Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)

The policy section of the village pump is used to discuss proposed policies and guidelines and changes to existing policies and guidelines. If you want to propose something new that is not a policy or guideline, use the proposals section. If you have a question about how to apply an existing policy or guideline, try the one of the many Wikipedia:Noticeboards. Please see this FAQ page for a list of frequent proposals and the responses to them.
Please add new topics to the bottom of this page.
« Older discussions, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97

Centralized discussion
Proposals	Discussions	Recurring proposals
RfC on developing a guideline for responding to Article Feedback Tool v5 feedback RfC about the appropriateness of "X on Twitter" (or similar) articles RfC at Meta-Wiki on the global bans policy referred to in the Terms of Use RfC on whether an editor can request a review of another editor's block, and if so, how they should do it. RfC on how to word the lede of Wikipedia:Verifiability, including discussion of the phrase "verifiability, not truth" Proposal to extend the use of authority control identifiers to a large number of articles. Proposal to update the level-one user warnings based on testing results Note: inactive discussions, closed or not, should be archived.
archive talk edit history watch

A fundamental problem with administrators and inactivity

About 6 months ago, I noticed that the number of administrators and the number of semi-active/inactive administrators was at near 50% with slightly more semi-active/inactive admins than active. Right now we sit at 697 active and 773 semi-active/inactive, or 47% active. Semi-active is fewer than 30 edits in the past 2 months, but at least 1 edit in the past 3 months. Inactive is 0 edits in the past 3 months.

The problem I'm addressing isn't inactivity, but rather competence of semi-active/inactive administrators who may not be informed of current practices on Wikipedia since they have been away. Our policy on removing administrator access to inactive accounts is good, but it's easy for someone to game the system to just keep their admin bit, and their status of trust, within the community. All we require is a single edit or single admin task to keep it. The problem is that all they have to do is come back once a year to make a single edit to continue holding their status. The status of administrator on Wikipedia isn't just the tools, which anything they can do can be easily reverted, but rather a pedestal of high regard and respect in the community that, without proper evidence or reasoning, usually isn't challenged. The problem with this is that with over 770 inactive or partially active accounts with admin, not all of them could be informed on our current practices after being inactive so long. Like I said, one non-binding edit confirms that they own the account, which is great, but it doesn't address them coming back with stature within the community and potentially being uninformed. Here are a few different examples in what I am talking about (these particular users were taken partially at random):

• Xeno (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights) - This is an example of an administrator who is semi-active I have no problem with having adminship. Their last fifty edits date back to the beginning of this year and he comes back infrequently to edit and do administrative tasks. It's clear that he is is still capable of holding his position.
• (aeropagitica) (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights) - This administrators last fifty edits date back from 2012 all the way back to 2009 with 15 of those 50 edits came on the same sessions of editing and 10 of them are in his own user space. In three years, I don't know if he/she is still capable or knowledgeable of different changes that have occurred in guidelines and policies.
• Lightdarkness (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights) - This administrator's last 50 contributions go back to 2007, with 0 edits since 2010 and only 12 edits since 2007. They avoided having their administrative bit removed by deleting the How do i add content test page in 2011 and hasn't edited since. 19 of 50 of their last edits were in their own user space. Again, I don't know whether they're informed of everything that has changed since 2007.

There is a tipping point that was established when User:LC, who had his adminship removed in 2011 for inactivity, came back to get his adminship restored and was denied because he had not edited since 2002. There was a fear of giving LC his adminship back for reasons of the myriad of changes over a 9 year period that he may not be informed of (also it was not sufficiently proven that the account was controlled by LC himself, and he did not reply to queries). At what point do we decide who is equipped and knowledgeable of our current policies and guidelines to still be valuable to the community with the tools or to have the tools restored to them?

If you're looking to skip to the proposal here it is. I think the answer is really simple, all that it requires is a different method of determining who is an active administrator and deprecating the current "one year inactive" de-adminship. It's fairly straight forward: If you do a combined 50 edits or admin actions outside of your own user space within a calendar year, you are considered an active administrator. If you make less than 50, your adminship is removed for inactivity. It actually benefits the encyclopedia in various ways:

• It stops inactive administrators from simply coming back and doing a null edit to their user page to keep their adminship for another year and leaving the community to wonder if they are coming back or not.
• It forces administrators at least provide a bare minimum of contributions or administrative duties to give us something to base their work on. We won't have to wonder whether they are equipped to handle to tools anymore.
• The difference between a bare minimum of 1 edit/log to confirm they are here and my proposed 50 is this:
  • 773 semi-active/inactive administrators making 1 edit to confirm they are still admin under our current system is 773 edits/logs (which could be as little as a user page edit.)
  • 773 semi-active/inactive administrators making 50 edits/logs outside their user space is 38,650 productive edits, and all of them could keep their adminship and be considered active.
• For administrators who fall inactive, the method of restoring their admin bit is slightly the same: all the former admin has to do is make 50 edits (outside their user space) to confirm that they are active, and they make request at WP:BN to get their admin bit back (at the bureaucrats discretion as always).

An example of this proposal in action is as straight forward as it's worded. For example, between 00:00 January 1, 2013 and 23:59 December 31, 2013, all an admin would have to do is make their combined 50 edits or administrative logs, and they keep it until 2014. In 2014, they just have to make another minimum 50, and so on into the future. The only way I see this being debated is because the proposal actually enforces that an administrator has to make a bare minimum number of edits, but is that a bad thing compared to accounts sitting there and rotting with an admin bit? Normally active administrators are unaffected, admins aren't forced to be here any longer than normal, and it makes inactive administrators only spend minimal time here if they want to keep being administrators. At 50 contributions per administrator who are inactive at this point, we can gain tons of useful contributions and the rate of completion for doing the minimum number is achievable within a single day. I look forward to seeing responses about this. — Moe ε 13:52, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

• The inherent flaw in your proposal is that you assume the inactive admin has not simply been reading, rather than taking an active role. Further, it's inherently "forcing" admins to meet a quota, something that really flies in the face of making good decisions. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 18:52, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

• I don't assume that they aren't reading, and if that is the case, they could be very informed which is good. But if that's the case, if you make 50 edits in less than a year, you're not doing your part, are you? Out of the 1,400+ people entrusted on the entire website to be here and actually do something when there are problems, are the people we allow to sit and do nothing? Do you knowingly pass a user on RFA, if it said in their nomination "After I'm give admin, I'm going to rarely be here at all, but I'll keep informed and make an edit or two a year."? No, you won't. Like I said, is enforcing a quota a bad thing? Why do we tolerate administrators to sit back and not do anything? If you gave a janitor a mop and bucket and he only came by once a year to adjust their locker and leave, I'd be pretty pissed nothing is being done. We have 697 active and 773 snoozing. 50 administrative logs or edits combined, is such a minor task for someone at the level of an administrator. It's achievable by them logging in once and year a doing something, which is all I'm asking really. — Moe ε 23:12, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

Apologies for the delay in responding. Took a short Wikibreak.

