** At-length quotations = copyvio. Why do we have to struggle with condensed paraphrasing of source pages, if we ''must'' (as proposed) provide copies of these pages? This is not an exaggeration. Consider a biographical article that draws heavily on a single book. One hundred individual pages cited. Even quoting one paragraph from each crosses the line.
** At-length quotations = copyvio. Why do we have to struggle with condensed paraphrasing of source pages, if we ''must'' (as proposed) provide copies of these pages? This is not an exaggeration. Consider a biographical article that draws heavily on a single book. One hundred individual pages cited. Even quoting one paragraph from each crosses the line.
** Bloated article size. Some already have hundreds of footnotes. Throw in quotations, and welcome to megabyte-sized articles. [[User talk:East of Borschov|East of Borschov]]
** Bloated article size. Some already have hundreds of footnotes. Throw in quotations, and welcome to megabyte-sized articles. [[User talk:East of Borschov|East of Borschov]]
To me, copyright violation is the only real deal-breaker here. Dumb idea perhaps, but would it perhaps suffice to summarize / paraphrase what the source said? For the moon example, the reference could say "250,000km from Earth". [[Special:Contributions/83.81.60.233|83.81.60.233]] ([[User talk:83.81.60.233|talk]]) 17:51, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
The policy section of the village pump is used to discuss existing and proposed policies and guidelines. If you want to propose something new that is not a policy or guideline, use the proposals section.
Please see this FAQ page for a list of frequent proposals and the responses to them.
It is believed that the deletion policy is not being properly followed. Whilst I am not experienced in patrolling pages and therefore do not have a broad overview of the issues, the small amount of evidence I do see gives me cause for concern. I believe part of the problem is that the ATD section of the deletion policy should be described in the lead as per LEAD. This would hightlight to editors that articles can, in many cases should, be improved by the main contributing editor, in this context, usually an inexperienced editor. The processes, CSD's, PROD's and AFD (have I missed one?) are being applied to articles by nominators that, in the cases I have seen, are not topic aware enough to make such judgements. In one case, a PROD occured within two minutes of the page creation. The net result is that new editors are being driven away by our over-prescriptive approach when common sense suggests a more gentle and sympathetic treatment of such editors is required.
I am a relatively new editor, who wishes to write articles of interest, with some limited success. I am however distracted by what I see as an unjust deletion process against new or inexperienced editors. I am frustrated because I do not feel I can express the issue properly, as I do not have the experience nor tools necessary, am too new to see the wider picture and the examples that I can give will unfairly single out a few patrollers and limited topic areas. What follows is a list of articles that have been rescued
I guess what I am trying to alert you to is that new editors are not being treated with respect. Each one I come across already has a bad experience via a csd, prod, or afd which are very aggressive processes to new people who do not understand the policy driven terminology we use. In all the articles above, a little gentle encouragement on the new editors concerned may have created a new editor; instead many of them have gone.
As a community, we should resolve to do the following
aggressive posting on new editors talk pages should be punished, this includes writing wiki-speak which has no meaning to a new person - perhaps for every such post found, 5,000 edits are removed from the editors "edits since" count! That would stop them
Cease and desist posting negative sections (prods, afd, policy violations etc) on new editors talk pages without first considering if the new editor needs sympathetic help
be more proactive with the mentor programme. If necessary wikipedia should be prescriptive with established editors, such as every wikipedian must adopt one new editor a month or something similar
If you have read this far you deserve a little light relief. You have probably quite rightly ignored the subtle message embedded in the list above. In addition, you have probably interpreted the mis-quote from Julius Ceasar in one particular way. Which way? If you are one of the patrollers I have been describing, then cynically, the mis-quote is your mantra. My original meaning was not to praise the patrollers! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Senra (talk • contribs) 15:53, September 11, 2010
For what it is worth I have been involved in four or five deletions, one of which was the second article I ever wrote. In all but one case it was as you described... an editor who basically was deleting because "I never heard of this". Deleting based on technical aspects of an editor not knowing how to source correctly or not living up to our expectations is NEVER a reason to delete and anyone deleting on that reason should be banned from putting up an AfD ever again. We are a work in progress and if you see an article you think reflects poorly on the quality of Wikipedia then either clean it up or move along, do not delete. If you cant clean it up because you are too lazy, then please be too lazy to nominate it for deletion. Notability is the only issue that comes into play. That is my comment to these editors who are deleting what they consider to be "low quality" work. Do some freakin' work of your own.Camelbinky (talk) 00:46, 12 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Some of us disagree. What both of you are advocating is View Two of WP:DEADLINE--that is, as long as an article might potentially be good/source-able/neutral, then it should be kept and improved. However, please note that some of us, myself included, take View One, which is that there is no hurry to create articles, and that an article should already fulfill basic policies prior to being put into mainspace. There are several ways to develop articles prior to adding them to the live encyclopedia, and if you can't bring it into compliance with policy prior to that point, then it shouldn't be in mainspace. I agree that we don't need to be too hasty in deletions, but I think that's only a problem with speedy deletions. By definition, both of the other deletion processes take at least a week, and that should be plenty of time for someone to fix the problems, if they are, in fact, fixable. Yes, we shouldn't prod a (non-BLP) article within minutes of creation, but that doesn't mean we need to let it lie around for a long time, hoping someone will improve the article. As for the claim that we're too "lazy," please see WP:BURDEN. If I believe an article is non-notable, I do a few searches in appropriate places, and I don't find anything, it's not up to me to go to the library, search through thousands of pages of false hits in an online search, etc. It's up to the person who wants to include the article. Perhaps the only thing I agree with is that people need to be careful with subjects outside of their realm of ability. I, for instance, have become far more cautious than I once was on articles relating to music, because I find the notability guidelines difficult to apply and in contradiction to WP:GNG; rather than try to deal with the conflict every time, I simply stay out of it, for the most part. But there are times where exactly what is needed is someone who does not have subject matter competence--that is the person who can evaluate a little more carefully things like WP:N and WP:OR. Qwyrxian (talk) 02:11, 12 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
You are justifying actions that are in contrast to policy by quoting an essay. Not a great argument. Policy states that we are always under construction and that an editor's good faith contributions done incorrectly or incompletely do not invalidate their contributions. There may be two views, but one is codified in policy and one is codified in an essay. Who do you think we should follow? I see no reason to delete something. WP:PRESERVE is part of POLICY and precedence over that essay. Preserve instead of delete.Camelbinky (talk) 02:20, 12 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sure he will respond himself, but it seems to me that Qwyrxian is trying to explain a difference in philosophy, not mandate what any one person should be doing, so whether it's an essay or a policy or something written on a fortune cookie really makes no difference. There is no doubt that the approach Qwyrxian advocates leads to better-quality articles, but it also inevitably leads to fewer new articles and fewer new productive editors. Whether or not that's a reasonable trade-off is very much a matter of individual opinion. Regardless of one's feelings on that, there is a real issue with how new editors are welcomed and treated when they make their first edits. For a new user to put together a good-faith article and press the "Save page" button may represent hours of work, learning wiki markup and tweaking their wording. They desperately need to feel validated and encouraged, and to understand that their effort is appreciated. Having their article tagged for speedy deletion or similar within minutes of creation must be a terrible discouragement, and many promising wiki-careers probably end right there. Thparkth (talk) 02:36, 12 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
So then what do we do if their article really is unsalvageable? Let it sit around for a few days or weeks, until we think they can handle it, then say "Oh, by the way, we need to delete that, we've just been lying to you all this time"? What about all the thousands of articles that clearly did not represent hours of work? The ones that are riddled with spelling errors and are totally unformatted? Mr.Z-man04:04, 12 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
(@ Mr.Z-man) - I regularly patrol the pages tagged for speedy deletion, and I can back up what you're saying about the "thousands of articles that clearly did not represent hours of work." The majority of pages tagged for speedy deletion absolutely need to be deleted, as speedily as possible. In my opinion, someone who comes here to write an article that is blatantly spam, or someone who writes an attack page, or someone who wants to impress Suzanne in the 8th grade by having a Wikipedia article about themselves... I'm not too concerned about hurting their feelings, because they are clearly not motivated to improve wikipedia anyway.
But there are other cases too. There are articles by retired carpenters about some technical detail of their craft, utterly unsourced and probably unsourcable, but almost certainly true, and almost certianly harmless. There are articles by systems adminstrators (like me) who know perfectly well that dig is an essential tool used by millions of people every day, and that the world economy would actually suffer a blip if it stopped working, so who don't comprehend why we might question it's notability. Or maybe they don't understand yet that the UNIX manual page for it is not a "reliable source" in wiki-speak, when in the real world it's THE reliable source, far more "reliable" than some crappy article by a know-nothing tech journalist, which for some reason we want them to reference instead ;)
I'm rambling here, but the point is that things that seem obvious to those of us who've been around this project for a while, that aren't obvious to a newbie - even a smart one. There are many articles being created in good faith, by people motivated to improve the encyclopedia, containing nothing but true information with absolutely no legal issues, which are nevertheless deleted within minutes of creation because some over-eager new page patroller and some lazy admin had never heard of it and didn't find it in the first page of a google search. This is losing us people - the specific people we want to keep. I'm not arguing that those articles shouldn't ever be deleted, but they certainly shouldn't be speedily-deleted, with the article creator having basically no chance to learn about the problem and fix it. There is no hurry to delete a harmless article IMHO. Why not work with the creator to see if it can be improved? If it's done right, it will either end up with a good article that can be kept forever, or with the article creator agreeing themselves that it probably should be deleted, because although interesting, it just doesn't fit the guidelines.
Of course, this will never happen, because the people with great content editing and mentoring skills are generally busy editing content and mentoring people, rather than doing new page patrols - different people have different skills. But what if there was a formal "new article resuscitation" team waiting to handle new articles identified by patrollers as being possibly hopeless, but made in good faith? I'd sign up for that. Thparkth (talk) 04:29, 12 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
This isn't really a direct reply, as I mostly agree, at least in theory. Personally, I think we need to simply discourage people from creating new articles. They should be encouraged instead to add their information to existing ones. It kills 3 birds with one stone 1) Its easier to edit an existing article than create a new one so they're less likely to be reverted or discouraged simply by the process of editing. 2) It results in a net improvement in our huge corpus of stubs, rather than continuing to expand it. 3) It reduces the load on new page patrollers, so they potentially can devote more time to each page. Why can't the retired carpenter add his content to one of our other dozens of articles on the subject? If one is working within the context of existing articles, primary sources like man pages are often perfectly acceptable. The current idea that "new users create articles" stopped making sense about 2.5 million articles ago. We've been scraping the bottom of the notability barrel for a few years now. But of course, that too will never happen - old habits die hard. We have a discussion like this every couple of months. People complain that new users aren't being treated well and present some solutions that are either too vague to be workable or wholly impractical, while the underlying problem (Why the hell do so many people feel the need to create a new article as their first edit?) is not considered. Mr.Z-man05:07, 12 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
<ec>I'll admit to being guilty of this. I tend to be in favor of keeping and improving material rather than deleting it, but when I use tools to delete things I just post the generic templates that the Twinkle tool gives. As what I often do is remove an attempt to summarily remove material (WP:PROD) and replace it with an actual discussion (WP:AFD), I'm actually trying to give their work a chance. But what they get is a wall of notices. So we have two issues. #1 We do have inclusion guidelines such as WP:N which insists that "good" sourcing must exist on a given topic for us to have an article. I favor this pretty strongly. But at the same time we want to avoid WP:BITE because otherwise we'll lose potentially useful editors. Honestly I think the problem is that the standards we have for Wikipedia have gotten so high that it's really hard for a new user to contribute without doing a lot of reading and work first. And that's going to scare away people. But we also don't want so many bad articles that the encyclopedia is an unmaintainable disaster. And frankly the new page patrollers are already overworked, so writing nice notes to each person just isn't realistic. One thought I've had is to have articles fit into different layers of Wikipedia. Some articles are just bad and are part of the outer ring. Some are good, some are featured etc. It's pretty much what we do right now, with Good and Featured articles, but maybe we need a new layer, the "seems okay" layer and somehow only grant access to the layer below that when the user specifically asks for it. Given that people generally use search engines to get here, we'd need to work something out with them so that any such tag shows up in the search result. Probably not viable, but it's the best I've got. Thoughts? Hobit (talk) 02:41, 12 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, I see Senra has suggested that by default we move articles without BLP/copyright problems into the creator's userspace. I think doing that with a tag at the top which A) describes issues that need to be resolved B) states if it stays in userspace for more than (say) 6 months it will be deleted and C) makes it plain this isn't an article might be a great way to handle this. Thoughts? I think it would be a wonderful change to our standard procedures without causing any meaningful harm I can see. Hobit (talk) 02:53, 12 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
This is such a huge change in the basic philosophy of Wikipedia that I'm beside myself to even see such a concept in print, much less advocated strongly. Assuming good faith is a fundamental principle behind Wikipedia that to give it up is to change the nature of this project entirely. While I don't mind user space articles if they are under development for some reason or another, I think that is something which should be strongly discouraged and that articles ought to be kept in the main development space even if they are stubs. An incomplete article, even a single sentence is just fine in terms of an article. Label it as a stub if you have to, but don't go deleting things just because you've never heard about it.
For myself, it ticks me off to no end to see somebody PROD an article a mere minutes after its creation and demand two or more reliable sources for it when clearly the article is under active development. I've had that happen to me on articles I've created... and I'm hardly even a newcomer to this project. A much more friendly tone can certainly be coming from the crew that is involved in recent changes patrol to distinguish between a good-faith article creation attempt and something that is pure drivel, spam, or trollish behavior. If you can't tell the difference, hold back and learn a bit before you start PROD'ing articles again and ask questions. I've been an admin before (I'm not on Wikipedia, but I don't want to involve myself in the politics here) and I do know some of the tricks and trash that happens when trying to stop the trolls. Unfortunately all edits start to look like trolls when in fact they aren't. Don't get hyper sensitive here and do encourage new contributors. A few bad admins can really spoil the environment for everybody here too.
If the complaint is about disc space on the servers, I should point out that deleting articles actually takes up more hard drive space than simply keeping the article in place. If something needs to be merged into another article, make the merger and add the redirect. Unfortunately that is often much harder to perform as it requires real editing as opposed to simply hitting the "delete" button. Nobody said that participation on Wikipedia was easy, and if you are using admin tools you should be cautious about using those extra tools that mere mortals don't have. My first instinct as an admin has always been to do what I can with the normal editor tools and use the admin stuff as a very last resort.
Importantly, remember the five pillars and don't create unnecessary bureaucracy and policies that start conflicting with those principles. I was involved with this project back in the Nupedia days, and remember how Wikipedia was set up as a sort of bastard child of the "serious" encyclopedia effort. I sure hope that we don't need to go back to that original model of Wikipedia on another site where we need to create a website where the "rest of us" can edit while the privileged and select few concentrate on refining the ever higher standards for inclusion into the main project. Just look at how successful Nupedia became and how widely used its content has been spread around the globe and then tell me which method works out better. Time and experience shows that a project of this nature works out best when you are as inclusive of all ideas as possible and the people you need to be stopping are those who somehow block new users from participating. Those are the real trolls here. --Robert Horning (talk) 03:33, 12 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Adding a P.S. here. It was said above by Hobit
'And frankly the new page patrollers are already overworked, so writing nice notes to each person just isn't realistic."
I completely disagree. While perhaps the new page patrollers may feel overworked, try to be human here for a change. You can't get to everybody, but if you get to somebody and respond to their work with some real words of encouragement, it goes a long way. Whenever I do an introduction to a new user, I always include a personal note on top of and beyond the simple template. It is quality over quantity, even if you can't get to everybody or look at everything. A "nice note" to a person who has raised an eyebrow in terms of something questionable goes a long way to finding out what the real problem might be... or if that person is simply a troll. You might be surprised and get a real answer to a query you make too. From my own experience, far more new users respond to a genuine query than don't, unless they are sock puppets or troll accounts. Generally it is easy to tel the difference too. Just don't go assuming that everybody is a troll. --Robert Horning (talk) 03:43, 12 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
"I certainly see where you are coming from. But A) I think userfying articles that we are currently deleting is more friendly, not less and B) the new page patrol folks are overworked. Either things don't get patrolled (which maybe okay) or templates are the best you're going to get. As far as the userficaiton thing goes, I would worry that by having such a policy we'd start "deleting" more articles and we'd move more toward a future where stubs of notable topics are userfied rather than left in mainspace. That would suck. Bah. So what is the next step forward? How can we make this place more friendly for new editors? Should we ask the new page patrol to patrol less and work with users more? Assuming that generates a backlog (which I strongly suspect it would) is that acceptable? What should we do with articles that have no hope of meeting WP:N? Deleting them 15 minutes after creation is a problem (per WP:BITE), but leaving them around is also a problem (do we really want to have a massive number of unsourced and unsourcable articles?) Thoughts? Hobit (talk) 04:03, 12 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Is a backlog acceptable? All that shows is where some extra help is needed on Wikipedia, and if this project is more inviting to newcomers it will generate the support and help to take care of the problems from massive growth. If instead you are pushing new users away from this project, it indicates a dying project that will only require more effort with fewer people willing to do the work. No, I don't think having a massive number of unsourced and "unsourceable" articles. If it bugs you, clean it up. Demand that sources be found. At least give the person creating the article a chance to create the article.... which implies something on the order of months to develop the article instead of mere minutes or days. If an article goes unnoticed for a couple of years and then gets an AfD, it makes no difference if it is a bad article. I say give the new users the benefit of the doubt here, and cleanup can happen in other ways besides squishing the new users within the first few minutes of their contributions. There are articles that were created years ago that are in much worse shape than many of the articles that come up for AfD.
I also argue that if we let a "massive number of unsourced and unsourceable articles" into Wikipedia, there will also be a number of those articles that will eventually turn into quality articles. The question here is where should be draw the line on these articles? Articles that are stale are ones that ought to be more of a concern, such as WP:DUSTY. If the topic is something that nobody is paying attention to, generally you aren't hurting new users when you are deleting old content that hasn't had an update for years. I say let those article go stale and then delete them rather than "protecting" Wikipedia to keep them from getting created in the first place. Obvious trollish behavior is a exception. --Robert Horning (talk) 15:51, 12 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
(e/c)I'm personally not a huge fan of userfication (in most cases it results in no improvement). If we not going to delete them, the Article incubator is nice, as it allows everyone to work on, and it means we're keeping track of what's there. The problem is that these articles are not "incomplete" like a stub, they don't meet basic standards of verifiability and NPOV. I agree that things shouldn't be tagged for deletion within minutes, but when does "active development" end? An hour without an edit? A day? A week? Wikipedia is long past the point where we can continue to treat it like was done in 2001. We're a top-5 website that millions of people turn to every day for information. That calls for higher standards. If we've learned anything from the history of the project, its that the "it doesn't matter if it sucks, someone will fix it" philosophy doesn't work. Unless someone comes up with a way to automate the fixing, the problems just keep piling up. About 3 years ago, there were 26,000 articles needing cleanup. Today there are more than 60,000 including nearly 200 that were tagged in 2006. The number of people creating substandard content is greater than the number of people improving it. And yes, the people doing new page patrol are overworked. 2 users have done 25% of the new article review work this month so far (each more than 1200 articles, or about 100 articles per day). Mr.Z-man04:39, 12 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia is one of the top-5 websites because of the policies of openness, being friendly to new contributors, and a willingness to allow article creation that doesn't require a lengthly process for somebody willing to start a page on that topic. Where the complaints about Wikipedia come from are those who have been manhandled and disrespected... usually with a gross violation of established policies in terms of editor to editor or admin to editor conduct. There are detractors to Wikipedia, and not all of them are trolls that have been burned in the past. There are some very valid complaints that do need to be addressed.
