Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not

Topic: Galleries (November 2005–January 2006) Topic: Newspaper Articles (May–July 2007) Topic: Unencyclopedic (2003) Topic: Trivia (July–October 2007)

NOTNEWS

What's happened to the enforcement of WP:NOTNEWS? I look at a number of articles created in the wake of October 7 that pay no heed to this. The article is the Wikipedia version of a live blog of a news event. Is this not a main tenet of Wikipedia anymore? MaskedSinger (talk) 20:45, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

@MaskedSinger on top of that, several Philippine-related articles may run counter to WP:NOTNEWS, in particular 2013 Metro Manila Skyway bus accident and 2010 Balamban bus accident. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 03:06, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

Interesting. MaskedSinger (talk) 07:48, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

@MaskedSinger just a discovery now: one of these two was nominated before but ended up with no consensus. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 03:23, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

You may want to propose a change to NOTNEWS, so that it more clearly proscribes the types of articles that you are objecting to. As it stands, NOTNEWS has an overview and four bullets.

• Overview: does not restrict what types of articles are forbidden, explicitly supports "stand-alone articles on significant current events"

1. Original reporting: not applicable here
2. News reports: the examples given are pretty limiting. Editors seeing "routine news coverage of announcements, events, sports, or celebrities" are not likely to count major news events as falling into that bucket. News event are "events", but the policy links to WP:ROUTINE, which makes it clear the events in question are things like "Wedding announcements, sports scores, crime logs", "sports matches, film premieres, press conferences", "Run-of-the-mill events—common, everyday, ordinary items that do not stand out", and "brief, often light and amusing (for example bear-in-a-tree or local-person-wins-award), stories". Deadly attacks or accidents would not appear to be included.
3. Who's who: not applicable here
4. Celebrity gossip and diary: not applicable here

I would be interested in expanding NOTNEWS, but we'd need a carefully written explanation of what new article types should be included. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 15:22, 28 June 2024 (UTC)

@Firefangledfeathers Sounds wonderful! How should we proceed? MaskedSinger (talk) 20:43, 29 June 2024 (UTC)

I don't have a bright idea. Maybe you could pull together a few articles you think should be proscribed by NOTNEWS and propose some language that would describe them narrowly? Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 02:15, 30 June 2024 (UTC)

I'd say a lot of deadly attacks or accidents do fit into "routine" news coverage, as they get the usual brief spurt of coverage in the immediate aftermath and then disappear entirely, the same way an average film premiere or the like would. Obviously the amount of coverage shifts, generally with how exceptional the incident is or how many casualties, so there's no hard line, but I think you have to do more than just robotically look at a list of sources, say "GNG pass" and move on. The Gaza war is the latest example, but there's plenty more, such as the absolute train wreck that is the exhaustive day-by-day coverage of Covid. I don't think NOTNEWS is really what needs revision, though, beyond pointing people to WP:NEVENTS and specifically WP:PERSISTENCE, which have much more useful and detailed information on why news stories alone are not inherently notable. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 11:25, 30 June 2024 (UTC)

NOTNEWS does link via a "See also" link to NEVENTS, but a more emphatic point might help. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 04:54, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

@David Fuchs@Firefangledfeathers@MaskedSinger one more possible example: 2020 Masbate earthquake. Is the article a breach of the policies y'all mentioned? JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 07:58, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

Wholly separate example, Withdrawal of Joe Biden from the 2024 United States presidential election. Moved to that today, there are effectively only three paragraphs that are of "new" material in addition to quoting the letter (which we really don't need to do, it exists on commons and other sites), all which could be part of the Biden campaign. There was a AFD, but it closed no consensus, but my read of the keeps show little adherence to our purpose as an encyclopedia to summarize the news, not detail it to this level of coverage. This is just an example systematic of the problem we have we that we are writing for the now, and not for the 10yr or longer encyclopedic view, causing all of these excessively detailed articles to be created. --Masem (t) 04:21, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

Is the concern more about too many too specific articles existing at all or merely that their content is too specific, or is it something else entirely? Mathwriter2718 (talk) 21:16, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

2028 US presidential election is an "appropriate topic", but we keep deleting it

The WP:CRYSTAL section states that "Examples of appropriate topics include the 2028 U.S. presidential election"; however, this is currently a red link and even a draft of this article was rejected as recently as April 2024 because it's WP:TOOSOON, which links to WP:CRYSTAL. Which one is wrong, the policy or the implementation? Jpatokal (talk) 03:14, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

The year in CRYSTAL is determined using a formula, I wonder if it doesn't always generate the correct date. 2028 would be a valid topic in 2024, but by convention only after the 2024 election. However the formula jumped from 2024 to 2028 at the beginning of 2024. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 10:17, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

It should be possible to modify the formula so that it gives the correct date for the next presidential election year, by taking the month and day into account. At this point, it's probably best to hide the complicated stuff in a template like {{Next United States presidential election year}}. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 22:15, 28 July 2024 (UTC)

Discussion on application of NOTCATALOG criteria

there is currently a discussion on the application of WP:NOTCATALOG at Talk:Survival_Records around the exhaustive listing of album releases by a record label. Graywalls (talk) 21:23, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

With all due respect regarding Wikipedia policy

Ever since the Wikipedia Group "The Guerilla Skeptics" became a known mainstream subject it shows that Wikipedia does not have a neutral stance and this group has gone out of its way to make changes to ridicule individuals and subjects. The problem is not the evidence, but the tone of their message towards the person or subject matter which is unbecoming of this website.

