sites when in fact, they aren't. You can very well use Google Authenticator, Authy, Ente Auth and other 2FA apps with WMF sites – all three of these apps support syncing of your tokens in the cloud, ensuring that even if you lose your device, you can still view tokens using another device. – SD0001 (talk) 12:15, 12 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    The real problem is the collision of two situations: (a) many end users are ignorant of how 2FA works technically, and have no idea how to properly manage their recovery codes or backup and restore anything; (b) unlike many other places you may set up 2FA, we don't have good other ways to authenticate someone to aid in helping them recover from their errors in (a), nor a support system to with cycles to do it if they could. — xaosflux Talk 23:29, 12 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support all, but from what I understand of the conversation above is that it's not well-implemented. MFA/2FA is great for account security, which is why nearly every service does it. Google can enable it for every user, why shouldn't we? SWinxy (talk) 16:53, 13 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Google can enable it for every user, why shouldn't we? The biggest difference between Google's 2FA and Wikimedia's 2FA is that Google has approaching infinitely better support for those that are locked out of their account due to 2FA than we do, both in terms of number of options and in terms of support bandwidth. Google has multiple options available to establish identity, and literal teams of customer support people who can implement and help. Wikimedia sometimes has an email address, very occasionally has personal knowledge and very little else in terms of options, and rather than dedicated customer support people only a circa single digit number of developers who can implement and help. The difference is comparable to that between a multi-lane highway and a barely used footpath through the woods - both will get you from A to B but that's about where the similarities end. Thryduulf (talk) 18:39, 13 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Google also still gets criticism for permenantly locking people out of their accounts with no recourse. Bawolff (talk) 19:05, 13 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Option 2 and probably everything else. Serial (speculates here) 19:10, 13 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support 3, 4, and 5 based on ACN's comment and ToBeFree's comment, especially "there will be page movers who wouldn't request a global permission for 2FA yet would enable it in their preferences if it was a simple option", at the pagemover discussion. Autopatrolled and NPP are the most coveted userrights to scam rings and other malicious groups targeting Wikipedians. It is ridiculous that a user wishing to use 2FA has to bother a Steward to do so. 2FA is not going to get any better anytime soon, so we may as well encourage folks to start using it now and lower the barriers to doing so.
I am neutral on 1, 2, and 6. I don't think rollbackers need extra security, and while I agree in principle that most users should have access to 2FA I strongly disagree that extended confirmed = "I know what I'm doing". On the other hand, checking a box in your Preferences to activate 2FA does mean you should know what you're doing, and (assuming the explanatory pages are well-written) it's mostly your fault if you screw up. Toadspike [Talk] 07:37, 18 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support 2 as optional choice for EC - i see args for technical limitations and user incompetence to be strange. It should not be hard to extend a preexisting system to other users, including those seeking additional protection. Honestly, if its buried as a preference for an account, most folks won't use it. User:Bluethricecreamman (Talk·Contribs) 04:46, 19 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • If you really want 2FA you can just go to Meta and get the requisite user right freely - provided you've understood the risks involved. It would be better and easier to direct users interested in 2FA to go there, IMHO, and make that venue more visible. No need to separately enable 2FA access for a large number of users here - that's redundant, at the least. JavaHurricane 23:24, 20 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    The main concern raised is why should people bother to go to meta and request stewards? 2FA/MFA should be allowed by default. ~/Bunnypranav:<ping> 06:44, 21 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Because we actually want people to understand the problems with the current 2FA system that Risker brings up before they get it for themselves. And if it really is a big deal to have to actually click on a link, read through a documentation page and write two lines in a request: well, what do I know. I for my part see this as a solution in search of a problem, and one that may result in users not being aware of the issues by default. And your blunt reply to Risker above is poorly thought: people can lose access to their authenticator app and security codes without any fault of their own, such as purely accidental loss of device, or a change in device, etc. It definitely is the WMF's job to care about if 2FA users can get locked out of their accounts and what should be done in such circumstances. For what it's worth, I had got 2FA for myself but had to turn it off when changing devices because for whatever reason Google Authenticator wouldn't load my Wikimedia 2FA on the new device. JavaHurricane 19:30, 21 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    If a person is signing up for a service [MFA], I guess they should be aware of the risks involved and what they're getting into? WMF should not have the job of taking care of users who just like to turn on stuff for the sake of testing it, and then lose their account. If I have to give a comparison, this is like saying you should request someone to be able to add a password to your account, because some people do not know how to save it and lose access to their account (lost password, no email set). If we can entrust saving a password to every user, why can't the same be extended to MFA? After all, it's another password. ~/Bunnypranav:<ping> 07:18, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    The flaw in this analogy is that there is no way to "not have a password" or some other authorization credential and still have user accounts be a thing—there must necessarily be some credential for the computer at the other end to request, for you to prove that you are actually User:Example and not, J. Q. Random, or, another computer executing a program to guess passwords and crack into people's accounts. (And of course, as-is, people can edit without any account, subject to some restrictions.)
    This in fact—no accounts—is precisely how Wikipedia was when it first began back in the primeval eons of 2001 on Usemodwiki! There are no user accounts on Usemodwiki; the site is simply world‐writable by all and sundry. "Administrative tasks" such as deleting and blocking were protected behind "the admin password": the way you originally became an admin was, you asked Jimbo on the mailing list and if he approved he emailed you the password. (Have a look at nostalgia:Wiki Administrators.)
    This is the origin of what functions were originally bundled into the "administrator" package. When what became Mediawiki was first written, it essentially just copied the functions of UseMod and that distinction between "regular user" and administrator, only now with actual individual user accounts with password authentication, hooked into the Mediawiki SQL database backend. --Slowking Man (talk) 05:33, 23 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    @Slowking Man The analogy seems wrong, but it is actually being done, IRC. Unless you specifically set a password, your nickname is free for anyone to use (Ofcourse I'm not ranting about IRC, it is an example). Same can be extended for my argument about widely available MFA in Wikimedia, like we have a password granted by default to users, why can't we give them the opportunity to get a second password (MFA)? ~/Bunnypranav:<ping> 06:02, 23 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    There is a bit of a distinction: In IRC, two clients can't both have the same nick at once. The distinction arises because IRC is a stateful protocol, while HTTP (Web) is stateless. In IRC, servers keep track of which client currently has nick X; in HTTP servers have no concept of "users" or "usernames" or "user X is currently connected to me" (a connection state), anything like that. All that, where it exists, is implemented "on top" of HTTP in the application layer via mechanisms like Web cookies. (Similarly IRC nick "ownership" and authentication are implemented "on top" of IRC—which is a very rudimentary protocol—by adding "network services" like NickServ, which are just "bot" programs that sit on the network as users with superuser powers and (in the case of nicks) kick people off a nick unless they authenticate with the password.)
    The IRC case is actually quite similar to how "anonymous" users work in Mediawiki: because of TCP being stateful and connection-oriented, and IP using globally-unique "public" addresses, two clients can't both have the same IP address at once (analogy: IRC nicks). There can't be a situation where one-half of an edit from 1.2.3.4 is from one person, and the second half of the edit is from a different person on another continent. However IP addresses can be reassigned, so from one edit to the next, 1.2.3.4 can be different people.
    Also, from reading others' comments, my understanding is that 2FA de facto already is available to anyone who wants it? You just have to jump through the hoop of going to Meta and asking for it. --Slowking Man (talk) 17:02, 23 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Also, from reading others' comments, my understanding is that 2FA de facto already is available to anyone who wants it? You just have to jump through the hoop of going to Meta and asking for it.
    Yes, anyone who wants it and isn't in a 2FA group here just needs to:
    1. Know they need to ask at Meta
    2. Ask at Meta
    3. Convince whoever it is at Meta that does the processing of requests that they understand the risks.
    My understanding is that all that is required for 3 is:
    1. Making the request in the right place
    2. Stating that you have read the documentation and/or understand the risks
    3. Not doing/saying something that makes it obvious you don't understand the risks
    Thryduulf (talk) 18:17, 23 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Apologies if I did not get it clear, IRC was just an example with no intentions to get into the nitty-gritties of the tech behind it. Since 2FA is just frame a rationale to stewards that you know what it is and what can be the risks, I proposed that everyone*(EC if option 2, autoconfirmed if option 1) have it by default, with an additional change to the 2FA interface message (MediaWiki:Oathauth-ui-general-help) to clearly indicate the risks. I believe that it should help give the opportunity to help more people to secure their accounts. ~/Bunnypranav:<ping> 12:47, 24 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    In re If we can entrust saving a password to every user, why can't the same be extended to MFA?
    We entrust saving a password to every user, and people do lose their accounts this way. However, the difference is that the password works the way people expect, and the 2FA software is ...maybe not quite so likely to meet people's expectations. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:27, 26 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support > 3 provided it is optional, tbh the current defacto granting standard for oauth-testers on meta seems to be "has a pulse and/or has eyes". We are merely going to save folks a trip down to meta with this change. Sohom (talk) 04:50, 21 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support 3, 4, 5 and 6 per Toadspike and TBF. Users in these groups are trusted by the community to wield advanced permissions that can do damage in the wrong hands so any argument about incompetence does not convince me, especially after MediaWiki:Oathauth-ui-general-help was updated to mention the risks. If such users want to secure their accounts with 2FA, they shouldn't need to ask anyone for it. Nickps (talk) 16:18, 4 March 2025 (UTC) 6 added on 18:52, 4 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    On second thought, supporting 6 as well. While not as dangerous as the others, I think that a user trusted with rollback can be trusted with 2FA as well. Nickps (talk) 18:52, 4 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't think 2FA is a trust-based permission. Whether or not someone can use it is determined more by a baseline understanding of the technical risks of using it rather than trust. JJPMaster (she/they) 13:32, 11 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    That's not what I'm saying. My point is that editors are expected to be competent. This is even more true for editors holding advanced permissions. Therefore, we shouldn't insult their intelligence by having them tell the stewards that they understand the risks before they gain access. We should just assume they do. Nickps (talk) 13:56, 11 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    We expect editors to be competent at editing the encyclopaedia, we do not require them to be competent with poorly supported technologies with risks that are significantly greater than (and significantly different to) anything else you can casually turn on in your settings. Ensuring someone is actively aware of the risks of permanently losing access to their account is not an insult to their intelligence but a proportionate precaution. Thryduulf (talk) 14:28, 11 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    anything else you can casually turn on in your settings There's nothing casual about enabling 2FA even if you don't have to ask the stewards for permission. It's an process with multiple steps involving at least 2 different UIs, (WP and the 2FA app). Multiple warnings are given before and during this process. If the user ignores them and gets locked out of their account because of it, it's on them to convince T&S to let them back in. Otherwise, that's a CIR global lock right there. Nickps (talk) 15:49, 11 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose all, you can already get 2FA tester by just asking the stewards for it, and they'll just ask if you actually read the policy (ie: don't blame us if you screw up 2FA because you didn't read it). I don't think we should really need to make it easier, especially when the only support for being locked out is essentially to convince Trust and Safety/sysadmins that you're the legitimate owner of the account. EggRoll97 (talk) 16:34, 4 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose all, as the benefits basically consist of a couple fewer requests on SRP and are far outweighed by the massive backlog for T&S/sysadmins that would result. I am not convinced that occasional non-admin compromised accounts pose a major security risk. ⟲ Three Sixty! (talk, edits) 16:07, 11 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion (2FA for more groups)

  • "with a registered email" isn't even an available option in this software. If someone wants this, I hope they are ready to write a patch to build it... — xaosflux Talk 19:11, 11 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Just noting that a lot of people already have non-WMF 2FA in one form or another. For me, it's that I need it to open my password keeper, which I need to do because I have no idea what my passwords for WMF wikis are. So I've already done a 2FA before I even log into my account. There is a multitude of commercial and free 2FA software, much of which is better supported than the WMF variant; if people are really concerned about the security of their account, they should consider that. Or not do things like use public computers or wifi in Starbucks, or choosing easy passwords; account security is ultimately the responsibility of the user. Note that I'm not kicking the WMF on this point; I know that improving this software and ensuring proper "ownership" and ongoing maintenance is very much on their radar, but there's still a lot of work to be done. We do need to keep in mind that the underlying software was created for WMF staff (at the time a much smaller and cohesive group), and it was maintained by volunteers for most of its existence. Risker (talk) 22:50, 11 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    There is a multitude of commercial and free 2FA software, much of which is better supported than the WMF variant Please avoid spreading FUD about 2FA. There is no WMF "variant" – Wikimedia uses the same, standard TOTP protocol like most other websites. I have been using 2FA for Wikimedia and other accounts for 5 years and have never faced any issue, nor seen any difference in Wikimedia's implementation as compared to others. – SD0001 (talk) 12:15, 12 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    My point is that many people are already using 2FA just to get to their WMF account. Having to then use the WMF 2FA on top of that adds zero security. The WMF requires the use of its own software (what I call the WMF variant) for certain permission types. It is in fact distinct from others, only a very limited number of WMF people are authorized to reset it. This is all well and good for English Wikipedia, but we are the exception. We speak the same language as the primary contacts to get things fixed. Most of the rest of the world doesn't. There is zero security or other benefit for those groups to use 2FA on their WMF account. The project doesn't benefit. The more people who use this particular extension, the more WMF resources are needed to support users who mess up. Given the non-existent security benefit for the websites, that is not good use of our resources. (And yes, I would call the one that I need for my password keeper a variant, just as I would the one I need for Google, and the one I need for two other apps I use. They may use the same principles, but they are all linked to specific functions and are only useful on that one site or group of sites.) Risker (talk) 19:01, 12 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    We don't use the term 2FA for anything other than mw:Extension:OATHAuth – doing that would be very confusing. The WMF requires the use of its own software (what I call the WMF variant) for certain permission types. It is in fact distinct from others,... Which permission types? Which software? I don't think what you are referring to has anything to do with this proposal. – SD0001 (talk) 07:23, 13 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    You can use any compatible client-side software for this, server-side you obviously have to use that extension. WMF only requires 2FA enrollment for these groups: meta:Category:Global user groups that require two-factor authentication. — xaosflux Talk 09:54, 13 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    This is a bit of a pet peeve of mind, but i think we should stop telling people not to use the wifi in starbucks. While that was good advice in 2010, its not really accurate anymore (hsts preload makes pulling off a MITM attack against Wikipedia very difficult even if you are on path). As far as what you're describing with a password manager - that is very good security practise, but would traditionally not be considered a form of 2FA (arguably though the security benefits are mostly the same). Bawolff (talk) 12:34, 13 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Pure technical note: things like password managers are nice, but they don't add any "extra" security to your WMF account—besides encouraging you to use a better password. The password is the only thing that proves your identity as the account owner to WMF's computers, and anyone with it "is you" as far as the computers know and has total control over the account. This is "one-factor authentication": the password is the only thing, factor, needed to authenticate. Calling a password manager "non-WMF 2FA", while I understand where that's coming from, can mislead those not fluent with the concepts. The point of 2FA is that authenticating to the system on the other end, requires you to provide both of those two factors. Just the password by itself isn't sufficient. Hence if a malicious actor guesses or obtains the password, they still can't do anything with it without also obtaining access to that second factor. Analogy: something locked with two locks, keyed to different keys, so that both keys are required to unlock. --Slowking Man (talk) 21:57, 18 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • IMO Option 1 (and maybe Option 2) should, if they gain consensus here, also require global consensus. It wouldn't make much sense for 2FA access to be automatically granted to anyone who makes a few en.wikipedia edits but restricted to advanced permission holders on every other WMF wiki. ⟲ Three Sixty! (talk, edits) 15:58, 13 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Basically, yup. I tried to pass an RFC on meta-wiki to enable for all there, so that you would at least have to make a trip over to a non-content project and read a centralized, translated warning - but it failed to gain consensus. The lack of support is a real problem, but once someone makes it over to metawiki 2FA access is pretty much shall-issue - we mostly only check that a requester says that they read the warning. — xaosflux Talk 16:11, 13 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • A notice for this discussion has been added to Help talk:Two-factor authentication. Nickps (talk) 01:07, 7 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal to not refer to the children of Donald Trump as simply "Trump" on their articles

Originally posted on Talk:Donald Trump, but I was advised to post it here instead.

Before I start, yes, I am aware that what I am proposing violates Wikipedia's manual of style, however I believe that in this case, an exception is justified.

While I was scanning the article of Tiffany Trump, I encountered the following sentence: "In 2015, Trump worked as an intern for Vogue magazine and, in 2016, modelled for an Andrew Warren fashion show during New York Fashion Week". For a brief moment, I was pretty confused by this, until I realized that "Trump" in this context was referring to Tiffany, and not Donald Trump. I realised that the article on multiple occasions referred to Tiffany as "Trump", as would be typical on any other article per WP:SURNAME. However, this leads to other bizarre statements such as "In summer 2018, while on vacation in Greece with the actress Lindsay Lohan, Trump met Michael Boulos, a Lebanese-American business executive. The pair began a relationship and were married on November 12, 2022, at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida. In October 2024, it was announced that they were expecting their first child together."

While this convention works perfectly fine on most articles, I believe it is problematic on articles pertaining to the children of Donald Trump, as at this point the name "Trump" has become so heavily associated with the president himself that most people will instinctively think of D.J.T. whenever they see simply "Trump" written without a first name, which could lead to confusion, as well as Wikipedia passages potentially being taken out of context (as I have done here). For this reason, I believe it would be best if Wikipedia articles did not refer to Trump's children, or indeed anyone carrying the Trump surname, as simply "Trump", with the exception of D.J.T. himself. While I appreciate that Wikipedia's manual of style is robust, and has been painstakingly developed over the span of many years, all guidelines have exceptions, and I believe that this should be one of them.

As for how it should be handled, I think the best way would be to simply use their first names instead (and append Jr. in the case of Donald Trump Jr.), however I am not explicitly proposing that this is the way it should be handled. My proposal here is simply to stop referring to them as "Trump" alone, and for another convention to be agreed upon. Alex the weeb (talk) 13:44, 1 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree that Donald Trump is such an exception as to warrant dropping our guidelines. Surely you didn't think that he had worked for Vogue or married someone called Michael? If I am reading about snooker and see the name "Trump" I think of Judd, not Donald. There is life beyond contemorary American politics. Phil Bridger (talk) 14:13, 1 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Given that any article on Trump’s children will likely mention their father, and that in the context of articles relating to that family confusion can arise as to which member of the family is being referred to as “Trump”… I agree that we should specify more clearly. This obviously isn’t needed in an article on the snooker player. Blueboar (talk) 14:50, 1 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • After writing several articles about United States first ladies, including Melania Trump, I've found that it's simply not practical to have a clear understandable article using a surname in these cases. If every part of the article goes back and forth mentioning different people with the surname Trump, then it should refer to them by their first names for readability purposes. I recently promoted Edith Roosevelt to featured article with her and her immediate family members referred to by first name, and I believe the article benefits from it. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 16:48, 1 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm not sure we need a policy on this. Perhaps it should be settled on an article by article basis in normal editing discussion. Wehwalt (talk) 16:50, 1 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Note this usage is covered by Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Biography § People with the same surname. isaacl (talk) 16:53, 1 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I see this problem when only one member of the family is famous (or infamous) and the others are only known because of their relative. It's even more awkward in the childhood section where most the people the subject interacts with have the same surname. The max is when a Briton becomes so famous that he's ennobled and from then on everybody calls him by his titular town or other namesake and this is also used in describing childhood activities. General Sir Arthur Wellesley is an example. I would prefer a bit more looseness in such matters, making him "Arthur" as a child, "Wellesley" as a soldier, and "Wellington" in politics. Jim.henderson (talk) 17:13, 1 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    The scenario of the commonly used name changing is covered by Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Biography § Subsequent use, which I believe the article follows (I appreciate it doesn't match your personal preference). isaacl (talk) 17:27, 1 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Thing is… as is stated at the top of the guideline page… “occasional exceptions may exist”. The question is: should this be one of those occasional exceptions? Blueboar (talk) 18:20, 1 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I think Wikipedia's guidance (and how the article mostly handles it) seems reasonable: use Wellesley until the event where he gained his title, then use Wellington. I don't see a reason to treat his childhood differently than the childhoods of other people. isaacl (talk) 18:32, 1 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Of course if an article refers to several people with the same surname we should disambiguate somehow, and first name is an obvious thing to use. My main problems with the OP are with the phrase "or indeed anyone carrying the Trump surname" and the implication that Donald Trump is unique in this regard. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:22, 1 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Trump and Wellington are only two examples of what could be made a more general guideline. I am often confused by unmarried women who only did anything notable after taking her new husband's name, and her biography backdates the name to her girlhood or premarital collaborations. Better to follow the usage of whatever time is being handled in each section, with a notice of each change both in the intro and at the time at happened. Or by a British Ambassador or whatever, who became Baron whatever, and continued doing important things. Jim.henderson (talk) 18:44, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
My knee-jerk reaction is that there's no reason to treat the Trump-children different in this regard than say John Shakespeare and Tom Shakespeare. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 19:46, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • This does not have the makings of any kind of "rule", it happens all the time in sections describing families that you write differentiation into the text but let writers be free how they want do so. In general, it remains, if the last mention is Sam Trump than Trump is going to refer to Sam. Also, this is nothing new, even in the United States: Adams, Astor, Rockefeller, Roosevelt, Bush, etc, etc, Alanscottwalker (talk) 20:12, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don't really see why this is a thing. Surely this is true for any famous person, and people who share their surname. Should we also not refer to Judd Trump as Trump? Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 20:34, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • This shouldn't need a special rule. Everything should be written in a way that is quick to understand and hard to misinterpret. That's just common sense, and outweighs even the manual of style. Where a reader is likely to be confused (to think of Donald when we meant Judd), allow editors the discretion to use whatever name best minimises the risk of misreading. Same goes for other famous names. Elemimele (talk) 15:33, 4 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • I recently had this problem with Gittings family, there are three John Sterett Gittings - the third is a "Jr." because his father had the same name, but the second took his name from the grandfather so is not "Jr." The only way to disambiguate the first and second is (birth-death). I'm all for first name though, particularly in "early life" sections when referring to the mother and fathers life. Convention for primary topic is last name throughout, any ancillary family can use first name, or some other method. -- GreenC 17:47, 4 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    You might find a phrase like "the elder Gittings" to be useful on occasion, and for childhood, there's sometimes a family nickname that can be presented (e.g., the man who is called "Junior" his whole life, so you might write about "his grandfather, who was called Junior..."). WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:04, 5 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    In the convention I am familiar with, the three John Sterett Gittingses would be JSG, JSG II , and JSG III. Junior would only be used for a son named after a father who was not named for any ancestor. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 09:16, 8 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think this can only be handled on a by-article basis, and it is up to the editors of each article to deal with any possible ambiguities. If there is a paragraph which mentions each of Donald, Donald junior, and Tiffany, the way to handle it is just like that—first names only. In this sort of situation, I think existing guidelines hold good, and it really doesn't matter who Donald Trump is when it comes to preventing ambiguity. The readers come first. Spartathenian (talk) 10:32, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