My broad and general experience over years of participation is that "if it sucks, somebody will fix it" actually happens. You need to have the perspective of years of effort rather than merely hours or weeks. The statistics you are quoting here indicate a growth of this project rather than a lack of effort to clean up articles. That is a good thing and is indicating that the efforts to review articles is being successful. The problem facing new page patrollers is that those people who are patrolling new pages are not accepting new users nor are doing an effective job at recruitment. If the number of people involved with that activity is going down, the question should be raised in terms of what is driving folks away from that activity and how can new users be introduced into helping to support that work.... including training those new users on what is an acceptable practice and what isn't. If you are feeling overworked, that is a system problem that requires more openness and developing tools to help with the issue.
My issue is that new page patrollers are the front-line folks meeting new people coming to Wikipedia. It is a people to people issue more than being a bunch of security guards watching the front door. To me, I'd rather let a few articles slip by that may be of poor quality and instead concentrate on helping those who may be lost and need an extra little bit of help. A "kinder, gentler" new page patroller group that is focused on working with new users may be a much better paradigm than acting like security guards at a major airport. That, to me, is where the problem lies. --Robert Horning (talk) 16:07, 12 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
No, we're a top-5 website because of the amount of information we have. On a normal day, 4-6 million people view the Main Page, only about 30,000 people edit the site, including vandals. Readers outnumber editors by about 150:1, many are totally clueless about where the content comes from. There really are people who don't know that anyone can edit Wikipedia. I've been here for years as well. I've seen how little the average quality of the site has improved. That is not just a "growth of the project" - hundreds of articles have been waiting nearly 4 years for cleanup. In 2007 around this time, we had about 2 million articles. We now have 3.4 million, a 170% increase. The cleanup category increased by 230% in the same time. We get about 2000 new articles every day; probably about 500 of them will be deleted. A few articles slipping by might be 10 or 20 every day. That adds up fast. The real problem, to me, is our nonsensical quantity over quality approach. It seems like most people on Wikipedia would rather have 20 stubs than one high quality, comprehensive article. People should be encouraged to add their knowledge to existing articles, creating a new one only as a last resort if no other article should reasonably contain that information. Mr.Z-man18:41, 12 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
How did all of that content get written in the first place if it wasn't open to new contributors? What standard is being used here for "average content"? I've seen the quality of the top articles certainly improve over time, and the standards for becoming a featured article dramatically increase. The quality improvement is there as well, and when watching individual articles that at least are getting some regular attention, I most certainly watch the quality improve gradually over time. The trick is to get some eyeballs on an article and get at least some level of regular contributors. Even articles I've worked on have had some major overhauls that included text I wrote... and had some of that text substantially improved simply because somebody with better skills than I have was able to edit the article. I argue that while the backlog is certainly there for some cleanup, you don't need to stress oer the increase here.... all that is showing is the growth of the project not necessarily that problems are happening here.
Restricting new article creation and demanding that articles appearing on Wikipedia meeting some minimum standards before the article is in the main namespace is something that I think is flat out wrong and is contrary to how this project was started in the first place. The encouragement of quantity over quality is something foundational and part of what makes Wikipedia work out the way that it does. It is a strength, not a weakness. It isn't nonsense, it is precisely the way that got so many people together to be contributing to the development of the content that is found here. 30,000 people editing Wikipedia on any given day? How wonderful! Isn't it amazing that so many people are willing to help here and contribute so many hours of effort to share information with others! It sounds like things are working out just fine and the problem here is the complaint about the growth, and a desire to change Wikipedia into something it never was in the first place. Nupedia was a flop and I don't want to see Wikipedia be turned into Nupedia II. It will fail as a project if that happens. --Robert Horning (talk) 03:44, 14 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
No, the main complaint is that our articles are of an extremely low average quality. More than 40% of our articles are stubs and more than 20% have a maintenance tag. Nearly 400,000 articles (not including disambig pages) have fewer than 1000 characters of wikitext - assuming no formatting, templates, or categories that would be ~200 words. The encouragement of quantity over quality is why Wikipedia is not taken seriously in the real world. Most of the newest articles are seen by a handful of people (the creator, his friends, and search engine bots) a month because they're of such minor interest, meanwhile we have articles seen by thousands that are embarrassingly short and unreferenced. Mr.Z-man04:48, 14 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
There is no possible way to placate most of the critics involved here, other than going to a traditional proprietary model of encyclopedia article writing that has a stiff gateway of contributors that must have a PhD after their name. Wikipedia has never been taken all that seriously and I don't think it should either. It is the incarnation of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but done with slightly less humor. If an article on Podunk, Oklahoma says only "mostly harmless", that seems to be typical for many of these articles that you are complaining about here. I stand by my statement that over time articles are improved and that this is an issue of recruitment and not standard raising. The rest is a complaint about notability guidelines being too lax. I argue that those articles aren't being read anyway so it isn't really an issue. Deleting these minor articles isn't going to get the articles read by thousands fixed any time soon.... which are precisely the ones I am arguing are getting improved over time. --Robert Horning (talk) 23:55, 14 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not saying we need perfection, but frankly, much of what we have is just marginally better than "useless" (though we do have some that's worse). Its not that we don't need the information, its that we don't need it so massively spread out. We should be making an effort to consolidate information into comprehensive articles rather than have a billion 2 sentence stubs just so that we can say we have 2 billion articles on the main page. Why do we need 50 nearly-identical stubs on towns like Podunk, Oklahoma, when we could have a much more useful "List of towns in Podunk County, Oklahoma" - where we only split off individual articles when there's a significant amount of information. Its not even that the notability guidelines are too lax, its that people take them too seriously. Some people feel that if notability allows it, that we not only can have an article on a subject, but we actually need one. Though I still disagree that articles are improved over time. We not only have articles that need cleanup from 2006, we have articles that haven't been touched since 2006. Or, take Studio album for example (200000+ pageviews last month). It was created in 2005 as a 3 sentence stub. 5+ years and 200+ edits later, it has ... 3 sentences. They're better/longer, but its not much of an improvement, especially for 5 years on a highly visible article. While some are improved, certainly, we are getting more low-quality new articles than we're improving old ones. Recruiting more users to do cleanup will help with that imbalance, but its probably the more difficult option. Mr.Z-man02:40, 15 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
From long experience on many other wiki projects besides Wikipedia, I have noted that a wiki tends to get much more participation and fewer editor disputes when you have more articles rather than fewer. Using the Podunk, Oklamhoma example, there is bound to be an occasional editor that is from one of those towns in "Podunk County, Oklahoma" that will start to edit. Sure, it is still only once in awhile, but it does happen. I am simply noting that the philosophy of deleting seldom edited articles to concentrate all new users into editing the "popular" articles doesn't work. Not everybody is willing to get into the fray of editing Barack Obama or George W. Bush. I don't think they should either... those aren't very good articles for new users to make their first edits. Removing articles from my perspective and experience tends to drive new contributors away more than it helps in concentrating the efforts of new users. BTW, many of those dusty articles are obscure topics like things taken from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica... obscure because it is old history. That is part of the bias that Wikipedia has in terms of its editor community, which is particular strong on technology, arts (popular culture), and science. Proportionally, I say we are getting as many poorly written articles and stubs turning into high quality articles as ever happened, and the reason more low-quality new articles is being written is simply because that is where high quality articles start. Almost no article starts out on edit #2 or #3 completely finished as a featured article candidate... and on those I tend to get very suspicious if I'm patrolling as those tend to be copyvios instead. The poor quality articles are a part of the process and how this project gets its high quality content. Killing off the low quality stubs will kill off the culture that has brought about Wikipedia as we know it. --Robert Horning (talk) 20:57, 15 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Just because they're overworked doesn't mean they're miserable. But just because they're not miserable doesn't mean they have the time to do extra work. Mr.Z-man04:39, 12 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I believe new page patrolling should be done in two waves, one shortly after say a few hours or a day, and another a week or so after. The first pass should be mainly speedy deletes of the obvious attack pages and suchlike obvious total rubbish, they could also tag the page for the probable type content if that is missing. The second pass could select by content type or missing type and check more carefully when there has been time for something that might eventually be reasonable. Having new pages tagged quickly could also alert people with an interest in a subject so the editor might get some support or be shown an existing page covering the topic. Dmcq (talk) 11:10, 12 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I believe Wikipedia:New pages patrol says all the right sorts of things. I believe though that a two stage process would take less overall effort and give a better result than having in effect a single check as it is at present. Dmcq (talk) 11:20, 12 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Senra makes a good point. I'm not sure that this can be fixed by policy changes (I'm not saying it can't either). I try to follow the behavior he has described. It is time consuming. A couple of suggestions, beyond just being mindful of what he has said: 1) People, don't be shy about chiding an editor who has tagged or deleted an article that could have been salvaged, or tagged it too soon, or not engaged the editor beyond using a template (when warranted). You're doing them and everyone a favor, how else can they learn? 2) We need to change the template graphics, I think. The triangle-wow sign used to notify editors that there article is being considered for deletion is the same sign use for second warnings to vandals (I think). Herostratus (talk) 14:26, 12 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps part of the reason I differed above is that maybe myself and Camelbinky (and, presumably others) are actually talking about a different kind of article. While WP:PRESERVE is policy, so is WP:V and WP:OR, and WP:N is a guideline (and policies do not trump guidelines). If an article is unsourced, at least 2 people (a nominator and an admin if speedy/PROD; more if AfD) need to make a judgment call as to whether or not the information can ever meet those criteria. If it appears to be the case (e.g., non-notable companies, actors who are "about" to make it, scientific principles of highly dubious quality and no reliable sources), we shouldn't PRESERVE that information, because that information is fundamentally inappropriate for an encyclopedia. Let me make bring up a set of examples, ones I see a lot because of the time zone I live in--articles about people, townships, and schools in India. If an article comes up about a living person, and it has no sources, it should either be marked for speedy deletion or with a BLP-prod, and I have no qualms doing that within an hour of the article's creation, because BLPs fall under far more stringent rules than anything else. If a school shows up without sources, I'm inclined to let it sit for quite a bit longer, because it's likely that (if it's HS or post-secondary), it counts as notable, and it's likely that sources can, eventually, be found. If an article about a village shows up (or is significantly expanded), it's really important (I think) to get in there and start editing right away, if you can. That's because I find that those articles, while fundamentally notable and valuable, are regularly filled with all sorts of non-encyclopedic information that should not be preserved (lists of people who live there, puffery about how great the village is, dubious unsourced claims of historical importance, etc.). Now, I certainly think that, along with all of these instances (save for outright vandalism or disruptive edits), it's nice to add some detailed, personal, non-templated information to the editor's talk page--if nothing else, that increases the likelihood that the info won't be re-added without any conversation.
Sorry, I know I'm going on and on, but I'm trying to get down to the idea that simply because one editor added something, or created a new article, that doesn't mean we are automatically compelled to keep it. WP:PRESERVE actually contains all of the explanation I listed above and more for why deletion is sometimes the best choice. I don't believe that I'm alone in thinking that a better encyclopedia is, well, better than a large one. Maybe that's even what people above meant, and I just misinterpreted their words; if so, I'm sorry. I agree that the retired carpenter should be encouraged to find a way to get what he knows (that can be "reliably sourced") into the encyclopedia. I think that if patrollers are just speedying these articles and not giving at least a one paragraph, personal discussion to the contributor, then they're doing something wrong. But I don't think the way to get that person to become a "good" contributor is to let their contributions float around in our encyclopedia indefinitely, hoping someone sometime improves it until it meets minimum standards. Qwyrxian (talk) 00:09, 13 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The problem is that speedies at least don't require that an article can't be improved. In some cases a lack of assertion of notability is enough. In other words it's about the state of the article and it can be improved. Perhaps speedy deletion notes like that should go to the creator and let them know userfication is an option... Hobit (talk) 13:20, 13 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Notability is such a subjective and slippery slope to follow. My main complaint there is throwing up the notability complaint immediately after the article is being created fails to even give the opportunity to even list references in the first place, much less be able to document the notability or lack thereof of the article topic. I'm not saying that notability should be removed as a rationale for deletion, but I am saying that there should be at least an effort to find out if it is non-notable before it is PROD'd. Several new page patrollers abuse the tools and PROD just about anything they've personally never heard about, often getting overruled and having notability proven. That is most certainly not friendly to new contributors, particularly if a substantial number of articles end up going through the AfD process. That is generally not a pleasant way to introduce new contributors to Wikipedia, even if the article is "proven" as notable in the process. --Robert Horning (talk) 03:53, 14 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Conciseness would have helped get across many of the contributions above! I'm a novice to article creation and deletion, but two issues appear to be (1) civility and respect: I prefer to give and receive a personal message to a template. (2) Finality of deletion. Where poor or insufficient content have been the reasons for deletion, yes, page would be better "off-line". Off-line (eg. moved to user space) as a concept is an incentive to the creator to improve the article, get it into shape; deletion, the opposite. Feedback from non-contributing users amonst my friends indicates a poor-quality article is a worse reflection on WP than no article. Let articles be incubated before they're thrown up for instant gratification and then become throw-away! As per Qwyrxian, "..there is no hurry to create" –most– "articles.." (my qualification). Best, Trev M ~ 13:56, 13 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
So, why don't we solve both problems? Quite honestly, it's very rare that I see a new editor contribute an article that's on a topic that's even workable. Happens, but rare. We just waste a bunch of time from experienced editors cleaning it up, while pissing off the new editors who don't understand that this is not the place for an article on your dog, or your best friend, even if you write it really well. (And most of it is not written really well).
So I propose we solve both problems, and don't let people start right out by creating articles. Make it (at least) an autoconfirmed right. Non-autoconfirmed editors can still use articles for creation as normal, if they've got something they're sure works. Everyone else can get a few edits under their belt before starting to create pages—and hopefully learn a few things in the process, including quite possibly that the page they were intending really won't work. It'll reduce biting on the newbies (and I think "You're not allowed to do that quite yet, but you can try it with some help here" is far less bitey than "Your page is going to be deleted immediately.")
Don't get me wrong. I'm all for deletion, and consolidation, and cleanup. We don't need hundreds of thousands of articles that will never be more than a stub. But this problem can be solved at its root, and save frustration and trouble for everyone involved—the newbies and the old hands. SeraphimbladeTalk to me04:18, 14 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
This approach worked before, too - pre 1995 and instant gratification. Anyone an experienced USENET contributor from those days likely remembers that newbies were always told to lurk to get a feel for how the community worked. I see no reason why, from a WP standpoint, we can't limit article creation to an editor with a reasonable amount of time or handful of other edits under their belt; it is far from harmful and will improve the perceptions new editors get. --MASEM (t) 04:36, 14 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, please. Even if we don't technically restrict article creation by new users, we should at least stop going out of our way to encourage it. Mr.Z-man04:48, 14 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The technical ability to restrict article creation is clearly in the MediaWiki software. If you want, we could restrict this to only somebody with a "founder" flag on their account. I certainly don't advocate such a position. There is also a "Autoconfirmed users" category that applies to users with multiple edits.... currently used to restrict page moves only for established accounts. I might.... grudgingly... accept this as a compromise in terms of where article creation ought to be allowed. The current requirements are 10 edits and an account that is at least 4 days old to be a part of this category and doesn't require any extra administration. That to me is still a relatively low threshold but keeps the trolls more at bay and requires somebody at least trying to participate with Wikipedia before new articles can be contributed. This is a change that could technically be done right now, but as a policy question it is something that does cut deep into the heart of what Wikipedia actually is. I certainly don't see the developers making a change of this nature without a major site-wide policy poll being taken... and expect a flame war royale if the question is posed in a formal manner with commentary by the WMF board too. There would be incredible resistance to any tougher standards than this. See also Special:ListGroupRights
I also don't see that this is going to resolve the whole problem, but it does resolve a complete novice landing on a red link and typing in some random gibberish. That might be beneficial. This kind of change coupled with an increased effort to put the new page patrollers into a new user helper attitude would go a long way to "fixing" this problem. It can't be solved purely by technical means as this is a people to people issue, and it can only really be resolved by having people responding to people in a very human way. --Robert Horning (talk) 23:40, 14 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Would it be possible to put that restriction in place but still allow a user to create a new page in userspace without being autoconfirmed? Also, I find myself wondering whether or not it would be useful to beef up the text on the page when a user tries to create a new page--it seems to me that it would be helpful to guide users to create new articles in userspace, so they can work on it a bit before bringing it to mainspace. --Nuujinn (talk)00:06, 15 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Not sure I expected such a well reasoned and informative debate, so thank you all for your comments. I am sorely tempted to respond, though I expect I would merely end up cherry picking responses which support my thesis. Please be assured I am watching these posts --Senra (Talk) 23:47, 14 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
How do we proceed?
An issue was raised and generated a lot of input. I'm new here and don't know how things work. So how do we procede to ensure that the issue is addressed and that the community is satisfied? Thanks. - Hydroxonium (talk) 23:49, 14 September 2010 (UTC)(fix edit conflict Hydroxonium (talk23:55, 14 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Concensus seems to be centering on changing the user rights for creating new article to be changed to Autoconfirmed users. Secondary concensus seems to be centered more on how the new page patrollers interact with those creating those articles... with an emphasis on perhaps some education/training of new page patrollers in some fashion. These are two distinctively different proposals.