The reason your janitor analogy fails is in two parts: A) this is a volunteer service, so no one is required to be here at X time or X days a week, and B) there is not a limiting factor on the number of admins, ie. we aren't "over budget" or running out of "space" for people. If someone works that hard to get the bit, then goes idle, that's their business. As long as they haven't abused the bit, I see no reason to remove it due to lack of activity. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 16:23, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

• Hell, I've been active here for eight years and I don't even know our current practices. The problem isn't inactivity among admins, the problem is in informing everyone of evolving standards and practices. --Golbez (talk) 19:38, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

• And that's fine Golbez :) I'm not expecting someone to re-invent the wheel or be some kind of connoisseur of the English Wikipedia. All I'm asking for is a simple minimum number of duties, a combined 50 edits and/or administrative logs (outside their userspace) that you do within a year. It's just a simple recognition that you are here and that you actually do something still, something very minor to prove you are still competent in holding the tools. — Moe ε 23:12, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

• Ah, the only problem I have with this proposal is that you mischaracterize the background. Logging in once a year to make one edit is not "gaming the system", since desysopping inactive accounts is a procedural matter only. And LC was not denied a resysop because he had been inactive too long to know what he was doing. That was claimed, sure, but there was no consensus on it. His resysop was actually declined because even the bureaucrats who didn't care how active he was weren't sure if his account had been compromised, or why he was asking. But getting back to the actual proposal, this seems to me like a solution in search of a problem. Please show me the administrator who, as a result of ignorance of policy changes, started screwing up the encyclopedia and resisted all attempts at being educated. An RFA is a stamp of a approval on an editor for not only being knowledgeable of policy, but also having clue. I choose to believe that any editor capable of passing RFA is at least cognizant of the fact that policies change. Someguy1221 (talk) 20:37, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

• I too would like to assume that anyone we give a stamp of approval on is aware of our every-changing policies and guidelines, but the reality is that most of them are probably not actively reading every day. If they are, that is one thing, and doing a bare minimum of 50 edits/administrative logs isn't very hard for someone reading Wikipedia every day. In the case of those who are not, then they don't have a clue what the current policies and guidelines are, because they are never here. In the case of Lightdarkness above, are you sufficiently satisfied that he is still able to perform administrative duties within Wikipedia based on his last bout of active editing stemming from 2007? The problem, as I said from the beginning, is accounts sitting there and rotting under the guise of they are an administrator for life, as long as they come back and make a null edit. I don't need to be convinced they are superlative at handling the admin bit, or that they know every policy, but rather confirmation that they are here and at least trying. Why would we give someone special privileges and stature in our community for them to sit and idle on it? — Moe ε 23:12, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

• FWIW, both Meta and Commons have (different) substantive activity requirements:
  • Commons: less than 5 admin actions in 6 months: 30 days' notice to confirm intention to return; then desysop without warning if again less than 5 actions in 6 months. See Commons:Commons:Administrators/De-adminship.
  • Meta: less than 10 edits in 6 months: immediate desysop; 10+ edits but fewer than 10 admin actions: 1 week to confirm intention to remain admin. See meta:Meta:Administrators#Inactivity.

Rd232 ^talk 21:19, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

• • The Commons policy of harassing administrators in otherwise good standing to perform work to maintain that standing is, to be frank, bullshit. --Golbez (talk) 22:47, 2 July 2012 (UTC)
    • And if anyone missed in my proposal, as long as you come back and do your minimum number of duties, even if you are de-admined for inactivity, you are given back to the tools procedurally like we do now. It's just changing 1 edit to prove that you're alive, to 50 to prove you're still functional. — Moe ε 23:17, 2 July 2012 (UTC)
• Yes, this is a good proposal.  Unscintillating (talk) 00:48, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
• I also support more substantive activity requirements. --99of9 (talk) 05:00, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
• Support This just seems like common sense. If you can't make at least 50 edits a year, then it is extremely unlikely that you are keeping up on policy changes and admin responsibilities and activities. Sure, there might be a few outlier admins, but the possible amount of those is so low as to be negligible for the main purpose of this proposal. Silverseren^C 05:13, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose. On these criteria, we would have lost User:Moreschi, an excellent administrator. Fut.Perf. ☼ 05:47, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

• They can easily do RfA again. I mean, if they're good admins, then it should be pretty easy to get reinstated and it would further show community support for them in general. And, heck, we could use some more RfAs in general for our current dismal stats in that area. Silverseren^C 05:56, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
• Hello Future Perfect at Sunrise. Actually, Moreschi would be fine, re-review the actual proposal. He has made 50 edits and administrative logs combined this year alone, so under this, he would retain adminship. If he was inactive for a long period of time previously (assuming he was gone for a very long time?), his edits proving him being active now means he would have got his adminship restored if it was removed. The only difference between our current practice and this proposal, is that it's 50 edits or administrative logs combined (outside of the user's own userspace) in a year, as compared to a single edit anyone on Wikipedia in one year. He actually wouldn't need to go through RFA again, Silver seren, he would just have to prove he is active on Wikipedia. This is to prevent administrators from idling for an entire year and committing a single edit to retain adminship without providing any service to the site. — Moe ε 06:07, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

• Strongly Oppose. What we need are admins who are capable of fair, judicious and impartial actions. Those qualities do not degrade over time. The argument that a period of inactivity should of itself be a disqualification is flawed for several reasons (as mentioned above they may be observing but not editing, or they may be completely absent but prepared to spend time getting up to speed when returning).

RfA discussion is not just about technical knowledge of current policy, it's about assessing intent, motivation and character. And from the point of view of this longstanding, but not especially active editor, it works. The quality of admin work here that I have seen has been outstanding: not because of detailed current knowledge of every last policy, but because it has been thoughtful.

Now I'm sure there are examples of misuse or incompetence, and that might be the motivation behind this proposal, but the way to address that concern is to streamline the process for de-adminship (for action rather than inaction).

Another legitimate concern is that requests for administrative action be dealt with promptly - let's achieve that by encouraging communication by means other than the talk page of an administrator. I would support a proposal to put a "Seems to be inactive" notice there.

Finally, (sorry this is so long), it's hard enough to get properly engaged editors, let alone properly-motivated admins so please let's not let impose an arbitrary technical requirement. Mcewan (talk) 05:59, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

• Hello, Mcewan. I'm not rather questioning their past usefulness to Wikipedia, which is self-evident because they are administrator, but rather wanting to expand what is considered inactive for the sake of the website. It's rather preposterous, the little amount of requirements it takes to retain adminship, don't you think? If admin X left now, July 3, 2012, under our current policy, he could do a total of ten edits and/or administrative actions, once a year, from now until 2022 and retain adminship without a further glance. We have continued to push a mantra of "administrator for life" to the point of ridiculousness. The whole premise behind that makes things very difficult to retain administrators, because they can come back anytime they like, make their minimum requirement of 1 edit and move on. After that, they can come back and by the time they do, it's not the same Wikipedia they left with. You can check any policy or guideline page on Wikipedia to exactly 5 years ago, it isn't the same as today. That mantra is fine for people who are here every day contributing, but it's the 1 edit admin a year this isn't fine for. All this proposal does, is makes someone who is an administrator fill a quota of 50 edits or administrative logs (blocks, protections, deletions, etc.) so that we can be sure that they are somewhat familiar with the site on a yearly basis. — Moe ε 06:28, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

Hi. I suppose my point is that if we trust someone to be an admin then we implicitly also trust them to keep current on policy before acting. There is no correlation between knowledge of policy and number of edits, so why impose any activity requirement at all? Personally I would be happy with none. Mcewan (talk) 11:40, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose, proposal doesn't actually solve any problem. 5 or 10 or 50 admin actions per year don't help me keep up with what is going on (unlike a month of lurking at ANI). We already have an arbitrary automatic desysop cutoff, and you have not demonstrated any actual problems (bad admin actions) that have resulted from making it easy to stay an admin. —Kusma (t·c) 09:17, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