School Block

When schools are blocked indefinitely after kids going ahead and vandalizing multiple times cause its fun or cool, the IP often almost always gets blocked, with account creation blocked. Obviously kids who do want to edit Wikipedia will create an account and kids who vandalize because its just cool generally don't go through the hassle of that. This is why I propose that when Administrators block school IP addresses, they allow people to still create accounts. Of course if vandalism goes on even after a block is imposed through creating accounts, then an administrator can step in and block account creation access. I predict that this argument will spring up, so I will answer it: "Why not just create the account at home and login with it at school?". Well its simple, people might have accounts but they might not want to associate it with the school for safety and technical reasons. Heres an example: If a person is LGBTQ+ and they live in an extremely religious neighborhood which is hostile to the idea of LGBTQ+ and on Wikipedia they have edited heavily on LGBTQ+ topics or they may even identify as LGBTQ+ on their userpage, if they log in to Wikipedia and are caught they can face severe consequences by the community and their parents. Another example is accidentally leaving it logged in while at school, at home this would be fine as your likely using a personal computer, at school however someone can just walk in, see that your logged in to Wikipedia and start to vandalize. This is why having 2 separate accounts, one for school and one for personal reasons can avoid the examples above. DotesConks (talk) 05:23, 12 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In that case, I would suggest them to go through Wikipedia:Request an account, which explicitly points to school blocks as one of its relevant use cases. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 09:43, 12 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Do you know which schools are blocked indefinitely? Both Wikipedia:Blocking policy#IP address blocks and Wikipedia:Blocking IP addresses#Block lengths indicate that IPs shouldn't be blocked indefinitely. CambridgeBayWeather (solidly non-human), Uqaqtuq (talk), Huliva 03:21, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Note: We need an example of an IP address that was blocked indefinitely, not the name of a school. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:10, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That's what I meant. CambridgeBayWeather (solidly non-human), Uqaqtuq (talk), Huliva 22:27, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Rather than "Why not just create the account at home and login with it at school?" the question is "Why not create two accounts at home, and use one at home and the other at school?" That avoids all the issues you mentioned, you don't have to create them in different places. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 18:40, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hopefully identified as alternate accounts. Donald Albury 20:56, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You would definitely want to read WP:LEGITSOCK and WP:ALTACCN before creating an alternative account. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 21:16, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Good Night

We could put a table of acknowledgments of edits also comparing with the page, would that be good? Exxxtrasmall (talk) 05:41, 12 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Isn't that what the page history is for? Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 09:42, 12 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I can't. I prefer to compare non-editor articles with this parameter and not users. Exxxtrasmall (talk) 13:02, 12 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, Exxxtrasmall, but I can't make sense of either your original post or the reply above. Could you elaborate a bit, or say what you want to say in your native language and let the reader translate? Phil Bridger (talk) 13:40, 12 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Prefiro a segunda opção como falante nativo de português. Exxxtrasmall (talk) 18:45, 12 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know much Portuguese (only a few words I have learnt from friends, mostly Brazilian), but I think that translates to "I prefer the second option as a native Portuguese speaker". Phil Bridger (talk) 19:10, 12 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Podia criar uma tabela atualizada por um bot "ranqueando" (ranking) as 5000 páginas do domínio principal com mais "thanks log" (agradecimentos em português). Exxxtrasmall (talk) 19:16, 12 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You're saying that you'd find it useful to have a way to see a compact list of distinct contributors to an article instead of combing through every one of the thousands of contributions from a few contributors in order to get their names? If you want to get a list of who's contributed to an article instead of a list of every contribution, that's not currently easy to do AFAIK.
Now I'm trying to think of what that might be used for. If I understand your message correctly, your use case is to thank everyone who contributed to an article? (Sorry, I don't speak Portuguese either; just attempting to understand based on French and Latin cognates.) -- Avocado (talk) 22:31, 12 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
When viewing an article click history, then page statistics, which brings you to something like this that lists contributors. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 22:35, 12 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
TIL -- thank you! -- Avocado (talk) 22:35, 12 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Tipo, uma página assim ranqueando os artigos e não os usuários. Exxxtrasmall (talk) 15:57, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's there for articles, too. Use "View History" -> "Page Statistics". Here's an example: https://https://xtools.wmcloud.org/articleinfo/en.wikipedia.org/Portuguese_language#top-editors . And then a link at the bottom of that table to view "3,238 others". -- Avocado (talk) 16:10, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Mas usando como eixo/vetor cartesiano da tabela principal os artigos do domínio principal, não do domínio usuário Exxxtrasmall (talk) 16:21, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Conversion of all-numeric date formats

This is clearly not happening. * Pppery * it has begun... 23:53, 13 March 2025 (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.

Hi, all. First, I hope I've come to the right place. This proposal concerns WP:CITESTYLE and WP:DATEVAR, which I understand to be guidelines rather than actual policies. Please point me in the right direction if I've gone astray.

A very useful maintenance aid I've adopted is the 'MOSNUM dates' script written by User:Ohconfucius. Using this has made me aware of inconsistent date formats across a wide range of articles. WP:CITESTYLE rightly says citations within any given article should follow a consistent style. It goes on to deprecate all-numeric date formats with the exception of YYYY-MM-DD. As CITESTYLE says, an all-numeric date can be ambiguous as to which number is the month and which is the day.

I agree with YYYY-MM-DD up to a point, in that it does remove ambiguity for the editor. But, it does not remove it for the reader.

Even if 9 January 2024 (dmy format) appears in United States—or if January 9, 2024 (mdy format) appears in England—a reader of any nationality knows it means the ninth day of January. But, 2024-01-09 remains ambiguous, even if the reader is aware of CITESTYLE and believes YYYY-MM-DD is the only format we use for all-numeric dates. Bear in mind that very few readers will be aware of that and, probably, only a minority of editors too. Also, the reader has no certainty that a numeric value has been input correctly, because the editor might have got their numbers mixed and inadvertently written 2024-01-09 instead of 2024-09-01.

If the name of the month is written, whether as 9 January or January 9, the ambiguity is gone. Then, it's only a question of whether the topic is, for the most part, British or American.

Having said all of that, I do realise there must be some editors who find it easier to type a single numeric format than to choose and write one of dmy or mdy. I am not saying they should cease doing that, because it may create difficulties for them.

Proposal. When an article is reviewed, and to avoid ambiguity, dates should be converted to one of the dmy or mdy formats only, subject to the variety of English in which the article is written. All-numeric dates should be amended, but use of the YYYY-MM-DD format is not prohibited as a means of date input.

To achieve this, we would amend the second paragraph of CITESTYLE to confirm that YYYY-MM-DD remains an acceptable informat, but that it is subject to conversion when the article is reviewed, so that the outformat becomes either dmy or mdy. Furthermore, to ensure a smooth process, we would amend WP:DATEVAR so that it endorses reformatting of all-numeric dates to one of the dmy or mdy formats. Spartathenian (talk) 14:16, 12 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose as WP:CREEP. I do sometimes change YYY-MM-DD to dmy or mdy depending on the established style of the article, but I just do not see the necessity of mandating the change. - Donald Albury 14:47, 12 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose except if automatic conversion can be done by a bot. Many tools such as WP:ProveIt automatically generate YYYY-MM-DD dates, and it would be an added burden for new page reviewers to have to change them each time, especially given the already increasing backlog of articles to review. Noting that "converting dates to a consistent format" is not even, currently, a requirement for marking an article as reviewed. (edit 12:48, 13 March 2025 (UTC): striking the bot idea per Jc3s5h) Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 15:15, 12 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I agree it would be ideal if a bot could do the job. Thanks. Spartathenian (talk) 15:48, 12 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Striking this as a bot would be indiscriminate, and I now accept that some types of article do require the YYYY-MM-DD format. Spartathenian (talk) 12:43, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. YYYY-MM-DD AKA ISO 8601 is not ambiguous ("The standard provides a well-defined, unambiguous method of representing calendar dates and times in worldwide communications"), and indeed is the only correct format in some contexts. Date formats should be consistent in the prose (except where date formats are the subject of discussion, direct quotes, etc) and consistency of citation date formatting is a nice to have, but YYYY-MM-DD needs to remain one of the allowed formats. Thryduulf (talk) 16:23, 12 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    The Wikipedia article "ISO 8601", like all other Wikipedia articles, is not a reliable source. It would be rare indeed that ISO 8601 would be the only correct format in a Wikipedia article, if it's visible to the reader. Jc3s5h (talk) 12:18, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. These are fair points, but I get the impression you think I'm advocating compulsory conversion. I'm suggesting "should", not "must", so conversion is at the reviewer's discretion. If that is the de facto case already, I think we need to tighten the guidelines to make clear that the reviewer does have that discretion, as when using the 'MOSNUM dates' script. Thanks for taking part, all. Spartathenian (talk) 09:33, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose, YYYY-MM-DD is not only an ISO standard, it is commonly used in some countries, albeit likely due to word order in a non-English language. It is not really ambiguous, when is YYYY-DD-MM used? It may be unfamiliar to some readers, but I don't agree unfamiliarity necessitates depreciation. CMD (talk) 10:25, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Does anyone anywhere use YYYY-DD-MM? Otherwise I can't really see a reasonable possibility for confusion with YYYY-MM-DD. – Joe (talk) 11:52, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Hi, Joe, it's more a case of what readers know about formats. Someone might see 2024-03-12 and it may not be obvious to them that it means March last year, so they wonder if the event or action was in December. My concern is removing possible ambiguity, but I'm happy to accept YYYY-MM-DD where it is necessary as a standard format, as seems to be the case in some types of article. Perhaps we should be focusing on articles where it is not a necessary format? Thanks for your reply which is a good point. Spartathenian (talk) 12:06, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Answer: No. Nobody ever uses YYYY-DD-MM. It's not 'a thing' anywhere. The middle endian format for calendar dates never begins with the year. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:15, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strongly oppose conversion with a bot. I also use the script written by Ohconfucius, and it has fewer errors than any date-related bot or template I've seen, but it still requires manual supervision to spot errors it makes. Jc3s5h (talk) 12:22, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Hi, Jc3s5h. I agree, now, that we can't have a bot doing it, and I've struck my earlier comment. Due diligence is still necessary when using any kind of utility. Spartathenian (talk) 12:48, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose in general, and very strongly oppose tying this to the WP:NPP page review process. NPP's main job is to get rid of copyvios, hoaxes, and other WP:CSD candidates. Fiddling around with date formatting is not their job. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:19, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I haven't mentioned NPP, and I'm not seeking to tie this idea to any specific process. As I have said above, the target guidelines are CITESTYLE and DATEVAR, nothing else, because the sort of reviews I'm mainly interested in are routine article improvement and maintenance, where the 'MOSNUM dates' script is likely to be used. Spartathenian (talk) 19:22, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. Where in the world is YYYY-DD-MM ever used? The potential for confusion seems vanishingly small. older ≠ wiser 17:21, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    The proposal is not about YYYY-DD-MM, if that even exists. It is about the ambiguity of YYYY-MM-DD in comparison with the dmy and mdy formats in which the month is alphabetic, not numeric. Spartathenian (talk) 21:27, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment There seems to be some misunderstanding above. The YYYY-MM-DD format is not the only date format permitted by ISO 8601 - it is just one of several. I have written on this matter several times in the past, going right back to October 2009 - see for example: --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:28, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose as this is a standard way to write dates, and is not ambiguous at all. It would be good in template values, where it can be converted automatically to more readable localised dates. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 23:30, 13 March 2025 (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.

Encouraging use of alt text in lead images

Note: prior topic name was "Mandatory use of alt text in lead images"

As someone who is active on the Fediverse, cases of persons with impaired visibility are rising, this is why I encourage everyone to read WP:ALTTEXT before adding alt text to lead images. This suggestion might be useful because without the alt text on lead images (long pressing or hovering to the lead image), how can they describe them? Ahri Boy (talk) 06:34, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, this topic was removed without comment, so I've restored it. Spartathenian (talk) 06:53, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It certainly is a useful suggestion, but it should not be mandatory. We should do everything we can to assist editors and readers with disabilities. ALTTEXT is a big step forward. Spartathenian (talk) 07:06, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
To take an example: The Adventures of Tintin; what purpose does the alt text there serve? How does it help visually impaired readers, and how does it help them any better than the caption? Fram (talk) 09:25, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
For example, the lead image of Raiden Shogun has a different alt text, straight to the point. Ahri Boy (talk) 09:29, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I do support encouraging the use of alt text as much as possible, and having more editors familiarize themselves with WP:ALTTEXT. However, regarding making it mandatory, I'm afraid that it might be counterproductive, as not all editors know from the get-go what makes a good alt text, and might add something unhelpful instead (as I've also seen happen with short descriptions). To take Fram's example, the alt text on that picture is Tintin is standing in front of all of his friends. While technically accurate, it doesn't really match the image's function (to introduce the cast of the Tintin series), and the caption is in fact more helpful for that purpose. In that case, |alt=refer to caption could be more optimal. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 09:52, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Are you running in to situations where you have added alt text and other editors are arguing with you that there should be no alt text? What do you suggest is done for violations of this "mandatory" requirement? — xaosflux Talk 11:00, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I would worry that too strong language would discourage people from going out and finding images, which can be quite a task.--Wehwalt (talk) 13:34, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Making something like this mandatory isn't going to work, but as an accessibility issue it should be strongly encouraged. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 13:58, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
One way to encourage this would be to add something like "media has suitable alt text" to the Wikipedia:Good article criteria and Wikipedia:Featured article criteria. This wont fix the issues alone, no single thing can, but I think it will help. It would require separate discussions to implement but I don't imagine it being particularly controversial. Thryduulf (talk) 14:07, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's been discussed, I believe, from time to time for the Featured Article criteria but not added. The proper forum for that would be WT:FAC. Wehwalt (talk) 14:12, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Here is an RFC from 2019 on alt text in FAs. There have been a number of other discussions. Alt text is encouraged but not required.Wehwalt (talk) 15:32, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Personally I expect alt text on FAs and require it if I am checking them out for FA. FAs are supposed to be the best work on Wikipedia, and so should not have any identifiable deficiencies. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 20:33, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I also expect it on FAs. WP:FACR states that "[The article] follows the style guidelines", and those style guidelines state "An image's |alt= text takes the image's place for those who are unable to see the image. See Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Accessibility/Alternative text for images". CMD (talk) 14:26, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If someone were to open another RfC on requiring alt text at FA, I would definitely support it. Honestly I'm rather surprised by the arguments that were made against it in that 2019 RfC. --Grnrchst (talk) 11:43, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I believe the Design team has been looking at making this a structured/suggested task for more experienced users (suggested tasks are things that are evaluated while you edit the page and then make suggestions to editors) —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:39, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, this is a good idea. We already have {{Alt text missing}} for categorizing and tracking but it doesn't render anything on the page, so it's only useful if you go looking in the category for pages that are tagged. I just threw together {{No alt text}} for a cleanup banner, but haven't made the companion category or documentation, if anyone wants to run with it. Or maybe merge it with the first one since the structure is already there. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 13:02, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion at Wikipedia talk:User pages § RfC: allowing editors to opt-out of seeing floating decorative elements

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:User pages § RfC: allowing editors to opt-out of seeing floating decorative elements. HouseBlaster (talk • he/they) 23:03, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Bibliography

There could be a table of articles with more bibliographies; collecting data from ISSN, ISBN, ASIN and others for example. Exxxtrasmall (talk) 21:41, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This could be an intriguing idea, but you will have to give a little more context and explain what you're talking about. What is meant by "more" bibliographies?, and are you referring to Bibliography sections in articles or list articles like this one? Thanks, Cremastra (talk) 23:44, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Like this one, but per books. Exxxtrasmall (talk) 03:48, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I know that there are articles like that in Wikipedia, but I am not convinced that they belong. I feel that they fall afoul of Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not#Wikipedia is not a directory. Donald Albury 13:48, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I wholly agree. I once nominated a Bibliography article for deletion, with a similar rationale, not knowing that it was actually a type of article. Needless to say, it was kept, but I'm still not convinced they're encylcopedic. Cremastra (talk) 21:06, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I do also agree, although I believe bibliographies can be useful – just not necessarily as article themselves. It is true that we do have non-articles in the article namespace: lists, disambiguation pages, etc. However, bibliographies can be a bit more problematic as they may easily fall under WP:INDISCRIMINATE. Some other Wikipedia editions have a separate "Annex" namespace from which we might take inspiration, so these bibliographies can still be used as resources without necessarily being under the same status as mainspace. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 21:15, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That's actually a cool idea. (Maybe WP:RA should also be in Annex?) Cremastra (talk) 21:17, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Citizendium has a Bibliography sub-page for articles that includes all sources used in the article and Further reading. Personally, I want to keep cited sources in the article, but a Bibliography sub-page would be nice for an expanded Further reading section. Donald Albury 22:48, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I do agree with that! Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 00:00, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I previously proposed to Wikimedia the creation of a new page titled "Library" to be placed alongside the talk page. This page would serve as a dedicated space for listing the essential bibliographies. Given the impracticality of including an extensive list of references in a single article. Riad Salih (talk) 21:22, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That's a great idea, and could be an implementation of the "Annex" namespace I suggested earlier! Looking at other Wikipedia editions, Spanish Wikipedia has a very broad view of what goes in annexes, including a lot of list material which we would most likely prefer to keep in mainspace (Portuguese Wikipedia also used to have it, although it has been deprecated due to its subjectivity/vagueness in scope). On the opposite side, French Wikipedia has a Reference namespace, which only stores different editions of a single work.
I do believe that a middle ground aiming at covering bibliographies and lists of reference materials (including "Further reading" sections and {{refideas}}) could be a helpful namespace to have. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 21:52, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Set mentor status to away for other users

Sadly, sometimes Wikipedians take a break, or leave and never come back. If they were signed up as mentors, they keep getting assigned new mentees. Is there a way to set mentor status to "away" for another user? If not, this is urgently needed. I discovered this issue while looking at User talk:Bsoyka, who is currently MIA. Toadspike [Talk] 10:03, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I just discovered that admins can edit Special:ManageMentors. Not sure if they can only remove mentors, or also change their mentor status. Anyone mind setting Bsoyka to "away" or removing him from the list? We might also want to check for other inactive users, or automatically set mentors who haven't edited for two weeks to "away". It is pretty bad that we're directing new editors to mentors who are not active. Toadspike [Talk] 10:06, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, admins can edit MediaWiki:GrowthMentors.json, not Special:ManageMentors, and I think setting "weight" to 0 is the same thing as setting status to away. Toadspike [Talk] 10:08, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
One can actually edit directly, by clicking on the "edit" button in the corresponding line....I tried some things (just setting on "away", but then you need to set a date, and you have to edit the welcome text). Lectonar (talk) 10:11, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Update: I have set on "away" until November 20th. Courtesy @Bsoyka:. Lectonar (talk) 10:13, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. I cannot see the history of that page, but it looks like it's worked. I feel like marking inactive mentors as "away" would be a good bot task. Toadspike [Talk] 12:11, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hotcat for stub-sorting?

I don't know whether this is the right village pump but anyway: Hotcat is a pretty useful gadget that makes categorizing articles a lot intuitive and easier by recommending potential categories. And stub-sorting is a pretty important task too in categorizing different stubs on different subjects. So it seems weird to me that a Hotcat analogue designed to stub-sort isn't a thing. The basic principle is the same for both in that you categorize articles. Ofr how it could work, it's basically like Hotcat: Whenever this "StubCat" detects that you're on a stub page, it automatically at the end of the page but before the category list gives an option to easily add stub templates and suggest them. Seems like a pretty useful gadget to me, though I might be wrong since I'm by no means an experienced user yet. Yelps :) talk 11:51, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

What you are asking for is a gadget, they start out as user scripts. There doesn't seem to be a venue dedicated to requesting them, with Wikipedia talk:User scripts and Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) suggested in different places. Thryduulf (talk) 13:03, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
We have User:Danski454/stubsearch, which is pretty close to that! (the only difference with what you suggest being that it is at the top and not at the bottom) Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 13:48, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Requests for user scripts can be made at WP:User scripts/Requests BugGhost 🦗👻 15:27, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Idea lab

What do we want on the front page?