This is significant enough that I think a formal poll needs to happen in terms of the technical changes to the user rights, and announced beyond just the Village Pump. The question here is who wants to run this, and who is impartial on this topic that would also be willing to get the leg work happening to make this known to the wider Wikipedia community. At the very least, notifying the en-wikipedia mailing list and putting something in the Signpost would be a place to start, as would the Admin noticeboard to perhaps get something on a sitenotice message.... if we think it deserves that level of attention. --Robert Horning (talk) 00:05, 15 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
One thing I'd like to see done is gathering of actual statistics regarding new users. How many users actually do get their start by creating a new article? How many actually quit after their article gets deleted? If their article isn't deleted, how many still don't edit afterward? We had WP:NEWT, but its experimental methods were so shoddy, its impossible to draw any real conclusions from it. Mr.Z-man03:01, 15 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps the proposal could be along the lines that users without a small edit record only be able to create pages in user space, or some other off-line space and that such articles may be requested to be moved to mainspace? I go to new page patrol and there's not many pages I can say whether are Notable enough (they probably aren't), so I'm reluctant to "define them" as such by clicking patrolled or recommending them for deletion, but I would be prepared to cast a quick vote either way for them that didn't change their status, in a process that automatically took several editors views into account, and the same for a page that was being incubated that was not yet on line. I know that's beyond the policy of whether straight into mainspace or not is on, but a simpler, quicker and not so heavy on any one assessor means of evaluating articles is surely fundamental to dealing with the flow, whether they already be in main space or a queue to get there? Trev M ~ 09:44, 15 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
One thing to keep in mind when discussing a restriction of page creation to autoconfirmed users: IP editors are never autoconfirmed. Even if they could create articles in their user space this would be problematic, because they are unlikely to remember their old IP if that changes. So we would effectively bar IPs from creating articles. Personally I think that IP editing should be thought of as a no-barriers preview to editing Wikipedia, and that in a sense most long-term IP editors are abusing the system. But if you don't follow this theory (which doesn't seem to be a popular one), then forbidding IPs to create articles is problematic. HansAdler10:07, 15 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Tell me about long term IP editors! Personally, I think the privilege of creating articles in main space should come with at least a user name. What other un-notable website lets you come along and start creating content without even giving yourself a handle? But as for an IP editor finding the article they just created in their user space: they can bookmark with their browser, can't they, or search for it? (although I do now see what you mean about if tthey wanted to edit their article from a different IP address. They soon realise the value of being autoconfirmed.Trev M ~ 10:35, 15 September 2010 (UTC)Et seq.[reply]
(re Beeblebrox) now that response is nit-picking. The spirit of what I am saying, irrespective of guidelines or policy, is that the lead of the deletion policy "article" should be written from a more neutral perspective, to more fairly represent the fact that deletion should be a last resort. Currently, the WP:ATD (alternatives to deletion) section is not mentioned within the deletion policy "article" until around one-third of the way into the document. To be clear, I was knowingly and explicitly referring to policy; your reference (Wikipedia:GTD#Nomination), whilst valid, is to a guideline only document --Senra (Talk) 19:45, 15 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Considering that there are clearly Deletionists, Mergists, and Inclusionists on Wikipedia, I would say that the principles of NPOV apply to policy as well as content. Yes, this it nitpicking here, but there is no reason that it can't or shouldn't be written in a neutral tone rather than taking on the philosophy and point of view of one of these editing camps. NPOV is a basic pillar policy that can and perhaps even should be considered a meta-policy. It certainly is the one indisputable policy that must apply to all language versions of Wikipedia and is also in all Wikimedia projects. Why shouldn't that also apply to most policies as well? --Robert Horning (talk) 20:23, 15 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I have to agree with Robert Horning...I'm not so sure that deletion should always be the last resort. Additionally, my understanding is that it is incorrect to say that policy necessarily trumps guidelines. Qwyrxian (talk) 22:30, 15 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
We are wandering farther and farther afield from the original subject of this discussion, but let me say that the lead to the deletion policy is in fact written like the lead of an article in that it provides a broad overview of the subject without delving into details and in fact is followed by a brief section listing valid reasons for deletion, followed by seven subsections detailing alternatives to deletion. In short, even if we accept a content policy as a valid guide for how a policy page should be constructed I still consider the argument that alternatives are not given enough weight invalid. If this line of discussion is going to continue to be pursued I suggest it be split off into it's own section as it has little bearing on the proposal we are supposed to be discussing.(as an aside I was not trying to lay down a "trump card" by mentioning WP:GTD, I just thought it was the most widely used deletion related guide page and is the one I always refer people to if they have questions about deletion.) Beeblebrox (talk) 00:37, 16 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The original subject of this whole debate is that far too many articles are being needlessly nominated for deletion and that some recent change patrollers are complaining that they are being "overworked" by the crushing influx of new pages being created by apparently clueless new users. The topic is how to deal with those new users and if perhaps something ought to be done to help with this situation.... including a minor rework of the instruction that are being given to those who perform a vital function to Wikipedia in general. There is a problem here, and more than one solution can be applied in terms of how to resolve it. If this includes reworking the lead paragraph of the formal deletion policy, perhaps that is something which can be very useful to make those who are applying this policy to be encouraged to be more friendly to new users in general. How is that for staying on topic? --Robert Horning (talk) 00:52, 16 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
As a result of following this thread, I've had a fairly informative read of WP:DEL and it actually suggests many of the things that I thought "ought" to be implemented, not least of moving articles to the incubator! So armed with that one at least, I shall do a bit of duty on the new page patrol, and send any that fit that criterion off for incubation. But hey, as I was reminded above, IP editors can't create their own pages; nor can hatchling editors: can't the proposal simply be that that x-day, y-edits period be extended for main-space page creation? That's not an earth shattering policy change: that's just adjustments: new page numbers excessive + quality poor = increase incubation time: fewer but better live. By the time they've built their page in their user space they'll have all the edit-credits they need and had time to compare and re-evaluate their page, or got bored and gone away and left less work for other editors...? But those statistics talked about by Z-man would be good to see. If editors with time served are creating crap pages, then forget all the above! Trev M ~ 01:12, 16 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Registered users are able to create new articles from the moment of creation. Also, I'm working on getting some of the statistics. I should hopefully have them in a day or so. Mr.Z-man05:35, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
As someone who routinely does NPP, I like this idea. It makes no sense to allow users to create articles if they have no idea what the hell they're doing, any more than it makes sense to allow users to begin moving articles before they're familiar with the relevant guidelines (MoS, NPOV, and others). Not only would this be easier on the new editors, it'd make our job as patrollers much easier. I'd be glad not to sift through the enormous reams of garage bands and guides on how to become an Internet millionare (if you think I'm kidding...) that new users frequently create. Having users wait a few days would cut down the amount of suspicion we patrollers have when we see a new article, especially one with "band" in the title, and reduce the hair trigger CSD tagging. In short, it'd help everyone, and help solve, not exacerbate, the underlying problem. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 06:46, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I finished gathering the stats about new users and article creation. The full results are here. To summarize:
Users who create an article are much more likely to leave the project if their article is deleted. 1 in ~160 will stay if their article is deleted while 1 in ~22 will stay otherwise
Our main source of regular users is not users who start by creating an article.
Users who start by editing an existing page outnumber article creators by 3:1
Users who start by editing an existing article are far less likely to have their first edits deleted (and therefore are far more likely to stay)
From the users analyzed, we got fewer than 200 regular users from those who created articles (1.3% retention), we got more than 900 from users who edited existing pages (2.5% retention)
A significant number of regular users (24%) get their start outside of mainspace.
I would like to thank Mr.Z-man (talk·contribs) for going to the trouble of producing the above interesting statistics. I have never really been a fan of such numbers as it is so easy to think of a thesis, then gather statistics that prove that thesis. I will find it difficult to interpret the above results without adding my own bias. Nevertheless, if I understand the above results correctly (which I may not of course) one potential new user stays for every 160 new users that go away (in the period studied)? If my interprestation is correct, that is a really sad indictment to the deletion process --Senra (Talk) 13:57, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
An alternate explanation for the data is that the (vast) majority of users whose first action is creation of a new article are here for reasons other than creation/improvement of the encyclopedia. In my time at NPP, I learned the first four steps in forming a band are gathering a group of friends, choosing a band name, creation of the band's Wikipedia article, and finally learning to play musical instruments. Add in the variety of bored school kiddie inventions, resumé postings, and advertisements for taco stands and hot dog cart vendors and it is not hard to see where the 160 new users who leave come from. The "deletion problem" has always been a GIGO issue and until the project is willing to look at the input side of the problem there will be no good solution. --Allen3talk14:54, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Yep, that's exactly what I was thinking of (today I had to tag yet another set of garage bands; my latest contributions will show that). It's really easy to talk about being easy on CSD tagging, but there's no good way to avoid the fact that many new articles are useless. There are a lot of new articles that are pure vandalism and obvious hoaxes (the one I found and tagged today was Negroponte Isle). And it's even worse when someone creates 10 articles advertising themselves under different titles; and yes, I actually came across someone who literally had 10 articles spamming his resume. No matter what you do, there's no way to soften the blow of telling some 12 year old kid that he has to wait until he is the next Snoop Dogg, and that his page will be deleted until then. If only autoconfirmed editors are making articles, the G5 speedy deletions probably won't go down much, but the articles that are being created are far more likely to be of at least some use, and the number of garage bands (which are probably the biggest problem) will probably be reduced. And like Allen3 said above, the input does have to be examined. Autoconfirmed editors are far more likely to have enough useful input to create a whole page, thus increasing the chance that a new article will be useful. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 05:09, 24 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
One new user will stay for every 160 in the group of people whose first attempt at writing an article is deleted. For users whose first article isn't deleted, 1 in 22 will stay. There's no way to tell (with this data) whether the latter people are more likely to stay because they had a better experience or their article being kept just shows that they were more dedicated from the beginning and therefore more likely to stay regardless of the outcome (or both). But yes, the script only looks to see if the article is deleted, not why (though if the user is indef blocked for vandalism, they will be excluded). Mr.Z-man16:41, 25 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Summarizing issues and suggestions
Important: Wikipedia needs new editors to help improve and maintain the project. Issues
New editors are leaving from a negative experience with a WP:CSD, WP:AfD or WP:PROD because new page patrollers are being too strict with WP:NOTABLE and not following WP:AGF and WP:BITE
Suggestions
Educate new page patrollers to use WP:INCUBATOR and WP:USERFY more often and to be nicer to new users
Appoint more editors as WP:Autopatrolled this takes pressure off NPP and reduces the chance of an incorrect speedy deletion tag (I've appointed about 100 since NEWT)
Give more feedback to Newpage patrollers on incorrect tags, there are a lot of incorrect speedy deletion tags, and taggers rarely get feedback until RFA
Expand the list of tags that shouldn't be applied in the first minutes from A1 and A3 to "don't tag goodfaith contributions for deletion in their first hour".
Require all new articles to have a source, and change the software to prompt people for their source - I believe DE wiki does this already
I have some strong objections to requiring "new articles" to have a source right at the get go. This implies that article development absolutely must start in user space and can't be created in the main namespace until after it has at least passed some sort of quality review, and expecting C-class standards or better for all new articles. I think that is a massive mistake and in the long run will hurt at least the English language version of Wikipedia, given the demographics of some of the readers and new contributors. This isn't a technical issue, but a people to people communication and relationship issue that needs to be solved. I'll leave it for now that this is an issue that is a point of contention. As for the other items you list here, these are pretty good ideas. --Robert Horning (talk)
I actually think that idea is a very sound one. It doesn't really solve many of the problems (since many people will still create, for example, articles to their garage band and you the band's myspace page as a "source," which the software obviously can't handle), but compelling that inclusion helps point everyone, new and old, to the fact that Wikipedia is not like other places on the internet. Such a prompt would necessarily need a link to WP:V, to show people that we absolutely do not want articles which are not verifiable in a reliable source. Wikipedia is quite old enough (as a site) that we no longer need to allow articles to start out at such a low level. Incrementalism can be a good thing, but we are no longer in a situation where we need to set the starting bar so low. If we want, we could conceivably allow a user to bypass the need to add a source by clicking some sort of box that said "I understand that not including a source means that the article will likely by nominated for deletion shortly, as all Wikipedia article content must be verified by reliable sources."
On the other issues, I definitely like the idea of giving feedback to new page patrollers in principle, as it does seem a bit odd that we "coach" people in creating new content (through the use of the deletion process and talk page comments), but we don't "train the trainers" to themselves give appropriate feedback.
In a certain sense, I could almost imagine a wikipedia in which the tagging of articles for some types of deletion is itself attached to some higher right (like rollbacker, reviewer, or some as yet unnamed category). That is, allow any editor to raise an AfD (since that itself requires a community guided process), but restrict prodding and especially speedy prodding to some user level higher than autoconfirmed. Now, I know that many editors disagree with increasing the amount of hierarchy (bureaucracy-creep), but this could help balance out the need to keep removing cruft/attacks/OR/etc., while keeping the ability to do so in the hands of people more careful about not biting the newcomers. Qwyrxian (talk) 00:47, 27 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
One of the tough parts about that is the fact that not many people are interested in NPP. I personally very much enjoy it (I've come across some really neat articles in the process, and I've done a lot of copyediting for newly translated articles from ja-wiki), but I can totally understand why most people want nothing to do with it. It's sometimes hard to tell new users that their article will have to be deleted because they/their company aren't notable enough, and it's even harder when people keep recreating their articles and/or removing speedy tags, because it becomes a huge, drawn-out process that can seriously test people's patience; those who haven't done it before would be impressed at the amount of deafness some new users have, especially with regard to notability. I'd be fine with requiring someone to have some sort of status (reviewer and/or rollbacker status) before being able to PROD/speedy tag articles, because I think a user needs to have some experience before tagging. However, there's also the additional issue of copyright violations, which 1. need to be dealt with as quickly as possible, due to the potential legal liability, and 2. don't necessarily need someone familiar with Wikipedia policy to identify, just someone familiar with copyright law. Right now, one user, VernoWhitney, does most of the work there, and I've started to become more active in that myself. It's very difficult, because it's not always just as easy as running a Google search or looking at what the bot says, and the last thing we need is to narrow the field of people who do it, because that will just perpetuate some of the hair trigger tagging if those of us on NPP know that there are only a few of us. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 23:54, 27 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'm a new page patroller. There's alot of info to read above, so I haven't. I'll just throw in one thing that I've mentioned numerous times at WT:CSD: the idea of having a "speedy userfication" process is highly appealing to me, and less off-putting to new editors. I think they'd understand a message like "hey, we see this article, but there are some problems: 1, 2, 3, 4. We didn't want to destroy your work, but feel free to edit in your userspace then ask someone for assistance before posting." This type of activity would instantly let the user know that we want to work with them and it shows that this is a collaborative project. — Timneu22 ·talk14:01, 28 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, I came across a case last night where that would have been ideal; I'm in the process of guiding this user through getting a copy of their deleted work, but a speedy userfication would have taken care of it with much less hassle. In this case, the band he was writing about (WeMusic) is actually right on the line between notability and non-notability, and userfication is the best way to handle those sorts of pages from newbies. Seems like something logical, to me at least. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 15:45, 28 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
(outdent) I too, am working with a new user that had their page deleted. I am walking them through the process of creating a good article. If anybody comes across a new user willing to learn, send them my way. They can join in on my teaching effort. - Hydroxonium (talk) 00:44, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The power of the Arbitration Committee
Currently the Arbitration Committee functions as the governing body of the English Wikipedia. I believe that ArbCom and MedCom were set up by Jimbo to aid in the process of dispute resolution, MedCom has stayed true to that but ArbCom has evolved into the governing body of Wikipedia, it has become a case of "What we say is final". The Committee itself has too much power. I am proposing the following changes:
Decentralisation and removal of the power currently vested upon the Committee.
Creation of a new committee that will be responsible for looking after Policy and putting forward the remedies proposed by ArbCom to the greater community in order to gain consensus on these remedies, the final decision then lies with the Stewards who will determine the consensus established and make the final decision.
Removal of Jimbo's authority, he should not be the person to make the final decision. He should be allowed a say in discussion but should have no part in enacting these decisions, such decisions are for the community and the community alone.
Allowing the community a greater say, the community should be allowed to have a greater say in decisions. The Arbitration Committee should then evaluate the opinions of the community and take them to heart. They should not override community consensus and should not have the final say, the final say always lies with the community.
User rights, sanctions and editing restrictions should be decided by the community through a simple Request for Comment, the Arbitration Committee should not be the ones to decide who does what, the community are capable of deciding for themselves. Whether or not a user should keep their admin/crat bits and whether or not a user should be made a Checkuser and given Oversight permissions should be decided by the community in the same manner as a request for admin/bureaucratship, with a requirement of 80% Support for promotion.
There's a draft new arbitration policy available for discussion - Wikipedia:Arbitration/Policy/Draft - you might consider making suggestions there. I tend to agree that power should rest more with the community, but there needs to be a body that has the power to determine what the community's view is (given that individuals within the community have widely differing views, and usually each side considers that their view is that of the community). I do believe, though, that the arbitration process is a symptom of mudddled thinking - everything ArbCom does (except things requiring access to confidential information) should really be done by the community or rather by admins - then ArbCom could simply act as a body to review (and overturn, if necessary) the decisions of admins. (I keep suggesting this and no-one ever answers, which could mean one of two things.)--Kotniski (talk) 07:30, 17 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, I copied the suggestion there. Which is why consensus needs to be evaluated, everyone should be allowed to participate in ArbCom cases without having their say overrided. —Ғяіᴆaз'§Đøøм • Champagne? •07:38, 17 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
"Decentralisation and removal of the power currently vested upon the Committee" and "Allowing the community a greater say": that would be a disaster. Most of the service ArbCom provides is a hard daily grind and would bore us silly. ArbCom is part of the cost of doing business on a free wiki: unfettered freedom would be chaos.
Policy committee: is just won't work. While ArbCom involves itself in content and policy only insofar it is absolutely necessary to sort out behavioural issues in a case, the idea of a WP government has been tried and failed miserably. We, the people, are the government, and consensus is the mechanism.
"Removal of Jimbo's authority"—I used to be strongly against his authority as the ultimate appeal, but I've softened. He never uses it, and frankly, there's a bunch of reasons for not bothering to change this symbolic status. However, I believe Jimbo should not interfere in the democratic process of ArbCom elections. Tony(talk)09:04, 17 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
See WP:PEREN. Tony is pretty much spot on. There is large participation in the annual elections for arbcom, showing the majority of the community realizes we need it. Cases get to arbcom because the community is incapable of solving a situation. Not to mention such a proposal would destroy the ability of the community to handle highly personal matters that pretty much anyone except arbs and ex-arbs is totally unaware that we handle. When I first got on arbcom and became aware of all the intensely personal stuff arbcom deals with, I was stunned. And that was after having been an arbclerk. Believe me, this is stuff I'd prefer not to know but someone on wiki has to deal with it. — Rlevse • Talk • 10:32, 17 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Right now, the question isn't whether ArbCom's power will be restricted, but whether it would be expanded by proposals such as Wikipedia:Arbitration/Policy/Draft. I think what's crucial here is to keep ArbCom restricted to a judicial role, entirely subordinate to community discussions of policy. As I've commented there, I think that expansion of their executive power puts Wikipedia at risk of being subverted by political manipulations, and runs contrary to the basic idea of community consensus that people have been using. I don't want to be entirely thankless for the ArbCom's role in settling issues, but I think that they've sometimes been heavy-handed against editors, and their role in issues like WP:BLPBAN and WP:Child protection has turned issues on which consensus might easily have been achieved into burning points of contention. I don't believe we can trust ArbCom to redefine and expand its own scope, because there would be a huge careerist benefit for people who can say that "the dozen of us ran Wikipedia...", at the expense of the rest of the community. Wnt (talk) 17:14, 17 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'm all for it, ArbCom doesn't need so many powers and if we can separate these powers into a 3 level system, Judiciary (ArbCom), Legislative and Executive (PolCom?). This is based off the systems used in many democratic countries, it worked there so why can't it work here? —Ғяіᴆaз'§Đøøм • Champagne? •20:51, 17 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Because we don't need the extra bureaucracy. ArbCom only generates real policy when its relevant to a case. The last thing we need is a group who just sits around and makes up policy, whether we need it or not. A policy committee would either be a bureaucracy factory or a useless group that does nothing. And in many cases, the judiciary does create laws. As for "Allowing the community a greater say", ArbCom does listen to the community; they certainly don't go through long, drawn-out cases for fun. The community does have the final say. ArbCom is for when the community can't agree on what that should be. Nothing happens without community support. ArbCom is 14 users, there are probably about 10,000 or so regular editors. If the majority of the community opposes something, it will be overturned. People seem to forget this sometimes; a handful of users can't actually run Wikipedia on their own. Mr.Z-man04:24, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It seems about 90% of all MedCom requests get rejected due to either parties not agreeing or to draconian standards needed to accept cases. Moreover, most cases eventually end up in front of ArbCom, anyways, and it is they whom people send their problems to (as the other oft-ignored and underused areas of dispute resolution). It is also no doubt that the community in general pay more attention to what happens on the Arbitration side, so the community at large is also complicit in ArbCom's status as some "high and mighty power". I don't know if the community is capable of resolving some issues by themselves, frankly, and IMO they depend on ArbCom to do all that work for them instead of doing the collective "legwork" themselves. –MuZemike01:52, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It should be noted that ArbCom turns down more cases than it accepts, in nearly all cases I have seen, this is to send an issue back to the community, or to ask the disputants to try other dispute resolution methods. ArbCom really does consider itself the court of last resort. Since it only deals with stuff the community finds itself unable to deal with, its cases tend to be contentious and messy, so by definition their decisions piss off roughly half (or more) of the community. That's because if most of the community could agree in the first place on how to handle a situation, it would have never gotten to ArbCom! Without ArbCom to do the hard and unpopular work of cleaning up after the community's inability to solve certain problems, we'd be in a much worse situation. --Jayron3204:35, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I understand the arguments presented, I would like to ask if it would be plausible for ArbCom to separate its sanction imposing etc. powers into a separate sub-committee. With the main body of ArbCom itself dealing with WP:DR and the propsed sub-committee looking after DR remedies. —Ғяіᴆaз'§Đøøм • Champagne? •09:07, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Well, that's tricky because the DR aspect is closely interlinked with the sanctions aspect. By the time a case comes to us, it usually way beyond the stage where suggesting the parties go off and have a cup of tea together will have any actual impact. There is incidentally already a division of sorts: only a small sub-set of arbitrators generally draft cases but the whole committee (who have usually been following developments from the wings) votes on it. Roger Daviestalk09:17, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I understand, could this system not be trialled first, surely if it works then Arbitrators themselves will have a lighter workload. Also I still oppose the idea of CU/OS candidates requiring internal discussion before deciding if they are fit to run. —Ғяіᴆaз'§Đøøм • Champagne? •05:54, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Fridae'sDoom, it turns out that we already have most of what you say you want. It's called Requests for Comment, and it is a fully decentralized system that allows absolutely any editor to have the greatest possible say on both content and behavior, and it is a formative step in most community-imposed sanctions.