For the record: on nowiki there is a gadget which helps people to keep track of who is active on which administrative tasks. See MediaWiki:Gadget-show-sysop-activity.js. Maybe someone finds it useful here as well. Helder 13:47, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

I'm not seeing the problem. Or, the problem that this would solve is not a problem that I've seen or that is being complained about. If we have signs that someone kept the bit (e.g., by making one edit every 12 months) and later screwed up with the admin tools (more than the average admin might), then de-sysopping due to inactivity (by any measure) would be reasonable. But I'm not seeing any examples of this happening, and failing any such evidence, the OP wants us to pretend that having the tools is a great big deal. Also, there are some admins who rarely do anything on the English Wikipedia, but who are sometimes enormously useful to us, e.g., dealing with multi-project copyright violations. Some of our "inactive" admins are actually quite valuable to us. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:43, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

There are also uses to being an admin that don't involve performing any admin actions. A lot of feedback issues, help desk questions, and OTRS queries require looking through deleted edits. You could theoretically have an admin who uses his tools all the time, just not the ones that log. Someguy1221 (talk) 23:53, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

• This is a solution looking for a problem. I took a lengthy wikibreak at one point, probably near two years, but came back around occasionally during it. I still read the articles, after all, and I just can't see a typo or easily fixed problem here without, well, fixing it. I was never intending to leave the project permanently, just to take a long break. This being a volunteer project, I have every right to take a "leave of absence" whenever, for whatever reason, and for whatever period of time I want, and so long as I'm not leaving to evade likely sanctions, to come back in just as good of standing as when I left. Coming back to make a null edit every so often isn't "gaming," since inactivity desysops are strictly procedural and are immediately reversible upon a simple request to the 'crats anyway. It's just a way of saying "I'm still interested in working on the project, I just am not doing it right now." Obviously, it would be incumbent upon someone who takes a long break to carefully review any changes that have occurred in their absence, as I did when I returned, but admins have passed a community process showing trust in their judgment. I should think it very basic good judgment to say "Hrm, I've been away for X years, and this project is pretty fluid. I'd better make sure I check on current community expectations before I wade in to hit the big red buttons." If someone fails to do that and fails to respond to feedback when they're told we don't do it that way anymore, we can handle that through normal processes and ultimately ArbCom, but I know of no such actual circumstance. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 16:33, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Hello, Seraphimblade. We can only hope that people who come back to their former hobby they no longer participate in actively are as willing to realize this. I know most of them would be, but there's always that exception :) In your case, since you came back, you would have had your admin bit restored procedurally just like our current policy after proving that you are active again. There have been a fair share of administrators who have come back for their admin bit on the 'crat noticeboard, then proceeded to disappear again. With this proposal, all it does is make those editors participate minimally in the community rather than not at all. — Moe ε 07:37, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Hello, everyone. The most common oppose I have read from the above oppose !votes to my proposal have been based around no current problem and there not being any examples of there being an issue. I understand the premise behind that understanding, which is something we usually base our policies and guidelines on, but this is rather a solution to a future problem which is going to arrive since we have nearing 800 inactive/semi-active administrators. Active administrators are actually a minority that is steadily declining. Just keep that in mind. :P I may write a formal WP policy proposal based on the idea, since a few people did say they supported it. I'll be around to read comments until the thread dies. Regards, — Moe ε 07:32, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

• Support A good administrator deactivated through inactivity shouldn't have any problem going through RfA again, and we should welcome the chance to review their credentials for currency. --BDD (talk) 15:41, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

• Strong oppose - The whole idea is that the community chose to trust the individual with adminship. The proposal would de facto be a way for Wikipedia:Removal of adminship. We have had a tradition that any admin who has not had the tools removed "under a cloud" may have adminship restored by any bureaucrat. This proposal is contrary to that common practice.

  And by the way, no offense to anyone asserting this idea, but the argument that someone coming back after a few years wouldn't know or understand the continually evolving common practice, and so should have adminship removed is straight up BS.

  First, you have NO CLUE whether they have been reading during this time. To use myself as an example, at one point I had severe technical issues. And while I don't mind reading wikipedia at the local library or other such places. I strongly preferred to not sign in and edit from such places.

  "Second, if we as a community decided to entrust them with the tools, and that includes to not mis-use the tools, then it follows that we should trust them to not misuse them after a lengthy wikibreak. This proposal just violates long common practice here.

  So to re-affirm: Strong oppose - jc37 16:35, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Hello, Jc37. To reply to your concerns:

• If an administrators tools were removed for not being active (50 edits/administrative logs in a calendar year) under this, they would get them restored procedurally just like we do now at WP:BN, but the only difference is instead of 1 edit/log, it would be 50, to prove activity.
• The notion that the semi-active and inactive administrators who only make an occasional edit to the encyclopedia and their request adminship back, but simultaneously sit and watch policy and guideline pages, is preposterous. There are semi-active adminstrators who do a fair share of edits around the encyclopedia, 2-3 every week, who would be unaffected by this. It's essentially only those who come back to WP:BN, request their adminiship back, then idle again are the ones who are directly affected for the most part since even semi-active admins make the bare minimum number of contributions of 50 edits/logs a year.
• Even if there was "reader" admins who sit and make no edits but request their adminship back, what good can come of giving the occasional reader of Wikipedia adminship? Why don't we give adminship back once they no longer have technical issues or once they are ready to actively return and make a bare minimum number of contributions? Like I said, the process is still procedural that they get the tools back once they are active and ready to contribute using the tools. I hate the thought of giving someone access to tools when they aren't here for a majority of the time. It's true, we don't know whether they are caught up-to-date on policy or not, but being inactive suggests that they are not here, rather than that they are.
• Regards, — Moe ε 07:41, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

The reason is that this creates needless bureaucracy. Someone gets to baby-sit the logs (or develop an automated process) to watch every admin's contributions, and remove the bit if they don't meet their quota. Then, if the admin comes back, they have to pester the 'crats to get it back. It's creating more work for no real benefit. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 16:30, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Hi Moe. I disagree with several of your points, but that's fine, neither of us can read minds, nor has the ability to see the future, so we're welcome to have a difference of opinion.

But to just address your 50 edits idea. Why is the amount higher than what we require for autoconfirming an editor? that seems a bit much. Once upon a time, we had a consensus for autoconfirmed to be changed to 7 days 20 edits. but the devs implemented a smaller amount (erring on the side of caution, which I can understand). This might be almost worth discussing if the numbers were down in that range. But 50 just seems ridiculous (as several above have noted).