A recent RfC was closed with the suggestion that in six months an RfC be held on whether or not to abolish In The News. We could, of course, just abolish ITN without replacing it. However, I wonder if rather than asking "abolish ITN? yes/no" as the survey we might find consensus with "On the front page do we want a section for: In the news or X?" in a way that we wouldn't if we just discuss about abolishing ITN. Looking at some other projects things that I see on their front pages in roughly the place of ITN on ours are a featured image and information about how to participate. But I'm guessing there might be other ideas? And is this concept even a good one rather than the binary abolish/not? Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 22:51, 3 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I honestly think that we should revisit the two proposed amendments which were derailed by the added "abolish ITN" option. The close did find consensus against the nominated forms of the proposals though, so I'm not sure if re-asking these questions would be disruptive.
On replacing ITN, we could replace just the blurbs and the title with "Current events"—the newest blurb for each category, with 2 blurbs in a category if needed. (In practice, this will probably mean armed conflicts will have 2 blurbs most of the time and occasionally another category will have 2 blurbs.) Other possible replacements include a short introduction like simplewiki, a blurbed version of Wikipedia:Top 25 Report, {{tip of the day}}, a WikiProject spotlight, and perhaps the WP:Signpost headlines. Looking at all these, perhaps Current events is the only way we can preserve the innocent Current events portal and Recent deaths... Aaron Liu (talk) 23:20, 3 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Or we could, I dunno, list recent deaths whenever "deaths in <year>" pops up under Top25. Aaron Liu (talk) 23:28, 3 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
These suggests strike me as ways of "fixing" ITN (in quotes because I think some argue it doesn't need fixing?) rather than saying what is a different way we could use that mainpage space (which was my hope in this section). I found it interesting and not what I'd have initially thought that the closers felt abolishing was more likely to get consensus than some other form of fixing ITN as the two proposals that were on the table both had consensus against. I'm not sure what the value would be in revisiting either of those so soon. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:17, 4 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I did talk about ways to replace the space in my second paragraph and beyond. What do you think of those?

I'm not sure what the value would be in revisiting either of those so soon.

There was a lack of discussion and engagement regarding the fixing proposals after option 3 was introduced. I have had quite a few counterarguments that weren't addressed by newer !votes repeating the previous arguments. Maybe we could just split the RfC into separate, isolated sections. We could also change the proposals to be alternate qualification routes inserted. Aaron Liu (talk) 17:31, 4 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Anything featured on the main page needs to be representative of the quality of work that WP can produce, so a blind inclusion from something like Current Events is very much unlikely to always feature quality articles. — Masem (t) 05:04, 5 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Makes sense. I guess that also eliminates the "Top 25 Report" option. Aaron Liu (talk) 12:38, 5 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't agree that everything on the Main Page needs to be "representative of the quality of work that WP can produce", where what we "can" do means "the best we can do". I think we should emphasize timely and relevant articles even when they are underdeveloped. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:48, 6 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In the case of articles about current events, the quality seen on ITN postings often approximates the best that can be achieved. GA, let alone FA, requires a stable article and that is simply not possible when the thing we are writing about is not stable. Obviously not every ITN post is of the same quality, but then the existence of FAR shows that not every FA is of the same quality. Thryduulf (talk) 22:54, 6 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, apart from TFA I really don't get the impression that any of the Main Page sections actually are showcasing particularly "high-quality" articles, but rather represent what the average reader would expect to see with any topic that has received above-average editorial attention. Merely meeting the core requirements of V, NPOV, and OR isn't "the best we have to offer", it's just the minimum we feel comfortable advertising so publicly. JoelleJay (talk) 23:19, 20 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
ITN was set up in reaction to how well an article about 9/11 came together when that happened, and not just a breaking news article but at least writing towards an encyclopedic style. We've done similar with more recent examples such as 2024 South Korean martial law crisis or back when Jan 6 was happening. Importantly all within a few hours of the onset of these events it was immediately clear they would be topics that meet NEVENT and had long term significance, so their posting to ITN was in part that they showed clear quality including notability concerns.
What's been happening far more recently is that editors are writing articles on minor news stories without clear long-term significance (such as traffic accidents that happen to have a larger loss of life), and then trying to nominate those as ITN. The problem is that in the bigger picture of NOTNEWS and NEVENT, most of those are not suitable encyclopedic topics, and because they lack the encyclopedic weight, the articles read more like news coverage than encyclopedic coverage. Thus the quality issues are compounded by both notability (for purposes of an encyclopedic) and writing style (more proseline than narrative). There is a need to address the NOTNEWS issue as a whole as it has longterm problems across the entire encyclopedia, but for ITN, we need to be more wary of that stuff. But if there is a good change the news event will have longevity, and we know similar events in the past have generally proven to be good encyclopedic articles, as the case for most commercial airplane accidents and major hurricans/typhoons, then the quality check should be to be assured that the article is moving towards what is eventually expected, but definitely does not need to be super high quality.
Its far easier when we are dealing with ITN stories that involve an update to an existing article, which is where most of the recurring ITN topics (at ITNR) make sense, since quality should have already been worked on before the known recurring event occurs. Similarly, when we do blurbs for recent deaths, quality of the bio page should be very high to even consider a topic for a blurb (we get complained at alot of times for not promoting "famous" people's death to blurbs, but often this is a quality factor related to their bio page like filmographies). — Masem (t) 13:37, 21 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I've always liked the {{tip of the day}} concept, in order to get more of our readers to make the jump to editing. Otherwise, something as simple as moving WP:POTD up could be a "band-aid" solution, but I would certainly prefer trying something new rather than just shuffling our sections around. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 17:00, 4 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
POTD needs more space than ITN has. Aaron Liu (talk) 17:27, 4 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • The main page juggles a lot of tasks, but they can be boiled down to editor retention, reader engagement, and editor recruitment. Most of the main page has long been about showing off our best or most interesting work (reader engagement), and giving a sort of reward to encourage editors (editor retention). Hitting the front page requires dedication, and also a little bit of luck, which really helps with gamification of our work--and that's a good thing! Knowing that I could get something I did on the front page was and remains a major motivation to contribute. I think DYK and FA are currently perfect. If we could come up with a new stream of quality content to hit the front page, that'd be awesome, but perhaps a bit pie in the sky. If we had to replace ITN with DYK, I wouldn't lose much sleep. If we replaced it with OTD, I would want to see the OTD process reformed to encourage higher quality entries. However, that brings up the last, perhaps less frequently considered point of the front page: editor recruitment. I'd be interested to see some data on how much new editor traffic is created from articles that hit the front page. CaptainEek Edits Ho Cap'n!⚓ 17:17, 4 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'll add the suggestions I've raised previously:
  • The best option in my opinion would be an "Intro to Wikipedia" box: a brief explanation of what anyone can edit means, some links to help with the basics of editing, and maybe a tip of the day as suggested by Chaotic Enby above. This might also subsume what currently exists as "Other areas of Wikipedia" toward the bottom of the main page. Editor recruitment is paramount, and something like this could help.
  • We could feature more content with "Today's Good Articles". This would function similarly to TFA, but instead of a full paragraph it would be a bulleted list of ~6 GAs and their short descriptions. We have over 40,000 GAs, so just those alone give us enough material for 20 years, let alone everything promoted in that time.
  • We could add a portal hub with icons that link to the main portals. I'm a little more hesitant about this one given the track record for portals, but I have a hunch that they'd be more useful if we gave them front-and-center attention. The current events portal has a subtle link to it on ITN, and it gets a ridiculous number of page views. There's been talk of Wikipedia's identity in the AI age, and a renewed focus on browsing could be part of that.
  • We could have a display for recently updated articles. This is cheating a little since it's kind of an ITN reform, but a brief list of high quality previously-existing articles that have received substantial updates based on new sources would be more useful than a list of news articles.
Even if there's no consensus to replace ITN, I strongly believe Wikipedia would benefit if we added one or more of these somewhere on the main page. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 17:35, 4 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The display for recently updated articles is what DYK is supposed to be, right? CapitalSasha ~ talk 17:46, 4 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That's more for new content, such as newly created pages or stubs that got expanded. I'm picturing already-written articles that get large additions based on new developments. It's at the bottom of my list for a reason though, these are in the order of how viable or useful I think they are. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 17:50, 4 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm partial to the Today's Good Articles box, since I think GAs don't get enough love. Although of course a GA promotion is a DYK qualifying event, so there is some overlap. With the downfall of featured portals, I don't think portals are exactly what we want to be showing off. CaptainEek Edits Ho Cap'n!⚓ 18:03, 4 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'd support replacing ITN with either DYK or Today's Good Articles. SilverTiger12 (talk) 18:08, 4 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Another idea would be a “Can you help improve these articles?” Section… each week we nominate a few underdeveloped articles and highlight them for improvement by the community. Not a replacement for draftspace or New Article patrol … for articles after that. Blueboar (talk) 18:40, 4 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Asking unacquainted readership to make substantial improvements is a bad idea. Aaron Liu (talk) 19:44, 4 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The goal would be to highlight articles for the benefit of experienced editors who are acquainted with the topics, but may not know that a particular article (within their field of expertise) needs work. Blueboar (talk) 02:17, 5 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This sounds like WikiProject article improvement drives. Thryduulf (talk) 02:50, 5 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Unfortunately, most of our wikiprojects are moribund. Most no longer do article improvement drives. So why not shift that concept to the main page? Blueboar (talk) 12:01, 5 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This section header asks "what do we want on the front page", but "we" do not include casual readers or non-editors. Would they really want us to replace ITN with a boring "Please help out with these articles" type of box? Besides, when new people sign up to edit Wikipedia, I believe there's a feature already recommending them articles that need improvement, see Newcomer tasks. Some1 (talk) 12:13, 5 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that we should be taking the desires of non-editing readers into account. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:48, 6 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The main page does not filter out non-experienced editors. Aaron Liu (talk) 12:39, 5 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It could; we can selectively hide any content from logged-out editors. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:49, 6 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Then what should we display for logged-out editors? Aaron Liu (talk) 02:29, 7 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I assume that the logged-out editors would like to see Wikipedia:In the news, but if we don't want to have that, then we could leave it blank. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:46, 9 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
encourage them to sign in first, and then redirect them to WP:Signpost. Batorang (talk) 12:23, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The Signpost and ITN serve very different purposes. Thryduulf (talk) 12:48, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The main page is very much for signed-out users as well. Aaron Liu (talk) 12:50, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
As we discussed last year, Wikipedia:Articles for improvement used to have a section on the main page, but it was removed after its trial was considered unsuccessful, as there were few new editors making edits to the highlighted articles. I suggest working with that WikiProject on the feasibility and potential cost/benefit ratio of having a corresponding section on the main page. It could also be something to consider for user home pages, which has a specific intent of suggesting tasks for new users. isaacl (talk) 04:48, 5 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Could we do GAs but on a certain topic, using WikiProjects? So for instance if you get 3 GA articles (or another number) tagged for WP:Literature, it gets added to the queue for the main page much like with DYK. If the article has multiple tags, nominator of the GA chooses which WikiProject they want it to be part of. A big benefit of this is that it could revive interest in WikiProjects and give people a common mission that isn’t just vaguely improving Wikipedia’s coverage. Perhaps the display would have the topic at the top, which would link to the WikiProject, and then the three or so articles below maybe with excerpts. Basically something that fostered collaboration, improved collegiality etc. Kowal2701 (talk) 19:51, 4 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There are good topics. That's an intriguing concept for me. Between good topics and featured topics there are just under 700 potential topics. That's close to two years of topics to rotate through and if we put it on the front page I can't help but think we'd get more of these made. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 22:18, 4 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I also like that idea! A neat way to emphasize good articles without it being either DYK or "today's good article". Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 22:29, 4 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
We might have 365 days x 20 years of GAs listed at the moment, but if we don't resolve the fundamental disagreement about whether the Main Page can offer links to imperfect content, then we're just replacing "Get rid of ITN because it has so many WP:ERRORS" with "Get rid of GA because it has so many WP:ERRORS".
One of the things that seems to surprise folks is that GA is literally one person's opinion. There's a list of criteria, and one single, solitary editor unilaterally decides whether the article meets with the listed criteria. The most important criteria are largely subjective (e.g., "well written") and therefore something editors can and do disagree about. Most reviewers aren't especially knowledgeable about the subject matter, and therefore they will not notice some errors or omissions. In other words, while GAs are generally decent articles, a critical eye can and will find many things to complain about.
IMO people either need to decide that imperfect content is permissible on the Main Page (and thus quit complaining about how other people have sullied the perfection and ruined our reputation), or that imperfect content is not permissible (and thus get rid of everything except featured content). WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:27, 5 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure where the WP:ERRORS thing is coming from, because that's not at all why there's such widespread dissatisfaction with ITN. You're also saying that a system that promotes GAs to the main page wouldn't work despite DYK doing exactly that for years. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 05:57, 5 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
One of the persistent complaints about ITN is that the articles aren't Wikipedia's finest quality. This complaint is also leveled against DYK entries, sometimes including GAs. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:21, 5 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Not sure where GAs come in in all of this. If anything, GA quality is the least controversial thing about DYK, with complaints usually centering around misleading blurbs or recently created articles of mediocre quality.
Our threshold for ITN/DYKNEW quality is way lower than GA, and it doesn't really follow that GAs would have the same quality issues. Lumping GAs alongside ITN/DYK issues as "imperfect content on the Main Page" is oversimplifying the situation. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 10:24, 5 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
WAID is correct in saying that with GAs, "one single, solitary editor unilaterally decides whether the article meets with the listed criteria" (see Talk:I-No/GA1 for example). The quality of GAs are subjective, the same way the quality of ITN/DYK, etc. articles are. Some1 (talk) 12:21, 5 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
One of the persistent complaints about ITN is that the articles aren't Wikipedia's finest quality: I don't think many are expecting finest. Are there example threads? ITN is already an editing drive of sorts to meet WP:ITNQUALITY. —Bagumba (talk) 08:39, 7 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
A few people[4][5] who supported the "abolishment" of ITN at the RfC argued that the main page should only feature "high quality" content. Some1 (talk) 12:41, 7 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Much less. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:47, 4 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • However, I wonder if rather than asking "abolish ITN? yes/no" as the survey we might find consensus with "On the front page do we want a section for: In the news or X?" Why ITN vs [X]? What if editors want to keep ITN and replace another section on the main page such as DYK with something else? Any future RfCs regarding the potential removal of ITN from the MP should initially and explicitly ask whether editors want ITN removed or not (a "binary abolish/not?" sort of question).
    We could also go the more general, less ITN-focused route and ask the question you just asked in the heading: "What do we want on the front page?" and in that RfC, provide multiple options, such as ITN, DYK, OTD, TFA, [and any new ideas that people have]; then have the community choose their favorites or rank the choices. Some1 (talk) 00:44, 5 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • I like both the "learn to edit" and "good topics", but given the appalling deficit of editor recruitment on the main page, the former is my decided preference. Cremastra (talk) 00:39, 5 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • If we are going to remove it we shouldn’t replace it with anything, there isn’t anything else that won’t have just as many problems as ITN. PARAKANYAA (talk) 04:01, 5 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    A static box as an introduction to editing? Aaron Liu (talk) 12:50, 5 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I am very opposed to that idea. It's just not main page type content. No matter what we put on the main page it should be showing stuff, not begging/pleading for more editors. PARAKANYAA (talk) 18:17, 5 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Why not a simple explanation of the pillars? I could say it features some of our best projectspace work. Aaron Liu (talk) 18:26, 5 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    How exactly then are we supposed to continue to attract new editors? Cremastra (talk) 20:46, 5 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    In my opinion, part of this exercise should be reconsidering what "main page type content" actually means. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 21:14, 5 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • I looked at page views being driven by the Main Page, using the list of recent deaths from mid-December (the latest data in Wikinav). https://wikinav.toolforge.org/?language=en&title=John_Fraser_Hart is a typical example. Most of the page views for that article came from the link on the Main Page. This makes me wonder whether the question about "What do we want on the front page?" should be interpreted as "What 'categories' or 'departments' do we want?" (e.g., a box dedicated to WP:GAs) vs "What purposes do we believe the Main Page should serve?" (e.g., helping readers find the articles they want to read). I think that ultimately, no amount of rearranging the deck chairs is going to solve the fundamental problem, which is that we need the community to decide whether the Main Page is only for WP:PERFECT content, or whether the Main Page is for WP:IMPERFECT content, too. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:15, 5 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    One of the more common positives of Wikipedia that RSs bring up is the speed and neutrality with which it covers even contentious current events topics. I would say that ITN does reflect the best of Wikipedia in a sense, even if the exact process needs revamping. -- Patar knight - chat/contributions 06:36, 5 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I agree, and apparently our readers agree, too. Current events are one of the places where we shine – some of "the best", just not always "the most polished". WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:51, 6 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    It's not "Perfect", it's "quality enough". Very few people !voted option 3 due to perceived quality issues. Aaron Liu (talk) 02:30, 7 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • This is not meant as an idea to replace ITN, but the top box on the main page is extremely sparse compared to any other Wikimedia project page. The top box should serve better as a welcome box to WP for any incoming link so should feature a search bar, links to the key pages about how to contribute to WP, and other similar links. The closest info for that is buried near the bottom of the current main page. --Masem (t) 05:18, 5 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    The search bar is at the top of the page. I do think it would be helpful to add at least a more explicit sign-up link or something. We already advertise that anyone can edit, which is sort of an WP:EASTEREGG link to an introduction page, and the number of editors. -- Patar knight - chat/contributions 06:41, 5 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • You know what I'd love? Some widget that features articles on topics from around the globe. Maybe a map with a promoted article for each country, with irregular turnover (so that Burundi isn't expected to have the same frequency of front page-worthy articles as France does). The promotion could be handled by each country's wikiproject ꧁Zanahary꧂ 22:49, 11 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Would love to see something done with WikiProjects. Even if ITN is kept, just get the featured list segment to budge up and introduce a new one Kowal2701 (talk) 23:05, 11 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    They're such a great idea—obviously, people will be more motivated to contribute to Wikipedia if they feel they have a community of other active editors passionate about the same topics as them. But they're totally out of reach for inexperienced editors, and the space for that valuable and enticing discussion is tucked in the talk pages of projectspace pages. ꧁Zanahary꧂ 23:24, 11 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Also, I second calls for some feature showing articles that are trending or the top viewed for a certain period. It's one of the unique features of Wikipedia that we can stay up to date on new things. ITN does a more flawed and complicated job at this than a trending module would. ꧁Zanahary꧂ 01:51, 6 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I share Masem's concern that we should make sure the main page features work of some quality. Aaron Liu (talk) 03:08, 6 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    The ITN process often responds to new stories by motivating a rapid effort to improve relevant articles as quickly as possible. I believe the same would happen for the top-viewed articles. ꧁Zanahary꧂ 03:14, 6 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    But on ITN, the articles have to be improved to a certain quality before they are on the main page. Quite a bit of the most viewed articles would fail ITN for quality. Without an actual nomination process or "risk" of the article not being featured, there's way less motivation to improve the articles. Aaron Liu (talk) 14:12, 6 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Maybe then, there can be a buffer wherein articles are not featured until they meet a quality greenlight. I think it would move fairly quickly, since highly-viewed articles often have a lot of eyes on them to begin with. ꧁Zanahary꧂ 14:37, 6 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't think ITN is really more flawed than a traffic analysis, unless your goal is a traffic analysis. ITN (in my opinion) isn't just for what's being read about, but also about historically significant events happening in the world -- like the end of the Gaza ceasefire, and civil wars starting, and stuff like that. I've found out a bunch of interesting stuff over time, that I wouldn't have noticed just from a "Top 25 articles" list that mostly centered around celebrities and movies that are coming out. Mrfoogles (talk) 02:58, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
First of all we need a foody-section,
plants Taraxacum, dishes Lentil soup, environment Kitchen; Ecoregions in Poland, Gordon Ramsay, useful animal for hobby garden Mandarin duck, drinks Sake, Cherry-Banana-Juice, cocktails White Russian (cocktail), edible or non-edible grasshopper? which cocktail glass? Spatula lot's of history there; probably enough content on "potato" alone to get a whole month full - also I admit I am hungry while writing this
second, Random Article just generally bigger and better;
I remember some nights just smashing on the random button article, it was great fun and I wasn't depressed
On English Wikipedia, the amount of informative articles; e.g. some historical figure, concepts, buildings etc. i would get was fairly low compared to German random articles, (I just tried that again and I hit warhammer 40k and Monsters Inside me, these are tier A hits for me) but I thought someone could make a filter: I want to read a random article, but it has to be say about 16th century polish history or only articles with keywords plants+south america, or music related but not mexico, full random but in English or French
third, Moving Text
I see that the main page is meant to be lean and clean and non-distracting, but this is the 21st century, at least we need a (lean and clean) 90s moving text banner, better-yet an RSS feed that I can sync to my Divoom (hey look which article is missing) even better: you make your own little informative reading screen I can put on my wall.
fourth, The News
i don't see whats wrong about the news at all (other than it is likely a lot of work) and agree it is best to feature high quality articles over sloppy or hastily established singular-event articles, especially regarding Wikipedias high standard on sources and citations
lastly, Spotlight List
Where are the lists at? Qdajet22 (talk) 01:41, 6 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Why a food section? In my opinion, we first of all need a leech section: a FA article, a GA or two, and then so other other... common ... species –— the big orders, Rhynchobdellida and Arhynchobdellida, and then a "featured family of the month". Cremastra (talk) 02:04, 6 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I would also use a section with "random article under some filters" -- there are too many random sportspeople in the random article selector currently. Mrfoogles (talk) 02:59, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
An Android app screenshot from 2023
  • The Featured Picture would be a natural replacement for the ITN top right slot on the desktop view. Having a prominent picture at top right is our standard look and the featured picture is a logical complement to the featured article.
Otherwise, to see other existing possibilities then try using one of the Official apps. The Android app provides the following sections:
  1. Featured article
  2. Top read (daily most-viewed articles)
  3. Places (nearby articles based on the current location)
  4. Picture of the Day (from Commons)
  5. Because you read (suggestions based on a recently read article from your history)
  6. In the news
  7. On this day
  8. Randomizer (a random article with some filtering for quality)
  9. Suggested edits (suggestions to add content to Wikipedia)
And what's nice is that you can turn these sections on or off in your settings to customize the feed.
Andrew🐉(talk) 09:56, 6 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I love the top read module in this screenshot. We should implement that! ꧁Zanahary꧂ 01:52, 6 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Front‽ Hah! Neither Google nor Bing, nor anyone pointing to Wikipedia for some reason, have taken me anywhere near it in decades. And none of the people who print Wikipedia into books and YouTube videos ever include it.