if we're going to follow "wikipedia is not" then that group needs to put down their fists and try to be neutral, and if not they should have their privileges be revoked. My apologies if this is not the right talk page, but I do not know where to go to address this issue. 2606:A000:9FC0:57:6937:10A7:B067:6E7B (talk) 17:20, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

I hadn't heard of this group. Ridicule would have no place on WP, but would need to be addressed at the administrators' noticeboard (WP:AN/I). It's easier to address the neutrality of articles at their individual talk pages. But if it became systemic, it would help to provide multiple examples of articles, as evidence of a pattern. Shooterwalker (talk) 20:27, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

Mainstream? Because someone complains about the way UFO-related articles are handled here? Not to be taken serious. The Banner talk 23:17, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

Do we really have to come up with some lame cope every time someone complains about Wikipedia, instead of just answering the criticism? jp×g🗯️ 10:37, 27 July 2024 (UTC)

Thank you! The Guerilla Skeptics on Wikipedia (GSoW) co-ordinated editing ArbCom case went far beyond a few UFOlogists complaining about how their articles were handled (and was not really part of the main criticism GSoW editing). A lot of valid criticism there, though it's not clear what IP wants us to do exactly – I think most editors are aware that Wikipedia is not as neutral as we strive to be and suffers from systemic bias, but some specific examples to act upon would be helpful. GnocchiFan (talk) 17:07, 30 July 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Skepticism_and_coordinated_editing#Remedies - they were inspectigated by the Arbitration Committee in March '22, and the case closed with one person being topic banned, another warned, and the group as a whole rather sternly advised to cut it out.

GSoW is advised that a presence on English Wikipedia, perhaps as its own WikiProject or as a task force of WikiProject Skepticism, will create more transparency and lessen some of the kinds of suspicion and conflict that preceded this case. It could also provide a place for the GSoW to get community feedback about its training which would increase its effectiveness. Passed 12 to 0 at 8:47 pm, 2 March 2022

Granted, this is not quite a heavenly reckoning, but it's not like they've been given the go-ahead to go hogwild and do whatever. jp×g🗯️ 10:27, 27 July 2024 (UTC)

Are these posts eligible for removal as forum style posts?

As they were by a sock, they've now been removed for that reason, but the one to Talk:Ashok was restored as appropriate.[1] and [2]. Doug Weller talk 14:31, 1 August 2024 (UTC)

This is worthwhile borderline territory to explore. I think some editors would strongly disagree with me here, but I do think "being rhetorically or lexically obnoxious" can be a factor when judging these things. As the goal is to limit disruption of the encyclopedia, a nasty tone can absolutely take a post from "this editor needed an editor, but oh well" into "simply useless for the present discussion" territory, in my view. I think the Ashoka post is worth removing: it does not actually engage with what it's replying to, and itself contains absolutely no actionable suggestions to improve the article, only bile. I feel the SIF post is roughly the same, as its only direct suggestion is an empty "yes I agree this is an issue", with the rest being a total non-sequitur. I think if someone is clearly just using a discussion as a springboard, it matters a bit less that some points that could theoretically be germane to improving the article's content. But I'm a bit of a grump. Remsense诉 14:49, 1 August 2024 (UTC)

Creation of product catalog under a new article

Per WP:NOTADIRECTORY #6, it specifically says author pages can have a list of their creative works, but publishers shouldn't have a book catalog in their page. I have noticed that Nonesuch Records discography was essentially created as a product catalog for the obscure record publisher/record label Nonesuch Records. I am not exactly familiar with SNG WP:NLIST, but I feel like this should not have been created. Graywalls (talk) 04:53, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

WP:NOTOEIS

Per the discussion at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Mathematics#Cleaned_up_the_article_7, I was wondering if we could propose adding a standard for the notability of facts about numbers to this policy. Allan Nonymous (talk) 20:52, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

I don't know that it's a big enough problem that we need to cover it in a policy, but I'll echo here what I said there. My personal inclination is that a number appearing in an OEIS entry is only worth mentioning if the sequence is "nice", "core" (of central importance to some topic), or "hard" (which often means that it comes from an unsolved problem). Because the source is reliable but intentionally rather indiscriminate, we should focus our attention on the subset of it that is marked as more interesting than the rest. Or, in other words, we should follow the source when it comes to emphasis. This is roughly going to be equivalent to mentioning properties that already have their own blue-link-able Wikipedia articles. I say "roughly" because it's not hard to imagine edge cases where an article could be written but hasn't yet because nobody has gotten around to it. XOR'easter (talk) 21:01, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

I think it makes sense to have a two-tiered standard, based on my read of that discussion.

1. Certain properties (e.g. parity, primality, triangularity) that are sufficiently well known and generally applicabile, are worth assuming they would be of interest for anyone reading an article on a specific number.
2. Otherwise, properties should only be noted if there is significant attestation in sources specifically regarding the number in question having said property.

Remsense诉 21:01, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

I think maybe this all should be addressed at WP:NNUMBER rather than WP:NOT. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:12, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

Good to know people at Wikipedia have beaten me to it, but adding something here might be a quick little guideline to help people avoid the most egregious examples. Allan Nonymous (talk) 21:27, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

So Much Bidding!

Content of something outside of this had meant to come around here and must prepare such a future. 2601 (talk) 23:34, 6 August 2024 (UTC)