Though again, I'm pretty much opposed due to the fact that trust includes not using the tools just as much as using them. So I think the entire premise of this proposal is flawed on those grounds. - jc37 15:47, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

• Strong oppose - the solution to the problem of having so many inactive admins is to have more active admins and to seek reduce the reasons that cause active admins to leave in the first place. See, for instance, today's Atlantic article on the decline in our admin ranks. Taking away admin rights from proven members is exactly the opposite approach from what we should be doing. Indeed, that would likely be the final slamming of the door to keep out those who have already made substantial contributions to the project. Removing admin bits from users who have been completely dormant for years makes good sense from an account security perspective, but the goal here is to increase the total number of active admins, not eliminate the inactive ones out of some kind of unsubstantiated fear of a future problem. Zachlipton (talk) 20:30, 16 July 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose - As previously mentioned, this doesn't seem to be a problem needing fixing. User:Moe_Epsilon hasn't shown that changing the arbitrary definition of admin inactivity will reduce the number of admins who misunderstand Wikipedia policies. There are already procedures in place for dealing with admins who don't follow policy. Matt (talk) 04:39, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Appropriateness of "X on Twitter" (or similar) articles

There's been a lot of issues with behavior problems revolving around various celebrity's "...on Twitter" articles. Examples include

• Lady Gaga on Twitter (Best I know, hasn't seen AFD yet)
• Justin Bieber on Twitter (current AFD
• Ashton Kutcher on Twitter (current AFD

Uncle G has provided a good summary of the poor behavior that these articles are creating (either way), in that we have "empty" AFD !votes, articles at GAN/FAC being sent to AFD, articles at AFD being sent to GAC/FAC, etc. Plus a race to create more, put more to GA (at minimum) as "protection" from AFD, etc. Rightly so, the problem is that these are articles that we don't know what to do with yet, and there are arguments on both sides regarding them.

First, I'd like to propose an informal halt to any meta-activity on these articles, at least until some resolve has been made. No creation, no AFD'ing, no GAN/FAC (allowing the current running ones to complete of course).

But we do need some resolve. I have my own ideas how these articles should be treated, but I don't want to taint the discussion with my opinion here. Instead, I'd like to see what the general community feels about these, are they appropriate, are there better ways of handling it, should they not even exist? Based on what consensus says, we can make appropriate changes to guideline/policy that summarizes that and then and only then can we turn back to what we have to see if the articles themselves may be affected.

Note that I am going to assume that we are talking about "...on Twitter" articles that already meet WP:V in terms of sourcing, and we're talking only those that other sources have clearly recognized, not a random celebrity or nobody. The three examples above are the ones that I would expect of minimum quality for an "on Twitter" article to even exist, so this is not meant to say that we can create a "On Twitter" article for any random person X. But even when they get as largely sourced as the above three, the questions on appropriateness remain.

Note that I'm looking ahead to any type of "X on Y" where Y is some social media application, like YouTube, or Facebook, or whatever. There may not be any articles that meet these now, but we should be considering the potential of what future such services may bring.

Given this, I'm breaking up the discussion into three areas, below. Two for "Generally acceptable" and "Generally unacceptable", and a third for "Other options", which I hope people expand with possible ideas for determining between acceptable and unacceptable. --MASEM (t) 14:26, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

"...on Twitter" articles are generally acceptable

• Assuming as the question does, that the twitter account is generally notable and verifiable. To avoid the illegitimate WP:BELONG type arguments, yes. These are similar to articles on noted individual blogs. Alanscottwalker (talk) 23:03, 2 July 2012 (UTC)
• It would be foolish to exclude broad categories of article types when they are capable of having their notability established by information discussed in multiple reliable third party sources. Any claims that these sorts of articles are too trivial are foolish as only people who think the subject worthy of study will spend their time reading them. Abyssal (talk) 21:41, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

"...on Twitter" articles are generally inappropriate

• Because of the potential spread, since most subjects here in the entertainment industry have at least the potential for such a page, the standards should be very high. The claim that such a subject is notable is the sort of extraordinary claim that needs extraordinarily good sourcing. It should require a very strict interpretation of the notability guidelines, in which several really substantial non-tabloid sources of unquestionable seriousness and reliability --preferable academic or serious published non-fiction studies devoted primarily to the topic should be required. Otherwise we degenerate into a fansite. DGG ( talk ) 01:34, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

• I would say that notability for these types of articles should be based on impact, and not just activity. Activity will be written about by "reliable sources" every day just because of the incredible size, reach and potential profitability of the industry, but this material is generally of the trivia/tabloid kind. However, sources about the cultural impact or long-term consequences of a person's Twitter account by the kinds of organizations DGG mentions above ("academic o[r] serious published non-fiction studies devoted primarily to the topic") are a completely different animal and would certainly seem to warrant a serious article. Those are understandably rarer, and so given the amount of -- yes, I'm going to say it -- cruft that finds its way into current articles on these subjects, I think saying that "X on Twitter" articles are generally inappropriate is closest to the truth. Nolelover ^{Talk·Contribs} 01:53, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
  • Well, WP:notability (fiction) was a notability guideline and tried "impact" as part of notability criterion, but it is now an essay about notability of characters itself. All internet stuff is notable under GNG, but this whole discussion is becoming more about how to write a valuable article. As said, why focusing more on notability than an idea of making MOS guideline about internet topics? --George Ho (talk) 02:24, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
• The issue that is larger than the "...on twitter" articles is the issue of meta-articles in general. These articles are reporting on the reporting of others, which is distinct from using the reporting of others as sources. Said in WP-speak, articles such as these are treating what are normally RS as PRIMARY. By writing an article about what X or Y source thinks about topic Z, we are no longer an encyclopedia but rather a news aggregator. As an example if this, if a Twitter user tweets from their verified account that they are getting married then we may update their BIO to say that they are getting married and source it (BLP allows SPS as sources about themselves) to the tweet. That is writing about the event (getting married), not the medium of distribution (Twitter). When we get into writing about the medium, the line into meta-reporting gets crossed. That is no longer encyclopeadic, but just being an aggregator (at best). That isn't to say that there aren't notable events where there is an intersection. For instance, the race to 1M followers might be notable for both the BIO and the Twitter article. --Tgeairn (talk) 02:41, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
  • As a devil's advocate, we have articles on notable fan sites that are pretty much just news aggregation or the like for something else. Take, for example Lostpedia or Equestria Daily. I will not dismiss the idea that a celeb's twitter can be notable on its own as long as the sources are talking about the Twitter account and not just reporting on news reported in the account. There is some reasonable logic here. --MASEM (t) 02:53, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
    • Right and to add, there is no basis in fact or logic to the claim that "The Washington Post" or a myriad of other sources are "primary sources" about a twitter account. Alanscottwalker (talk) 02:59, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
      • It depends on how they are reporting it. WashPost stating "Celeb X said on his twitter that he will be getting married" is a primary source. WashPost station "Celeb X's twitter has been used for X to pass along news and personal information faster than through his PR agent." would edge on secondary. --MASEM (t) 03:08, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
        • • No. The Washington Post is a secondary source; the tweet itself is primary assuming it's the person involved tweeting.Alanscottwalker (talk) 03:40, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
            • Wrong. Secondary sources require analysis and transformation of information; otherwise, if they are just repeating a primary source, they remain a primary source. This is why, for news and events, we expect analytic coverage of the event rather than only just rote reporting. --MASEM (t) 03:43, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
            • Also, specifically, the WashPost in the example above would be a third-party source, which does help with WP:V, but doesn't help with notability. --MASEM (t) 03:44, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
              • No. The Washington Post is almost never a tertiary source. And no, a secondary source reports from a primary source. It is third-party because it is not the first or second party in a communication. (however, its reporter might be the second)Alanscottwalker (talk) 03:49, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ Just as Washington Post, a secondary source, weekly reports from soap operas, primary sources. Like soap operas, Washington Post reports primary sources, like Twitter activities and fiction. --George Ho (talk) 03:59, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

As a secondary source, they have editorial control over what they report from a primary source.Alanscottwalker (talk) 04:09, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