It's also a process that is sadly neglected, because most uninvolved people (e.g., you) never bother to show up and have their say. There are currently six RFC/U cases open. The list is right here, and you are invited to help resolve these disputes. And if you personally can't, or won't -- then what makes you think that "the community" will magically have more time and energy to do this work if we blow up ArbCom? They're (and you're) not doing it now; why would they do it then?
I suggest that you become more familiar with the existing procedures -- and the critical resource limitations affecting them -- before you try to reform the only dispute resolution process on Wikipedia that can be relied upon to provide some sort of response to disputants. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:44, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I am aware of RFC, my primary concern is that ArbCom currently has too much power. Some of which could be diverted and given to sub-committees or new committes altogether, ArbCom is for dispute resolution and I understand sanctions etc. are part of dealing with disputes these responsibilities can be given to other committees without causing site-wide disruption. —Ғяіᴆaз'§Đøøм • Champagne? • 8:30pm •10:30, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'm still not entirely sure what you're proposing here. From what I can understand, though, your proposals wouldn't actually solve your concerns. What, exactly, gives ArbCom "too much power"? How in the world would those responsibilities be "given to other committees" without adding more layers of bureaucracy that will slow things even more? — The Hand That Feeds You:Bite20:52, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
ArbCom has the ability to go to Stewards and ask for the revocation of certain user rights, imposing sanctions, dealing with blocks etc. While I understand this is often necesary for WP:DR I see no reason why a Policy Committee couldn't be setup to deal with this. A one-month trial of this system wouldn't hurt would it, dispute resolution is just that. The remedies should be managed by a separate committee made up of people who WP:AGF and exercise common sense. —Ғяіᴆaз'§Đøøм • Champagne? • 7:04pm •09:04, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see what the point of setting up a separate committee for imposing these remedies would be. Also, your comment about AGF and "common sense" is dangerously close to a personal attack against the Arb members. — The Hand That Feeds You:Bite13:22, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I think that the logical choice is not between giving ArbCom new policy-making power, or creating some "PolCom". The best choice is to leave policy making power in the hands of the community as a whole and existing processes of consensus building. Wnt (talk) 00:53, 25 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Fridae,
The community can (and does) handle disputes separately from ArbCom all the time. See, e.g., this RfC and this topic ban that resulted from it. There's no sign of any all-powerful ArbCom anywhere in this. Why should we create a new bureaucracy to do something that the existing systems can do just fine right now?
Think of it this way: Your "policy committee" already exists. Its pages are WP:RFC, WP:CENT, and WP:AN. Its members are whoever shows up. If you (and all of us) actually show up and do our jobs on these pages, then nothing will ever reach ArbCom in the first place. The only viable solution to ArbCom having "too much power" is for you (and all of us) to resolve all the disputes before people beg ArbCom to do it for them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:24, 28 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Article cleanup templates
I'm not sure whether this is the right place to discuss this... if not, please redirect me. As far as I can tell we neither have a policy nor a guideline to plaster articles with myriads of cleanup templates. Please, where is the consensus that these templates do any good to an article? Take Authentication for example. Does it help the reader? It has been argued that the reader can be "warned" about the article's lack of quality... heck, by that argument we'd have to tag every article that is not featured or at least good by our standards. Does it help editors? Certainly not editors working on the article... they know the issues very well. Does it attract other editors? I highly doubt that... it usually doesn't even help asking on wikiproject pages for help! Do we have any statistics that such templates really do any good? Nageh (talk) 17:59, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I think some are useful as they alert readers that there may be severe problems with the article. However, templates like Template:Orphan that only refer to editorial issues are clutter, and should be placed on the talk page instead. Fences&Windows19:47, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Would it be possible to display some of these templates via editnotice rather than on the main article (for example, the BLP editnotice)? This would allow editors to view issues with the article while editing it, without having to view the talk page, and at the same time prevent casual readers from being distracted by them. Some of these templates could still remain on the main page to warn readers of sub-par content. Intelligentsium19:51, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It doesn't surprise me that this issue has come up before. Yet, the arguments given at WP:PEREN are surprisingly inaccurate. A reader doesn't get ideas on how to improve an article simply because somebody has attached a one-liner to it saying how bad the article is. But the main problem I see is that if we are consistent in tagging all articles with issues we must do so for every single article that is not featured. That some users (or drive-by taggers) really are tagging for pedantic reasons can be seen in Authentication as an example. So either we set up stricter guidelines on when to tag an article, or we may (and will) end up with an ever growing list of articles with a pitoresque banner in the lead section. Nageh (talk) 20:46, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The reasons make some sense, and I've seen plenty of articles with tags improved by users new and old as a result of them. But I agree with F&W that {{orphan}} isn't relevant to readers in general, so i would support moving that one to the talk page. Alzarian16 (talk) 21:07, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
As I said, the problem is that if we don't differentiate what and when issues must be so dominantly pointed out on the article page we may just as well end up with all articles tagged (subtract the featured ones). Currently we can't do anything about overzealous drive-by tagging – and some people (often those not adding content at all) enjoy this extensively! (Take Authentication for example: Lack of references is obvious, yet this won't change a thing by merely pointing this out. Instructions or how-to? I cannot even find this in the article. General cleanup? Of course, it's a C-class article!) Nageh (talk) 21:21, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I couldn't agree more about drive-by tagging, a completely useless pastime. There really is no need for a copyediting tag as a banner. What is a reader supposed to make of that - oh, maybe I should not read this article, the English is going to be bad? Is it supposed that readers will not notice the article has poor English without a banner headline informing them of it? Likewise wikilinking, likewise categories, likewise MOS issues. There may be a case for content problems like POV, OR, fringe, US-centricism etc but often it still too "in your face". I am not even convinced of the need for banners for inline citations, I have noticed several editors moving these to the references section. So often the issue is merely a mechanical task of reading/finding the references and creating appropriate inlines. In cases where the content is truly thought to be suspect, that is different, but that is not usually the case, usually the tagging is a purely mechanical process with no consideration of the actual article content. SpinningSpark22:15, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I have to agree that these are overused. I think that most of the time this problem results because the templates don't make it clear exactly what needs to be fixed, so nobody is sure whether to take them out. I would suggest, as a rule of thumb, that if a regular editor of an article doesn't understand what a banner template is asking for, he should take it out. Wnt (talk) 22:43, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I do tend to do that, but often it makes the tagger angry who then restores it with a fire-breathing edit summary for daring to remove their template. If only they would put half that effort into a couple of sentences on the talk page, their actions would be so much more effective. SpinningSpark23:47, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
My point is, banners should be only used to point out important issues. POV, OR, and fringe are certainly important issues. Kinds of cleanup that you'd expect to be done for an article to become featured are not important issues. (A cleanup tag may be warranted for articles such as Block code or Linear code though.)
Please have a look at Authentication again: Additional referencing required? Debatable whether this should be placed so dominantly in the heading, or better moved to the References section for example, or even pointed out at all (after all it is obvious!). How-to content? Certainly not – I cannot even find evidence for that! General cleanup? Now that's probably the favorite term for drive-by taggers... can you be a bit more specific? Yet, when say I'd remove these tags (probably move the first to References) this sure would escalate into an edit war with the tagger (who as far as I can see virtually never contributes by adding content to an article).
Is it possible to get consensus that banners should only be used to point out important issues? (otherwise inflational meaning, may tag all non-featured articles in the end, etc.) Nageh (talk) 11:51, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
There is one more reason to tag the articles: readers (potential writers) might wish to use the articles they read as examples for the articles they are going to write. Thus, when the reader sees a tag "Additional referencing required", it also says "Don't forget the references when you write your own article!". It is useful even if the reader doesn't try to find references for the article he's reading. By the way, it looks like this "phenomenon" has also been noted in User:Uncle G/Cargo cult encyclopaedia article writing ([1]).
As for the "Template:Cleanup" ([2]) tag... Maybe we could try what I did with the deletion tag (lt:Šablonas:Trinti, [3]) in Lithuanian Wikipedia? If the reason hasn't been provided as parameter, it would show "The reason hasn't been specified, but it might have been given in the talk page or in article history". Thus it would gently hint to the tagger that giving the reason would be nice, and the reader would know where to look for it. --Martynas Patasius (talk) 13:50, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Potential writers should always be pointed to featured articles, only! As I said before, you may thus just as well add a tag to any article that is non-featured. (Anyway, pointing out a major lack of references in the lead may be argued for, so I don't complain about that specifically. There are other more minor issues that taggers like to point out but that certainly do not require that kind of dominant reader attention.)
The problem I see here is that most taggers, especially drive-by taggers, will not provide a reason unless they are forced to (and in which case that most likely wouldn't have more meaning than "this page needs clean-up".) Nageh (talk) 14:13, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
(I collected both your statements to the same place, if you don't mind) It's easy to say that potential writers (in other words - "almost everyone") should look to featured articles for examples (and, maybe, that we should only choose the featured articles as good examples), but, unfortunately, it doesn't happen that way... The readers are not going to read the featured articles just because they are "the examples". They came to Wikipedia to read what interests them, not what is "the best".
Side thought: Hm, maybe it is a good suggestion then to point a newcomer to featured articles when attempting to edit an article (above the edit box)?
It is also wrong to imply that all articles that are not featured are somehow "bad". Many of them are good examples - they tell you that an article should start from a definition, have at least one category etc.
Probably true. At the same time they do have issues, otherwise they were already in featured state. Yet there is no point in pointing out these issues within a lead section banner.
Don't worry, I do AGF. :) Nonetheless it doesn't improve the article. It is distracting, often doesn't help either reader or writer, and drive-by taggers are demotivating real contributors. Just trying to improve this situation. ;) Nageh (talk) 14:53, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
(ec)Still, that's not an argument for banner tagging at the top of the article. A lot of this could go on the talk page or elsewhere. As for a link pointing to the talk page, some templates already do this, but if you follows the link, guess what, 9 times out of 10 there is nothing there, it was just drive-by tagging. This is especially annoying with "merge" templates. If I want to oppose the merge it is hard to present arguments against the rationale of the proposer when they fail to reveal what they were. In my view, a talk page post or embedded comment should be compulsory when posting banner templates except in the most obvious cases, and failure to provide them should warrant escalating templated warnings. It is actually disruptive to have all this unexplained litter and it wastes the time of content contributers trying to figure out what it means. SpinningSpark14:20, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
"Still, that's not an argument for banner tagging at the top of the article. A lot of this could go on the talk page or elsewhere." - Once again, maybe it would work if the readers would be known to read the talk pages habitually. But, as the things go, the talk page is the place for tags that are useful to "almost no one" - for example, wikiproject tags (they are useful to the members of those wikiprojects, but that is a small minority of all readers and editors).
As for the absence of the reason in the talk page - that is exactly why I also added a link to the article history. Hopefully, someone who doesn't add anything to the talk page doesn't forget the edit summary..? --Martynas Patasius (talk) 14:52, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
maybe it would work if the readers would be known to read the talk pages If it is essential information for the reader then the talk page is no good, but the discussion here is on editorial tags like copyedit. These need to attract the attention of editors, not readers. SpinningSpark21:55, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Some articles have To-do lists on their talk pages (e.g., Talk:Digital signature). IMO these are much more useful. — So maybe what could be done is add a small, non-intrusive tag to an article (maybe somewhere on the right side), pointing to the To-do list on the talk page when it is non-empty. Nageh (talk) 14:41, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Would they inform the reader that the article should not be used as an example in some respect? I doubt that... But, given your comment about something "small, non-intrusive"... What exactly is wrong with the tags? I have seen many discussions where some user claimed that the tags are ugly, but how comes that such statements generally support something like "The tags must be abolished!" or "The tags must be moved somewhere where no one would see them!", and not "We should make the tags beautiful!"..? --Martynas Patasius (talk) 15:03, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
What I'm trying to suggest is, issues that are mostly relevant to editors moved to the To-do list on the talk page. Issues that we think are important enough to be pointed out to the reader stay as a shiny banner in the lead section. But I strongly think that we should not point out each and every minor issue within a banner (again, featured articles and such). Nageh (talk) 15:13, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The idea of a small, non-intrusive box would be that an interested reader could be pointed to issues collected for an article but primarily of interest to an editor, written out in prose rather than a "helpful" "this article needs cleanup". (It is a separate suggestion from pointing out minor issues via banners.) Nageh (talk) 15:17, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
There is already a template for this, {{Multiple issues}}, that allows to tag multiple problems without adding several templates, and the resulting template is shorter. Besides, if an article has two or more problem templates that point basically to the same general problem, it's simply a matter of choosing the most apropiate one and removing the others. For example, the templates {{Hoax}} and {{Disputed}}, an article wouldn't need both. MBelgrano (talk) 14:11, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
That doesn't address the issue of potentially tagging each and every article for some issue. I would like to see some minimum requirements for when tagging is an appropriate solution, i.e. an article contains issues that are important to be pointed out to a reader. Nageh (talk) 14:19, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I think most of the useful arguments have been outlined above, but I would like to add a few more I couldn't see. First is the "Yes, we know this article is a bit rubbish. We're going to do something about it (eventually)" argument. In other words, "we don't like this particular facet of the article either", which shows at least a modicum of solidarity with the reader. Secondly, whilst I dislike drive-by tagging by people who really ought to just get on and fix the article, it's important that a wiki is a two-way process even for readers who do not have sufficient capacity to fix the articles themsleves. And thirdly, templates like unreferenced are useful for highlighting the "maybe you shouldn't take this as gospel truth" element of Wikipedia. A lot of criticism of the site in the mainstream press is about inaccuracy, and it's useful to highlight particularly flawed articles -- even if we ourselves think it's obvious you shouldn't trust us. - Jarry1250[Who?Discuss.]14:50, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Just to clarify. I'm only attempting to discuss (head level) banner templates, not inline templates like {{unreferenced}} (which would be a separate discussion). Nageh (talk) 14:59, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oops, sorry, my bad. But I said before that highlighting strong lack of references could be useful. It's mostly purely editorial tags and other minor issues I'm complaining about being placed/complained about so prominently. Nageh (talk) 17:10, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Tagging "each and every article" shouldn't be a problem in itself. The important thing is if each article, considered on its own, deserves or not the template. If I wrote articles with the plots of all the episodes of a given TV comedy and they are all tagged with "In-Universe" (if that was the case), then who cares if they were all tagged at once or in different occasions? The problem may be if all the articles of a series had a problem, except a few that are better, and those are labeled as well. Even so, that would be simply a mistake, easy and uncontroversial to fix. It would be too trivial to concern ourselves with it. MBelgrano (talk) 15:19, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I do consider it a distraction if every article starts with a banner pointing out minor standard-template issues, and not helpful at all. Banners for major issues. Good. Banners for every minor issue. Not good. Nageh (talk) 15:25, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know what to make out of all these comments. In general I think that all issues should be pointed out as detailed as possible on the talk page, possibly within a To-do list. Only major issues that really should be pointed out to a reader should go the article page. This includes POV, OR, fringe, etc., and may include references when there is a clear lack, but does not include minor copy editing and similar cleanup tasks. Currently there is nothing to prevent an editor tagging each article for any issue he likes as long as the article is not featured. "Oh, there is still 'lead too long/short', 'too many see-alsos', 'lead missing', 'MOS'," but generally he will just tag with a simple 'cleanup'.
If you still disagree, I'll want to ask why you think the issues pointed out so dominantly at Authentication (as an example) are justified (and need to be raised in a header banner). I'll accept a "useful" vote for the lack of references argument, but how-to and "general" cleanup? Nageh (talk) 17:34, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The ones added in edit [4]? Well, it is not exactly an exemplary edit... No edit summary (not even "Tags added."), no other explanation in some obvious place... "Cleanup"... Well, there was one unnecessary empty line (subsequently corrected by a bot), statements like "Efforts to control the supply chain and educate consumers to evaluate the packaging and labeling help ensure that authentic products are sold and used." also do not look too well... But I wouldn't say that "cleanup" is a suitable tag for those... Maybe "Template:Essay-like", "Template:Inappropriate tone", even "Template:POV" or "Template:Original research"..? On the other hand, maybe "Unreferenced" would cover it..? As for "how to"... No, I failed to find anything. So, why don't you ask the tagger, what did he have in mind? I see that you have already complained to him ([5]; by the way, would it have been a good idea for you to show this diff to us?), but you didn't seem to ask (like "Sorry, but I do not seem to understand what exactly did you mean by your tag 'how to' in [article, maybe diff]... Could you, please, elaborate on that? Thank you in advance.")... --Martynas Patasius (talk) 18:26, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The issue is bigger than this single editor. (And he made it clear that I would not be able to convince him.) As long as such actions are permitted there will always be someone tagging articles at will. Nageh (talk) 20:23, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The issue might be "bigger than this single editor", but it could be that the solution to almost all instances of it is more or less the same. Let's look at the "incident" again. First someone tagged an article without indicating what some of the tags mean and without using an edit summary. That was a mistake. Then you went to complain about it (about tagging, not about leaving no explanation). That was your mistake. The tagger got defensive (what else could one expect?).
Oh, it is my mistake? I've talked to the editors just a few days before, and he just made it similarly clear that I won't be able to convince him. Period. No further arguments from his side. And I was being more polite back then. Of course my reaction the next time was a bit more chilly (what else could one expect?).
Also, the tagger still hasn't explained what did he mean by the tags (well, no one actually asked him about that).
He has been informed about this discussion two days ago.
So, you shouldn't have complained, you should have asked. Given that the tagger reacted rather politely, I see no reason to assume that such approach wouldn't have worked.
Oh, and great! So the burden is on someone else than the tagger to get an explanation? (And obviously you misunderstand what I'm trying to do here... I'm not complaining about the tagger, I'm complaining about the behavior, which more than just a single wikipedian shows. [Edit: Nageh (talk) 10:19, 21 September 2010 (UTC)])[reply]
And "As long as such actions are permitted there will always be someone tagging articles at will."... Let's try this one: as long as editing the articles will be permitted to "almost anyone", there will always be someone vandalizing. So, we should forbid anyone but professional editors to edit the articles, right? I hope we all know the answer.