Whatever you do to it, though, it's probably best not to replace it with things from Project:Community portal, which is there for the potential editors in project space as opposed to the potential readers in article space. Whereever one may go when it comes to the content quality rules, the "main page" being article content as opposed to project content still remains as a distinction.

Unless you want to take the drastic step, which some wikis (e.g. German, Spanish, and Polish Wikipedias — de:Project:Hauptseite, es:Project:Portada, pl:Project:Strona główna) do take, which is to set the MediaWiki:Mainpage as somewhere outwith article space (vide de:MediaWiki:Mainpage). But then MediaWiki still has a distinct page (set at MediaWiki:Portal-url) for the "community" rather than for the readership.

Uncle G (talk) 07:28, 8 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  • There's quite a bit of users who commented in the ITN RfC that they found the box useful, so they must have checked the main page somewhat frequently.
    Main Page is in the article namespace solely because of inertia (from having too many links to it and stuff) and not because it's article content. And the Community portal only links to community forums, which is not what the "introduction to editing" suggestion entails. Aaron Liu (talk) 14:23, 8 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    • Hence why I said "drastic". However, it is article content. If it weren't, we wouldn't be having all of these discussions about how it should be the best example of our article content, or whether it should satisfy our Wikipedia is not a newspaper article content policy, or whether (if it is exempt from policy, a huge double-standard given everything else on the main page) it should be more like a real newspaper rather than an obituaries column. (Only 2 death notices, as I type this.)

      The best response to that question is to ask where, in amongst the DYK snippets from articles, the featured articles, the featured pictures, the snippets from the almanac pages, and the featured lists, does the questioner see the non-article content that leads xem to think that it isn't chock full of article content. It's a good question to ask why it's in article space, given that clearly it doesn't have to be and almost none of the ways in which Wikipedia gets re-used ever use it. It's not a good question to argue from the premise that it isn't article content, though. I wonder how many people really have, or whether that's been phrased as a straw man.

      Uncle G (talk) 13:19, 10 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  • Yes, the main page is checked quite frequently. It was the most viewed page in January actually - and had over 4.9 million views yesterday alone… ✈ mike_gigs talkcontribs 21:45, 8 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    • That's almost certainly bogus, since the $wgMainPageIsDomainRoot setting is turned on for Wikipedia and the sidebar hyperlink is not nofollow for starters. Notice how things are very different for the Wikimedia App, where one has to deliberately choose to go to the main page. Also notice that TopViews excludes the main page alongside excluding other things in the sidebar.

      Are people really still making the "the main page is what people primarily see of Wikipedia" argument? Not since the search engines started putting individual Wikipedia pages in sidebars on their search results, it isn't. I cannot remember who first shot that argument down by pointing that simple reality out, but it was almost a decade ago, shortly after Bing started doing it if memory serves. The most viewed page in January 2025 was really, and unsurprisingly, Donald Trump.

      Uncle G (talk) 13:19, 10 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

      • Does it matter? Our job is to write and present encyclopedic content, not to rack up clicks. Wikipedia is not about page views. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 15:45, 10 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
        • Obviously yes it does to all of the other people still making the long-since fallacious "the main page is what people primarily see of Wikipedia" argument, and clearly mike_gigs thinks that it matters. You are trying to have it both ways, now.

          I think that everyone should recognize that this argument from supposed popularity is fallacious, and has been for a decade. It's a lot of fuss about a page that actually not nearly as many people read as the bogus statistics, that the TopViews tool has been excluding for all this time, imply; and it's long since time to more strongly shoot down the "But it's our public face and our most-viewed page!" fallacy.

          Our public face for January 2025 was the Donald Trump article, which was also part of our public face for 2024 per Project:Statistics#Page views.

          I really would like to remember who made this argument all of those years ago, so I could give proper credit. Xe was right. I think that most of the people who concern themselves with the Main Page would find that if they ever stopped being involved in those processes, as simple readers like all of our other readers nowadays they would almost never go to it in the first place. Then perhaps discussions about what belongs on it would be less fraught and more relaxed.

          Mind you, the flip side is that discussions about the Donald Trump article would be even more fraught. ☺

          Uncle G (talk) 09:51, 14 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

          I'm just pointing out that you are incorrect by saying nobody sees the Main Page, just because you haven't been anywhere near it in decades. And you calling the statistics bogus doesn't change them at all. We won't ever know how many people who land on the Main Page actually look at it, but saying that none of them look at it so we shouldn't even bother with this conversation is absurd.
          And simple readers like all of our other readers nowadays? Really...? ✈ mike_gigs talkcontribs 14:26, 14 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
          The clickstream data for January shows that, even counting only the top ten most common destinations there were over 2.5 million (2,508,183) instances of people clicking on links on the main page (not including the search) and collectively links on the main page were clicked over 34 million times in that one month (I don't think that includes the search). 31.5% of the views of Deaths in 2025 came from people clicking the link on the main page. This clearly demonstrates that your (Uncle G's) assertion that nobody views or interacts with the main page is the one that is fallacious. Thryduulf (talk) 17:44, 14 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
        not to rack up clicks. Wikipedia is not about page views I mean, we have GalliumBot notifying "nominators when their [DYK] hooks meet a certain viewcount threshold." Some1 (talk) 23:30, 18 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
      • I'm not sure how being the domain root makes the statistic bogus. Aaron Liu (talk) 15:49, 10 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
        • Then you need to think about it a bit more. The writers of TopViews did, back in 2015. The people who wrote about unintentional views at Project:Popular pages did, too, as did the people who came up with meta:Research:Page view and the Phabricator bugs tweaking all that for the PageViews and TopViews tools. Uncle G (talk) 09:51, 14 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
          I don't see anything written to explain why, though. I'm guessing the argument is that readers usually use the main page to search for things. But even in that case, readers do see what is on the main page, especially the graphical content on the top. Not to mention the countless social media posts about main page content. If you know something else about the main page, could you elaborate? Aaron Liu (talk) 14:37, 14 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
          I think the idea is that most people aren't going to the Main Page for its own sake. There are presumably some who want to know what the TFA is, but for the most part, people go to the MP so that they can get somewhere else, and not for the purpose of reading the MP itself.
          Thinking of my own behavior, I end up at the MP several times a day, usually because I want to search for an article whose title I don't know. An empty page with a Special:Search box would be equally effective for me. (If I know the title, I'll just hand-edit the URL to go straight there.) Maybe once a month, I might drop by to glance at the TFA or ITN (not counting when I check the MP due to a discussion on wiki). A couple of times a year, I might glance at DYK. But mostly, if I end up at the MP, it's for a purpose other than reading the MP. If readers are like me (hint: That is not usually a valid assumption), then the "page views" for the MP are not representative, and the MP should be treated like a transit hub instead of a destination. Sure, sometimes a student will go to Grand Central Station to look at its artwork or its architecture. But most of the time, people are going through there to get to their real destination. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:46, 19 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • I naturally go to the main page several times a day either because I'm opening the site from a shortcut in a browser or because I click on the globe icon to get to a standard start point in the site. Having gone to the main page, I will naturally tend to browse it.
The number of people who browse the main page on a given day seems to be about 100K. I say that because that seems to be about the peak readership for articles when that's mainly driven from the main page. Featured articles get the most attention with about 50K views while ITN articles get about 20K readers from the main page and DYKs get about 10K.
These numbers aren't huge but they are better than nothing. If you've written or improved an article then it's nice to get some attention and comment. A problem with just writing an article that's reasonably complete and competent is that you usually get little feedback. The main page thus provides a good showcase for such work and so helps motivates editors. This is not a problem.
ITN is not such a good driver of editing because articles such as Donald Trump have been written already and are often battlegrounds or needs lots of fixing up. The focus at ITN then seems to be on gatekeeping rather than editing and this is why it's not as productive as the other main page sections.
Andrew🐉(talk) 21:04, 20 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Add an AI-Talk tab to each page

LLMs are now useful in their ability to generate encyclopedic-like material. Quite rightly Wikipedia heavily limits bot/AI editing. It is not possible to make use of LLMs within those bounds, and the bounds should not be loosened to accommodate LLMs. So how can the power of LLMs be harnessed for the benefit of Wikipedia without undermining well-established and successful processes for developing content?

I believe it would be useful to add a 3rd tab to each page where AI generated content either from human activity or bots could be posted, but clearly distinguished from other discussion.

On the (existing) Talk page, an appropriate response to lack of engagement to one's proposal is be WP:BOLD.

However, on the AI-Talk page the default response must be to resist editing. This would allow human contributors to check proposed AI based edits for value and encourage or enact them following normal Wikipedia guidance. However, if no human editors engaged with the AI proposal then no harm would be done because no edit would be made without such engagement.

The approach I propose allows the wikiepdia editing community to organically determine how much effort to put into making use of AI-generated content, and in doing so may make clear what kind of AI involvement is helpful. DecFinney (talk) 15:38, 21 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia will not, and will never implement AI slop content. We are one of the few places left on the internet that haven't embraced this corporatized, overhyped technology and most people firmly intend to keep it that way Mgjertson (talk) 16:08, 21 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@DecFinney: No. AI has a known problem with blatantly making things up and is incapable of actually assessing sources. You're proposing to include a section which by default is going to be filled with junk to the point people will just blatantly ignore it to avoid wasting their limited time. (On a related note, I recently had to help assess a fully-AI-written draft; aside from the usual tells the reference list included cites to two books that did not exist.) —Jéské Couriano v^_^v threads critiques 16:24, 21 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia is the opposite of AI. It’s like oil and water; they just don’t mix. Pablothepenguin (talk) 19:57, 21 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
A few years ago we had an article suggestions system, but for human rather than AI suggestions. One of the reasons why it failed, and was predicted to fail from the outset, is that we are primarily a community of people who want to write and correct an encyclopaedia, with an emphasis on the first part of that. Hence we have to have measures such as quid pro quo at DYK, and a bunch of watchlisting and other systems to encourage our volunteers to play nice with others who add cited info to their work. We find it easier to recruit volunteers who want to write than volunteers who want to check other people content. Before we take on a scheme to create loads of content suggestions for our volunteers to check and integrate into articles, we need to find a way to recruit a different sort of volunteer, someone whose favourite task is checking and referencing other people's work. Otherwise we have a scheme to make Wikipedia less attractive to our existing volunteers by trying to distract them from the sort of thing they have volunteered to do and instead direct them into something they find less engaging. Worse, like any attempt to organise Wikpedians and direct them towards a particular activity, we undermine one of the main areas of satisfaction that editors have, the autonomy that comes from choosing which tasks they want to undertake. That isn't to say we can't have AI tools that make Wikipedia a better place, but we need to find ways that work with the community rather than against it. That said, I'm currently testing some typo finding AI routines, and I think there is some potential there. ϢereSpielChequers 22:13, 21 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for such a thought-through reply. Ultimately, I don't think having an AI-Talk page would require that anyone change how they currently interact with editing Wikipedia (nobody has to use the existing Talk page). Therefore, I don't think the feature would act against the community except indirectly through the potential for wasted effort/resources. The Ai-Talk page would be there for those that were interested.
Nevertheless, you make some good arguments that this kind of feature is not one likely to be well-used by existing users.
You also make me think about how such an approach could lead to an overly homogeneous style to Wikipedia articles. I'm not sure everyone would consider this a bad thing, but I do think that could be an unfortunate consequence of using AI-generated content. DecFinney (talk) 14:38, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe an AI talkpage would be treated differently than the normal talkpage. But we have a lot of editors, and many of those who write content are the people who are hardest to engage with proposed changes to the features. I'm thinking of the proverbial person who spends an hour or to a month checking some articles they watch. I suspect a lot of those editors would feel they had to respond to the AI talk as well, otherwise eventually someone would change the article with an edit summary of "per AI talk" and they'd feel they lost the opportunity to point out that the paywalled sites they have access to take a very different line than the fringe sites that are free to access. ϢereSpielChequers 18:24, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Strong point, well made. Thanks. DecFinney (talk) 09:46, 24 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Absolutely not. It is a terrible idea to let the junk generators (and possible WP:BLP violation generator) loose on a page that, let's be real, is not going to be closely watched. We do not need a graveyard of shit attached to every article. Gnomingstuff (talk) 23:45, 21 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Jéské Couriano @Gnomingstuff - The proposed AI-Talk page is a self-contained space for proposed content that has involved AI-generation. The default is that no edit to the article can be made unless human contributors permit it (i.e. they would not be "loose on a page". Therefore, I don't understand what you are afraid of. If you are correct and AI-generated content is never good enough, then it would not be used. If I'm correct in thinking that at times AI-generated content may be useful in improving a page, then it would be used in such cases, while poor AI-generated content would be left to archive on the AI-Talk page.
My impression from your responses is that either: 1) You're worried Wikipedia's human editors are not capable of effectively using AI-generated content from an AI-Talk page, or 2) You're scared that in some cases AI-generated content may actually prove good enough to improve Wikipedia articles and therefore be used.
Just to note, that various safeguards could be put in place that would deal with most of the tangible concerns you raise, e.g. no AI-Talk page for featured articles, no AI-Talk page on WP:BLP, possibly only allow registers users or users with advanced experience to view and use the AI-Talk page. DecFinney (talk) 14:54, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't really understand what the proposal is trying to do. Is the idea to have an AI evaluate all ~7million articles? If so, how frequently? If anyone wants AI feedback on a particular article, they can input the current version of an article into their AI engine of choice. This is possible without any of the work needed to add a whole new area to en.wiki. CMD (talk) 15:11, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I imagine, that in the same way that people make bots that make direct edits to pages, their might be useful tasks that bots could do but which are too subjective and risky to allow direct edits. Instead they could post to AI-Talk, to allow a check of what they are doing. What tasks AI bots were allowed to contribute could still be constrained but there would be more opportunity to explore their potential without doing direct harm to a page. In summary, I don't have a prescribed view of what would be undertaken, it would be dependent on what bot develops would look to address and the constraints on that agreed by the Wikipedia community. DecFinney (talk) 09:49, 24 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I understand what and where this page is proposed to be. Your impression is wrong. My response is:
3) I am concerned -- with good reason -- that AI-generated content produces false statements, and that when they are applied to real, living people, those false statements are likely to be WP:BLP violations. There is no way for a human editor to "effectively" use false statements, and there is no point at which they are "good enough." The problem is that they exist in the Wikipedia database at all.
As such, the BLP policy is that we need to be proactive, not reactive, in not inserting BLP violations anywhere, and should remove them anywhere they come up -- including on talk pages and project pages, which are still pages. So, one way to be proactive about that is to not do something that risks them accumulating on largely unmonitored (but still visible and searchable) pages.
Even non-BLP falsehoods are not things that we want to commit to the database. I don't think you realize the extent to which this stuff accumulates on even prominent articles, or talk pages with enough activity to get really long. We do not need an accelerant, there are already 20+ years of this shit to clean up. Gnomingstuff (talk) 17:19, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@DecFinney: Do the words Seigenthaler incident mean anything to you? —Jéské Couriano v^_^v threads critiques 17:21, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Jéské Couriano @Gnomingstuff - Thanks both for the follow-up. I am a physical scientist, I don't engage much with BLP side of Wikipedia but I appreciate it's a major component and I see your concerns. I don't see why there couldn't be a ban on AI referring to BLP, and no AI-Talk page on BLP pages. In which case, LLM's would still be able to benefit the non-BLP parts of Wikipedia.
@Jéské Couriano - Regarding falsehoods, I consider LLMs to have moved on a bit in the last year. They certainly do hallucinate and state things falsely at times (I don't deny that). But they are much more accurate now, to the extent that I think they possibly don't make more mistakes than humans on small bits of certain kind of text (I don't claim they could usefully write a whole article unaided, as things stand). That said, I think you are potentially acknowledging the fallibility of humans as well as AI in your "20+ years of this shit" statement. In which case I respect you point regarding not wanting "an accelerant" -- I would probably agree. DecFinney (talk) 09:57, 24 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@DecFinney: In order:
Does this help? —Jéské Couriano v^_^v threads critiques 19:05, 24 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Even if/when AI gets better, there are already loads of places where readers can get an AI summary of the subject (for example, the top of a Google search - and I'm quite sure Google will continue to improve their use of the technology). The world needs an alternative place, a place which gives a human-written perspective. It may or may not be better, but it's different, so it complements the AI stuff. My strong feeling is that Wikipedia should avoid AI like the plague, to preserve its useful difference! In fact the best reason I can think of to provide an AI tab is so that there is somewhere where people who really, really want to use AI can stick their stuff, a place that the rest of us can steadfastly ignore. In effect, the extra tab would be a sacrificial trap-location. Elemimele (talk) 18:04, 25 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I respect this point of view, and may even agree with it. However, I wonder if the wider global population in such a future is likely to continue visiting Wikipedia to any significant extent. And if not, then would editors still feel motivated to maintain such an alternative place?
I know you are probably jesting, but I do see the AI tab for human proposed edits that have a amajor AI comoponent, as well as bot generated proposed edits. So my suggesting is consistent with your proposed use of the AI tab :D DecFinney (talk) 10:08, 26 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It was a very early development of LLMs that they can be forced not to discuss certain topics. Since a list of topics off-bounds could be produced, I still do not see BLP has meaning LLMs could not be used on non-BLP topics. I understand your arguments but I think either you don't understand that, or disagree that, LLMs can be constrained. Either way, I respect your disagreement but I feel like we are now going round in circles on this particular point. I am happy to agree to disagree on it.
I see your experience and impression of AI-generated content. It is familiar. Nevertheless, I have experience that LLM-generated content is at times effective, though it still requires human engagement with it.
I agree with your point around "source assessment" being key, and agree that AI is not good at this. I do, however, think AI has been steadily improving on this skill over the last year. Though it is still not good enough. DecFinney (talk) 10:16, 26 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@DecFinney:
  • Even if you constrained the LLMs, contentious topics are broadly construed, and as such include discussions and sections on pages otherwise unrelated to the contentious topic. (To use a recent example, Sambhaji falls under WP:CT/IPA, WP:RFPP/E does not, and a request for Sambhaji on RFPP/E falls under WP:CT/IPA.) You would likely have to hand-code in every single article that is under a contentious topic - which I'd estimate to be at or around 1 million (and I'm low-balling that) - which becomes more and more untenable due to tech debt over time, either due to new articles being created or CTOP designations lapsing (YSK, HE) or being revoked (SCI, EC). And this would still result in the AI potentially sticking its foot into its mouth in discussions on unrelated pages.
  • You can't improve AI's ability to assess something it is fundamentally incapable of interpreting (scanned media and offline sources). The (legitimate) sources in the draft mentioned were both scans of print media hosted on the Internet Archive.
—Jéské Couriano v^_^v threads critiques 06:49, 27 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks @Jéské Couriano I respect your view, and your concerns are well-founded. I think our experiences and impression of LLM potential is different so I'm afraid I do not agree that it is definitely impossible to address your concerns. I do not intend to take this idea further at this point, so I will not continue to try to persuade you otherwise. Thank you for engaging in the discussion, I have found it interesting. DecFinney (talk) 08:24, 27 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Red X symbolN Oppose. I don't want to see AI taking over Wikipedia. The Master of Hedgehogs (talk) (contributions) (Sign my guestbook!) 16:10, 27 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Ah well, this is a great idea. I'm sure they won't violate WP:BLP! Worgisbor (Talking's fun!) 20:40, 7 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Let us imagine if Wikipedia did implement this, Wikipedians would fight hard to reverse it. Plus, on a heavily vandalized page, or any page for that matter, it could spew out incorrect and/or offensive text. Really the only way it could make sense, would be a "Summary" tab. But, even if, Wikipedia has a nutshell template. Codename Abrix (talk) 22:56, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Adding video content to articles

Someone started a discussion at WP:RSN about whether a video was an RS. It turned out that the intended use was not as a source, but to embed the video in an article. Since I had no experience with the question of adding video content, I went looking for information. MOS:IMAGES § Video content is relevant, but doesn't give a great deal of guidance: "Videos should be used as a supplement to article material, to concisely illustrate the subject in a way that a still image or text cannot do. Videos should not replace article text, and articles should remain coherent and comprehensive when video playback is not available" strikes me as the most relevant part. The WP:VIDEO infopage also has a bit of relevant discussion; the Examples of videos we can use section has several didactic/summary videos.