Be aware: primary/secondary/tertiary is one way to classify a source, describing how itself is using other sources,, and first-party/third-party a completely separate way. The WashPost is a third-party (in that it is unrelated at all) to a celeb's twitter, no question. But if all that is being repeated in the WashPost is what is in the twitter with no further comment, that makes it a primary, third-party source. The thing to remember: the primary or secondary nature of WashPost (or any other source) will change depending on the topic and how they report it; we never say that every article WashPost ever publishes is always primary or always secondary. It's context dependent. Please review WP:PSTS for clarity on this. --MASEM (t) 04:11, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

As that says primary is created by the people involved not by others not involved. The Post is not the primary source. If someone speaks to you in person or writes a note that's the primary source; if someone else tells you what they said or wrote, that is secondary. Alanscottwalker (talk) 04:22, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

No, that's assuredly the "first party" source, but even a first party source can be secondary depending on the nature of the topic and method of presentation. --MASEM (t) 04:36, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

The nature of the topic is someone else's communication, and the method of presentation is the paper's editorial control over telling you that information is something they want you to inform you about. It is secondary. Alanscottwalker (talk) 10:32, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

Again, it's not as simple. If the newspaper is simply repeating what was in the Twitter with no additional analysis or critique, the newspaper is a primary source for that Twitter account because there has been no transformation of information. If the paper goes into an analysis of the Twitter account or critiques on it, or does something otherwise novel than just re-reporting what it said, it is secondary source for that Twitter account. That follows WP:PSTS and long-term discussions on WT:OR. --MASEM (t) 12:44, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

The newspaper is not simply repeating (even if there were the specialized meaning of secondary, which is incorrect), it is picking that information out to highlight. Now, if you are saying the newspaper is primary for its own content, that is unremarkable and true of every source we use, but none of them are primary for other people's communications. Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:55, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

Editing down information from primary sources does not make a work secondary if there's no further analytical aspects added to it. And no, I'm not saying the newspaper is primary for itself. If an article, in the context of the topic of re-reporting what a Twitter account, performed no further analysis of that Twitter account, that article would be a primary source for the Twitter account. That makes no claim that the rest of the newspaper is a primary source, or that the article is only a primary source for any other topic, simply for the coverage of the Twitter account. Again, you need to review WP:PSTS, as we are looking not just for one-step removed but for the analysis that comes with secondary sources. "Secondary sources are second-hand accounts, generally at least one step removed from an event. They rely on primary sources for their material, making analytic or evaluative claims about them". --MASEM (t) 13:04, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

The evaluative claim a newspaper makes when reporting is that it is something to be reported. Again, it is secondary. Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:12, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

If it happened that the entire article (or at least a very sizable chunk) was about the Twitter account, that might be true. For example, this news article discussing the Twitter "war" between Gaga and Bieber is secondary to both of them. This news article which is supporting a commentary about Bieber via quotes from his Twitter, is a primary source for the Bieber Twitter article on WP. --MASEM (t) 13:21, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

No. Commentary is a secondary source. Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:25, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

The commentary makes the second article a secondary source for Bieber himself but it makes no statement about the Twitter account beyond repeating the quote, so it is a primary source for Bieber on Twitter. --MASEM (t) 13:34, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

The statement it makes is that it is worth reporting. The tweet, itself, out of his or anyone else many tweets, is the primary source for the tweet. Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:38, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

Your concept of "secondary" is far outside the lines we use on WP. Just repeating information (even if it is the case of editorial oversight to pick out the most relevant quotes) does not create secondary information. Again, please review WP:PSTS. This is standard practice on WP. --MASEM (t) 13:44, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

Ah well, as you have nothing to offer based on the ordinary meaning of policy, words, or reason. I take it that's the end.Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:20, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

I quoted what WP:PSTS says about secondary sources! You are drastically mis-interpreting that. --MASEM (t) 14:24, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

No. Just reading it in its ordinary and common sense meaning. Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:28, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

So exactly what "analytic or evaluative claims" are being made about the Twitter account by simply requoting the Twitter account? I strongly urge you to review past discussions at WT:OR where its being iterated that newspaper stories just reiterating the facts are typically primary sources, but can be secondary in other context. This is crux to this issue to understand why this articles can be problematic if they're based only on repeating what was said in Twitter. --MASEM (t) 14:33, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

No. Sorry. We've been through exactly this above and it's best not to repeat. My answer has not changed. If you would care to discuss further come to my page. Thanks. Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:38, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

You never answered this, and it is critical to this discussion not to separate it to a separate page. Understanding the nature of Twitter coverage by sources is critical to whether they pass notability or other tests for article allowance. --MASEM (t) 15:11, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

I've tried in at least three slightly different ways, see the comments beginning: "The newspaper is not simply repeating...,"The evaluative claim. . ."; "The statement it makes. . .". I don't know what more I can do. Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:32, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

"The evaluative claim a newspaper makes when reporting is that it is something to be reported" is bogus, at least when considering the second article I point above. When a newspaper article dedicates itself to a topic, like the Twitter war article that the first example is, that gives some credence to the evaluative claim. But when it simply pulls a tweet out to support an article about the person, there is zero evaluative claims about the Twitter account. It's just using the Twitter account as a source, like they would use eyewitnesses, press releases, or interview responses as sources; using these first-person accounts as sources as part of a larger topic, without any further comment, does not make the newspaper article a secondary source for the first-person account. --MASEM (t) 15:37, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

That is the evaluative claim it makes. It doesn't matter if you don't approve of the evaluative claim it makes. It has decided that that information is pertinent and worthy of coverage. Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:47, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ What happened to the recap thing and stuff? How is reporting real-life events not the same as recapping soap operas? --George Ho (talk) 16:40, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

You can have a primary source recap an event, a secondary source recap an event, or a tertiary source recap an event, so its not pertinent to the distinction. Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:19, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

A recap that only summarizes the event/show/whatever is a primary source. A recap that summarizes and adds commentary or analysis is secondary. --MASEM (t) 20:07, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

Incorrect, the categorization is the sources relation to the action and what they use as source{s). Alanscottwalker (talk) 10:46, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Primary/Secondary has nothing to do with the source relation; that's the first party/third party metric. It has to do with where the information is coming from and how it is used. I've read through the discussions on WT:OR to make sure my memory of how these discusses go, and again its pretty clear that reporting without analysis is primary, period. Your viewpoint, specifically on the example above where an article simply republished what the Twitter account says, that this article is a secondary source of information for the twitter account, is flat out wrong. You can check WT:OR if you want but that viewpoint is just not compatable with the normal definitions or how WP uses the terms.