No, I'm saying that (according to my oppinion) the correct way to fix this is educating the users - probably one at a time. And it is going to work better if whoever does the "educating" stays focused on the problem at hand: it is not tagging as such, but insufficient explanations. Oh, and may I ask you to consider not adding your replies in the middle of my posts, or at least in the middle of my paragraphs (like [6])? Thank you in advance. --Martynas Patasius (talk) 19:30, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I understand what you are saying. But I have not come here to complain about a specific editor. Thoughtless tagging is a behavior excited by more than a few wikipedians. Sorry for the inline response. Nageh (talk) 19:37, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, ok, well, it may work arguing with each user separately. But then it may not. It would be much simpler pointing them to a relevant page that clearly says when to use such templates instead of getting a reply in the form of "you won't be able to convince me, period". Hence my below suggestion (you're welcome to comment on). Nageh (talk) 19:55, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
This is really more of a problem with a certain group of users than a problem with the tags themselves. Drive-by tagging is indeed annoying and often completely pointless. However, I have long been a supporter of not putting tags such as {{orphan}} or {{uncategorized}} on articles. They do not alert the reader to any pressing issue with the article. I find the uncategorized tag particularly pointless because it takes just as much time and effort to go ahead and add a category as it does to add the tag. I could see putting these tags on the talk page, or maybe turning them into categories, but there is no need to alert a casual reader to the fact that the article they are reading is not in any categories. They don't care. We often lose sight of the fact that this project is for everyone, the articles are written to share knowledge with the world, and any edits to the article itself should be made in the interest of advancing that goal. Tagging something as an uncategorized orphan does not do that. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:43, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I completely agree re: drive-by-mass-taggers, as being annoying and often less-than-helpful. However: Re: {{Cleanup}}, it has clear documentation saying that a more specific banner should be added it at all possible (or the cleanup banner removed if the problem is unclear) – it's like the generic {{stub}} tag, the specific problem should be clarified, and preferably soon. Re: {{uncategorized}}, that template is often added by editors (like me) who aren't familiar with a topic or aren't comfortable making a judgment call. It's usually on new-articles, so it reminds the creator to add some categories. (the creator is often the most likely person to know which categories belong, and will have it watchlisted). Re: {{orphan}} and {{copyedit}} and others, these are the types of tag that recruit new editors. (a {{wikify}} tag was the bait that first hooked me as an anon. I thought "I know html markup, maybe I can add links to articles easily...") They also let readers get a sense of our processes (getting a look at the people behind the curtain). One core reason behind putting style banners on articles, instead of on talkpages, is it provides a large impetus for editors to fix the problem soon, rather than postponing until later - out of sight, out of mind. Another reason is radical transparency - people appreciate it, and trust us more because of it. There is good documentation at Wikipedia:Manual of Style (article message boxes), and the full lists of templates can be found at Wikipedia:Template messages. Most of the yellow style-class templates can be found at the specific subpages: Wikipedia:Template messages/Maintenance and Wikipedia:Template messages/Cleanup and there are good instructions at the top of that second listing regarding when not to template. See also WP:Overtagging, WP:Tag bombing, and WP:Responsible tagging. HTH. -- Quiddity (talk) 20:02, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the links, they are helpful at least in part. What is interesting though is that WP:Overtagging advocates the general {cleanup} tag, stating that "{cleanup} is a good general-purpose tag", while WP:Responsible tagging contradicts this by saying that some more specific cleanup tag should be selected.
I would consider {wikify} a major copy editing issue, as such article could be really inconsistent with common article layout. But I don't see tagging for minor issues (especially without explanations) as something useful for reader or editor. So I would really vote for some form of guidelines saying that banners (especially for cleanup) should be added to point out issues that need particular attention by either reader or editor, and not to criticize minor issues. And furthermore that for banners that are unspecific about the issues explanatory text must be added either inline as in Block code or on the talk page. Nageh (talk) 20:39, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Sure {{wikify}} is helpful to our readers but it is hardly a disaster if it is not done. It is a minor editorial issue and would be better on the talk page. Major issues which really need to be brought to the readers attention are things which are potentially misleading (or downright wrong information) such as POV. SpinningSpark21:48, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I should point out that the Cleanup template documentation does ask people to use the 'reason' parameter, though the parameter was added fairly recently and may not be generally known. I've spent some time trying to clean up some of the articles so tagged and found a large percentage with no discernible issue to correct. One problem seems to be that once a tag is added it tends to stay if the reason for its being there is vague. No one wants to remove the tag since it's hard to tell if the issue has been fixed.--RDBury (talk) 23:30, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I think a point that's been missed in this discussion is that the point of adding a tag is not to have a tagged article but to tickle someone into fixing the issue. There wouldn't be a problem if we didn't have articles that had tags that remained unaddressed, even when they point out serious issues, for years sometimes. I think I've done my share of clean-up duty in this respect, including keeping all the articles I've created tag-free, but have found task rather thankless and unrewarding. One problem with the all-volunteer model of effort is that the division of labor tends to get a bit skewed. If a newspaper was run this way then everyone would get to be star reporter or editor-in-chief and important but unglamorous tasks such as fact checking would go undone. For Wikipedia, I think the solution lies in understanding why people donate their time and effort and then figuring out how to channel this energy in a way that does the most good. One thing we need to do better is prioritize which tags in which articles should be addressed first, for example there are 310,000 articles with no references, an issue that will take years to address even assuming that we can get a reasonable number of people to work on it regularly, but there is nothing that says "This article is seen by thousands of people per day and should be addressed as quickly as possible."
Another reason to have these tags is to point out that the article in question is not a model to be followed by future editors. Most people who edit or create articles are going to imitate the articles they've seen, the de facto standard, whatever policies or guidelines we write. If people commonly see articles with no references then they will go ahead and create more of the same. At least when an article is tagged it says to a potential editor "This article wasn't done correctly, don't use it as an example." Unfortunately, with tags becoming more and more common and insufficient effort being made to address the issues, the de facto standard is becoming problematic articles with tags rather than articles with no issues.--RDBury (talk) 23:14, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Your observation about the all-volunteer model and division of labor is very keen, and I wish more people would read your post.
Regarding tagging, I believe it is way overdone. Many times a tag represents someone's opinion -- they come to an article and think it needs something, leave a gigantic banner at the top, without explanation, and walk away. No attempt to fix the problem; just a spray-painted tag that something needs to be fixed. Instead of picking up the hitchhiker in the desert, they hang a sign around his neck, "hey! someone pick this person up!" and drive off. Since it's a wiki, anyone can add a tag, and anyone can remove one. If a tagger lacks the rudimentary courtesy to explain on the talk page why that banner is going on the top of the article, they do need a corresponding courtesy explaining why you summarily remove it. Be bold; take them out when they are unwarranted. I do it all the time.
I suggested once a third Wiki space besides "article" and "talk" -- "meta article" which contains all the tags and notes on what needs improvement. Didn't get any traction.
The rate at which people are adding tags greatly exceeds the rate at which they are being removed. Removal by finding citations, sources, doing copyeding, de-orphanning, wikifying, takes effort and time; tagging takes none. If there are any taggers reading this -- do the honorable thing and fix some of the problems you have helpfully pointed out rather than just walking away from them.
Sorry for the delay in responding. Let me try to summarize; most people seem to agree that:
Banner tagging is overused.
Banner tagging should be used to point out important issues that require attention by either editor or reader.
Unspecific tagging should always be accompanied with providing an explanation for the tag.
So how about setting up some sort of guidelines or additional text to pages like Wikipedia:Template messages/Cleanup, WP:Overtagging, and WP:Responsible tagging that says "Use banner templates to point out issues in articles and sections that require particular attention by a reader or editor. When tagging try to be as specific as possible; particularly, when using more general templates, provide your reason for tagging either inline (using the reason parameter of templates) or on the talk page. Do not use banner templates for minor editorial issues, to point out single issues that could be better addressed using inline templates (e.g., {citation needed}), and for general comments that may be better placed on the article talk page. Finally, consider if you may be able to fix issues found yourself instead of merely pointing them out."
The following template messages may be added to articles that need a cleanup. The purpose of such templates is to inform other editors and readers at a quick glance what potential problems there are with article content and to spur improvement in the spirit of Wikipedia. In obscure articles with few editors, the templates can serve to attract attention to problems that have not been addressed. In articles that are heavily edited or discussed, templates can be used to indicate ongoing problems or disputes in order to attract outside help and caution readers that the content may be shortly subject to change. Unless otherwise noted, they should be placed at the top of the article—before other templates, images, or infoboxes (for the short notes placed at the top of an article before the primary topic, see WP:Hatnote#Placement). Templates placed at the top should be used to point out issues that need particular attention by a reader or editor. Do not use them to highlight minor editorial issues, problems with specific sections, and single issues that could be better addressed using inline templates or on the talk page. When adding such tags, try to be as specific as possible. When using general templates such as {{Cleanup}} add an explanatory remark via the reason parameter or on the talk page. Please do not insert tags that are too similar or redundant with each other. For example, all articles that read like essays have an inappropriate tone, and in fact they end up in the same category, so it is unnecessary to tag with {{Inappropriate tone}} in addition to {{Essay-like}}. Similarly, if an article has many problems, please consider tagging only the most important problems. A very lengthy list is often less helpful than a shorter one. Remember that tags are not intended as a badge of shame (see also: tag bombing).
Yes, I know, it is a small step for what hopefully is an improvement. Still, it would ease the current issues of thoughtless tagging a lot! Thank you for your consideration and feedback, Nageh (talk) 17:26, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
That text you wrote above sounds pretty good. Now just frame it up in a big banner template... ;)
Seriously though, there's almost as much of a joke in these current templates. They all have a link to "improve this article" which dumps you into the "edit" mode. Not even section-specific. But I dare say that anyone who can figure out "This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards." must know where the edit button is. This must be some kind of throwback to the days when everyone was a new editor, but it seems awfully anachronistic by now. Wnt (talk) 20:20, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I regularly remove banner tags too. The main problem with them is that they are too intrusive. This is uncivil because it actively discourages editors from using the talk page. Why use the talk page when you can jump to the head of the line and dominate the discussion with a shrieking box around your complaint at the head of the article? One simple way of toning down this rudeness would be to move the banner tags to the foot of the article or to the appropriate section. For example, the {{references}} template belongs in the References section. If this was done cleverly, the template macro might actually create the references section and put some search links there, to assist the process. Or a bot might be constructed to seek out these tags and turn them into References sections. Colonel Warden (talk) 20:00, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Creating an empty references section is of marginal benefit, but easy enough. If you can get consensus to do it, then we could add it to AWB, but I have my doubts.
Placement - again that has been thrashed out many times, consensus seems to be: unref in the ref section or at the top, uncat at the bottom, everything else at the top, except of course section and in-line tags. If you can get consensus to move them around, or to the talk page, it can be done easily enough.
I'm not howling in protest, but pointing out that all it does is add, "Please do not use the findsources template in articles" to the notice in very large, red letters. I can't believe this was the desired result. --Ronz (talk) 02:35, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Once upon a time if the talk page tag was blue you flipped to the talk page to see why the article was broken, or pick up useful information. Now with WP0/7/1.0 BLP they are almost all blue...
But some general points on the subject:
Don't forget that tags also categorise - most of them are hidden categories to avoid pollution. These allow us to see how long stuff has bee tagged for- get a feeling for the backlog, handle it and and make decisions about what to do. This works exceedingly well for Uncat - one of the the most successful of tags if you don't count "Stub" as a tag.
Orphan - the Orphanage was very successful in its heyday , but I have always had reservations about worrying about orphans. Yes most articles probably shouldn't be, but it's not a function of the article.
Hidden tags. There is no reason that tags shouldn't be hidden either individually, by type, from unregistered users etc. We did that with "Unreferenced stub" - gave it the option to be invisible, and that functionality is migrated into "Unreferenced". Similarly it would be possible for Multiple Issues to be made collapsible.
The other cleanup projects do a lot , and they do rely on tagging (GOCE, for example and the Referencing team).
In the end it's up to the project to form consensus. How long should we give an article tagged for notability, before it gets automatically AfD'd? I have been considering AfD-ing some of the really old ones. What about un-sourced BLPs? And "sofixit" isn't a good argument - I spent a lot of time on Punjabi cinema - attracted by the fact that it was one of the oldest tagged articles, I got half way though before my brain started to leak out of my ears. A few days later someone form the clean-up team came and finished it. Without the tag, neither of us would have been there.
Ok guys, you all had something to say in the discussion. Now I'm asking you for a simple vote on whether above suggestion (with the added text in red letters) for Wikipedia:Template messages/Cleanup seems acceptable, and you think it's ok to add it, or whether you don't want to see that change.
Thanks, Nageh (talk) 17:49, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I added a variant " A balance should be struck between using article, section specific and in-line templates. When adding such tags, try to be as specific as possible. Where the problem is not obvious add an explanatory remark via the reason parameter or on the talk page." RichFarmbrough, 03:43, 24 September 2010 (UTC).[reply]
Wnt's comment brought up a point, so I thought I'd create a section break to emphasize it.
Part of the reason for these large notices is to encourage people who are just readers to become editors. If someone is looking up an article, they may already be familiar with the subject and just looking for more information. Those folks, coming upon an article that needs more citations, could be encouraged to add their own sources because of these templates. There's always folks who are just coming to Wikipedia, or just coming to that particular article. Perhaps the templates need some updating to be more pertinent to modern Wikipedia's audience? — The Hand That Feeds You:Bite21:16, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that an encouraging tone might be appropriate. One thing I've thought about (and I don't know if it's technically feasible) is having the text change on some of these tags as they get old. For example, {{unref}} could acquire a sentence after it's been in the article for a year to say, "This notice may be out of date. If sources have been added to this page, any volunteer can remove this template by clicking 'Edit this page'." WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:32, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
What about making the templates smaller, as a partial help? Just a smaller font would help a lot, I think. This should be easy to propose (at each template's talk page) and implement, I would think. Would not apply to all templates. Herostratus (talk) 23:40, 27 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
A deliberate "governor" on nominating articles for deletion
Here's a thought: Robert Horning above has raised some objections to the quantity of articles nominated for deletion. So...
What if if we, as a matter of policy, prohibited scripts that nominate articles for deletion?
Sometimes people do limit technologies below their technical capabilities on purpose. One that comes to mind: it is quite difficult to launch a nuclear missile. Technically, it could be easily made into a simple push-button operation, but this is not done for policy reasons. Governors on machines is another example.
I use Twinkle, and it sure does make it easier to nominate articles for deletion. But maybe we should have to cut-and-paste or type our way through the various steps. If a person isn't willing to do be bothered with that, maybe the article really shouldn't be nominated.
Strongest Possible Oppose: Twinkle and its brethren are invaluable tools in the right hands. If they are being abused, deal with the abusers appropriately, don't throttle the tools for those of us who use them responsibly for deletion tagging or any other purpose. – ukexpat (talk) 16:18, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Vehement oppose - the process for AfD nominations when I don't have access to Twinkle is so horrendously complex that I never bother. Don't deliberately break our tools. --Orange Mike | Talk16:28, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Nominating an article for deletion ought to be a last resort tactic, where there are some serious problems. It ought to be a somewhat complex process that takes more than simply making a single mouse click. If the process of making an AfD is so difficult to make "manually", it sounds like the problem is in the AfD process itself too. BTW, how do you deal with users who are being irresponsible with their AfD/PROD nominations? Yes, some are legitimate, but if somebody has a large number that get overturned (50% +) of the nominations are kept or have the PRODs removed by more responsible editors, it sounds like there is some education that needs to happen too. Currently there is little to no consequence to those who do the abusing here. --Robert Horning (talk) 17:00, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
"Horrendously complex"? I just listed an article for deletion; the time it took to complete the three steps of tagging the article, creating and saving the AFD page, and adding the AFD to the day's log was about five minutes, most of which was spent actually writing the deletion rationale and doublechecking it.
I forget which automated tool it was, but at one time when one of them was used to tag images for deletion at FFD, it was overwriting the image's caption in the process. One editor's response when I pointed this out to him was basically "I don't care, it's faster to do it that way." Never mind the fact that wiping out the caption for no valid editorial reason basically constituted blanking vandalism (an image at FFD remains up and in articles pending deletion, and the caption is of course necessary to evaluate NFU claims). Such glitches in how the tools operate can be fixed, but perhaps the ease of these tools can foster the wrong attitude about what a deletion nomination means. Maybe it is a process for which you should be forced to manually go through the steps so you have to think about it at every step. postdlf (talk) 17:29, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Nominating an article for deletion ought to be a last resort tactic..., yes if you mean Afd, but for obvious speedy cases such as vandalism, attack pages, copyvios, clear A7s that stand no chance, it is a first resort and the tools are a huge help. Same for PRODs. I agree that if the tools are being misused in any situation, AFD nomination or otherwise, the miscreants should be "educated" and/or access to the tools revoked, but please don't penalise the rest of us by restricting them for everyone. – ukexpat (talk) 17:17, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Interesting discussion. A couple of points: Wikipedia, as an organization, has precisely zero interest in making any editing task easier to do except inasmuch as it furthers the interests of the encyclopedia. We (well, I), don't care about your personal ease, only that the mix of articles in the Wikipedia be as optimal as possible. Obviously we wouldn't want to artificially make it too hard or bad articles would not get nominated. Have we made it too easy? I don't know, but clearly some people think so. I think the answer to the question What should be the degree of difficulty for nominating an article for AfD? For PROD? For Speedy? does not have an obvious easy answer, and I think it quite likely that the people who wrote and approved the scripts didn't even ask it. That's OK, that's not their job. Making useful tools in their job. Saying "too useful" would be ours. Herostratus (talk) 19:51, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Second point is: re educating deleters and/or chastising overly enthusiastic one: wishes/horses. This is not going to happen absent a major concerted effort by several editors, so this is not a good solution. Herostratus (talk) 20:34, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I do see one big objection: the deletion-nomination scripts automatically place a notice on the article creator's talk page. When doing the task manually, the editor is supposed to do this, but I'll bet that that step gets forgotten or skipped sometimes. And its an important step. Herostratus (talk) 10:40, 24 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
An oppose that's worth twenty supports! Perhaps, indeed, all twinkie users need to cool down once in a while and play it by the rules like common peasants. Make every Monday No Twinkie Day! Yes, rubber-stamping useless templates is fun, but try saying the same with your own words! East of Borschov05:55, 27 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I think we already have our "governor", our "two keys in two locks at the same time" model, since every deletion requires an admin (or, in some cases, a trusted long-term user) to close and/or do the actual deletion. AfDs and PRODs already have to run for at least 7 days. What's wrong with making the nomination itself easier, along with ensuring that none of the steps (especially notification) get skipped? As others have pointed out, if someone's Twinkling up a dozen AfDs an hour (and they don't deserve it), then we have a problem, and we can remove that user's tools and/or rights. But why making it harder for trusted editors to be able to nominate things for deletion? To me, saying that the process of nominating should be hard to discourage people from doing it is almost like assuming bad faith on the part of the nominators. Qwyrxian (talk) 11:45, 24 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Forcing the use of manual nominations would produce more incomplete nominations which someone else would need to fix. This would be making work to no good end. As others have noted, there are already perfectly adequate ways of dealing with repeated spurious nominations. Angus McLellan(Talk)14:19, 24 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
What is wrong with simply giving the benefit of the doubt and taking an incomplete AfD and simply removing it? This seems like it is assuming good faith on the part of the original editor when that happens, and that the individual making the nomination isn't familiar with the AfD process. BTW, what is the approach for fixing repeated spurious nominations, who is keeping track, and how are those being dealt with right now? ArbCom? At most all I see is a message on the talk page of the eager patroller saying "please be nice to the new users" and that is about it. Perhaps I'm missing something here. --Robert Horning (talk) 03:37, 25 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Why should we assume "good faith" on the part of (for example) spammers who create articles, but not on the part of an inexperienced editor who thinks it should be deleted, or any of us, if the electricity goes away while we're mid-process? "Good faith" should apply equally to everyone, not merely to article creators.
To put it another way: The AfD nomination process is not supposed to be a test of the nominator's intelligence, tolerance for complex systems, or electrical stability. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:01, 25 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
AfD nominations require editors to follow a multi-step process. Robert has proposed that all(!) incomplete nominations be deleted.
What do you think the effect is on the nomination, if the electricity blinks in the middle of your nomination work? Do you personally think that "the battery on the nominator's laptop died unexpectedly" or "an electrical storm interrupted power and/or internet connections during the nomination process" is an appropriate reason to remove the AfD nomination? WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:40, 25 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
If there are problems with an article and it is likely to be confirmed for deletion through an AfD process, somebody somewhere else will notice the same problems and go through the steps for an AfD later on. Or perhaps the person who made the original nomination will finish the process when they get a network connection working again. These articles don't exist in a vacuum and have only one chance to be deleted or they will be kept. I'm just saying that the benefit of the doubt should be to keep these articles and if an incomplete nomination is hanging around, there shouldn't be any harm applied to an editor who simply removes the deletion markings as if it is a failed AfD nomination. Perhaps somebody doing cleanup work could review these articles to see if an AfD is warranted based on their own standards and interpretations of Wikipedia policies, but it shouldn't be required. You are not obligated to finish the nomination process for an AfD. --Robert Horning (talk) 00:05, 26 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Somebody who is venturing into the realm of nominating articles, lists, categories, and more for deletion should already be at least a somewhat experienced editor.... certainly much more experienced than those who are creating the new articles in the first place. Yes, spammers and trolls are creating some articles, but you need to learn the difference between that and some genuinely new contributors who are unsure about Wikipedia policy or even if policies exist in the first place. The AfD process is where the content is coming up for review, but I repeat that it is an awful thing for a brand new contributor for the first sentence that they write on this project to face an AfD within mere minutes of making that contribution. There are indeed many well intentioned individuals who are trying to make their first contribution but having the door slammed in their face because of the bureaucracy involved with adding to Wikipedia.