Some editors at the RSN felt that since the video wasn't being used as a source, the RSN wasn't the right venue to discuss the video's use, and that it should instead go to WP:NPOVN to assess whether the video is DUE in the article. I don't know whether the involved editors will take it there, but regardless of what's decided with that specific video and article, this all made me think that the video policy needs some work. In particular, it seems to me that a didactic video is like presenting content in wikivoice, but without any other source supporting it. Are we supposed to assess the video as an RS (e.g., do the creators/publisher have a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy)? Are we supposed to check that everything said/shown in the video is supported by existing text in the article that's sourced to other RSs? How long can a video be before it exceeds being a "concise" illustration? If it's intended to serve as a summary video, is that really a question of whether it's DUE? Etc. I figured I'd bring this here for discussion. @Rhododendrites, @Bastique, pinging you since you seemed interested in a more general discussion of video use (apologies if I misunderstood). FactOrOpinion (talk) 21:52, 4 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If I've posted this to the wrong Village Pump, please let me know the correct place to raise it. I'm not experienced at starting topics here. FactOrOpinion (talk) 21:56, 4 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  • With respect to summary style videos, am in support of the use of MDWiki:WPM:VideoWiki style videos, which are supportable by reliable sources and collaboratively editable. For Example. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:44, 5 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • I support the inclusion of summary and didactic style videos, as those supplement the article, made them more accessible and improve the overall experience of the readers. Many articles are long, and having summary videos will improve the learning experience in the core of the word encyclopedia. There are many examples of videos that could add to the articles, even documentary ones. This kind of videos are being used in other language Wikipedias, and adopted widely, but English Wikipedia is now lagging behind. And this goes against the current learning strategies people have (let's remember that Encyclopedias are for learning), where video and podcasts are consumed way more than written text. There's a huge gap between those who want to complement their readings with a summary video or extra learning material (it may be a didactic video about a subtopic, or a whole documentary) and what we are currently offering. Wikipedia should be the primary place to learn, and people is currrently going to YouTube or, even worse, TikTok, where standards for accuracy are worryingly low. Adding videos doesn't harm Wikipedia, it makes it stronger and more useful. Theklan (talk) 10:35, 5 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Doc James, I have to admit that my response to the TB video was mildly negative. I didn't feel like I got anything useful from it being a video rather than just audio (and it sounded to me like an AI-generated voice). A video should "illustrate the subject in a way that a still image or text [or audio] cannot do." Did I miss something in the visuals?
    Theklan, none of that really addresses my questions, which are not about whether videos should be included in Wikipedia, but about what it is that we're supposed to assess in determining whether a given video is appropriate to insert into a given article. For example, do we need to assess that all of the content in the video is supported by existing RSs in the article, or by a combination of those and RSs that aren't in the article? (See, e.g., the Example that Doc James linked to, which identifies RSs for the video's content.) If it's intended as a summary video, are we supposed to identify the key ideas in the article and then check that the video addresses all of them? We have policies for the use of videos as sources, but we have very little policy that addresses the use of videos as article content. It seems to me that existing policy is insufficient. FactOrOpinion (talk) 15:50, 5 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, I understand that. But we are in a loophole here, because we also have policies against adding videos or images which repeat the content of the article. So, if the video has the same content the article has, but with visuals to make it more appealing, the argument against it would be that the content is already in the text. And, if the video adds content, like a documentary video, or the example that triggered this conversation, then it is not accepted because it doesn't reflect the text. As far as I see it, there are two different issues stopping us to innovate and add some interesting content (and maybe new contributors) to our project. Theklan (talk) 20:21, 5 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Videos are great. Every part of an article should add something; you don't want a video that just repeats what is in the text, narrated in a monotone, but that almost never happens. Primary source videos produced by or about a topic are helpful as sources that can be embedded if appropriate, and should be verifiably cited to an appropriate source; secondary source videos providing analysis should be from an RS or should include their own sources (could be in a caption or footnote); tertiary source videos made as encyclopedic illustrations, just like other illustrations, can be made by editors to enhance the article and should include sources. That holds for most formats; with a short clip this is quite similar to an image, with a longer one the associated footnote might be longer and compound. – SJ + 18:10, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • The essay Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not YouTube sums up my thoughts on this topic. Some1 (talk) 12:28, 5 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    That essay has two problems. The first one is in the nutshell section, when it says "Encyclopedia" means "not YouTube". The second one is letting all the knowledge in the world to YouTube, instead of claiming that we should be the center for those who want to learn something. It happened something similar in the late 1980s and early 1990s when printed encyclopedia editors claimed that "Encyclopedia" meant "not online". We can see where they are. Theklan (talk) 20:22, 5 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    While hosting an encyclopedia on YouTube could be a possibility, it doesn't mesh well with the model of Wikipedia, as videos are not really user-editable. Not sure about your historical analogy, given how major print encyclopedias like Encyclopedia Britannica did go online. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 20:31, 5 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm not suggesting to host an encyclopedia on YouTube, but to have more videos in Wikipedia. There are plenty of learning materials nowadays on YouTube, that are encyclopedic/educative. If Wikipedia is seen as a place where videos can help the text, there will be more people doing those videos, so we will have a better understanding of what is possible. Technically, videos are user-editable, in the same way that audios or images are user editable: it just takes more time. And we have Wikipedia:WikiProject Videowiki, which a software allowing the collaborative scripting and edition of videos.
    About the analogy, it comes from the book All the Knowledge in the World. And you are right, after a decade claiming that printed books were superior to online text, they ended up closing their printing media and adapting to the online world. I see that we are in the same point: we think that text is superior to other media, and that other media is going faster and deeper than we thought. We can adapt and see how we include rich media, or we can be a one-generation-wonder. Theklan (talk) 22:21, 5 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Maybe you could request that the WMF create a new video-focused project called "Wikivideos" (en.wikivideos.org) or something similar. Some1 (talk) 23:33, 5 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Eventually, that may happen, but we don't need it now, as we already have Commons. We can even make dedicated video portals at Wikipedia using the videos in Commons. Take a look to eu:Atari:Hezkuntza/Ikusgela for an idea on how a didactic video project can be organized at Wikipedia. Theklan (talk) 07:01, 6 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • I can't see a problem with videos created through consensus and normal contribution-tracking editing, following all content policies, and that respect copyright, being included as a summary of a topic. Tools to make such could be a barrier. In terms of video as content, the block here is more accessibility, since those reliant on screen readers will not see it, so the video must stay within bounds of what is already presented in text. Masem (t) 16:00, 5 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Masem, your idea about videos requiring the same kind of sourcing and allowing editing makes sense to me, though I wonder how we'd be able to track the effects of edits, as I don't know what the equivalent of a diff would be. My impression is that the video that Doc James linked to is consistent with your intent. I'm not sure how to address the accessibility issue, and I'll see whether there's a WikiProject that could provide guidance about that; one approach might be to add subtitles explaining the visuals, just as subtitles for the deaf include important sound effects, not just dialogue.
    Theklan, I think that adding examples of key uses could be a good addition to the existing policy. I don't know if one intent is to use visuals to make content more appealing; that's possible, but it involves judgements about what visuals are appealing (for example, I like good animation, but I find some animation visually boring, and I don't know that my assessments of "good" and "boring" would be widely shared). Personally, I'm more interested in visual content that accomplishes something more effectively than can be accomplished with words, still images, or audio. If a video adds content, then perhaps we should have an expectation that the editor adding the video will also add written content to the article. FactOrOpinion (talk) 20:54, 5 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thank you for starting this discussion @FactOrOpinion! One of my responsibilities at WMF is to track where and how people like to get information online globally outside of Wikipedia, and for the past ~4 years I've been keeping a close eye on the growing global popularity of video platforms (i.e., TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube) as not just entertainment platforms but sources of learning and information. Here are some insights we have gathered via large-scale global surveys on this topic over the past couple of years that might be relevant for this conversation:
  • Gen Z-aged people (18-24 years old) around the world increasingly see video apps like TikTok and YouTube as places to get overviews of a wide variety of topics (both encyclopedic and non-encyclopedic) and find them more relevant and useful than visiting Wikipedia. (Source: Brand Health Tracker)
  • Despite this, we still have many Gen-Z-aged people coming to read Wikipedia today! In fact, most of our readers globally fall into this age group. The Gen Z people who do visit Wikipedia are quite different from those who don't in some key ways (e.g., they skew more male than the general population, and they report far less social media usage than the general population of 18-24-year-olds), but even they are currently also turning to video apps like TikTok and YouTube for information at greater rates than older Wikipedia visitors. (Source: Meta:Research:Knowledge Gaps Index/Measurement/Readers Survey 2023)
(We don't survey people younger than 18, so we don't have data on even younger people and their preferences in this regard, but I strongly suspect all of the above holds true for Gen Alpha, as well.)
I do think this may be indicating a growing preference for video as a learning format among younger people. However, it's not so straightforward to draw conclusions from this data about what kinds of videos might help people learn on Wikipedia. (We don't know, for example, to what degree the reason video apps are so relevant and useful for younger audiences is that they serve both encyclopedic and non-encyclopedic content – e.g., DIY, lifestyle tips, humor, etc. – that doesn't belong in Wikipedia.) And none of this data can answer the question of how/if videos could or should be used on Wikipedia in a way that respects the editable, collaborative, reliability-focused nature of the project – which is why I'm happy to see this discussion starting to flush out some of these deeper questions! Maryana Pinchuk (WMF) (talk) 21:08, 5 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@MPinchuk (WMF), it seems to me that if videos should be editable, one challenge is developing some means of identifying how a video has changed, without having to rewatch the entire video each time it's edited or having to assume that someone's edit summary is accurate and complete. With text, we have diffs that enable us to see all of the changes, and that helps in reverting vandalism or simply assessing whether a given edit improved the article. But I'm not sure how that would work with video content. Is this something that WMF is thinking about / working on / plans to work on? FactOrOpinion (talk) 00:06, 6 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@FactOrOpinion that's definitely a challenge (both making videos collaboratively editable and having some way to track changes made by multiple users) and is not something we're working on. But I imagine the level of complexity in reviewing would vary greatly depending on how long the video is and how often/by how many people it was being updated. With a short video and only the occasional edit, it probably wouldn't be much more work to get a sense of what the changes were than, say, reviewing that the sources added in a new text revision of Wikipedia accurately summarize from (and paraphrase without copyvio-ing) the source But I'm guessing a video over a few minutes long and/or with multiple people editing would get exponentially more tricky to manage. Maryana Pinchuk (WMF) (talk) 01:42, 6 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
VideoWiki already handles diffs between videos, as the changes are done via text. However, that is one of the video types we could be adding. If you open WMF's TikTok account, you will find videos that summarize topics "Did you know" style, and could be a good addition to both articles or even the Wikipedia main page. In this videos you should follow AGF as we follow for other media. Imagine that I download Beethoven's 9th symphony file, I add randomly at 3:56 another sound, and I reupload the audio to Commons. That would be clear vandalism, but the file would still be available at Wikipedia until noticed. The same applies to other media. Theklan (talk) 07:05, 6 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't understand "the changes are done via text." Could you link to an example? I don't understand what "you should follow AGF as we follow for other media" refers to. We absolutely don't assume that potential sources are created in good faith, whatever media they're in. FactOrOpinion (talk) 13:32, 6 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
At VideoWiki you can follow each change to the script: https://mdwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Video:Acne_keloidalis_nuchae&action=history or https://eu.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:VideoWiki/Planeta_teluriko&action=history. Every change in the script can be coded (if clicked) into a new version of the video, so you can see what changed just watching the script (or the file in Commons, whatever you prefer). I agree with you that potential sources are not created in good faith, but currently taking any file we have at any article, inserting something that shouldn't be there, and reuploading the file is perfectly possible. We assume that people is not randomly inserting nasty images at Steamboat Willie video, funny sounds at Symphony No. 9 (Beethoven) or adding a vectorial layer behind another vectorial layer in a WWII map. And, if they do that, eventually we will revert and block the trolling. Theklan (talk) 14:24, 6 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Much of the above discussion is the reason why we don't have more video. The thing is, that fundamentally a good video is engaging, coherent and it tells a story. That makes it much more suited to being edited by one ore multiple people ONCE. This is also why many of the most successful science channels on YouTube are heavily focused around a single person Veritasium, Tom Scott, SmarterEveryday, physics girl, numberphile, just as it was in TV land with David Attenborough and Brian Cox. Being a good presenter and story teller matters. Creating a good coherent story with a TON of very expensive preparation, matters.
We on the other hand focus on bland facts, sourcing, completeness and changing our material all the time. Those are two styles that simply do not match very well (not impossible, just incredibly hard). It is like comparing a textbook at school with a video of the teacher explaining a single chapter in that book. Or thinking we could collective wikiwrite poetry at the level of the Illiad or The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe. We can't, the work would lack the personality that makes those things as good as they are.
If people are really interested in creating a wiki version for educational video content, you'd be much better off indexing, sorting and verifying youtube content and making that presentable and navigable for an audience, then it is to write your own video for wikipedia in my opinion. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:48, 6 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think you are giving a good example of one of the problems we are facing within the media revolution. If we had, let's say, Veritasium videos with a Creative Commons license, or BBC would republish David Attenborough's documentaries with one of those licenses... what would we do? The current policies point towards not including those videos in articles, even as supplementary materials. Theklan (talk) 09:05, 7 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Those videos could be uploaded to the Commons then added to the hypothetical video-focused "Wikivideos" project. Some1 (talk) 10:16, 7 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think that the good videos tend to be copyrighted for example Ken Burn's history videos or even The Great Courses videos by actual professors and experts. Ramos1990 (talk) 02:04, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
And the good photographs, and the good music. But here we are, promoting free content. Theklan (talk) 08:49, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hello all, as a member of the Wiki Loves Broadcast project, I think that videos can generally contribute to a good article (which is obviously not the controversial topic here). We have already gained some experience with this in the German Wikipedia and so far we have only included videos that come from a reliable source (public broadcasters from German-speaking countries) and also do not contradict the article and summarise the content from the article (either a section or completely). We have deliberately not included videos that have nothing to do with the article or have touched on topics that are not covered in the article. In addition, there are of course general criteria such as no topicality, no annoying music, etc. As we are also planning to collaborate with English-language content in the future, or perhaps videos other than these short explanatory videos will come about as part of these collaborations, I am following this discussion here with great interest. More information about Wiki Loves Broadcast can be found on Meta (page still under construction). — Preceding unsigned comment added by New York-air (talk • contribs) 14:29, 11 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi User:New York-air, Wiki Loves Broadcast looks amazing. Good videos definitely contribute to good articles! Thanks for your work. I like criteria such as "no annoying music" -- some of these are things that one could modify uploads to meet. – SJ + 18:10, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

WP:Long-Term Abuse

From time to time, a nomination is made at MFD to delete a Long-term abuse file. The reason given for deleting the abuse file is usually to Deny recognition. Miscellany for Deletion is a highly visible forum, while the existence of a Long-term abuse file is seen only by an editor who is actively searching for LTA files. So there is a Streisand effect in nominating a long-term abuse file for deletion. However, perhaps the real problem is that there is no control over the creation of these files. As a result, anyone can create an LTA file, while deleting an LTA file requires the public procedure of nominating it for deletion. This seems to put a cart before a horse. My suggestion is that we restrict the creation of Long-term abuse files to Checkusers and SPI clerks, who are the editors who normally deal with chronic offenders and have the training and background to know when it is useful to write them up and when they should be ignored.

It is true that any editor would have the technical capability to create Long-term abuse files, but these could then be speedily deleted without the need to deny recognition by providing recognition. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:23, 7 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

How often is there a MfD nomination for an LTA file? ‍Relativity ⚡️ 17:12, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Based on the archives, there have been six nominations since January 2024. One of those was speedily deleted as a hoax LTA page, another was speedily kept because the nomination was made by an LTA. Thryduulf (talk) 17:22, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Ambiguity of Unreleased Film Guideline

The guideline on the notability of unreleased films is ambiguous. There is currently a somewhat contentious Deletion Review in progress which reflects the fact that reasonable editors are interpreting the same guideline differently because the guideline is unclear. An attempt to clarify the guideline in November 2021 and December 2021 was closed as No Consensus, so the guideline is still ambiguous, and has been ambiguous since it was written in 2008.

The guideline on future films reads:

Films that have not been confirmed by reliable sources to have commenced principal photography should not have their own articles, as budget issues, scripting issues and casting issues can interfere with a project well ahead of its intended filming date. The assumption should also not be made that because a film is likely to be a high-profile release it will be immune to setbacks—there is no "sure thing" production. Until the start of principal photography, information on the film might be included in articles about its subject material, if available. Sources must be used to confirm the start of principal photography after shooting has begun.

In the case of animated films, reliable sources must confirm that the film is clearly out of the pre-production process, meaning that the final animation frames are actively being drawn or rendered, and final recordings of voice-overs and music have commenced.

Additionally, films that have already begun shooting, but have not yet been publicly released (theatres or video), should generally not have their own articles unless the production itself is notable per the notability guidelines. Similarly, films produced in the past which were either not completed or not distributed should not have their own articles, unless their failure was notable per the guidelines.

Some editors read the third paragraph restrictively. Some other editors read primarily the first paragraph. We agree that there are three classes of films:

  • 1. Films that have not begun production (principal photography or animation).
  • 2. Films that have at least began production, but have not been released.
  • 3. Films that have been released.

There is agreement that films that have not yet begun production may not have their own articles. The plans for such films are often discussed in the article about the filmmaker. There is agreement that articles about films that have been released should describe reviews and other third-party coverage. The question is about films that are in production, and are reported by reliable sources to be in production. The question is whether the significant coverage of these films should be about the production itself, or whether the coverage can be about the film, and may refer to production.

There have been differing interpretations of this guideline for years. An attempt to change the wording of the guideline by RFC resulted in no consensus, so there are still differing interpretations. The issue has to do with films, usually high-budget films, that are in production or have completed production and have had considerable coverage, focused mainly on plans for the film, rather than on the production itself.

Should the guideline be changed either to clarify that such films are normally not considered notable, or to ease the guideline for articles on films that have not yet been released? Robert McClenon (talk) 03:25, 7 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

My issue with writing about pre-production films is that it seems most of what's published are rehashes of press releases as the production attempts to create "buzz" about the project. Like the weekly announcements of cast that have been attached to the project or fluff interviews. Would it be more understandable to editors for the guideline to explicitly note that such sources do not demonstrate notability? – Reidgreg (talk) 14:54, 11 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Edit recommendations

For new users or those who've made only one edit, we should add a "Recommended Edits" bar on top, for example how X asks you for interests and then gives you relevant tweets, have Wikipedia ask you about your interests and suggest pages. Batorang (talk) 10:07, 8 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That’s what the newcomer homepage is. It should be there if you click on your username at the top of the screen. If it isn’t there, you can turn it on in preferences. Roasted (talk) 15:44, 8 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Batorang see User:SuggestBot. 86.23.109.101 (talk) 20:08, 8 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Special:Homepage Aaron Liu (talk) 15:04, 9 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The edit button for admins on a fully protected page should indicate that it's fully protected.

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T388405

Same goes for TE-protected pages. For ECP I don't know if this makes sense (since there are so many of them), but there have been a couple of times I've edited a fully protected page and not even noticed it. Sure, there is the gold lock, and I am personally able to see a protection log entry at the top of the edit page on desktop, but I suspizzle it would be easy to edit (or create) some MediaWiki page for this. If there already exists such a page, then my proposal is to make it say Edit (protected) or something. jp×g🗯️ 00:03, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Source editing
Visual editing (the yellow background is custom CSS for all VE editing areas)
When I try and edit a fully protected page in VE I get a popup highlighting that it's a protected page. When using the source editor, the editing area background is pink (both using monobook on desktop, see screenshots). Additionally (but harder to spot) the tab at the top of the page reads "change protection" rather than "protect". Thryduulf (talk) 02:10, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
As for changing the button label, as best I can tell that text isn't set by a MediaWiki page, rather what the button says is set by the interface language - if you append ?uselang=cy to the URI all the interface elements change to Welsh and "edit" becomes "golygu" (compare [6] and [7]) and so would need to be defined on translatewiki. However, from what I can tell MediaWiki has no concept of "edit protected" in this context so it would require a software change. I haven't the foggiest how much work that would be to implement, but it sounds like a potentially useful change so I'll open a phab ticket when I'm more awake if nobody beats me to it. Thryduulf (talk) 03:42, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Now phab:T388405. Thryduulf (talk) 13:19, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks! jp×g🗯️ 11:26, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Wrapping floating decorative elements in a standardized CSS class

Notified: Wikipedia talk:User pages HouseBlaster (talk • he/they) 21:02, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

A quick intro about what I mea by "floating decorative elements": I am talking about the stuff you can see on display at User talk:HouseBlaster/sandbox, which follows you down the screen when you scroll. I am not talking about {{skip to top and bottom}} (which is very helpful for longer talk pages), or other functional stuff. I am talking about the stuff which we put there for fun and decoration.

I love that people find a way to enjoy Wikipedia. "It is fun" is the main reason why I edit Wikipedia, and I'd imagine it is for many others, too. WP:MALVOLIO is a really good essay. The idea is not to ban this way of expressing yourself. But some people (myself included) find the elements annoying and distracting. They make it harder to read the content on the talk page by covering part of the text. This hurts most on mobile, where your screen space is already quite limited.

What I propose is adding a section to Wikipedia:User pages stating that these floating elements should be wrapped in a CSS class, such as floating-decoration. This is easy for anyone to do: simply place <div class=floating-decoration> before the wikitext generating the floating element and </div> after it. The CSS class lets anyone who finds these floating decorations annoying opt-out by adding a line to their common.css page hiding these elements if they so choose. (An example CSS line is at User:HouseBlaster/sandbox.css.) The CSS class only affect the appearance of the elemnts for people who have explicitly modified their common.css.

The idea is to provide an opt-out, not to ban the practice altogether.

Thoughts? In particular, anyone have a better name for the CSS class? Best, HouseBlaster (talk • he/they) 07:24, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Sure why not.
(An alternative class name could be "decor-float". Not sure if that's better.) Aaron Liu (talk) 13:33, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I should probably propose some wording; this would be placed as a subsection in Wikipedia:User pages § What may I have in my user pages?

Floating decorative elements
Shortcut

Editors are permitted to have a reasonable number of decorative elements which follow the reader down the screen on their user page, their talk page, or both. Some editors find these elements distracting or otherwise annoying. If they are included, they should be wrapped in class=floating-decoration. This allows anyone to opt-out of seeing floating elements by adding the following line to their common.css: 

.floating-decoration {display:none;}
Functional elements (such as {{skip to top and bottom}}) are not required to should not be wrapped in class=floating-decoration.