But as to avoid dragging this out. I am making the assumption that when we are talking about this "X on Twitter" articles that they have sourcing that already meets the GNG, so we're not challenging these articles based on notability; ergo, whether certain pieces of coverage are primary or secondary doesn't matter since we're assuming we've got secondary sources aplenty so that notability is not what's being challenged here. There's other factors at play that are more significant to consider. --MASEM (t) 12:31, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Thankyou. The Notability assumption is the one under which this discussion was started. I appreciate that you have come to agree with me that this is not the place to discuss categorization, although your understanding of the categorization is incorrect. Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:59, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

• I can't stand these articles for a pretty simple reason... 95% of what is written is pure trivia, while the useful 5% is already covered (or should be covered) on the subject's main article. They offer excessively fine detail on what is an incredibly small part of any celebrities person. Resolute 03:21, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
  • I will add, however, that getting rid of them is about as likely as dumping the equally silly royal wedding dress articles. Excessive detail on trivial things is something the project will very likely contain until the servers are switched off. Resolute 03:24, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
    • What? Articles of wedding dresses worn by celebrity are historical and worth discussing due to royalty, value, and stuff, mergable or not. Of Twitter activities, on the other hand, are children of internet activities and may suffer from recentism. --George Ho (talk) 03:33, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
      • That is rather my point, actually. Kate Middleton is notable for marrying a royal and her wedding to Will is likewise notable. Her dress is claimed to be notable because she is, which is a borderline POVFORK. I view the ...on Twitter articles the same way. Justin Bieber and his music may be notable, but the fine detail on this trivia is likewise a borderline POVFORK. Bieber uses hashtags when tweeting, and discusses a wide variety of subjects! OMG! So do I! Better write an article about my Twitter activities too! Resolute 13:37, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
        • ...Well, wedding dresses are not similar to technology. In fact, under Wikipedia standards, articles of a dress need reception and analysis to add encyclopedic value, regardless of notability, right? 19th-century dresses may be exceptions due to needs of an offline source. However, an article of an account cannot explain only messages that made impact; it needs background of creation and signifying analysis in general. The current revisions of an account article is bloated and demeaning to general public of five years from now. --George Ho (talk) 17:07, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

• It is a piece of technology, a means of communication. What a famous person may say may be noteworthy, but what means of communication they used is not. This should just be so completely obvious to anyone above a basic grade level that I find it difficult to fathom just why we have to discuss it. Tarc (talk) 13:02, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
• I explained below, but suffice it to say that I agree with DGG on this. WP:NOT applies. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © 14:55, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
• These are WP:SS subarticles of the main article. As such, their topic must not only be separately notable, but their size relative to the main article and other subarticles (if any) must be in proportion to the importance of the topic for the person's biography as a whole. I would be exceptionally surprised if a topic so trivial as a person's Twitter presence would be so important to their biography as to justify the creation of a separate article. Moreover, such articles are at a peril of filling up with vapid tabloid-style content even faster than the main article.  Sandstein  19:16, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
• "...On Twitter" is inherently unencyclopedic since it is essentially original research-type sifting of primary source material to first publish a treatise a topic. Carrite (talk) 20:05, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
• See my comment on one of the AFD's - in short: no thank you (✉→BWilkins←✎) 21:32, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
• Doesn't belong here; shows poor editorial judgement. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 21:38, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
• This is one of those odd cases where you can actually source an article correctly, even though the article itself contains nothing of value. Twitter might be a popular medium, but do we need a separate record to document what individual XYZ had said or done on this service? What about "On LinkedIn" or "On FaceBook", or the tongue in cheek "Caveman on historical clay tablet"?. There is simply no encyclopedic value in these articles - virtually the entire page is trivial information, and the few scraps of decent data can just as well be covered in the main page (And most times it is already covered). "On x" should generally be avoided - we don't want nor need an entire bunch of subpages for every article to document a relation with an external information source. Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 22:41, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

• Such articles are never appropriate as an article on any site with a desire to be a professional encyclopedia. The test of these things is to swap out one communication mediaum for another. X on a telephone. X on walkie talkies. X on Skype. X on Reddit. Ridiculous. DreamGuy (talk) 01:28, 4 July 2012 (UTC)
• It is pretty simple: we are building a serious encyclopaedia. For those who prefer a wiki that does not restrict their behaviour and accepts all kinds of nonsensical content: go install mediawiki on your own server. Arcandam (talk) 12:34, 4 July 2012 (UTC)
• Wikipedia is not Facebook or Twitter. If there is any notable content in the article, merge it with the celebrity's main article. --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 15:50, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

• Again, I'll copy and paste what I said at two ongoing AFDs:
  ... because this is what Wikipedia is WP:NOT. Wikipedia is WP:NOTDIARY, WP:NOTCASE study, and WP:NOTDIRECTORY. This is not a simple issue of notability. The fact is, for any major public figure, you're going to be able to assemble sources about a myriad of subtopics. Barack Obama's appearances in Ohio. Justin Bieber's live performances. Lindsay Lohan's substance abuse issues. Those would all technically be sourceable. The problem is, you're starting to get into topic selections that resemble the biases of the editor. You're starting to confuse "the subject" with "what the subject is notable for". It's your standard WP:CONTENTFORK problem where people can write multiple articles that are all basically about the same thing, which would make the encyclopedia even more unmanageable than it already is.
  ... There's my best reading of our policy, in both letter and in spirit. Shooterwalker (talk) 15:48, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

  Lindsay Lohan's substance abuse issues might be large enough for a spinout.... — Arthur Rubin (talk) 16:22, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

  Great, you managed to stumble upon my worst nightmare. (I'm one of the main editors trying to keep Lindsay Lohan in shape and I am all too familiar with the reams and reams of sources available on the most minor aspects of her life.) I seriously hope the BLP and POV issues of a spinout like that are too obvious for anyone to attempt it. Siawase (talk) 16:36, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

• Something like somebody saying they liked some clothes caused some rush that was remarked on in a secondary source then that would be about the limit of the twitter I'd have though was reasonable to include. A secondary source is needed. Dmcq (talk) 16:00, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

• Only if there is commentary about the celebrity's use of Twitter, and a sufficient amount of that so that a spinout article is appropriate. The actual tweets by that twit twitterer should not be a factor as to whether there is an article. Otherwise, it really does fall into WP:NOTDIARY. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 16:22, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

• Here's how I think WP:POVFORK applies. I think it was Tarc who mentioned this in one of the afds, NPOV doesn't just apply to controversial opinions (where it most often gets brought up) but to everything. It wouldn't be NPOV to add 50k text with details of Bieber's twitter activitities to the main Justin Bieber article, that would be giving it undue weight. And the context of the full biography makes due and undue weight and NPOV fairly easy to determine. Creating a separate article on only one aspect ends up skirting around the undue weight issues that would be obvious if it was included in the main article. We're talking about entertainers here, who are notable for their singing, acting etc. And we don't spin out separate articles on that. There is no Justin Bieder's singing career or Lady Gaga's singing career that had to be spun out due to length, but these minor aspects supposedly need to be spun out? Siawase (talk) 16:29, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