This is my point: Wikipedia is losing steam. New editors aren't coming into the project as quickly as it happened in the past. I am strongly questioning this process of new page patrols explicitly as I believe that it is here that new contributors to this project are being lost simply because a few people are trashing those contributors before they can get established. The process for creating a new article is becoming needlessly bureaucratic and new contributors making an honest attempt are not being treated with respect. If I have to favor a few hundred or thousand potential new contributors over the actions of a few rogue admins or over zealous page patrollers, I'm willing to side with the new contributors. Yes, we need admins who can protect the project and page patrollers who can monitor what is coming in. But that can and ought to be tempered, which I am asserting that tempering is not happening... at least not enough to restore Wikipedia to what made it so useful in the first place and what energy it had originally to bring hundreds of thousands of people together to write a collaborative encyclopedia. I will not sit idly by as people slam the door on new contributors or try to dismiss these contributions as meaningless. Every contribution to this project, no matter how small, ought to be given due respect and every new contributor ought to be encouraged to develop to their best potential. --Robert Horning (talk) 15:52, 25 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, we have a problem with new users creating articles and having them deleted. Simply deleting fewer articles by making deletion more difficult is quite possibly the worst possible solution. The effective result of such a policy would be lower standards for notability, spam, etc. as people will be less likely to consider deletion for borderline cases. While at the same time, it will annoy the hell out of more experienced users. We might gain a few more users, but at the cost of a (potentially large) loss in quality. Mr.Z-man21:53, 25 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The standards for notability are not in question here. This is a philosophical difference between you and I where you seem to believe these articles ought to be stopped immediately after their creation, and I am suggesting that perhaps we ought to give these new editors a little benefit of doubt, assume good faith, and let the article at least try to develop. I am also not suggesting that standards for spam, trolling, and general gibberish be lowered to permit Willy on Wheels or some other infamous troll from trashing this project. Speedy deletion standards are very different from the AfD process and don't cover the same kinds of content. I don't care about trolls. Sometimes a troll will "convert" and become a good editor with age and maturity, but patent nonsense can and should be deleted without even a debate by a reasonable admin or marked for speedy deletion by any other editor. As an admin (on other wiki projects) I have occasionally merely marked an article for speedy deletion if I thought it was a borderline case to get a second opinion from another admin, but that was if it was borderline between a speedy and an AfD (or equivalent) situation.
What I suggested earlier is explicitly oriented at new contributors, many of whom start at creating the very articles that you are complaining need to be contained because of lousy quality. Notability problems are not something that qualifies as an article needing to be marked for speedy deletion, nor is a lack of sources or references. Even bad grammar and markup language mistakes should be given a pass here. Yes, a backlog of potential articles to review is happening, and perhaps some method of going through that backlog ought to happen. But at the same time new contributors to Wikipedia ought to be welcomed and it is education, not a flogging that needs to happen. I certainly don't see that the quality of Wikipedia is going to go downhill if the same way Wikipedia articles were created years ago is allowed to continue today. --Robert Horning (talk) 00:05, 26 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Robert that this is part of a larger philosophical debate regarding how quickly articles should get deleted. What many seem to not remember is that QUALITY should never come into play when deleting. Wikipedia is a work-in-progress and as such we do not hold our articles to high standards, we allow them to be imperfect and we work to make them better. Instead of a governor on tools like Twinkle we should (and let the howls of "instruction creep" begin) hold limits on how many articles editors can nominate for AfD in a day, how long after an article has been created, and strong suggestions that before nominating that an editor attempt to rectify and fix any problems that could save the article. Too many times it seems AfD is made not in an attempt to force others to show notability but instead to force people to fix the problems found, well if you found the problem then you can fix them. If fixing the problems with an article was easier than nominating it for deletion and assuming if it can be fixed someone will do it, if no one wants to fix it then it deserves to be deleted, then perhaps editors will fix more articles or just not delete them. Either way win-win in my book.
Ive seen many poorly researched AfD nominations such as- an article that was a redirect for 2 years was nominated two days after it was changed to a stand-alone article on grounds that it has existed as a stub for two years, obviously the nominator did not check the history thoroughly. PROD, from my understanding, does not mean prod editors to make the article a B class article, unfortunately when you can do that very easily that is what the nomination becomes. Any stub article is up for nomination because of quality. Lets have better !rules on how, when, and why nominations should be placed and more responsibility on the nominator instead of putting the responsibility on those defending. And maybe consequences for editors who nominate AfD and continually lose, such as loss of priveledge for nominating.Camelbinky (talk) 00:55, 26 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
That is the real genius of Wikipedia. When it was started, a "companion" project called Nupedia had the higher standards. One discussion that I vividly remember went into how somebody without a graduate degree might be able to contribute a stub, but that only somebody with a PhD could possibly contribute anything to a real article. Wikipedia, on the other hand, was for the "rest of us"... the unwashed masses of people that didn't have the credentials (at least of the kind wanted by some of the Nupedia folks) and wanted to poke and prod at articles in real-time without having to constantly justify yourself merely because of who you were.
I suppose that the mediocre articles have continued with absolutely nothing worth seeing over the years but pure trash and dribble. Nobody could possibly want to read a Wikipedia article and the experiment has failed, as nobody would be willing to fix up a stub or add any images or other media to an article either.
The very principle by which this project was started was to allow "anybody to edit", which included new articles. Even anonymous editors who refuse to register with an account have been permitted to make edits to pages and make major contributions. Why are we here? To work together and help build a collection of articles that encompass the whole of human knowledge. The one and only purpose of the notability rules is simply to proscribe a limit to how far we can carry out that basic mission, as listing all 50+ billion people who have ever lived or are alive would flood the hard drives being used to store the data on the computers running Wikipedia. The purpose of the scoping rules are not to "force" participants into working on other articles more worthy of attention, it is simply to deal with practical realities related to computer equipment and storage devices. Over time, that is becoming a rather weak excuse, especially for what is mostly textual data that is being deleted. Patent nonsense and drivel is an exception and there is reason to clean that gunk out of Wikipedia, but notability standards have been acknowledged to be loosened over time on this project precisely for this reason.
The argument I'm making here is that editors are leaving Wikipedia and new contributors are not coming in explicitly because they are being turned away. The first people that these new contributors are meeting is the new page patrollers, and those who follow the recent changes to this project. If we want to have Wikipedia grow, to get some fresh blood into this project, I am suggesting that there are some changes that need to happen in terms of how recent changes are monitored and more importantly what standards are being used for bashing content that needs to be fixed as well as how the new editors are going to have communications with the greater Wikipedia community in terms of introductions. I certainly think that it is wrong to have most new users have as their first introduction "go away, you're not welcome here. Your edit was stupid and you should have memorized all of the site policies before editing here." --Robert Horning (talk) 21:59, 26 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Just because that's the way the project started doesn't mean that it is the best way for the project to continue, say, at this stage. Many many aspects of Wikipedia have and should change. While I haven't been around for long, I can see and have looked at some of the history for these changes. There is nothing wrong with the encyclopedia changing to account for differences in demographic and the encyclopedia's overall importance in world knowledge and the internet specifically. As has been pointed out elsewhere, Wikipedia articles on new topics can rise to top five rankings on Google searches within minutes of their creation--that means that it really does matter more what we have and what gets created. Second (partially as a consequence of the above), I don't think that many of the people contributing new articles are doing so, any more, for reasons that we would consider consistent with our basic goals. More and more, people from outside the project I believe see Wikipedia as a means of creating notability, rather than a place of reflecting what is already regarded elsewhere as notable. What I'm trying to say is that I'm not so sure that those editors who read a deletion template/process as "your edit was stupid, get out," are necessarily the people that we want to keep. As above, I'm not trying to be too much of a hard***--I do believe that the process could be made nicer, and that perhaps some form of NPP training should be instituted. But, at the same time, I don't actually think that many of the so-called articles by "new contributors" really have the best interest of the encyclopedia at heart. Finally, I have to add that, even if you are right, you don't really fix the problem. By definition, every editor always makes at least 3 edits prior to ever creating an article (since you have to be autoconfirmed to do so). Even if we made the new article creation process friendlier, that wouldn't stop the situations where a person's first edit is deleted based on some policy. And I think it would be pure ridiculousness for an established editor who sees an edit that needs to be undone (for whatever reason), to have to look through that contributor's user history every time to determine, initially, whether or not that other person is new and thus needs to be hand-held when their "very first edit" is reverted per policy. Qwyrxian (talk) 01:55, 27 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I think Robert Horning is on the right track here, and I disagree with Qwyrxian's opinion that it is "ridiculousness" for an editor working on deletions to look at whether another editor is a newcomer or not. When I created my first article 15 months ago, another editor thanked me, welcomed me, and said that Wikipedia had needed that article for a long time. That response brought me on board and I've continued to write new articles that others find useful. Intelligent editors should be able to determine almost at a glance if a new article has potential, take a look at the user page and user talk page, and know if the contributor is new or experienced. I object to those editors who don't bother to take those few seconds and then don't go on to welcome and perhaps mentor a new contributor. Cullen328 (talk) 03:35, 27 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
That's really more of an argument for better tools (that e.g. when tagging for deletion, warn the tagger if the creator appears to be a newbie by virtue of edit count or some other heuristic) rather than blanket disallowing tools as is being suggested. --Cybercobra(talk)05:43, 27 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
No, no, you (Cullen328) misunderstood me . My point was that even if we accepted Robert's proposal, the vast majority of newcomers would still be the "victim" of curt dismissals--because rather than create a new article, a newcomer is much more likely to make an edit first (and, in fact, has to, unless they're using Articles for creation). That is, I would be willing to bet that many many users start of by making some sort of edit to an existing article, and that, very many times, that edit was reverted, quite possibly with a very simple edit summary ("Rv POV;" "Per WP:EL, that link is not acceptable", or "rv personal opinion"). There is no way that, in the course of normal editing, I can research the contribution history of everyone I revert. Thus, even if we made deletion discussions "friendlier," the vast majority of new users will still at some point be reverted because they didn't follow a policy they didn't know anything about. Thus, Robert's proposal (which I don't agree with) doesn't even solve the problem he sets it out to solve. Qwyrxian (talk) 06:05, 27 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps you are right, Qwyrxian, but I suspect that most new editors don't put the first few articles they touch on their watchlists, so may well be unaware of reversions. They may well not care much if minor edits don't survive. However, creating a first new article is a major undertaking for many new editors, and to have someone experienced propose AfD without bothering to notice that the editor is new, is an unfriendly way to start out contributing new articles. I know from recent experience that this happens fairly often. Cullen328 (talk) 01:06, 28 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The subject here is nominating articles for deletion, not routine reversion of routine (usually minor) edits. I signed up for Wikipedia to write new articles and make significant improvements to existing articles. Routine copyediting is surely important but secondary to improving factual, verifiable content, in my view. Let's take every creative measure to welcome and mentor new editors who really want to add greater depth to the encyclopedia. I endorse the goal rather than any specific tool toward that end, as I don't yet use Twinkle or anything similar. Cullen328 (talk) 01:17, 28 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose. Anybody who has done New Page Patrol will know that articles are created at a great rate and it is all that can be done to keep up with it. Lots of articles are created which are obviously misconceived and which need to be deleted. Scripts like Twinkle make it far easier to do this and, more importantly, to get it right. This means that people always get their notifications and everything is listed correctly. I think it is fundamentally mistaken to assume that slowly shepherding a no-hope article (on a demonstrably unencyclopaedic or non-notable subject) is kinder than killing it off quickly. It isn't! It encourages people to waste time their desperately trying to fix the unfixable, which is obviously going to lead to frustration. Improvement tags are for articles that can actually be improved. There is no point in tagging a pig with {{needs lipstick}}. Tags like "notability" are for articles where the notability is borderline or hard to verify, not for articles that say "Bert is a kid from Nebraska. Check out his Myspace page. LOLZ!!!". We need to get rid of articles with no chance of becoming encyclopaedic and there is no point in making this more difficult and error prone than it needs to be. If we want to improve the human side of the way we handle new users, like the aforementioned Bert, we need to do a better job of explaining why their page got deleted and how that doesn't mean that we hate them or that they can't try again if they can think of a more appropriate idea for an article. We should also consider whether welcome templates should be handed out automatically at account creation time, to reduce users who go wrong because they didn't get a welcome message, and whether watchlisting everything one edits should be the default behaviour for new users. --DanielRigal (talk) 19:15, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I am enthusiastically in favor of an automatic (but very friendly and informative) welcome template for newly registered users. I am also in favor of not accepting any edits from a newly registered user until that user has visited his/her user page and (one would hope) read that welcome message. I know from experience that many articles proposed for AfD are very promising, and way above Bert's "effort" mentioned above. Cullen328 (talk) 15:30, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Page Patroller Academy
In the interest of being pro-active here, I'm proposing something a little bit different than simply throttling the tools, and perhaps this is something akin to a Wikiproject. The overall objectives are to:
Recruit new people into the ranks of folks who watch recent changes or new pages being created
Establishing standards of conduct that would apply to those who patrol the edits, and to educate those in the patrol to Wikipedia policies and standards
BTW, I came across this page that has something similar but not exactly akin to this concept: Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Academy Rather than just keep the focus for a single topic theme, this is something for work done on the wiki as a whole.
There are several aspects of this that I've considered, including perhaps a Wikiversity learning module that would include some of the tools on that sister project that can help with quizzing and evaluations. I also want to let those who have been outstanding helpers to this project realize that their help is still needed, and in fact we need them to help get the "next generation" of patrollers up to speed.
There ought to be a mentoring program where some veteran page patroller would be "assigned" to work with somebody new to the task, where they would sort of "look over the shoulder" of what it is that the new patroller is doing, fix mistakes that happen along the way, recommend tools, and in short deal one on one with a single editor. This shouldn't take too much time, but going over the "candidate's" contributions to see if perhaps they are being over zealous or perhaps missing some points (calling an article "clean" when it should have been marked). Being a mentor would be completely voluntary and on a time as available basis, but if you do agree to mentor a particular editor you ought to see it through to the end where they "graduate" or whatever you want to call it.
A number of examples ought to be presented to potential page patrollers as a sort of "what would you do here" kind of thing. For the most part, we ought to take existing content that has problems and are both easy to spot and some that are borderline cases. This is to be a part of the learning, where some very experienced page patrollers would review these examples and come up with what the best practices ought to be in those cases. Show some things that an editor ought to consider in each case, and what kinds of templates ought to be put onto each example. The objective here is to set up a potential new patroller with some experience and training even before they first start to wade into the experience by acting.
This is also perhaps something that even the ArbCom could use, where they might insist that for an editor to continue to engage in patrols that they need to "re-take" the training program for new patrollers and be mentored again as an education process. It certainly would be useful to give them options besides doing nothing or an account ban.
Training is the key here, and something that doesn't seem to be happening as much as it could. Expecting volunteers to complete training isn't unknown in other volunteer organizations I've been involved with such as in Boy Scouting or with the Red Cross. If you are going to have access to tools, you ought to know how to use those tools and certainly you should learn that the tools are even available. If there is interest in this idea, I'm willing to work with those who might want to help out with an idea like this. We can debate what those "best practices" really ought to be, but it might be useful to set up a more permanent forum for such issues too. I know it can be difficult to get involved with Wikipedia in some way if you are new to the whole thing, and perhaps this might help to lower the bar a little bit in terms of getting into some of the things that can really help out this project as a whole. This also should ultimately put a "kinder, gentler" face to Wikipedia if it is done right. --Robert Horning (talk) 19:22, 27 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose: Do we really need yet more process here? There is a huge new page backlog in any event and adding another hurdle for would-be patrollers is just going to put them off. IMHO this is a solution in search of a problem. If patrollers make mistakes, they should be informed of same. Continued errors should attract appropriate sanctions (withdrawal of access to automated tools, possibly blocks) based on the severity of the error. – ukexpat (talk) 19:59, 27 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I am not proposing anything for existing page patrollers..... they can go abut their business and keep doing what they've been doing. I'm just trying to propose a way to make sure that anybody new to the process knows what in the heck they are doing and making sure that people new to patrolling pages know what it is that they are doing. If you think that the learning curve for being effective at watching over recent changes is so low that a brand new editor who has only added a period or comma to an article is fully capable of being able to mark up articles with PROD and AfD requests.... be my guest and prove that to me. Telling people to click on recent changes (or whatever "special page" you are referring to for the task) and to "have fun" is precisely the problem we are facing right now.... too many mistakes are being made! Tell me.... who is watching the watcher? What is being done to make sure those who are adding these templates are doing the right thing and not being overly zealous, or passing on weak articles for that matter which need to be marked up and PROD'd? I hear that there is a backload, but rejecting this suggestion is to me seeming like you just want to keep the new page patrol to a small and select group.
Fine. If that is what you and the others watching new pages want, I'll wash my hands of this and move on to other things. I just thought I could offer a bit of help and direction. It also sounds like not only are other users being explicitly rejected from helping, but I am too. This is something I know a thing or two to help out in terms of putting something together, and I'm willing to do the work, but I need others to work with me too. This is a completely voluntary process and if you want to jump in with the sharks, there is nothing stopping an editor from doing just that. --Robert Horning (talk) 01:39, 28 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Go ahead and put something together if you want. My point is that IMHO Wikipedia is already way too process-heavy (just look at the endless, ridiculous navel contemplation we have had over getting "pending changes" - or whatever it's called now - implemented). – ukexpat (talk) 16:34, 28 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
After reading this I spent an hour in Nominations for Deletions. I was surprised how often Deletion is the tool of first resort. Instead of tagging it for notability or needing cleanup or any of those things... editors just fire off Nom for Deletion and some little line about how they aren't notable. I think that behavior should be discouraged and I can think of no better way than forcing people to think (by way of effort or time or whatever) before they act than what you proposed. There are clearly cases where deletion is called for, begged for, but you really do turn off new editors by saying quickly (even correctly, often) "You're stuff is crap, deleted," instead of even just throwing up a "notability" tag which would help guide improvement. Nevertheless, it's a tough problem to solve because arguments cut so deeply both ways.
One issue I noted that should be fixed is that new editors seem much more comfortable and likely to comment on the deletion on the article's talk page (this is actually where I thought deletion discussions took place until I investigated & I've been using Wikipedia since 06). If there is anything worse than the threat of deletion it's the inability to contest it because of a lack of understanding the process. Everything else about an article is discussed on a the Article Talk page and it is natural that an editor would go there to discuss that article. I would strongly beg that Talk pages of articles that have been nominated for be deleted include a bright warning that deletion discussion should take place at XYZ, not on the talk page (otherwise it doesn't seem to count for anything), no the link in the top-hat is not sufficient because the natural behavior is to always goto the Talk page to talk about the article. Having your voice not heard would be even more frustrating to new editors. Please fix this. -- CáliKewlKid (talk) 03:37, 28 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
See, this is what I actually still don't understand. If an article appears not notable, for me, I do one of three things:
If the article is new, I run through the usual "is this an ad? is this just garbage?" If not, I either just watchlist it and wait or, if it's a little older start adding some tags.
If I don't have time to do research on my own, I hit it with a notability tag, watchlist it, and try to check up again later.