HouseBlaster (talk • he/they) 21:02, 10 March 2025 (UTC); c/e at 23:24, 10 March 2025 (UTC); clarified scope at 22:44, 11 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Instead of "are not required", how about "should not"? Aaron Liu (talk) 15:14, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Good catch.  Fixed. HouseBlaster (talk • he/they) 19:09, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion at Wikipedia talk:User pages#RfC: allowing editors to opt-out of seeing floating decorative elements

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:User pages § RfC: allowing editors to opt-out of seeing floating decorative elements. HouseBlaster (talk • he/they) 23:03, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia's new AI sidekick.!

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
Similar ideas have already been extensively discussed before, and here again is a clear consensus against. Closing this as we don't need more pile-on opposition. Cremastra (talk) 14:19, 11 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hello there,

I've been visiting Wikipedia for quite a while and I like how much info is here! But sometimes, I find myself turning to a chatbot to get the main point of an article—like with Mind at Large. Skimming didn’t quite cut it, and I needed a quick, clear explanation.

What if Wikipedia had a small AI helper—maybe a little icon tucked in the corner (like Grok on X)—that stays out of the way unless you click it? You could ask something like, “What does ‘Mind at Large’ really mean?” and it’d give you a short, simple summary. Nothing fancy, just the crux of it. I think this could help a lot of users, especially on tricky or dense topics that aren’t super clear right away.

A feature like this could make Wikipedia even more welcoming and useful, drawing in more people (like how Grok boosted X). It’d be great for articles that are hard to grasp or need a little extra clarity.

What do you all think? Could this be a fun, helpful addition? Maverick 9828 (talk) 17:48, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

As has been stated multiple times whenever someone suggests something along these lines: no. signed, Rosguill talk 17:55, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
To agree completely with Rosguill: no. SportingFlyer T·C 18:20, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks... It's not like it's [AI is] all bad. This feature will save time and get more people to Wikipedia for finding a quick, witty or however prompted solution tailored to their need from the huge pile of information. Maverick 9828 (talk) 18:27, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
AI fucks things up quite often. Read the article yourself. If you want AI to think for you, you can seek those tools yourself. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:36, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
then explain what's Mind at Large from wikipedia, without much digging.
Not easily possible cause this article itself is not clear enough. That's when this tool will be helpful. And you can seek it yourself to not to use it. Maverick 9828 (talk) 19:06, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That's not a very good reason to add something to Wikipedia which we know to be expensive, bad for the environment, and also often factually incorrect. MrOllie (talk) 19:09, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
agreed with your first two reasons. Partially agreed to third. Thanks. Maverick 9828 (talk) 19:11, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If you're curious, the Wikimedia Foundation did experiment with AI tools to help explain/summarize pages, you can read about them at meta:Future Audiences/Experiments: conversational/generative AI and on the project's report! Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 20:44, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
While AI has made a lot of progress, it's not there yet, and some of the results have me referring to it as Artificial Stupidity. Always verify any results you get from an AI engine. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 20:45, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Can we not? For reasons already stated, this is a bad idea. Others have already said it better than I could, but I just wanted to add that for me personally, I would straight up stop editing wikipedia if this was implemented, not to try to make a 'statement' but because I know that I physically would not be able to comply with WP:NPOV if this was implemented. I'm sure this is the case for others as well. Froglegseternal (talk) 11:03, 11 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If you find the introduction to the article unclear, perhaps drop a note on the talkpage noting this. They're intended to do what you propose, provide a concise summary. CMD (talk) 11:53, 11 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
alright. Thanks Maverick 9828 (talk) 12:06, 11 March 2025 (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.

Modification of Airport template

Hey all, been a while since I edited Wikipedia (a loooooong time), but I was just looking at the Airport template and noticed it doesn't currently have provisos for things like airport plates (technical diagrams of airports) or for the operating frequencies for things like ATC. Can this be changed? Can I change it? Moonbloom (talk) 20:47, 11 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Can you link the airport template you're discussing? Template:Airport is actually about adaptations of a 1968 novel.
I think whatever you're discussing could be changed, and you can change it per WP:BOLD, and if anyone dislikes it they will revert and you can discuss it further. satkara❈talk 21:35, 11 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. I will try to add this soon. Moonbloom (talk) 00:30, 12 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I was referring to the "{\{Infobox airport}\}" thing (as seen on Auckland Airport) Moonbloom (talk) 00:29, 12 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you! That would be template:infobox airport. You can't edit it directly - only admins or people with Template editing permission (this is where to request that) can - but you can request an edit on the infobox's talk page. See WP:TPROT. satkara❈talk 00:54, 12 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you so much! I've added a request for the template editors (I figured requesting that myself would be futile, since I don't come anywhere NEAR the requirements as listed under Wikipedia:TPEGRANT ). Thanks for the help @Satkara! -- Moonbloom (talk) 04:03, 12 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Lead sections of government leaders

I'd like to propose that the leads of current government leaders (ideally all government officials currently holding office) include their expected term length or next election date - within the first paragraph or the infobox.

I think this is a vital fact for political leaders that quickly contextualizes their influence and their country's system of government.

Using Narendra Modi as an example, whose page is considered "good", the infobox says and lead sentence say he assumed office in 2014. However, nowhere in the article mentions when his next election is expected to be or how long he will serve. The lead does not even mention his recent reelection in 2024 (it does say "In the 2024 general election, Modi's party lost its majority in the lower house of Parliament and formed a government leading the National Democratic Alliance coalition.").

Not every official title has explanatory articles, but India's does. Still, even Prime Minister of India doesn't quickly explain. The lead says there are elections every 5 years and, at the end, that Narendra Modi has been serving since 2014, so you could calculate it - but it's not as simple as "the next PM of India will be elected in 2029, after the general election".

If there is no expected end of term, that context can be explained ie "Trudeau was appointed Prime Minister after his party, the Liberal Party, won a majority in the Canadian House of Commons in the 2015 Federal Election. He maintains his role indefinitely, until he resigns or loses parliamentary support."

Some modifications to Modi's article could be:

  • Adding "Next election cycle: " or "Current term: 2022-2029" or something similar to the infobox.
  • "Narendra Damodardas Modi (born 17 September 1950) is an Indian politician who has served as the prime minister of India since 2014. He began a third 5-year term in 2024."
  • "Narendra Damodardas Modi (born 17 September 1950) is an Indian politician who has served as the prime minister of India since 2014. He began a new 5-year term in 2024 after being re-elected as head of party by members of the National Democratic Alliance."
  • Or for directly elected officials, "Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo (born 24 June 1962) is a Mexican politician, scientist, and academic elected to serve as the 66th president of Mexico from October 1, 2024 to October 1, 2030."

Apologies if I got any facts wrong (it's a symptom of the problem I'm trying to address) but hopefully this exemplifies the idea.

Push back appreciated! satkara❈talk 00:49, 12 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Modi is not head of state, that is the President of India. Modi is head of government. 331dot (talk) 00:57, 12 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks - I'm using heads of state loosely here; ideally I think it should be all government officials including state govt officials. I'll change it to "government leaders". satkara❈talk 01:18, 12 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's not always clear. For example in the UK, general elections are held no less frequently than every 5 years but when exactly the election is held is at the discretion of the prime minister - and as recent history shows there is no guarantee they will serve the full term so all we can say is that Keir Starmer's current term will end no later than 15 August 2029. There are no term limits, so it's quite possible that the next election will see no change in the head of government. UK government ministers stay in their role until they resign, they get sacked or the next election happens whichever happens first. Then there are all the government officials who are not elected (e.g. monarchs), are only nominally elected or just play fast and loose with their country's constitution and have elections only when it is expedient for them. Thryduulf (talk) 01:34, 12 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

For topics which may not yet meet Wikipedia's inclusion criteria for articles, but for which relevant information is present across multiple articles (such that an editor may have difficulty deciding which page to redirect to), there should be a type of mainspace page dedicated to listing articles in which readers can find information on a given topic. A page of that type would be distinct from a disambiguation page in that, while disambig pages list different topics that share the same name, a navigation page (or navpage) would include a list of articles or sections that all contain information on the exact same topic. In situations where a non-notable topic is covered in more than one article, and readers wish to find information on that particular topic, and that topic can't be confused with anything else (making disambiguation unnecessary), and there turns out to be two or more equally sensible redirect targets for their search terms, then a navpage may be helpful.

Rough example #1

Wikipedia does not have an article on the Nick Fuentes, Donald Trump, and Kanye West meeting, but you can read about this topic in the following articles:

You can also:

Rough example #2

Wikipedia does not have an article on Anti-Bangladesh disinformation in India, but you can read about this topic in the following articles:

You can also:

Besides reducing the prevalence of red links, navpages can also be targets for other pages (e.g. Trump dinner) to redirect to without being considered double redirects. – MrPersonHumanGuy (talk) 16:23, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This is a cool idea! Toadspike [Talk] 11:51, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I also agree! I'm thinking some disambiguation pages tagged with {{R with possibilities}} could make good navigation pages, alongside the WP:XY cases mentioned above. At the same time, we should be careful to not have any "X or Y" be a navigation page pointing to X and Y – it could be useful to limit ourselves to pages discussing the aspects together. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 13:26, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Good idea – people seeing the nav page and how it is split across more than one article could also help drive creation of broad-topic articles. Cremastra (talk) 23:40, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Also noting that the small text If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended page. might not necessarily be needed, as it can make sense to link to navigation pages so readers can have an overview of the coverage, and since that page might be the target of a future broad-topic article. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 23:50, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This seems a useful idea. As a similar example I'd like to offer Turtle Islands Heritage Protected Area, which I created as an odd disambiguation page because it was a term people might search, but with little to say that wouldn't CFORK with content that would easily fit within both or either or the existing articles. CMD (talk) 01:32, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Different Icons for Temporary Protected

On Mar. 17, 2025, I visited the page for Saint Patrick's Day, and I noticed that the page had Temporary Protection. I feel like it should have different icon. This could be the normal lock color with a clock in the middle, and a different notice when viewing the source. Here is a mockup of what it could possibly look like:

Mockup

Codename Abrix (talk) 22:44, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

When someone wants a clock icon, then they can use {{Temporarily protected}}, which has File:Gnome-fs-loading-icon.svg as the icon. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:17, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Aren't the majority of protections temporary? It's permanent protection that is more unusual. CMD (talk) 02:29, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm saying it could use better indication, especially for mobile which gives a vague, "This page is protected to prevent vandalism," pop up. Codename Abrix (talk) 10:49, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There is a Wikipedia help page on why the daily is semi-protected. I advise you to check that @Codename Abrix and add a redir to that on this template Batorang (talk) 14:56, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In some articles, red links like this immediately redirect you to the article creator. Instead of that, red links can redirect to a search page for that topic. And we can explain at the top, like with a template saying "This article does not exist, but if you want to create it, click here." Batorang (talk) 12:42, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Batorang You only get the article editor if you are logged into an account - logged out users get the "this page does not exist" notice defined at MediaWiki:Noarticletext. 86.23.109.101 (talk) 15:32, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Graph template/module

It can't be too hard for someone to code a new template or module that would replace the broken graphs extension, right? Why not just do it ourselves, instead of waiting on MediaWiki when it's been years? 2601:644:8184:F2F0:F8AE:4783:30B2:16C3 (talk) 16:23, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

WMF

WMF annual planning: How can we help more contributors connect and collaborate?

Hi all - the Wikimedia Foundation is kicking off our annual planning work to prepare for next fiscal year (July 2025-June 2026). We've published a list of questions to help with big-picture thinking, and I thought I'd share one of them here that you all might find interesting: We want to improve the experience of collaboration on the wikis, so it’s easier for contributors to find one another and work on projects together, whether it’s through backlog drives, edit-a-thons, WikiProjects, or even two editors working together. How do you think we could help more contributors find each other, connect, and work together? KStineRowe (WMF) (talk) 20:27, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@KStineRowe (WMF), by providing more funding for scholarships to Wikimania and other conferences, for one thing. Sdkb talk 22:57, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Anyone is invited to collaborate and provide feedback on the page, Meta:Meta:Neuro-inclusive event strategies. I think working on this could go a long way. Hexatekin (talk) 19:33, 28 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think opening up the article translation features to more people would be beneficial for collaboration between the various languages of wikipedia. I also think english wikipedia and simple english wikipedia should collaborate more, but I don't have any ideas for that specifically (other than maybe having a button to link users to a simple english version of a page if it exists) Mgjertson (talk) 16:06, 6 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think WikiProjects could get more promotion with maybe a popup for new editors saying "talk with other editors active in this topic area here". ꧁Zanahary꧂ 22:51, 11 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
To me it seems like WikiProjects are mostly handy to get assistance from other people interested in a topic area / get consensus for some widespread change, but they only really work if the talk pages aren't dead. So links might help, although every article in a WikiProject's talk page already links to the project, though. Mrfoogles (talk) 03:50, 25 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I concur with more support to WikiProjects. These projects are invaluable to content diversity and surely there should be an effort to link these projects with both direct funding from WMF as well as other Affiliates. The synergy is obvious. — Thuvack | talk 00:18, 5 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
What would the funding be used for, and who would receive it, though? It doesn't seem like most WikiProjects always have formal leaders or much monetary needs. Mrfoogles (talk) 20:04, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Zanahary, @Mrfoogles, @Thuvack, thanks for bringing up WikiProjects! I work on a team at WMF that focuses on how we can improve the experience of people collaborating together on the wikis, and we have developed some tools that can help WikiProjects, as part of the CampaignEvents extension. The extension is already enabled on English Wikipedia, as well as other wikis (see deployment status). The extension has 3 tools: 1) Event Registration (a way to register participants & run collaborative activities on the wikis), 2) Collaboration List (a way to discover events and WikiProjects to join - see example on English Wikipedia), and 3) Invitation Lists (a way to find people to invite to events or WikiProjects, by identifying editors who made significant contributions to articles).
We also have some current & upcoming work that can support WikiProjects, which is: 1) allowing event registration in alternative namespaces (T385341), so that it can be used in namespaces like Wikipedia or WikiProject, if wikis want to allow it, and 2) allowing an embeddable version of the Collaboration List (T385347), so a WikiProject could have an automated "calendar" of events, filtered by the wiki(s) and topical area(s) of its interest, that could be added to any of its pages. Finally, we are in the early stages of exploring some future potential project ideas, including: 1) adding a version of the Collaboration List to the Newcomer Homepage, so newcomers could learn about events and/or WikiProjects that may interest them (T387792) and 2) tracking collaborative contributions through Event Registration, so that the contributions that are a part of an activity/event/project can be easily tracked on the wikis (T378035).
We're continuing to develop the extension, so we're very interested in any suggestions of what to work on next and/or what could be most impactful. So, I'm wondering: Do you think the tools that are a part of the extension today could be helpful to WikiProjects? Do any of our upcoming/future project plans sound like good or bad ideas? What do you see as some of the biggest gaps related to tooling on WikiProjects, and how could we potentially help address these gaps? Thank you again for all of the ideas you already shared, and I look forward to any feedback! IFried (WMF) (talk) 21:24, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
My experience is mostly with the unreferenced articles project, and their backlog drives. They could probably use a software-supported method for people to sign up for things and to invite people to things, etc., I think? Currently people just put themselves on the page with the list -- it's a bit hacked together, like a lot of things end up being.
All I can think of would be to say that it's probably best to make sure events don't keep getting automatically scheduled when a WikiProject is dead, as a lot of them become -- that would probably pollute the queue.
Do a lot of people actually use the Newcomer Homepage, so far? I've heard about it, but I didn't run into it when I got started editing. It would definitely be interesting if that could be used as a recruiting tool, and I think it would probably work well -- the whole point of backlog drives/etc. is to have good contained tasks -- but I didn't get the impression that the Newcomer Homepage was fully rolled out yet from the various pages. Mrfoogles (talk) 02:43, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Kill switch to delete information on user IP and email addresses

WMF should have a kill switch to delete all information on the IP addresses and email addresses associated with all user accounts. If DOGE can just walk in and seize the US treasury, seize USAID, gain access to the federal payment system and potentially everyone's SSN's, etc., then there is no reason to think people couldn't just show up at the WMF some day and seize all of our user data. The WMF should have a protocol in place to rapidly delete user data should that occur. Photos of Japan (talk) 07:16, 4 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think WMF would just say "No". DOGE is only able to do the stuff it does the federal government because it has the President, who can at least lie to people who work for him he has authority over this stuff. WMF would instead say something like "Do you have a warrant?" and suchlike. Mrfoogles (talk) 18:23, 20 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Why would they care about the WMF saying "No."? They just show up to federal agencies with armed officers and waltz on in, who is going to stop them? Some office worker in the WMF, "Do you have a warrant?", bunch of armed people just walk right past them. Photos of Japan (talk) 18:31, 20 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Do you have any evidence of DOGE going in to any organisation that is not government owned? I'm no fan of Elon Musk, but I don't think he has any control over Wikipedia (much as he'd like to). Phil Bridger (talk) 18:51, 20 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
They are too busy to care about something like Wikipedia right now. They are also in the process of flushing out the Department of Justice and mass firing FBI agents to replace them with their own people. They just released an EO declaring Trump determines the authoritative legal interpretation of the law for all employees of the executive branch, and has complete supervision and control over the executive. If Trump has thousands of FBI agents that do whatever he says, then one year from now there's no reason to assume the WMF won't be subjected to some illegal raid. You prepare for problems before they happen, you don't wait for them to occur and then react to them. Photos of Japan (talk) 19:16, 20 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think that currently both the main and backup sites are in the USA, along with the WMF and the endowment. Maybe now would be a good time to move some or all of that to countries with a greater seperation of powers between the executive and the judiciary. Or at least change the fundraising model to a more decentralised one where the money raised in each country where we have a national charity is under the control of that charity. ϢereSpielChequers 21:44, 21 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah. Regardless of who's in charge, it's just a good idea to not keep everything in the same place. We should probably think about setting up a backup site in Europe Mgjertson (talk) 19:30, 11 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Principality of Sealand RoySmith (talk) 19:50, 11 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
WP has "caching" data centers in Amsterdam and Marseille, as well as Singapore and Sao Paolo. What I don't know is how much would need to be done to move the "application" functions from the data centers in the US to one of those non-US facilities. I don't know how much protection that would provide, as the Foundation is a US registered corporation, and some European standards, such as the "right to disappear", clash with WP aims. Donald Albury 21:22, 11 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hey, I wanted to add my two cents. This is not really related to any recent events, but is about privacy and data we collect. The Trust and Safety Product team is working on Temporary Accounts, something which really strengthens the logged-out editors' privacy. The feature is live on 12 wikis already, and we are expecting it to be ready for deployment everywhere (yeah, on all our wikis) later this year. You are welcome to subscribe to the newsletter to keep track of our work, and to comment on the draft plan for the team's work in the next fiscal year. SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 00:46, 5 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
SGrabarczuk (WMF), this discussion was raised due to a potential concern about the privacy of logged-in users, whose accounts are not temporary. I see the draft plan includes some items on reducing abuse for logged-in users, but don't see any notes about data or privacy relating to logged-in accounts. CMD (talk) 01:25, 5 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

We want to buy you books - update

The next phase of discussion has started for the resource support pilot project, building from the opening questions' responses to now try and develop the details of what the pilot will look like. Please participate at: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Resource Exchange/Resource Request#Working on specifics, and let me know if you have any questions :) RAdimer-WMF (talk) 00:12, 27 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Without context, this just sounds like the Wikimedia Foundation will buy you random books. What if they gave you a random slice of the World Book encyclopedia??? The Master of Hedgehogs (talk) (contributions) (Sign my guestbook!) 12:24, 28 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think the idea is to buy books that are requested at places like WP:RX but are not easy to obtain. I think this idea was first proposed on a talk page somewhere during a discussion about non-ideal ways the WMF was spending their money and what they should be spending it on instead. I'm actually quite happy to see that the WMF took the idea seriously and is trying to meet volunteers in the middle by listening to their ideas and turning them into an actionable program. Full credit to WMF for trying this out. –Novem Linguae (talk) 23:11, 28 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That makes sense. The Master of Hedgehogs (talk) (contributions) (Sign my guestbook!) 11:18, 1 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds amazing, so how that works? Can this come to Rwanda? Annick green (talk) 17:54, 7 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Annick green! There's a subsection on geography that answers some of these questions – in short, it will depend on the resource being requested. RAdimer-WMF (talk) 18:38, 11 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Wikilinking to Asian News International vs. Wikimedia Foundation

Recently an editor removed wikilinks to Asian News International vs. Wikimedia Foundation from many articles. [8][9][10][11][12] What are our thoughts on if we should or should not wikilink to the article Asian News International vs. Wikimedia Foundation? I am inclined to keep these links and have said so before, but would appreciate hearing some other thoughts. cc Pppery. –Novem Linguae (talk) 04:17, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Novem Linguae All wikilinks to the article ANI v. WMF should be removed as the article isn't even an article. Its just a template saying "Asian News International is trying to censor Wikipedia for simply telling the truth". DotesConks (talk) 04:24, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) My comment there:

I think it's better we try to heal into a self-consistent state involving that article not existing, rather than deliberately sending people to the memory hole. Reverts are cheap, so when it comes back it won't be hard to revert my edits. I likewise would prefer that the article on the individual case be a redirect to an appropriate section rather than a visible sore (assuming that's legally allowed). I totally get the other viewpoint, though. * Pppery * it has begun... 15:39, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

Rephrased, I don't think it's appropriate to have a link that looks like it's going to point to something, but instead points to nothing. The only information the link conveys is that the WMF has blocked access to the article. In all of those cases the article still says that later in the same paragraph, so the link is redundant. I was inspired to do this now (after having been previously reverted in October) because months later I think the case for doing this is stronger than it was back them when things were still in flux. * Pppery * it has begun... 04:27, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflicted but applicable here too) If that is the consensus, is there a Template:ill type solution that could hide the wikilink if that is the case? Usually for pages with possibility redlinks mean there is not a need to redo all links if a page is created, however in this case there the wikilink removal is creating future work that would involve tracking down prior links as well as reverting. CMD (talk) 04:30, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'd prefer that we retain the links. The situation has already forced us to make extraordinary against-encyclopedic-interests changes, and modifying other articles as well would be an unforced deepening of the wound. Links, even when not clicked, reveal information to readers about e.g. which topics are notable enough to merit coverage. Removing them would send the false message that we don't consider the topic notable. This is also analogous to the situation with red links for notable topics, which we retain despite them not leading to information, so I don't find the "links need to lead to info" argument above persuasive. Lastly, reverts aren't the most expensive change, but they do take some work, especially once an article has evolved around them (e.g. by providing more context when a link is absent or by adjusting MOS:SOB workarounds). Keeping the links takes the longer-term view, in which the article will eventually go up again and we won't have to reintegrate it into the rest of the encyclopedia. Sdkb talk 07:02, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with the idea that links should be retained, unless there is any legal compulsion against it. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 08:40, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Sdkb makes sense to me. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 12:32, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I came in here with no strong opinion, but I think Sdkb makes a good point that the links, even to a removed topic, are valuable information. Valereee (talk) 12:59, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I see a rough consensus to restore the wikilinks. Any objections before I go making edits? –Novem Linguae (talk) 11:48, 11 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
 Done –Novem Linguae (talk) 06:08, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Status

While we're all here, can we get an update on the case itself? Is there a time estimate on when the page could be made available again? Are the editors out of legal risk? Is this case going to lead to risks of other articles going down and/or restricted availability in India? Tazerdadog (talk) 08:37, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Tazerdadog: There's been some updates over at WP:ANIVWF, and you can follow the court case directly here. Most recent update is that the WMF has appealed for the plaint to be rejected; the editors' details were disclosed to the court under a sealed cover and they have been served with a summons, but no affidavit has been filed by them and nobody has appeared in court on their behalf. There haven't been any real proceedings since this update as the presiding officer was on leave. Unfortunately I can't answer the rest of your questions, as it all depends on how the court case proceeds. --Grnrchst (talk) 20:09, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Tazerdadog Recent coverage: ANI vs Wikipedia: Supreme Court questions Delhi HC over Wikipedia page takedown order. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 15:26, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Wikimedia Foundation banner fundraising campaign in Malaysia on English Wikipedia only

Dear all,

I would like to take the opportunity to inform you all  about the upcoming annual Wikimedia Foundation banner fundraising campaign in Malaysia, on English Wikipedia.