• "On Twitter" articles should never be considered encyclopedia-worthy. As I said on the AfD discussion about Justin Bieber on Twitter: If your interested in somebody's Tweets, then do you A) read the person's Tweets or B) read about the Tweets on Wikipedia? I have a feeling almost everybody answers "A". Also, a topic's verifiability and the fact that it is well-sourced are not enough for it to be included. Perhaps include the information on each person's article, or start a section on the Twitter article about "Notable Twitter Accounts", but individual Twitter accounts do not deserve their own articles. RedSoxFan2434 (talk) 20:13, 4 July 2012 (UTC)
• In almost every case, the media presence of a subject (on Twitter, on their own website, in the New York Times, etc.) is not independently notable of the subject itself, and as such, the default for "Foo on Twitter" should be "REDIRECT:Foo". The number of Twitter followers cannot and should not be used to claim notability pbp 22:24, 5 July 2012 (UTC)
• Per DGG at the very top above. I suspect that the appropriate number of "X on Twitter" articles is zero (certainly sometimes a tweet is notable but it can be mentioned in the article on the author or subject of the tweet). But that my change as new sources become available . In any event, they should be the exception rather than the rule. Eluchil404 (talk) 07:23, 6 July 2012 (UTC)
• I think DGG and Nolelover together covered it pretty well. I won't say that no X on Twitter article is worthy, but I think they would be exceptionally rare (and I'm not convinced we've had one yet). Anything someone tweets is either not worthy of mention at all, or should be in the main article on the person. We would need high quality (think academic) sources talking about the impact of someone's Twitter (Facebook, Goodreads, what-have-you) account as a notable phenomenon in order to justify an article in an encyclopedia about that account. Wikipedia is supposed to be an encyclopedia, WP:NOTPEOPLEMAGAZINE. LadyofShalott 02:31, 7 July 2012 (UTC)
• Like the user just above me (LadyofShalott^contact) wrote, I too feel that the users DGG (talk · contribs) and Nolelover (talk · contribs) together described the issue pretty well. Nothing much left for me to contribute, however I will say this that the subjects of the articles are not really worth a separate page.  Brendon is here 12:06, 7 July 2012 (UTC)
• I feel as though I'm mostly reiterating what others have said, but I see no need for separate articles along this vein. The content would be better kept (or moved, or added, as appropriate) to the ... article instead of existing in a ... on twitter article. --Nouniquenames (talk) 00:35, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

I completely agree. - Presidentman talk · contribs Random Picture of the Day (Talkback) 21:49, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

• I don't think that "on Twitter" article are really necessary. If a person's social media profile is notable enough to have many reliable sources documenting it as such, then the person's article should just be expanded to include a "Social media" section. I think it's inappropriate and unencyclopedic to create "on Twitter" articles, as it not only adds to the problem of the already-cluttered navigational system, but gives undue weight to certain celebrities.—Yutsi ^Talk/ Contributions ( 偉特 ) 18:55, 11 July 2012 (UTC)
• Lots of comments above that make sense. Resolute and Sandstein, in particular, are right on the money. My take: X on Twitter articles are almost always inappropriate. The notability of X is completely irrelevant, and neither should it matter how often X tweets or how large an audience X has. The rare exception—and I think this would be very rare—would be in cases where X's tweets are recurrently noteworthy in and of themselves, attracting sustained news coverage and significant discussion among notable secondary sources over a lengthy interval. If we don't limit it to that, we're not only falling prey to recentism and indiscriminate content but also risk participating in the creation of a feedback loop that elevates the status of certain social media outlets and some of their users. Rivertorch (talk) 04:42, 16 July 2012 (UTC)
• X's activity on Twitter (if verifiable via WP:reliable sources) is a subject of coverage in the article about X. In fact, there is no topic for the article "X on Twitter". At all. – Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 13:03, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

"...on Twitter" articles should not be lumped together but evaluated individually

• I strongly object to the framing of this dispute. Were you to ask me whether I think said articles are generally acceptable or generally inappropriate, I would be compelled to say the latter even though I would vote to keep nearly all the ones currently in existence (the remainder being merge votes) and would move to undelete the one that just got deleted, which I said then and will say again was actually the one that was most worthy of being kept. The idea that there should be some sort of general verdict on the validity of including x-type of article is absurd. So, I will just create a section for people to assert the more basic principle that we shouldn't make judgments on Wikipedia content based solely on generalizations and innuendo. Each article is unique and should be judged based on its own independent circumstances not some confluence of hostility towards articles on popular culture and social media. We already have perfectly fine standards for determining whether an article should be kept or not, if we apply them appropriately and do not make judgments based on our preconceptions about the subject matter then it will work out fine.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 22:11, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

• On a note separate from the overall status of Twitter account articles I would cover the specific problem of WP:INDISCRIMINATE being used in these discussions. In the Kutcher Twitter AfD, people citing WP:INDISCRIMINATE appeared to be using it as a nice way to get rid of articles on pop-culture subjects they detest by claiming it is an "indiscriminate" collection of gossip material without regard to anything that separates it from the norm (the Bennifer AfD mentioned below is a similar case of the policy being abused to ignore the unique notability of the subject). Now, when I cited that policy in prior AfDs it was for these "rumor" articles that literally just tracked down rumors and gossip about a subject and compiled it all in a single article that actually resembled some subject of pseudo-significance. It was an absurd thing that you could do for just about any subject, which is not the case here. You really wouldn't have the sources to do an article "Rihanna on Twitter" that would not just be a random summarizing of things she has said on Twitter because the actual subject of her use of Twitter does not get much attention. Nothing I can find in connection with her on Twitter has any independent significance. Basically it is just reporting her talking about stuff happening to her. That is the kind of difference I would try to find.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 01:01, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

• This. More explanation for why I think this is available in my earlier comment, but the long and short of it is that there is nothing inherent about a Twitter account that means it cannot be notable or written usefully about. If some of the current crop of Twitter articles don't meet our standards, that's fine - we have a deletion process that can deal with non-notable or unencyclopedic articles! However, if/when there are articles about notable Twitter accounts - whether that's today, in six months, in five years, whatever - there will be, and will have been, no value in a blanket prohibition on the very concept. Evaluate an article on its merits, not on whether we like the topic or whether our scry glass says that every article about it always will suck. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 00:06, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

• • To both above, the issue is that we need to figure out some line if there are some that should be kept and some that shouldn't. To say "oh, treat each case-by-case" is not a resolution. I am starting on the assuming that WP:V is met, and that they are GNG-notable in that there are sources that talk about the Twitter account and not just the person or repeating what they post. (All three above examples I felt met that) But from that, based on those that don't think these are appropriate, how do we decide that? What line do we use? There's a confluence of BLP, UNDUE, and SIZE/Summary style issues that work together; some are insisting there's no such line at all, but if there is one, we need a strong definition of it. We can't just wave the problem off as it is causing problems. Please feel free to include specific ideas in new sections for !voting, of course. --MASEM (t) 01:40, 4 July 2012 (UTC)
• This discussion is...well, sprawling and confusing, first of all. Regardless, While I agree we need a meter-stick to measure (or whack) things with, I don't think it needs to be a Twitter-stick specifically. The question is more, When does WP:IINFO apply? When doesn't it? What is the motivation of the policy? (cf. WP:WHYN) Does anyone have a clear idea of that? If we have some way to agree to that, then that will be the bright line for any 'on Twitter' article, after things like verifiable and notable have been passed, and judging them individually should cause some small measure less strife. I seem to have forgotten my login, I'll recover it momentarily. ~Darryl From Mars 150.35.244.246 (talk) 07:47, 4 July 2012 (UTC)
• Twitter is a communication medium like any other. Probably 100 years ago if there was Wikipedia people would be saying should we have articles on radio broadcasts? And 15 years ago, should we have articles on blogs? Like anything else, most examples are non-notable, but there's going to be some that are notable, either because they use the medium in an innovative/clever/successful way, or because the communications have a wider influence/effect, or because they're useful in understanding someone who is sufficiently important to merit that understanding (much as historians and scholars use personal letters and diaries to understand figures of the past). People who pioneered use of Twitter as an advertising/communication medium are likely to be notable for their Twitter use, as are people who used Twitter for artistic or political purposes, but those who don't innovate may not be notable. But this can only be decided by studying the notability of the Twitter feed. (But of course there's a difference between notable twitter feeds and spin-offs from articles that have lower notability standards.) --Colapeninsula (talk) 09:34, 4 July 2012 (UTC)
  • I want to be clear, again: For this discussion we need to start from the assumption that for "X on Twitter" (or whatever), notability has firmly been established, so that we're talking about the next step of if there are other aspects that make it appropriate or not. (Notability is a necessary but not sufficient requirement for a standalone article). --MASEM (t) 12:47, 4 July 2012 (UTC)
  • Radio shows are a strange comparison to the social media use of already notable individuals. A more apt comparison from earlier eras would be "Correspondence of" articles, and we have very few of those. Siawase (talk) 13:05, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Not so different, see The Jack Benny Program. See also, Letters of Charles Lamb. Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:12, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