If I do have time, and I do a search on Google News/Archives, and or any relevant topic specific engines, look at the subject's official home page if they have one, and decide that the group is not notable, why do I have to tag the article? Why does bad content get to stay on the site any longer than it has to? It actually doesn't take all that much time in many cases to determine if something is likely to meet notability guidelines, especially for living people, companies, and bands. Another way of saying this is that if "the stuff" really "is crap," it should be deleted. Period. End of question. We're not here to make people feel better for contributing. This is not to say that you can't be polite about it--I often spend a fair amount of time helping new users understand why the process is occurring and what needs to be done to save the article. But I do that in the context of a deletion/prod discussion, so that users can understand that our work here occurs within a framework of processes and rules. I think we do the project far greater harm by letting someone coast along thinking that they're creating good articles when all we're really doing is waiting until the new editor is "strong enough" to handle the deletion discussion.
As for your final note, about adding another template to the talk page, that sounds reasonable. Even without a template, I think it can be useful to add a few notes explaining the AfD/Prod. And any responsible person tagging an article for deletion should be watchlisting it, and should be responsible if a new editor does make comments there but not the AfD. This plays into my larger point—we do have to be nice, helpful, and informative to new users, but we don't have to baby them. But we don't need to create some sort of "easy" starting point wherein we wait to enforce guidelines or policies until the editor "gets it" and is comfortable. Qwyrxian (talk) 04:06, 28 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
"We're not here to make people feel better for contributing." - I think we should let people know that we are grateful that they have at least tried to contribute to the project. I'm not insisting necessarily that you personally should do all of the work, but I have taken my time in the past to offer words of encouragement to a new writer and contributor to this and other wiki projects. Wiki editing is not really so new anymore for many people, but I still find people who have never done it before and it can get very intimidating if you are new to the process. A friendly nature to new contributors is indeed something that needs to be examined, and I am suggesting that Wikipedia has become much more intimidating to start making your first contributions as compared to what I remember when I first started adding content to this project. I'm an old hand and I get frustrated with some of the the PROD'ing and AfD that have been put on pages I've made recently.... which is part of my beef here. I got thick skin so I can get over it, but I did think of what my reaction would have been had I been a new user and that happened to me... which is part of what I'm complaining about here. --Robert Horning (talk) 04:26, 28 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Qwyrxian, thank you for your response. Number 1 and Number 2 make perfect sense. Number 3 is what I find troublesome.
Birth begins with crap, it's just usually how things get started, so to use the quality of the newly-born article as the deciding factor for deletion is crappy.
On notability, how can you rely soley upon the Internet to determine it? If an editor is acting in good faith they may have more knowledge about the topic than you and specifically information that may not be available online*. Why not throw up the notability tag and see what the editors of the world have? (at the very least, it saves you the time if they actually do it!). Even if you are right -- and it's crap and should be deleted -- it means that you are assuming that the editor is acting in bad faith. It's a teachable moment for new editors and it would show the openness of the community. ( * In the case where you do have sufficient knowledge about the topic to be considered an expert, I would expect you'd note why the person or topic was not-notable in your nomination for deletion and not simply say: Not notable. These are not the cases I'm talking about, I'm referring specifically the half-dozen articles I reviewed that were newly created, by new editors who appeared to be acting in good faith.)
If you want more volunteers and supporters Wikipedia's efforts, you are here to make them feel better for contributing. I'm nervous, even contributing to this big behemoth of a page/discussion, I'm constantly afraid I'm putting my remarks in the wrong section or not using the right wikitext to properly indent or that I'm generally screwing up in wiki-ettiquette. It's nerve-wracking! And if you didn't make me feel good about my contribution I'd go away (in this case responding to me at all makes me feel good).
I'd feel good about my work -- even if I was wrong -- if you explained to me why. If someone throws up a notability tag and I can't come up with a good response -- and then it gets nominated for deletion -- well, I had my chance. My bad -- but deletion is just like having your English teacher tear up your homework for getting their required header wrong.
The community can choose to spurn those who "jump in" by creating an article and invalidate their efforts by immediately nominating it for deletion but that is a path that will invariably lead to less contributors because even smart people are going to make mistakes in a system as complex as this. -- CáliKewlKid (talk) 03:36, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Why do you say that we must assume that a newbie who creates an article about a non-notable subject is acting in bad faith? This is simply wrong. I see articles fairly often from new people who honestly believe that Wikipedia desperately wants an article about the small businesses they're opening tomorrow, or the tiny club at their church, or other WP:ORG-failing groups.
I do have faith in your motivations! My point is not that you won't ultimately prevail in your assertion that an article should be deleted. My point is that you are not omnipotent enough to be able to determine whether a topic is inherently notable and that creator and editors of the article may be better equipped. If we assume they are acting in good faith then why not start by encouraging them? Tag it as failing to meet notability guidelines instead of immediately nominating it for deletion? It would be a divine being, indeed, for one to know so much about every topic as to know whether it was notable or not. The good faith effort should start with the "This doesn't seem notable to me, anyone care to make it better?" not "This doesn't seem notable to me, let's delete it!" (This clearly does not apply in many instances of spam articles or obvious vandalism but I'm only speaking to those instances where it would) -- CáliKewlKid (talk) 07:23, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
This, like so many things, comes down to a fundamental disagreement in philosophy, focusing on how to interpret the intersection between WP:V and WP:CIVIL. As a (mostly) immediatist, my opinion is that articles in mainspace should meet a certain minimum set of criteria. That means verification (reliable sources), and either have proven notability or some indication that notability is likely. My opinion is that, barring speedy situations, the 7 days you get by prod or by AfD are sufficient to get that info going. My further opinion is that while we need to be civil, we don't need to be so civil that we assume people new to Wikipedia are actually able to follow our policies without knowing them. I think that, now that we have a core encyclopedia covering a very wide range of topics, odds are greater than any given new topic is non-notable than notable (precisely because the vast majority of things, people, companies, bands, concepts, etc., are, by our standards, non-notable). You, I think, are arguing that civility (and the consequent goal of getting more editors) outweighs the need to have articles meet a minimum standard before appearing in mainspace (as a side note, I am of the opinion that we should at least consider userfying or Article incubating after deletion discussions more often than we do). To sum up, in response to just your final sentence, I actually do believe that, if something has no evidence of notability, and I can't find any with the tools I have, the correct, policy-based approach to take is to nominate it for deletion. Qwyrxian (talk) 08:30, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, but I am omniscient enough to know whether a topic is inherently notable. So are you -- because nothing is inherently notable. Notability requires verifiable evidence.
I'm also experienced enough to know that "Joe's Hamburger Stand, grand opening tomorrow!" doesn't meet Wikipedia's standards, and that the same is true for "Campground Troop X293, which now has seventeen members!" There's no good reason for me to slap {{notability}} at the top of these non-compliant articles rather than properly WP:PRODding them. If the newbie wants to prove me wrong, he can do it just as easily during the five-day prod cycle as he can with a notability tag on the top. WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:02, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, there's my problem. I was under the distinct impression that citations were not a requirement to add a Wikipedia page, clearly if nothing is inherently notable then the de facto requirement to add a Wikipedia article is proving notability when initially posting. I apologize and withdraw my concerns. -- CáliKewlKid (talk) 21:24, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'm still trying to figure out why there is opposition to this idea or what the opposition really is trying to explain as a reason for not doing this. The only lucid argument is more of a feature creep issue, where Wikipedia is already too bureaucratic. Fine, I can accept that to a point.
There have been some suggestions in terms of how to patrol pages effectively that have been opinionated on this section of the Village Pump that I think ought to be somehow preserved and even encouraged for other users to emulate. Obviously there have been some very dedicated people who are performing a really useful service to the community, but there are certainly areas of dispute and different philosophies in terms of how you deal with the massive crushing influx of new content that is constantly added to Wikipedia everyday. At the very least, if you are interested in helping out with this idea, please at least acknowledge that fact.
I'm trying to bring this back on-topic at least so far as if this concept of a page patroller academy is a good idea or not. There is much I could learn from those who are experienced in this area, and I'd love to be able to let you pass that knowledge onto me and to other potential patrollers. If this isn't the way to get that knowledge passed around, they how else are we going to get it done? Either that or I want some people to admit that they are more than willing to shoulder all of the responsibility for this part of Wikipedia and don't want anybody else participating. But if that is the case, don't complain that your workload here is overwhelming. --Robert Horning (talk) 16:20, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I have been doing NPP for several months now (since late May or so), and your idea isn't too bad. The problem is, it's very difficult to get anyone to do it at all, and putting more process in isn't going to help get more people in. One of the issues is that, if you haven't done NPP before, you'd be shocked at the amount of useless pages that come up. For instance, in under a minute, I tagged Lamuria band for the second time; it was a garage band from Indonesia (formed 3 weeks ago, 4 at the most, if I remember correctly), written in Indonesian. Given how many of those types of pages pop up, it's sometimes difficult to distinguish between articles that might actually make it and articles that are totally useless. I've had to rescue a few articles translated from ja-wiki because most people would have thought it was G1 Engrish. I know enough Japanese to fix those sorts of articles, but most people don't; it's worse when some article in Arabic or Sinhalese pops up, because almost no one knows those languages (and in the case of Sinhalese, many computers can't even support the script). There are so few people working there that the backlog can build up incredibly quickly, and the last thing we want is another Slow Blind Driveway sneaking through, so you have to make a very quick decision. There's also the issue of copyvios, which I brought up in another section; copyvios don't necessarily take people familiar with WP to detect, and those are potentially the biggest problem we face on NPP. Training people would help get them to make better decisions; however, getting people through the training would be very hard, because NPP is very high-stress when you first start. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 18:32, 29 September 2010 (UTC) For those of you who don't know what I mean by Slow Blind Driveway, it's this. This is the sort of thing one needs to learn to look for on NPP; if it doesn't get zapped right away, it might languish for years; check out the full list. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 23:06, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I believe the digression is my fault, apologies, I had been trying to add my thoughts to the debate on the topic of biting newbies with immediate prods (Prod Biting?). A NPP Academy sounds like an excellent idea so long as it's purpose is instructional, not policy-based. In other words, having experienced moderators provide guidance, tips and perhaps a checklist on NPP seems entirely worthwhile. Requiring someone be 'certified', though, would not. -- CáliKewlKid (talk) 21:24, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
No problems; I think you might be on to something. Right before I got into NPP, I used to do RC, and I managed to tag Oh Teacher (cartoon) as A7, without realizing that Disney cartoons are inherently notable. A few days ago, I came across an A7 tag for KPHN, a Disney radio station; that may have been avoided if we knew. To be honest, I haven't seen many bad taggings; usually, the declines are just a difference in interpretation (such as Tunnu Ki Tina, which I tagged for G1 (and stand by it, I challenge anyone to make any sense of it)). But I can also see where there would be benefits; I think I'd have to see it in action before I make judgments. If it does go through, of course, I'd be more than happy to offer my services. Of course, one of the reasons I started on NPP was because there were so few people doing it that I could make a substantial impact, but... </getting far afield>. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 23:13, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The only "certification" would be only if somebody was abusing the process and it was suggested by ArbCom or a moderator to go through the training process as a way to keep their account or access to certain tools. It could be a pro-active step rather than a negative one to tell people to go away because they aren't playing nice with others. This should be otherwise a completely voluntary process where certainly somebody could jump in right away and just start doing page patrols, but I think it ought to be recommended to at least read some of the "best practices" that experienced users have been doing. It is this knowledge that I'm trying to preserve. --Robert Horning (talk) 01:57, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'll admit that I was one of the rubberstamping NPPers, after reading this thread I'm significantly more cautious (Improvement tagging, Prodding, then CSD as a last resort). I'm now on the opposite wing of trying to throw the breaks on the Delete train and trying to get the original authors to improve the article. I guess I'd rather see the CSD templates (and automated tools that use them) require a explanation to be typed out. Just a simple "click click" to put the article on track to CSDland is much too fast for my new tastes. Hasteur (talk) 18:18, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I did that for months before I realized Twinkle would make it easier, and I didn't notice any change in my behavior. All I found was that Twinkle made it easier to keep track of what I had tagged, and to go back to it if the tag had been removed so I could figure out what went wrong and/or put it back on (depending on who removed it). Of course, if an article is anything approaching salvageable, I will do what I can (my personal specialty is copyediting, especially with translated ja-wiki articles) and tell the author that their work is a good start, and I treat speedy deletion as a last resort; however, I didn't find that switching to Twinkle made me more aggressive, just that it made it easier to tag pages. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 19:26, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
On the original proposal (sorry if we got sidetracked), I have no problem with a New Page Patroller Academy, so long as it is neither mandatory nor excessive. The devil, of course, is in the details, and that is what much of the discussion has been about. For example, I would be opposed to a learning module that taught new page patrollers that the default is either researching or tagging, and prodding/CSDing is only for extreme circumstances. So part of the question here isn't "should we have an NPP Academy," it's, "Can we agree on what an NPP Academy should teach/say?" As for making it mandatory, I think it's futile--it's usually nearly trivially easy to blaze through any but the best designed e-learning modules without actually paying attention, so anyone who doesn't care to read what's there wouldn't really be forced to learn anything. If someone isn't patrolling properly, I'd prefer mandatory mentoring (the pattern of "You have 2 choices: Stop doing task X, or accept a mentor who will teach you how to do task X."). The goal of the Academy should be to provide a set of best practices and review of the appropriate policies so that those who want to start NPP but aren't really sure about how to go about it could get everything packaged from one easy-to-use source. As a final note, one thing you have to consider whenever you make a training program is that you will need people to maintain it. Since consensus can and does change on Wikipedia, including both policy changes and standard interpretations of policy, we'll need people to continually be making sure the Academy matches the current state of the Wiki. Qwyrxian (talk) 23:35, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
How should two related companies be handled?
If there is not enough information on a company we'll call Company A, is it okay to include its information in the Wikipedia article about Company B? The two companies have the same name in the specific case I'm wondering about, because in the 1950s, Company A was a unit of the company that became Company B. It would be only natural to look for Company A in the Company B article. In the 1990s, Company B and Company C were formed from Company D (which no longer exists, though Company B was somehow merged into this company earlier), and Company B owned one-fifth of Company C, which was Company A's parent. Now Company C and, because it is a subsidiary, Company A are part of Company E and I'm not aware of any further connection with Company B.
I'm also considering a similar case where Company A and Company B merged. I think Company B has enough information for its own article, though separating the two companies' individual details into two articles will be tricky. But both have lost their separate identities and are now Company C. For historical purposes the other two companies are entitled to articles because they have long histories.Vchimpanzee· talk·contributions·17:40, 24 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
If it's verifiable that the companies merged, then adding information about the formerly independent company into the article about the merged company would seem fine. As for whether companies pre-merger deserve separate articles, that really depends on the amount of independent coverage in reliable sources. Applied Biosystems merged with Invitrogen to form Life Technologies in 2008; we have articles on all three. Fences&Windows18:50, 24 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
In the first case, only Company B and Company E now have articles. I'm finding very little about Company A and Company C.
In the second instance, neither Company A nor Company B had an article and I saw the need for Company A's article first. but Company E and the new Company C are huge and have gone through so many mergers, having details on every company in the merged company's article wouldn't be feasible. That's my feeling. A split would likely be recommend ed if it was tried.Vchimpanzee· talk·contributions·18:56, 24 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia never refuses verifiable, neutral and relevent information. There is nothing wrong with mentioning Company A in the article about Company B, even if Company A lacks sources to establish notability on its own. WP:N is about establishing criteria for a stand-alone article on a subject, not on including information in articles. For example, many articles contain brief biographical information on the parents, siblings, or children of notable people, even if those family members don't merit an article on their own, that doesn't mean its verboten to mention them in any article. This seems to apply here. If Company B is notable, but its ancestor Company A does not have enough information to sustain a seperate article, there's no reason not to include some basic info about Company A in B's article. --Jayron3205:08, 25 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
In the second case, A and B and C all get articles, if they're individually significant; if A does but B doesn't, then summarise B's details in with C but keep A distinct. In the first case, I confess you've lost me! You might want to have a look at how we handle Rolls-Royce, though. Shimgray | talk | 13:29, 25 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
In the first case, see Talk:Voestalpine#Which company is which?. I was afraid to ask here for information that specific (so I made it a more general policy question), but no one seems to be responding there. In the second case, Company C has an article, I created one for Company A and now feel I can probably do the same when I get time for Company B. The parent company for Company A and Company B is iffy seeing as how it didn't last long before Compnay C took over and all the others disappeared.Vchimpanzee· talk·contributions·17:19, 27 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Rather delete the lot before I waste more of my and your time
I was under the impression that new contributions to Wikipedia are being encouraged. Contribute your work and knowledge. Submit your pictures. Share your knowledge – unshared knowledge is useless and soon to be lost. Start an article, even if it’s just a base for others to expand on later. Make mistakes, it can be fixed.
I’m a rail nut, and one of my hobbies is photographing locomotives and rolling stock. Here in South Africa where I live. So I have pictures taken all around the country, a lot of them. And I know a little about the trains I’ve photographed even though my career was in the Air Force. But when I needed to know more and searched the web, I found very little and virtually nothing on Wikipedia. A couple of articles on two SA narrow gauge steam locomotives and the Red Devil, one on a SA narrow gauge diesel locomotive, and not a single one on SA electric locomotives.
So, exactly a month ago today I started by uploading some pictures of the new SA Class 15E and writing basic articles on the various SA electric locomotives since 1928. They are at Category:Electric Locomotives of South Africa[Sept 25, 2010 1] and Category:Electric/Diesel Electric Locomotives of South Africa, [Sept 25, 2010 2] 48 of them so far after 31 sixteen hour days with very little time to spend on my other interests. Plus some editing on the Hex River Tunnels. It was encouraging to already have received some positive feedback from other South African rail enthusiasts here and abroad.
Mistakes I made, and some rules I didn’t know, so along the way I was advised by some editors and reprimanded by others. The big issue so far has been watermarks on photographs. Over the years I’ve applied information about the subject on my photographs – loco type and number, picture location, my name and date. So now, after being reprimanded, before I upload a picture, I crop that info off the picture beforehand wherever I can. Unfortunately, it’s sometimes impossible without cutting into the subject, so occasionally I still uploaded some “watermarked” pictures. At least I could use them to illustrate the articles I wrote and supplement the descriptions. A picture is worth and all that….
I’ve had some very welcome assistance and tips from a few editors. One even went so far as to repair several of the “watermarked” pictures by removing all the script without leaving a trace – well done, that, sir, you’re performing miracles. Thank you very much, it’s highly appreciated!
Another editor, however, is placing huge strain on his keyboard’s delete button.
My priority is to get the articles written. When that’s done, I plan to go back and clean up behind me and replace watermarked pictures wherever I can still find the originals – some are still buried in my computer’s innards somewhere. Besides, the “watermarked” pictures are being judiciously tagged for me by an editor.
I’m all done with the SA electric locomotives, bar two, and ready to start on the horde of SA diesels. I’m leaving the steam and rolling stock for last since those will be the toughest jobs, so hopefully by the time I get to them “experience” will make it easier.
Last night, however, I discovered that several of the articles have had their pictures, in two cases the only picture, and the accompanying descriptions deleted, just like that, and in all but one case there’s not even a trace of those changes in the revision histories. Deleting “watermarked” pictures on Wikimedia Commons is one thing. But deleting pictures that are already being used in an article to illustrate the description is hardly encouraging.
So please, before I spend the next month also wasting my time on writing articles on SA diesel locomotives and more, rather delete all I’ve done so far and be done with it. I have other things in my life that demand my attention too.
Would you please provide links to specific examples? It would be far more helpful to have that so we can see what you're referring to. Thanks! SchuminWeb (Talk) 15:45, 25 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Please keep in mind, I'm not asking for exception from policy, I'm asking for time - I'll get around to the fixing upping.
André Kritzinger 16:06, 25 September 2010 (UTC)
In the case of the first article, I've restored the images, and indicated in the edit summary to remove the watermarks or refer it to the Graphic Lab folks to remove it. In the images presented, this is not hard at all.