The fundraising campaign will have two components.

  1. We will send emails to people who have previously donated from Malaysia. The emails are scheduled to be sent in March 2025.  
  2. We will run banners for non-logged in users in Malaysia on English Wikipedia itself. The banners will run from the 2nd to the 30th of June 2025.

Prior to this, we are planning to run some tests, so you might see banners for 3-5 hours a couple of times before the campaign starts. This activity will ensure that our technical infrastructure works.

Generally, before and during the campaign, you can contact us:

Thank you and regards, JBrungs (WMF) (talk) 12:07, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Wikimedia Foundation banner fundraising campaign in South Africa

Dear all,

I would like to take the opportunity to inform you all  about the upcoming annual Wikimedia Foundation banner fundraising campaign in South Africa.

The fundraising campaign will have two components.

  1. We will send emails to people who have previously donated from South Africa. The emails are scheduled to be sent between the 23rd-27th of June 2025.  
  2. We will run banners for non-logged in users in South Africa on English Wikipedia itself. The banners will run from the 2nd - 30th of June 2025.

Prior to this, we are planning to run some tests, so you might see banners for 3-5 hours a couple of times before the campaign starts. This activity will ensure that our technical infrastructure works.

I will soon be sharing the updated community collaboration page, where we outline more details around the campaign, share some banner examples, and give you space to engage with the fundraising campaign.

We will also be hosting a community call, details will be on the collaboration page, to which you can bring your questions and suggestions.

Generally, before and during the campaign, you can contact us:

Thank you and regards, JBrungs (WMF) (talk) 12:41, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin 2025 Issue 4

Here is a quick overview of highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation since our last issue on 24 February. Please help translate.
Wikimania 2025 Theme
Wikimania 2025 programming proposals are now open.

Upcoming and current events and conversations
Let's Talk continues

  • Annual Planning: Help shape our early-stage thinking around our Product & Tech work and provide feedback before budgets and measurable targets are committed.
  • Global Trends 2025: As part of annual planning, we identify a list of global trends that will impact the Wikimedia movement, such as changes in how and where people search for and contribute information online, the rise of misinformation and disinformation in online spaces, and evolving regulation of online information providers.
  • Wikimania 2025: Apply now to speak at Wikimania 2025 whether to lead a workshop, host a panel, present a poster, or showcase a tool demonstration. Submit your session by March 31 anywhere on earth. If you're interested reviewing proposals for Wikimania 2025 and helping shape the program, you can fill out a short form to apply to be a program reviewer by 17 March.
  • WikiConference North America 2025: Scholarship applications are now open until April 4. This conference will take place in New York City from October 16–19, 2025, under the theme “Wiki’s World Fair".
  • Wikimedia Enterprise and Global Advocacy at SXSW 2025: Wikimedia Enterprise is coming together with Creative Commons on March 9 for a day of conversations and panel discussions at SXSW 2025 that tackles the challenges of AI and the preservation and ethical development of open data. Global Advocacy is participating on a panel on March 8, diving into conversations about the future of the internet.
  • WikiCauserie: The online bi-monthly meeting aimed at bringing together the French-speaking member communities of WikiFranca will be held next on March 21 at 18:00 UTC.


Annual Goals Progress on Infrastructure
See also newsletters: Wikimedia Apps · Growth · Research · Web · Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia · Tech News · Language and Internationalization · other newsletters on MediaWiki.org


Annual Goals Progress on Knowledge Equity
See also a list of all movement events: on Meta-Wiki

  • Women’s History Month: Wikimedia Foundation is running a campaign to spotlight some of the Wikimedians working to close the gender gap on Wikimedia projects. The campaign, Knowledge is human. Knowledge is her., is aimed at reaching external audiences in Sub-Saharan Africa.
  • Wikimedia Research Showcase: "Gender Gaps" will be the featured theme for the next research showcase taking place on March 19 at 16:30 UTC.
  • Global Resource Distribution Committee (GRDC): The call for candidates is being extended until March 31.


Annual Goals Progress on Safety & Integrity
See also blogs: Global Advocacy blog · Global Advocacy Newsletter · Policy blog


Annual Goals Progress on Effectiveness
See also: quarterly Metrics Reports


Board and Board committee updates
See Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard · Affiliations Committee Newsletter


Other Movement curated newsletters & news
See also: Diff blog · Goings-on · Planet Wikimedia · Signpost (en) · Kurier (de) · Actualités du Wiktionnaire (fr) · Regards sur l’actualité de la Wikimedia (fr) · Wikimag (fr) · Education · GLAM · The Wikipedia Library · Milestones · Wikidata · Central and Eastern Europe · other newsletters

Subscribe or unsubscribe · Help translate

For information about the Bulletin and to read previous editions, see the project page on Meta-Wiki. Let askcac(_AT_)wikimedia.org know if you have any feedback or suggestions for improvement!


MediaWiki message delivery 15:55, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

What's up with the YouTube channel?

I was recommended a short from what seems to be the WMFs official youtube channel. It was basically an AI narration of a wikipedia pages lead with relatedish images lifted from the commons. Is this actually the Wikimedia foundations youtube channel? I find it hard to believe we'd make AI generated voiceovers and link to articles via Linktree but the account also says it's from 2007. Is this an experiment or something? mgjertson (talk) (contribs) 15:38, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Mgjertson, can you provide a link to the short? I do know the Future Audiences team at the Foundation has been experimenting with some AI-generated short video versions of articles — the idea is to see if it's possible to make such auto-generated videos engaging, which could open up new audiences. Sdkb talk 16:04, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hey Mgjertson, thanks for asking. As Sdkb mentions above, the Future Audiences team has been trying to see if this is a way we can get people who otherwise do not engage with encyclopedias to be aware of what Wikipedia is and that information they come across actually come from us, but repackaged, to create pathways for people to read the wiki, become editors and so on. You can find the rationale for this experiment linked above, and more information at m:Future Audiences/Generated Video. Also see this discussion from last year: Wikipedia talk:Did you know/Archive 201#Future Audiences call – inspiration from DYK to create videos. Johan (WMF) (talk) 20:34, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hi @Johan (WMF), m:Future Audiences/Generated Video raises the question "Is there a risk of damaging Wikipedia’s brand or enriching a non-free company’s brand by publishing content on TikTok?", and discusses this further at various points. However, it does not discuss the seemingly far more crucial question of considerations for the brand of directly associating it with AI-generated content. If you're trying to lead editors to Wikipedia, linking it to the suggestion it might be AI-generated is probably not a productive way towards that. If the trade-off does not lean that way that would be good to know, but it's surprising to see it just not even mentioned when there seems to be considerable effort made to manage concerns about TikTok. CMD (talk) 03:46, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Chipmunkdavis: For clarity, I want to stress that the content isn't generated by an AI. The content is coming from Wikipedia articles. The AI usage here is as a packaging tool with human oversight. Damian, who is the PM for the Future Audiences experiments, will give a longer answer. Johan (WMF) (talk) 15:41, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I feel like it's mostly fine as long as the actual text is not AI-generated -- text-to-speech is not the same thing as ChatGPT, really. Mrfoogles (talk) 02:44, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
As far as I can tell, AI stuff is currently the center of a very large amount of political contention, and moreover (not wholly unrelatedly) considered highly uncool by teens/etc. jp×g🗯️ 11:28, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
AI narration not necessarily (cf these AI-narrated Reddit threads someone showed me once), but it does feel a bit weird for WP's image. Aaron Liu (talk) 15:15, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If we have to choose between opening up to new audiences and not making AI-generated videos, I choose the latter. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 04:57, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hi @Mgjertson – Maryana from the WMF Future Audiences team here (h/t for the tag-in @Sdkb). As @Johan (WMF) mentioned, we're creating these short videos using Wikipedia content to see if we can reach new audiences that don't know about or visit Wikipedia today. We know from global surveys that today's 18-24-year olds are the least aware of or inclined to visit Wikipedia of all the age groups we survey, but they love learning on platforms like TikTok and YouTube Shorts. So if we want to introduce this generation to Wikipedia, we're going to have to do it on the platforms they spend a lot of time on.
The videos you're seeing are our first lightweight steps to seed the short video space and see which topics work and which don't. We've managed to get a few viral moments (interestingly, @Dumelow's DYKs have been some of our best performers! This is some DYK magic that we're studying and trying to replicate ), and have gotten millions of views and thousands of likes, comments, and new followers on our accounts since the start of this experiment last fall. In addition to learning and continuing to build up an audience on these channels, we want to invite Wikipedians and anyone who wants to make their own fun-fact/explainer video content to join us and participate in these channels. We'll have some videos made by communities appearing on these channels soon, so stay tuned!
Also, a little more detail on how this set of videos has been made to date: we start by handpicking either existing DYKs curated by the community or other topical/relevant-to-younger-audiences topics. We then use an AI-powered tool to summarize the text and images associated with the article into a short 30ish-second video and add an AI voiceover, and then get human review/editing on the text and images to make sure they're accurate. The AI tool and narration saves us some production time (which helps us learn more efficiently by allowing us to put out more content and understand how a broader range of topics perform), but it's still a pretty human/manual content creation process. It's true that AI has a certain stigma to it, which we're closely monitoring and collecting feedback on. Though we haven't seen a signal that AI is creating any major risk or pushback (e.g., we're growing followers on these channels, not losing them), our strong hunch is that once we start posting community videos that feature humans and are narrated by humans, they'll perform much better than this initial batch. But like I said, these AI-assisted videos were a way for us to get the ball rolling & start learning quickly/efficiently.
If you have any more questions, my colleague @DLin-WMF is happy to answer them! He has recently joined the Future Audiences team to lead this and other experiments, and he ran into some posting permissions issues because his WMF account is so new, so Johan & I jumped in here to help out in the meantime. Maryana Pinchuk (WMF) (talk) 14:46, 15 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia is fairly ubiquitous (yay!). I don't think we need to be explicitly trying to "introduce" teens to Wikipedia, because the majority already know about and probably use it sometimes. Some of them even edit it. Cremastra (talk) 22:35, 15 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Cremastra, here's a link to the survey data Maryana mentioned. It shows that most teens are aware of it, yes, but they're less aware of it and use it less than older groups, so there's a concerning trend. Also keep in mind that this is global data, and Wikipedia may not be as ubiquitous in other communities as it is in yours. Sdkb talk 04:25, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Also keep in mind that this is global data fair point. Cremastra (talk) 14:38, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, and: awareness doesn't necessarily equate to positive sentiment or usage. 18-24-year-olds have also been reporting the lowest net promoter score of Wikipedia of any generation we survey (NPS measures "would you recommend Wikipedia to a friend?", which is a way to get a sense of people's sentiment towards a product or service). This indicates that some young people may be aware of Wikipedia because e.g. a teacher told them about it and told them not to use it (so they don't), or because they saw someone on social media talking about how terrible and biased it is (which unfortunately is also growing more common), etc. Maryana Pinchuk (WMF) (talk) 14:25, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Surely some of us on here with radio voices could pitch in to do voiceovers, if they are very short? jp×g🗯️ 09:15, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • "The videos you're seeing are our first lightweight steps to seed the short video space and see which topics work and which don't. We've managed to get a few viral moments (interestingly, @Dumelow's DYKs have been some of our best performers! This is some DYK magic that we're studying and trying to replicate ), and have gotten millions of views and thousands of likes, comments, and new followers on our accounts since the start of this experiment last fall." Where would this be? At the "official channel for Wikipedia and other Wikimedia products", when I rank the video's[13] by popularity^, all the popular ones are at least 5 years old. Looking at the latest, there are from the last 12 months 2 video's which barely make 1K views, the remainder is less popular. Or do you mean the "shorts"? [14] There is one with 2.8K views, 2 others which just get 1K views, and all others get less than that. So where can I find these video's created since "last fall" which have amassed these millions of views? Fram (talk) 14:57, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Shorts plus TikTok is my understanding. Aaron Liu (talk) 16:28, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Ah, so not the Youtube channel... Fram (talk) 16:56, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    They mirror the same content, and evidently nearly nobody in this thread uses TikTok, therefore Jertson discovered this content through YouTube (Shorts) instead. Aaron Liu (talk) 17:00, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    This page I assume? Clicking "Popular" doesn't actually sort by popularity, but at least for me it shows the flat roof pub video near the top with 234.4K views. CMD (talk) 02:33, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    "Did you know that most people in North Korea cannot afford pizza?" seems a bit heartless for a specifically made official video. CMD (talk) 02:35, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Hey, 'twas hearty 'nuff for DYK on the front page. Aaron Liu (talk) 02:36, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    DYK is a fast-moving process where most hooks only get seen by a few people. It has redundancies in place, but it isn't perfect and shouldn't be assumed to be. CMD (talk) 02:41, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Pizza in North Korea received 54k views as a result of its DYK day as opposed to 100 a week later. Meanwhile the TikTok short was published months later and only received 4.4k views. Aaron Liu (talk) 02:43, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    That a hook got viewed isn't relevant to my point about DYK. On the aside though, I don't have an issue with the Pizza in North Korea article, which has the relevant text in context. Nor is the DYK still on the mainpage (buried on the talkpage and in archives), whereas that TikTok was one of the first things I saw when looking at the Wikipedia (that's us!) TikTok account. If you think it is good for an official Wikipedia platform to prominently host "Did you know North Koreans are poor" as an interesting fact, please say that rather than discussing the foibles of DYK. CMD (talk) 02:52, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    How is it irrelevant? If the hook got 54k clicks from being on the main page, how is that only "seen by a few people"? Way more people got an impression of Wikipedia from this main page hook just during its that one day while only 4.4k got the impression from an AI-generated TikTok short.

    If you think it is good for an official Wikipedia platform to prominently host "Did you know North Koreans are poor" as an interesting fact

    That's what we already have as DYK? Nobody opposed the hook on Wikipedia or in the TikTok comments. Aaron Liu (talk) 12:01, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    As I said above, DYK isn't perfect, and so because DYK did something does not make it perfect. "Seen by a few people" referred to the DYK review process, where hooks are seen by 1) the nominator, 2) the initial reviewer, 3) the prepper, 4) the queuer. Likely it'll get seen by a handful more who aren't engaged directly with it, and then a few editors check things for ERRORS, but yes, it's a few people. I'm not asking for what people have done on DYK and TikTok, I am asking for you to state your views, because it is unclear why you have decided to extend this discussion without commenting on the core subject matter that I raised in a very brief note. CMD (talk) 14:26, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't think it's a problem, and the handful of DYK people (way more than the one person that is you) did not find it a problem. Aaron Liu (talk) 15:07, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Perhaps explain why, rather than again pointing to the DYK process? It would be good to know. CMD (talk) 16:02, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I just don't see anything that heartless about it. It's not much more heartless than say when the Brighton Town Commissioners wanted to build Queen's Road through a slum district, they invited all the residents to a festival and demolished their houses while they were away? to me. You're not gonna get some sound logos out from me since this is pretty much all about subjective pathos. Aaron Liu (talk) 16:30, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    The sound logos stuff is red herring, I was seeking any actual opinion to explain the cause of this discussion, given all previous statements were about DYK. That said, your example doesn't seem similar at all, it's recounting an event rather than making a blanket statement about a group of people. Replace X in "Did you know most X can't afford pizza?" with other labels, saying group Y or Z are poor as a fun factoid is both not that interesting and easily coopted into harmful stereotypes. CMD (talk) 17:03, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Oh well, let's be happy that they took their soundbites from DYK, which is often wrong or in poor taste, and not from "On this Day", were between 2012 and, er, two days ago[15] we proudly presented Remembrance Day of the Latvian Legionnaires, "a day when soldiers of the Latvian Legion, part of the Waffen-SS, are commemorated." as the bolded top item for that day. Would be a hit on TikTok I suppose. Fram (talk) 17:18, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • For short-form content that would fit our aesthetic, one could look at the NYT's grey-background stuff (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6L1AYL6oxlU), except we'd have way less motion and mostly just grey-background guy talking with images Ken-Burns b'rolled to taste (plus ofc a short ident at the end, perhaps with the sound logo). Aaron Liu (talk) 01:05, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

2020 US court case affecting Google's contributions to Wikipedia?

As I fear, whatever remedies or sentence of the US case (2020) against Google will be might affect Google's ability to contribute to Wikipedia, its sister projects, and the WMF (Wikimedia Foundation). I can stand corrected about this.

Well, as we know so far, the sentencing/remedial trial will occur next month, and the judge will decide in August this year.

I'd like to discuss the newer 2023 case against Google, but I've yet to see decision reached. George Ho (talk) 16:47, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Open call for US & Canada Regional Fund Committees members

Hi everyone. The Wikimedia Foundation Community Resources team is seeking new members for the US & Canada Regional Fund Committee, which supports funding needs in the General Support Fund program. The committee maintains responsibilities to review and make final funding decisions for proposals received for this program, as well as working together with applicants on preparing robust proposals that benefit Wikimedia projects and the communities that contribute to them and use them.

The Regional Fund Committees' work is guided by the principles of participatory decision-making and subsidiarity, and aims to support the needs of many communities in the Wikimedia movement, including those based on gender, ethnicity, age, and geography, amongst other characteristics.

To learn more about Regional Fund Committees in general, eligibility criteria for joining, roles and responsibilities, training information, and procedure for review and selection, please review our general open call information on Meta-wiki.

To apply as a candidate for the US & Canada Regional Fund Committee, please review our candidates page on Meta-wiki for more information. Applications may be submitted on Meta-wiki or sent directly to me (cschilling@wikimedia.org). No deadline is set for applications for this open call, and will remain open until otherwise notified.

Please feel free to share this invitation and open call with any interested Wikimedians and other professionals who may be interested in committee participation. I'm also open to responding to any questions or needs for clarification here. With thanks, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 12:56, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi I JethroBT (WMF), the Committee Open Call meta page currently also states applications are wanted for Central & Eastern Europe & Central Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Are these closed, or should interested editors also apply there? CMD (talk) 14:10, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Chipmunkdavis: Thanks for your question. Yes, open calls for the Sub-Saharan Africa and CEE/Central Asia regions are also open for review, and so editors are welcome to apply there if interested. Information about Open Calls for those regions are available here on Meta-wiki:
With thanks, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 17:27, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

An idea I had

Wikitranslate, the free translator, uses information from the web and Wiktionary. Also Wikifilm, the free streaming service, mostly of public domain films. An editor from Mars (talk) 04:27, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

New WMF projects can be proposed at Meta:Proposals for new projects. Phil Bridger (talk) 09:07, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
To be honest, I'm not sure that there's enough demand for public domain films a whole streaming service is needed; people can already watch them fairly well on Commons if they want to. And Google Translate already uses information from Wikipedia -- that's not a distinguishing feature. Mrfoogles (talk) 02:45, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Miscellaneous

How to flag Arab-Israeli conflict related article

The article Alhambra Cinema (Israel) has a long history of people changing the country-designation of the pseudo-flag mounted on top of the building in the 1937 image. I think this article should be included under "Israeli–Palestinian conflict and all related issues" as listed in WP:List of controversial issues. I found the template {{Contentious topics/Arab-Israeli editnotice}}, but I'm not sure how to deploy it. (I'm not familiar with the geopolitical conflicts, I've just watchlisted this article about a building, and am annoyed with the back and forth edits.) Any help on how to reduce the long-term edit warring?   ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 16:55, 5 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

No tips? Anyone?   ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 16:21, 9 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Grorp, if you mean that you want to add the big warning on the talk page, then you post {{Arab-Israeli Arbitration Enforcement}} there. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:22, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@WhatamIdoing: Okay, I added that. However, the message states "You must be logged-in and extended-confirmed to edit or discuss this topic" but one can still edit the page as a non-logged-in IP editor (I tried it). There must be another step to limit editing on the article page.   ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 05:19, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The default is to allow anyone to edit. Now the page is tagged it warns about the situation, and an admin can protect the page if trouble comes along. For the talk page, others may wish to make edit requests. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 09:25, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
But the flagging shows only when you edit the talk page, not the article itself, so the warning is inadequate for drive-by editors.   ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 16:22, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
We only protect the pages when it is actually necessary. It is not, strictly speaking, necessary to protect a page just because someone might edit it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:32, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Actually all articles within PIA can be ECR by default. I've protected. Valereee (talk) 12:58, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, Valereee!   ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 16:39, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Do we need Recent changes" in the sidebar?

On special-purpose wiks with low volumes of traffic, recent changes is a great way to review what's been going on. But enwiki has such a high rate of edits that recent changes presents an essentially random sampling of pages. Is there really any value to having this in the sidebar? RoySmith (talk) 13:21, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That is a good question but in my knowledge every Wikipedia linguistical version have an equivalent button.
I don't know if this can be deleted as I'm far to be a specialist. Anatole-berthe (talk) 13:25, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I assume this is something that an WP:INTADMIN can change. Or of not that, then certainly a dev by editing the project config file. But before we go there, we should figure out if we really want it or not. RoySmith (talk) 13:38, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@RoySmith It can be removed by editing MediaWiki:Sidebar. 86.23.109.101 (talk) 15:29, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Putting #n-recentchanges { display: none } on your css page works if anyone wants to hide it. Nobody (talk) 15:34, 12 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I use Special:RecentChanges all the time. — xaosflux Talk 15:39, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In Wikipedia:Requests for comment/2020 left sidebar update there was consensus to keep this. At the time I voted to keep, saying Not only does it serve a important purpose to editors, but it also serves as a live demonstration of Wikipedia's editing activity to those unfamiliar with the site; I still agree with this.  novov talk edits 01:02, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It actually has many uses. I use it to deal with vandalism all the time. It might not be useful in its base forms, but with some filters set up it can be quite helpful. Gaismagorm (talk) 15:02, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
OK, that makes sense. I also didn't realize there was a prior RFC on this, so I guess this can be closed. RoySmith (talk) 15:07, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

-ve stuff

Is it wise to put -ve stuff on the Wikipedia home page. ? 220.240.117.89 (talk) 19:09, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Probably not, but your question is so lacking in context that it's impossible to answer properly. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:02, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Likely that they meant one of the ITN or DYK blurbs as those sometimes have negative (BLP) stuff (like the Arrest of Rodrigo Duterte). Nobody (talk) 15:24, 12 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, if the -ve stuff have good sources. Lova Falk (talk) 10:48, 11 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
What is "-ve stuff"? Schazjmd (talk) 13:38, 11 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I presume "-ve stuff" means "negative stuff". What had me stumped were the questions of what the "Wikipedia home page" is, and what negative stuff does it contain or someone want it to contain. Phil Bridger (talk) 13:53, 11 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Minecraft wiki feedback button

I just noticed that the Minecraft wiki has added a "Share feedback" button in a prominent position next to the article title. This button allows readers to anonymously post a message to the talk page via a bot. I'm still developing my own thoughts on this, but my initial reaction was "if we added something like this to Wikipedia, would readers be more encouraged to help out?" As a reader, I barely even knew what the "Talk" button did before I started contributing (despite its seemingly obvious nature). Of course, there are definitely problems with anonymizing feedback, such as encouraging talk page vandalism and unconstructive comments. I'm also not sure how this would impact our image as a collaborative project, as there's definitely a corporate veneer surrounding such "share feedback" buttons. Just wanted to see the community's thoughts Gracen (they/them) 18:23, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

We had WP:Article feedback tool once. It didn't work. * Pppery * it has begun... 18:24, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, thanks for linking me there! I'll read through the RfC. I'm a bit surprised it was discontinued, but I'm not one to argue with community consensus. Gracen (they/them) 18:36, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Gracen There's a report on the tool here mw:article feedback/Version 5/Report. For the English Wikipedia only about 10% of the comments were looked at by editors, and only 12% of comments were found to be useful. 86.23.109.101 (talk) 19:01, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
After reading through the RfC and IP's kind link, I'm no longer surprised it was discontinued. Damn shame that so many people just don't want to or don't know how to constructively contribute. Gracen (they/them) 19:40, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

An improved dashboard for the Content Translation tool

Hello Wikipedians,

The Language and Product Localization team has improved the Content Translation dashboard to create a consistent experience for all contributors using mobile and desktop devices. Below is a breakdown of important information about the improvement.

What are the improvements?
The improved translation dashboard allows all logged-in users of the tool to enjoy a consistent experience regardless of their type of device. With a harmonized experience, logged-in desktop users can now access the capabilities shown in the image below.

Notice that in this screenshot, the new dashboard allows: Users to adjust suggestions with the "For you" and "...More" buttons to select general topics or community-created collections (like the example of Climate topic).  Also, users can use translation to create new articles (as before) and expand existing articles section by section. You can see how suggestions are provided in the new dashboard  in two groups ("Create new pages" and "Expand with new sections")-one for each activity.
In the current dashboard, you will notice that you can't adjust suggestions to select topics or community-created collections. Also, you can't expand on existing articles by translating new sections.

Does this improvement change the current accessibility of this tool in this Wikipedia?
The Content translation tool will remain in beta; therefore, only logged-in users who activated the tool from the beta features will continue to have access to the content translation tool. Also, if the tool is only available to a specific user group, it will remain that way.

When do we plan to implement this improvement?
We will implement it on your Wikipedia and others by 24th, March 2025.

What happens to the former dashboard after we implement the improvement?
You can still access it in the tool for some time. We will remove it from all Wikipedias by May 2025, as maintaining it will no longer be productive.

Where can I test this improvement and report any issues before it is implemented in this Wiki?
You can try the improved capabilities in the test wiki using this link: https://test.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:ContentTranslation&campaign=contributionsmenu&to=es&filter-type=automatic&filter-id=previous-edits&active-list=suggestions&from=en#/

If you notice an issue related to the improved dashboard in the test wiki, please let us know in this thread and ping me, or report it in Phabricator, adding these tags: BUG REPORT and ContentTranslation.    

Please ask us any questions regarding this improvement. Thank you!

On behalf of the Language and Product Localization team. UOzurumba (WMF) (talk) 17:56, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the update! —Ganesha811 (talk) 21:03, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Notability of a group of articles

Are any of the 90 or so "comparative ranks" articles in Category:Military comparisons actually about a notable topic, a standard grouping / comparison? Or are they just galleries? I personally see zero reason why enwiki should have something like Comparative army enlisted ranks of the European Union, but perhaps others can argue in general why such articles belong here, or else whether they should be deleted or transwikied somewhere? Not wanting to start 90+ AfDs or one mass AfD if I'm missing something obvious. Fram (talk) 18:30, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

And I see there is also Comparative army enlisted ranks of Europe, which seems to encompass 'Comparative army enlisted ranks of the European Union'. I actually see close to 300 articles of this type (not just "comparative") in Template:Military ranks by country. Some of the articles listed there do have a paragraph or two of prose at the top, but many are just galleries. Donald Albury 19:01, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The ones that deal with one country (say, Military ranks of Eritrea), are probably acceptable as a topic, even if the current execution may be lacking. An encyclopedic article about the military ranks of an individual country should in most cases be possible and should have good sources, considering how many books about military topics get written. Fram (talk) 20:07, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Are any of the comparison articles between countries which don't have articles for the individual countries with the insignia already shown? If not then they don't add anything to Wikipedia. I think this problem spreads to comparison articles about other things. Those that aren't galleries are consumer guides, such as the software comparison articles. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:58, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This feels like a lot of original research to try to say that ranks in one country's military forces is equality to ranks in another country's military forces, in addition to excessive comparison via mostly images. I see no reason we should have these lists. --Masem (t) 02:32, 15 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I would expect state departments to track this so they can get the Order of precedence correct in ceremonial circumstances. You don't want to insult your guests by saying that their 'X' officer is less than your 'Y' officer, when it's the other way around. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:30, 15 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Firstly, articles about the military ranks of a single country are entirely encyclopaedic, as Fram appears to accept above. The question being posed appears to be whether articles on comparative ranks are. Many military history sources provide equivalent ranks to assist the reader in understanding. The fact that a SS-Oberführer in the Waffen-SS didn't really have an equivalent even in the German Army of WWII is useful for the reader to know when mentioning an officer of that rank. If you look at Ranks and insignia of the Waffen-SS it provides equivalents in the German Army of the same period and in the UK and US militaries cited to what appear to be reliable sources. This is exactly what can be found in the appendices of many WWII history books. My preference would be for individual country (or branch) articles of this type to provide information on their equivalents in standard English-speaking militaries like the UK/US rather than attempt to cover a huge number of countries in one article in the way that Comparative army officer ranks of Africa attempts to do. I've mentioned this discussion at MILHIST as others might like to chime in. Cheers, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 02:49, 15 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Regardless of all else, all the MOS:DECOR-violating insignias in those comparison articles make it impossible to easily compare ranks... and that kinda defeats the purpose of those articles. Ed [talk] [OMT] 03:15, 15 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that these articles are a problem. Besides the gallery-only nature of many of them, many of the articles have large detailed images of insignia that have not been used for decades or centuries. While there may be discussion in reliable sources about the significance of the appearance of such insignia, that should be conveyed in prose, with images used only to illustrate salient points. Donald Albury 15:23, 15 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Chiming in to say I've found a few of them (some comparisons across NATO countries, between branches of one military, or across history within one branch of one military) useful for research. I've got Comparison of United Kingdom and United States military ranks bookmarked and also had to dip into Royal Navy ranks, rates, and uniforms of the 18th and 19th centuries multiple times.
(The latter, btw, has a ton of value as an article beyond just the tables of ranks. I don't know how much there really is to say about comparisons between modern ranks, but articles with that richness seem like what we should be striving for in an article. On the other hand, most of these comparison articles are really just over-illustrated lists.)
And agreed that we should not have to scroll past all the insignia to unearth the data. The insignia aren't what make the comparison useful -- the names and levels of the ranks are. (And on the off chance one has any desire to see the insignia for some specific military/branch/rank, those are easy enough to locate on the pages about that particular military/branch/rank).
For instance, the format in this template is utterly fantastic: {{United States uniformed services comparative ranks}}. Clear, compact, and information-dense. With a sentence or two of context, that could stand alone as a pretty good List article.
-- Avocado (talk) 00:14, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The difference between this discussion and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Comparative gendarmerie enlisted ranks of Francophone countries is rather remarkable... Fram (talk) 16:01, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I unintentionally created the “Red link example” page

Wikipedia:Red link example

I thought this page was fully protected on creation instead of only extended confirmed protected, so I tried testing the sysop protection by just writing “test” and pressing Publish, thinking it wouldn’t let me create the page. But since the page was only extended confirmed protected (unbeknownst to me) and I am extended confirmed, it let me create the page.

I immediately nominated it for speedy deletion after it got created, because it’s supposed to be a red link used in examples.

Very sorry for having to waste an admin’s time with this. I will not do this again. ApexParagon (talk) 02:15, 15 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@ApexParagon, don't worry. It'll be easy to fix. I see that you've already tagged it for Wikipedia:Speedy deletion, so an admin will take care of it soon. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:17, 15 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
An admin re-deleted it. Phew

I requested full create-protection on RfPP to prevent this sort of scenario happening again. ApexParagon (talk) 03:04, 15 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

No worries. BTW, if you ever accidentally break Wikipedia, and help them fix it again, you'll win a T-shirt. I understand that very few of these T-shirts have been earned in Wikipedia's 25-year-long history, and I believe none of them have been earned through editing. You should proceed to WP:Be bold with the confidence that nothing you can do on the site is irrevocable. Any mistake like this is easily fixed. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:34, 15 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
And don't forget the Wikipedia:Village stocks. - The Bushranger One ping only 03:29, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

CentralNotice for Bangla Wikiquote contest

A contest will take place from April 7, 2025, to May 7, 2025, on Bangla Wikiquote to enrich its content. A central notice request has been placed to target both English and Bangla Wikipedia users, including non-registered users from Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal and Tripura. Thank you. ≈ MS Sakib  «TalK» 02:29, 15 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Can anyone add citations to ovenbreak being older than Canabalt?

It’s on the page endless runner. Therealbubble (talk) 20:34, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Cleaning up Category:Wikipedia requested images/photographs

I've been cleaning up the category Wikipedia requested images. One of the things I found frustrating was that when using the template Image requested there was no quick way to know what subject I could write. So I made this list. The problem I ran into was that there was no consistency of when to use the word images and when to use photographs in the category name. Examples aircraft and aircraft, airports and airports, architecture and architecture, beer and beer just to name a few. (Usually the category for photograph is inside of the category for images of the same subject). Another problem is that some categories don't follow the naming convention of the template, for example Star Wars articles needing photos should be Wikipedia requested images of star wars, Ant articles needing images should be Wikipedia requested images of ants. Obviously not all of the categories can follow this naming convention, but many of them can and should.

From what I can gather a large part of the inconsistency comes from the fact that when you write in a WikiProject template that the article needs a photo (example: {{WikiProject Food and drink|needs-photo=yes}}) then it goes into the photograph category. But when you use the template Image requested it goes into the image category.

I was not sure where to bring this up since there is no WikiProject Images. Also, before someone says it, I know that image and photograph don't mean the same thing. Images can be maps, diagrams while photographs are (as far as I know) usually taken by a camera. In other words: Photographs are always images but images are not always photographs. My point is to simplify these categories and standardise them so that there aren't unnecessary duplicates. And so that we can use the Image requested template more consistently.

My suggestion is that we always use the word images instead of photographs because images includes all photographs but photographs doesn't include all images. Steinninn 05:01, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"Expatriates by nationality" and "Emigrants by nationality'"

Kind regards. I just found the categories Expatriates by nationality and Emigrants by nationality and I wanted to ask for the difference between both, for anyone familiar with the categories or at least that has a better idea. Many thanks in advance. NoonIcarus (talk) 10:26, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The distinction is that an Expatriate intends to return to their original country, while an Emigrant does not intend to return. Blueboar (talk) 12:23, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Blueboar: Sounds good, thanks! --NoonIcarus (talk) 13:00, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Citation needed for Samson's "pushing or pulling" statement

I translated Samson into Chinese (link) which has recently passed DYKN (the discussion). As a GA here, I plan to have it nominated as a GA on Chinese Wikipedia. I found many statements that were not found (or too hard for a non-native en-3 person like me to find) in the cited sources, but I overcame that by reading the sources and rewriting the contents. (I don't plan to mess up with those because I don't have time. I may translate Chinese content back into English in the future, or do a GA reassessment if I don't have time.) But one particular statement, a caption for two images, caught my eye:

Pushing or pulling?

According to the biblical narrative, Samson died when he grasped two pillars of the Temple of Dagon and "bowed himself with all his might" (Judges 16:30, KJV). This has been variously interpreted as Samson pushing the pillars apart (left) or pulling them together (right).

To me, this statement is quite interesting and would be a great loss if not added to the Chinese version, as it carries additional information that readers would wonder about. Unfortunately, with my best efforts, I could not find any sources (at least from what's listed) that claim either of the above happened or stated the controversy. Therefore, I could only conclude that the above statement was original research or was non-verifiable, and therefore commented it out in the Chinese version.

After some tough WikiBlaming, I found that StAnselm first added the above statement in revision 495845636 (WikiBlame results), and the original image captions suggesting Samson was either pulling or pushing the pillars were added by Y12J in revision 484932198 (WikiBlame results). @StAnselm and Y12J, may I invite you to explain how you concluded or found the above controversy? I'd like to also invite @Katolophyromai, who reviewed the article in the GA nomination, and @深鸣, ItMarki, and 自由雨日, who gave constructive comments on the Chinese DYKN, to discuss this topic. 1F616EMO (talk) 14:15, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Just realized that Y12J is a sockpuppet of Tyciol, a user blocked by the ArbCom and also globally locked, but anyways. 1F616EMO (talk) 14:18, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
And because the CheckUser block on Y12J came after the ArbCom block on the main account, I'd not be surprised if ABF'ing their edit makes sense. 1F616EMO (talk) 14:31, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I have no knowledge of this topic, but from what you said, I won't be sad if it were to be removed. ItMarki (talk) 14:48, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the tag, though I don't know why it's here rather than on the article talk page. I don't really think it's OR since the difference is right there in the pictures. But it's certainly an interesting question: the majority view is that it is pushing, and that is made explicit in some English translations: e.g. "he pushed outwards powerfully" (NASB). I don't see any English translations that have "pulled" but I do see the verb used in some sources.[16][17] The Hebrew word can mean "push" or "bend" so both are indeed a possibility. StAnselm (talk) 15:00, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry for posting here... I am not sure where should I post this type of problem, given that individual talk pages would not be visited a lot.
For the OR problem, the ideal case would be having a source directly stating the controversy, though citing multiple reliable sources on both stances would work. And for the sources you provided: Cambridge Dictionary said that "pull something down" means "to destroy a building", i.e. without the implication of actually pulling the supports. Both the Jewish Encyclopedia and biblearchaeology.org used this phrasal verb, so I doubt they can become a prove. 1F616EMO (talk) 15:44, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
OK, I found a better citation. StAnselm (talk) 16:03, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Adding one more instance of the pushing view: Judges 16:29-30 MSG also said that Samson pushed [the two central pillars] hard with all his might.
By the way, the Strong's Number of the word "bow" (Hebrew: נָטָה, romanized: natah) is H5186. In the Strong's Lexicon it says, The Hebrew verb "natah" primarily means to stretch out or extend. [...] It can also imply bending or inclining, as in turning one's ear or heart towards something. From my understanding on this text, it seems like the explanation of "natah" being "bend" is only valid when talking about turning one's ear or heart towards something, but not when applying force to something. 1F616EMO (talk) 15:57, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
No, it's also used in Genesis 49:15: "he bowed his shoulder to bear, and became a servant at forced labor" (ESV). And Psalm 144:5 as well. StAnselm (talk) 16:03, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia policy/essay about not citing wikipedia policy/essays without elaborating

Is there a Wikipedia policy or essay that talks about not citing wikipedia policies or essays without elaborating? Senomo Drines (talk) 19:55, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

WP:WTF. Remsense ‥ 论 19:57, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Funnily enough, you're the one who motivated me to ask for this, but I digress. I don't see how that wikilink has anything to do with what I'm talking about. Senomo Drines (talk) 20:07, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If such a policy existed, I would cite it without elaborating all the time. BD2412 T 20:24, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In that case, the person you are disputing can cite that very same policy against you. Senomo Drines (talk) 01:01, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You might be looking for WP:UPPERCASE, thought that's a bit more about not trusting the shortcut to be a full, complete, and accurate description of the rule.
Other options:
WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:26, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That is very surprising. I expected there to be at least 1 page (essay or policy) dedicated to this topic. All the examples you've listed don't exactly fit in with what I am saying. WP:UPPERCASE is about misinterpreting the shortcut. What I said was to not use the policy without explanation, 2 different things. The other 3 options are also very different. The first is about essays not being the same as policy, the second is on not using "per nom" as a reason, and the third is just an explanation on what "per" means. Senomo Drines (talk) 02:48, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia does not have policies on details like that. You might not have clicked the WP:WTF link. But it is a good essay on the topic of the question. Johnuniq (talk) 03:31, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That one doesn't exactly relate to it either. It is based on excessive use of shortcuts and jargon, different to using them without elaborating. Senomo Drines (talk) 03:37, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
WP:VAGUEWAVE. —Cryptic 03:40, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm not being funny, but having to explain WP:UCN (or whatever) as well as direct an editor to WP:UCN where they can read the policy themselves seems redundant. And a waste of time. Sometimes I quote a sentence of a policy and say "per WP:FOOIAN" but that's about it. I'm all for welcoming new people, but we also have policies and editors (even new ones) need to be familiar with them. If someone doesn't like being directed to policy so they can familiarise themselves with it, then I'm not sure how they are going to navigate WP. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 07:19, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    • A common situation is that a group of not-newbie editors are discussing some disagreement over whether certain text should be included, or whatever. In that kind of situation, someone posting a comment consisting of WP:RS or WP:NPOV is unhelpful and borderline trolling. Instead, an attempt should be made to explain why a particular source is or is not a reliable source for a particular claim, or why particular text is or is not neutral. Johnuniq (talk) 08:15, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Don't misunderstand. I am not saying you need to explain what the shortcut means. I am saying you can't just cite it as the basis of your argument. You need to elaborate, ideally quoting a section from it, not just use the shortcut verbatim as is. Senomo Drines (talk) 12:37, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If you think this would be useful and you can't find one that says what you want to say then write one. Phil Bridger (talk) 09:17, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not particularly experienced at writing Wikipedia essays, but if no such rule exists, then I'll think about it. Senomo Drines (talk) 12:38, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

clickbaity fundraising title

The fundraising title has gone a bit too scary than the usual? Red background with "The internet we were promised, March 20: An important update for readers in Italy", there is no daily breaking news here, it's not like another nazist government legislation attempt. 62.98.160.86 (talk) 15:44, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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