In the second article, I don't believe any images were ever added in the first place. I looked at all the revisions, and never found any images, nor was there any evidence of deleted material in the logs. So I don't know what to tell you there. Feel free to be bold and add some images, however, preferably without the watermark (saves the trouble of removing it later if it's not there to begin with). SchuminWeb (Talk) 17:10, 25 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
My bad on the second one, it did never have a picture. I forgot in my upsetness that it's the one in service loco type that I've never managed to capture. (Yet.) As to the other deletions, they are recorded in the revision histories, but I'll restore those myself tomorrow.
Thank you.
André Kritzinger 23:05, 25 September 2010 (UTC)
Ok this is probably more appropriate for a Commons Policy debate, but we regularly allow historical images that contain factual watermarks about the subject. In fact I would go further to say it is extremely common to find this kind of water mark and we do not go to any lengths to remove these marks as they are respected as part of the artist's rationale or as part of a categorisation for an image collection. In this case I find that the Anti-Watermark policy is going much further than the project remit of trying to remove any watermark of ownership or distracting timedate stamp. It might be worth considering an alteration to policy where any Watermark that forms part of a genuine categorisation system or artistic rationale should be kept - this of course does not prevent other editors uploading watermark free versions but these shouldn't be used to take precedence from the original. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 19:20, 25 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The Audit Subcommittee is a subcommittee of the Arbitration Committee, tasked to review and act upon concerns and complaints about checkuser and oversight activities received from the community. Membership consists of three community representatives elected by the community, who serve one-year terms; and three arbitrators, who rotate through this assignment for approximately six months.
In advance of the scheduled election/appointment of community representatives to the Audit Subcommittee, a summary of activity has been posted on the subcommittee's report page.
The community is invited to discuss this report, as well as preferred methods and terms for the selection of community representatives to participate in the audit process. The result of the discussion will inform the Arbitration Committee on how best to proceed before progressing to another election cycle.
I happened to notice this image [7]. What struck me is that it's uploaded with a license that seems to designate it as a "copyrighted but free for wikipedia/noncommercial" image. This is based on the language in the license template itself. Since all content on Wikipedia is supposed to be free/libre and must be available for commercial reuse, except in cases of fair use, wouldn't this license tag be redundant and wouldn't any images uploaded and tagged with this license need a fair use rationale? (I think legitimate fair use is obvious in the case of Kim family photos since so few exist and there is no chance of creating a free one). - Burpelson AFB✈15:43, 28 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Correct, releases only for "wikipedia/noncommercial" use and similar are not sufficient and, absent an appropriate non-free use rationale, such images should be tagged for deletion. – ukexpat (talk) 16:37, 28 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding images for which there is noncommercial usage permission, shouldn't the only applicable WP:NFCC be #1, whether the image is replaceable by a free image? Because all the other NFCC seem to be concerned with satisfying legal fair use. But with an image licensed for noncommercial use or for use on Wikipedia specifically, the only concern is that the image would supplant free content; there's no concern I can see regarding using too much of the image, or using it on a user page, etc.
A corollary thought is that a completely unlicensed image, even if not replaceable by a freely licensed one, should still not be used where it is replaceable by an image licensed for noncommercial usage or for use specifically on Wikipedia, as it's certainly better to avoid the need to rely on any fair use legal claims. postdlf (talk) 16:56, 28 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
For myself, I would think that content of this nature should only be used with the same guidelines as fair-use. There is one image that has set some precedence for how content like this ought to be handled, and that would be with the image: File:WW2 Iwo Jima flag raising.jpg. Somebody was able to contact the Associated Press, who actually gave permission to Wikipedia but on a non-commercial only and non-reuse basis. Just has has been done with this Iwo Jima flag raising photo, I think any non-commercial use only images ought to have some fair use rational applied to them... if not they should be tagged for deletion, just as Ukexpat mentioned above.
The issue of non-commercial only images is one that has been debated extensively, and apparently some other language editions of Wikimedia projects do permit some non-commercial only images on their projects. We can reopen that ugly discussion if you really want, but generally the consensus in the past has been to remove any non-commercial only images from the project for a whole bunch or reasons I won't get into right now. The only concern is not just that it would supplant free content, but that non-commercial only content carries additional baggage for those who might want to use Wikipedia content on a commercial basis. Seriously, I can reopen this controversy in full force, but at the moment I merely want to express that it is an old argument that has been rehashed so many times that it isn't worth creating a flame war at the moment. --Robert Horning (talk) 18:20, 28 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, this has been an ideologue-heavy area for years now. I think my suggestions are logical and pragmatic; it makes sense to value free content above all, but it further makes sense to value noncom/wikipedia-only licensed content above fair use content. I'm not going to waste time shouting myself blue in the face over it though, if the consensus is still far from even thinking about it. postdlf (talk) 18:45, 28 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
If used within the scope of fair use content, but it happens to be available for noncommercial-only purposes as well, I think that is quite reasonable. My concern is if somebody would include the non-commercial content where the fair-use application is shaky ground and really doesn't apply, but it gets a pass anyway because it is "legal". Certainly how these images from Korea are being used doesn't have a fair-use rationale applied at the moment. It was also rather bold for the editor to create this kind of template, so under the principle of being bold I am a bit impressed. --Robert Horning (talk) 00:11, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
(outdent) since noncommercial licenses are incompatible with Wikipedia, I have nominated the license template for deletion. Discussion is here [8], stop by and weigh in if you like. - Burpelson AFB✈17:19, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Quoting sources
I'd like to ask for opinion on making it more the norm to provide a relevant quote (in footnotes) when citing sources. While this is not usual practice in academic contexts, etc. I think there are a number of special circumstaces that we need to consider.
For example, over time as an article is developed, references can "float" away from statements they originally supported because later editors are unsure about what exactly the reference supported. Or the statement a reference originally supported can gradually change in meaning as other editors (in good faith) copy edit the article or add new material to the statement over time. In both circumstances, we get a reference that seemingly supports a statement that the original editor did not mean and which the source itself may not even comment on, never mind actually support.
Including a brief quotation (or summary as appropriate) with each reference would cure this by making it immediately obvious exactly what the reference supports and to what extent.
Including a brief quotation would also aid with verifiability. Currently Verifiability (in a footnote) suggests, "When there is dispute about whether a piece of text is fully supported by a given source, direct quotes and other relevant details from the source should be provided to other editors as a courtesy." I believe this courtesy is useful at all time, even when there is no dispute at the time of adding the source. Later there may be and a quote can clarify exactly what the reference was intended to support and to what extent.
I am not suggesting that policy be that all sources should be cited with a quote - but I do believe that it should become good practice.
I can actually think of a situation where that applies, although not in the way you were thinking. The one I'm thinking of has to do with Japanese names; most people write their names in kanji, but a few (Masuda Sayo and Chihiro Iwasaki come immediately to mind) spelled their names in hiragana. In those instances, it would probably be helpful to have a footnote and small quote to explain why there's an unusual transliteration at the top- the Chihiro Iwasaki article actually has that already (you can take a look and see how you like it), and I think it would be good to expand that into other similar articles. Of course, I know that probably wasn't where you were going with that, but it's an idea. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 23:28, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think this would be practical for all types of articles. For the type of editing I usually do, a page or so of textbook exposition is summarized into a paragraph of WP text. Fact-by-fact referencing is impractical in this case and including quotes to support everything would be tantamount to including pages from the textbook. I've seen the type of referencing you're talking about but there is the danger of over using it and infringing on copyrights. You're right though in that the location of a footnote is not a very clear indicator of what exactly is supposedly being referenced.--RDBury (talk) 02:25, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
First, on the above quote from WP:V, I'm fairly certain that means that, when Editor A says Source X contains some info, and Editor B doubts that claim, that it is good practice for Editor A to provide Editor B with the quotation. My emphasis points to the fact that this is from editor to editor (most likely via the talk page), not a recommendation that the quote be provided in article text. I think this issue is there mainly when Editor A is using a source that Editor B doesn't have access to (because it's a print source or behind a paywall). This clause is not, as far as I can tell, saying anything about how articles themselves should read.
As to the more general point, I don't think that we should consider it good practice to include quotes. In fact, if we want Wikipedia to read like a classic print encyclopedia, I think we should actually want to minimize quotes. Now, I don't think we should abolish them entirely--we have the luxury of quoting because we have unlimited space, whereas paper dictionaries do not. But I think we want to preserve quotes only for those times when a sources says something in such a special way that we can't say it better (and more succinctly) ourselves. Sometimes quotes are also useful when we are dealing with a contentious subject and we're being extra careful to not impute opinions onto our sources that may not be exactly what they hold. I would find it very cumbersome as a reader if we starting quoting more than we already do, and I think many articles could ideally do with much less. Qwyrxian (talk) 04:36, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I think I might not have been very clear, Qwyrxian. I don't mean in-line quotes. I mean quotes in references.
Here's a hypothetical example of what I mean. In the example below, the accompanying reference is:
1 Mobberley, 2007.
This does not give a quote source when giving the reference:
1. Editor A: The diameter of the moon is 3,476km at its equator.[1]
This is correct and supported by the reference.
Now, watch what can happen over time:
2. Editor B: The Moon is 250,000km from the earth. Its diameter is 3,476km at its equator.[1]
The new sentence about the distance from the earth is incorrect. The second sentence is still correct and supported by the reference.
3. Editor C: The Moon is 250,000km from the earth and is 3,476km wide at its equator.[1]
This edit combined the two sentences (for whatever reason). It is now unclear, which part or to what extent the entire sentence is supported by the reference.
4. Editor D: The Moon is 250,000km from the earth.[1]
This edit removed the second part of the sentence (for whatever reason). The edit was in good faith but the editor didn't know that first part of the sentence was unsupported.
In the above example, the reference "drifted" over time away from the original statement it supported and ended up seemingly supporting another statement (in this case one that is untrue).
A simple way to stave off references from "drifting" like this is to provide a brief quote when citing sources. In this example below, the accompanying reference is:
1 Mobberley, 2007: "The Moon's equatorial diameter is 3,476 km and the polar diameter is 3,470 km.".
This gives a brief quote from the source so it is clear what is supported by the reference.
1. Editor A: The diameter of the moon is 3,476km at its equator.[1]
This is correct and supported by the reference.
Now, the future edits can take a different form:
2. Editor B: The Moon is 250,000km from the earth. Its diameter is 3,476km at its equator.[1]
As before, the new sentence about the distance from the earth is incorrect. The second sentence is still correct and supported by the reference.
3. Editor C: The Moon is 250,000km from the earth and is 3,476km wide at its equator.[1]
This edit combined the two sentences (for whatever reason). However, unlike the first example, it is clear what the reference supports and to what extent.
4. Editor D: The Moon is 250,000km from the earth.
Like in the first example, this edit removed the second part of the sentence (for whatever reason). However, because the editor could tell what the reference supported, they knew to remove the reference when removing the statement about the diameter of the Moon.
5. Editor E: The Moon is 250,000km from the earth.[citation needed]
Now future editors know the statement about the distance of the Moon from the earth is unsupported.
In this way, giving a brief quote from a source (not inline, but with the reference) makes it clear what is supported by the reference and to what extent. --RA (talk) 09:43, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Three objections.
I don't see any reasonable ways of separating appropriate (and obligatory) and inappropriate (and thus unnecessary) usage of at-length quotes. I agree that present-day practice is not robust, but where would you draw the line?
At-length quotations = copyvio. Why do we have to struggle with condensed paraphrasing of source pages, if we must (as proposed) provide copies of these pages? This is not an exaggeration. Consider a biographical article that draws heavily on a single book. One hundred individual pages cited. Even quoting one paragraph from each crosses the line.
Bloated article size. Some already have hundreds of footnotes. Throw in quotations, and welcome to megabyte-sized articles. East of Borschov
To me, copyright violation is the only real deal-breaker here. Dumb idea perhaps, but would it perhaps suffice to summarize / paraphrase what the source said? For the moon example, the reference could say "250,000km from Earth". 83.81.60.233 (talk) 17:51, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Manual of Style / non-initial acronyms
Not sure if this is the most appropriate place but here we go. I began going through some articles making them fit more with the Manual of Style, particularly the first lines of the lead, and I've run into a problem with abbreviations. What set it off is EXOSAT, a former spacecraft of the European Space Agency. Before my recent edit the first line of the article stated the name was "Exosat" as per the main ESA public website [9], however the article name uses an all-caps "EXOSAT" which curiously is also used in the "in depth" ESA article [10]. In fact after a quick google-search there appears to be no consensus among the reliable sources about which is correct! After I added the fact that Exosat is actually an acronym [11] and hence why it was being capitalised, I realised the public pages were probably doing this because the acronym uses some non-initial letters so in this instance they were using the syllabic abbreviation convention in a similar fashion to direct portmanteau names, e.g another satellite Meteosat, despite the fact it is neither. Note, they did capitalise initial-letter acronyms, [12] and [13]. Even so, this usage of lowercase is not consistent even within the organisation!
So to my main point about why this isn't an isolated issue, the Manual of Style does appear to weigh in on this. MOS:ALLCAPS,
Do write in all capitals for acronyms and initialisms, unless the acronym gains common usage as an ordinary, lowercase word (such as scuba and laser, but not NATO).
Although it doesn't state any non-initial acronyms this would tend to suggest that they be in all-caps. After looking there are a number of non-initial acronyms on a similar theme like COBE and Hipparcos that appear to be using different standards despite no obvious reason why. Some sources give "HIPPARCOS".
I'm sure this applies to acronyms in many different fields of knowledge on Wikipedia so there's not much point bringing it up on a specific WikiProject. So is this a "common sense" part of the guidelines that should be taken on a "case by case" basis, which seems strange as this is a style issue that doesn't appear resolved by outside sources, or has this been accidentally overlooked? ChiZeroOne (talk) 03:35, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
All Wikipedia is a case-by-case basis. The first remedy would be to find people who are familiar with the subject, and find out if they can direct you to sources which use the term, and find which version has a preponderance of common usage. WP:UCN applies even to acronyms, as far as I know. If there is no clear "winner" among competing styles, then there is also no compelling reason to change whatever the style in the current article is to something else. --Jayron3204:44, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Why should WP:UCN take precedence, it's no more impervious to IAR? This is a style issue, not a factual one; consensus in the MoS ignores UCN in some instances. In any case as I noted the article name and the lead are different so the article had no "style" or consistency to maintain, really it should adopt one! Given this is a style issue, and hence sources are bound to disagree on the "common name" in such cases, I think it's something for the MoS. That's why I raised the issue, asking what consensus is on this because the MoS does state a related one but not this specific point.
As well as this I wasn't aware that was the standard interpretation of Ignore All Rules, for a start that appears to lead to unresolvable conflict and invalidates consensus. As far as I'm aware IAR allows exceptions to guidelines when it makes sense to, but it's not a carte blanche to ignore it. It doesn't stop the enforcement of policies or guidelines over multiple articles, simply recognises that a certain guideline may not always be the best solution to improving them. I see no reason why this is applicable in this case. See another situation in the Hipparcos article; a user removed boldface emphasis in the expansion of the acronym stating the MoS guidelines on abbreviation, another user has now replaced this without explanation. Personally I'm inclined to remove the emphasis again, especially as it doesn't fit most similar articles. If you apply IAR and accept this and every other style and ignore the MoS are you not invalidating the MoS and Consensus? And more to the point if everything is on a case-by-case basis without adherence to Wikipedia-wide consensus then should the MoS exist because it will incite edit wars like above despite having no obvious purpose? ChiZeroOne (talk) 11:41, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Deleting images that I've tagged for deletion
Last week, I tagged File:Zmill sign.jpg, File:Zirkle Mill wiki Notated sm.jpg, and File:Zirkle Mill wiki Notated.jpg for deletion: they say that someone other than the uploader took them and has released them under free licenses, but they have no proof for such a statement. They're now eligible for deletion, but is it appropriate for me to delete them, since I was the one who tagged them? I'm not sure whether to see deleting them myself as a COI or as a case in which any reasonable administrator would take the same type of action. Nyttend (talk) 12:24, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Some of them are tagged to say the uploader took them Noneofubusiness appears to be the account of Robert B. Andrews and in File:Zmill sign.jpg he attests to being copyright holder. The other two were taken by the other founding member of the Preservation Society Sherryl Andrews Belinsky and the uploader attests that copyright rests with the society which is releasing them under GPL. contacting the society through their webpage http://www.historiczirklemill.org/ should be able to confirm that this is the case - however it then raises a significant WP:COI issue, in that the article on the mill and mentions of the mill in other articles were all committed by Robert B. Andrews the owner of the mill. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 13:39, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I deleted them since we lack confirmation that the uploader has permission to release them under this license, and the website asserts Copyright 2006, RBA Internet Services and the Historic Zirkle Mill. Shall I email them for verification? - 2/0 (cont.) 13:56, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
As I understand it, the onus is on the uploader to provide evidence of an appropriate release/permission rather than the responsibility of someone else to e-mail the copyright owner to confirm it. – ukexpat (talk) 14:13, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
True, but the article is poorer without them, and I am willing to take the time. At least when I visit them in person, people who run historical locations like this tend to be tickled pink that anyone is interested, so they might be willing to release the images under a compatible license even if the uploader did not have permission. Does anyone think that this would be a bad idea? - 2/0 (cont.) 14:34, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
By all means, go ahead and do so if you want to. But we should not be giving the impression that users can upload copyright images willy-nilly and expect others to seek out appropriate permissions/licenses. – ukexpat (talk) 15:07, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Quite so, we certainly shouldn't give the impression that anyone on Wikipedia might be prepared to actually help someone who's confused by licensing. Helping people out goes against the nature of Wikipedia - I mean, where will it end? We'll have people asking for help with wikimarkup, or referencing, or advice on whether to delete things if we start offering help willy-nilly to people who are trying to add useful and informative images. DuncanHill (talk) 15:18, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
This is a general question arising from a specific case. When, if ever, is a low quality picture worse than having no picture? In the instant case, User:ElKevbo removed this image of John Calipari from his article because it was a poor quality picture. I admit I wish I had a better one, but this is what I could get with a 12x zoom camera from ten or fifteen rows back across the court at Rupp. Still, this does show what Calipari looks like and, absent a physical description in the article (which most articles don't and shouldn't have), it provides the only information about his appearance to the reader. I contend that a project that relies on images with free licenses can't expect to get "glamor shots" for every article, and that almost any picture is better than no picture. ElKevbo disagrees, which is certainly fine. We posted this particular case on the article's talk page, where it has generated no commentary outside the two of us. I'm not really looking for commentary on the instant case, but more for some guidance in general about how poor a photo has to be before it shouldn't be included in an article that is otherwise unillustrated. Acdixon(talk • contribs • count)17:43, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It's not a great picture, but it's better than nothing; it's clear enough to be informative. I see the editor who removed it quoted WP:BLP in his edit summary as at least partial justification, but the only BLP concern regarding images is that the image not cast the subject "in a false light." There's nothing about concern that an amateur photo may simply not be the most flattering. It's not like you caught him in a bathroom stall; he's on the bench at a game, which is what he does for a living. I say restore it. postdlf (talk) 18:00, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for that feedback on this particular case. Do you have any suggestions regarding a general guideline about picture quality and inclusion? I also posted photos of similar quality (or lack thereof, I suppose) of John Wall, John Robic, Orlando Antigua, Tony Delk, and Rod Strickland among others. (All were taken from the same camera, same location, same game.) Again, none of these articles was illustrated before. In general, how bad do you think a photo has to be before it is worse than having no photo at all? Acdixon(talk • contribs • count)18:35, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I doubt we need a guideline on this. it's a matter of pure aesthetic common sense. If you tun into a conflict with a user over a particular image, do an RfC to get a wider opinion. --Ludwigs218:44, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
This isn't really the right place, the first place to ask is either the user in question's talk page, or on the talk page of the article. --Golbez (talk) 15:45, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
--Ludwigs2 18:46, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