A comedy show with several writers and a large cast? And yes, look at Category:Correspondences and how few entries it has. Correspondence is not something that appears to be generally notable if we go back in time a bit. Siawase (talk) 15:41, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Sure, Particular correspondence is notable and particular writers of correspondence are notable. But I was responding to your ill-formed claim that a famous person is not different from a communication outlet, solely because the person is famous. Thus we have Letter, Book, Radio, TV, etc. Alanscottwalker (talk) 19:26, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Other viewpoints

• Okay, after all considerations, notability of these things are.... not easy to define. Nevertheless, another Manual of Style subpage about internet content is needed. Someone must focus more on that rather than focus on notability criteria on internet. MUST. AVOID. SAME. FATE. AS. WP:notability (fiction), as there is WP:manual of Style/Writing about fiction. --George Ho (talk) 01:41, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

No special guideline is needed, just the usual WP:GNG. Has anyone written a book about Lady Gaga's twitter account? Are there serious articles from reliable sources that survey the history, behavior, and influence of Lady Gaga's twitter account? I just took a quick look at Lady Gaga on Twitter, and there do appear to be quite a few articles cited, in legitimate newspapers, whose main topic is indeed Lady Gaga's twitter account. There is enough material for a substantial article, with no padding or gratuitous quotations or cherry-picking references. Seems like a slam dunk to me.

OK, now I just took a quick look at Ashton Kutcher on Twitter. It seems to be a little more focused on trivia (do we really need to know the exact second that the account was created? do we need a list of his venture-capital investments? technology-related characters that Kutcher plays?? that he advertises digital cameras???), but there seem to be plenty of serious articles that really have this Twitter account as their main topic. I haven't gone over the article carefully, but it appears that even if the non-salient fluff were pared away, there is still plenty of factual material to make an article. The basis for notability is WP:NOTINHERITED from Kutcher's celebrity, it's that this was the first Twitter account to reach 1,000,000 followers. We don't just have a bunch of miscellaneous press coverage, we have a clear explanation for why the account received so much press coverage, in the form of a main fact that has a lot of closely related facts surrounding it, which got covered because that main fact was so important. That, ladies and gentlemen, is what we write encyclopedia articles about.

—Ben Kovitz (talk) 02:04, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

Like fictional and nonfictional material, WP:IINFO applies to these types. Notability and referencing are less relevant than content itself. Kutcher account needs an analyst, as Suicide of Tyler Clementi and Sam and Diane have analysts, which I've already said in AFD of Kutcher. --George Ho (talk) 02:17, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

Well said Ben Kovitz, the multiple angles the Kuthcher account has been covered in reliable sources -- from business, to communications, to philanthropy, to advertising, to media, to marketing, to (don't tell anyone) celebrity, etc. -- is why we write. Alanscottwalker (talk) 02:25, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

Shouldn't our usual metrics apply? Primarily, the one that says develop related content in the main article and only split when the content threatens to become too large? Powers ^T 14:34, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

In part, yes, though checking the history of these articles, that doesn't seem to be how they were created (and using the Bieber article as the example, it certainly wasn't from pulling out a section about his Twitter aspects based on its history, nor if we were to merge the articles back into the bios (ingnoring size) would much of these twitter articles retain their content. So the specific examples raise questions. But it still is entirely possible that a "on Twitter" article could be created as a spinout from a large bio article. That remains the question is that an appropriate spinout to meet SIZE aspects? That's a question to be answered here. --MASEM (t) 15:10, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

I'm concerned about what I see as a conflation of a couple of issues here. First, there's "are the current '...on Twitter' articles we have up to the encyclopedia's standards?" question. This is why there are AfDs running, and it's important that we do evaluate them. Second, there's "is is possible for an '...on Twitter' topic to be notable enough for us?" This is a valid question, though I think the answer is really "that depends entirely on the account in question, doesn't it?" It matters less to me whether they appear as standalone articles or as article sections, but I think we'll find in the near future that commentary that happens on Twitter is going to turn out to be something people write about in some depth, and pre-emptively prohibiting content about those topics will turn out to have limited us unnecessarily.

Now, both of these two issues are valid discussion points, and it's good to see them raised. However, I think there's a third issue being brought into play here, one that's really, seriously obscuring the discussion we should be having about issues 1 and 2. That issue is "do we, personally, like recentist-type content, especially involving newfangled celebrities or newfangled communication mediums?" and I think the issue of whether we like Twitter, or think Justin Bieber is ridiculous, or wonder why the hell all these news bureaus care about what Ashton Kutcher tweets when there's a war on, etc, is acting as a huge derail from what we should be looking at.

It shouldn't matter whether we think a topic is childish or too new - if that were a criterion for our inclusion, I'd be running around nominating every Pokemon article we have for deletion, because you kids and your newfangled games...!. But the fact is we have documentation and sources to show that Bulbasaur is notable, no matter how much its existence makes me want to headdesk. People talk about Pokemon, they write about them, and no matter how silly I find them, they're notable and sourceable. Can the same be said for "...on Twitter" topics, some or all? I obviously can't say for sure, but I do wish the community would focus on addressing that issue rather than the issue of whether those durn kids today have strange taste in what they write about. Relatedly, I would love to know how I've somehow found myself speaking up for anything having to do with Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga. One second I was mid-crotchety-cane-thump, the next I was copyediting a Twitter article! A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 20:41, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

• Bulbasaur article is diversive: it has merchandise, reception, and creation. "<name> on Twitter", on the other hand, is just retelling of events, suitable for Wikinews, and lacks general signifying viewpoint on account as a whole. Viewpoint on specific message from Twitter... is not that general. --George Ho (talk) 20:52, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

Strong support Twitter accounts are no different than any other topic, they are not presumed to be automatically notable or non-notable, they should be considered notable if there's been enough coverage in multiple reliable sources. Yes, it's true that topics like this are prime symbols in grand narratives of The Decline of Western Civilization, this vague (and empirically unrigorous) feeling that "we used to care about important matters but now all we care about is the Kardashians". But such feelings ought to have no bearing on our consideration of whether these articles actually meet the notability policy. If the current articles don't, I'm fine deleting them, but I'm embarassed to see DGG of all people endorsing the notion that a topic can be presumed inherently unencyclopedic. If more serious publications are starting to cover Twitter accounts on a par with blogs or YouTube series as a creative form, who are we to second guess them? (I've seen trends in this direction, if nothing that yet indicates true notability, for instance Pitchfork Media including "best Twitter account" in their end-of-year music polls).

Maybe it's just the "X on Twitter" framing that's tripping us up here. Shit My Dad Says is an article on a discrete creative product; @FakeAPStylebook could be one if you could find enough sources; so what's inherently wrong with @kanyewest or @justinbieber as a topic (given enough sources)? Of course that's not the same as collating every media reference to "X said something on twitter today". We don't have "X on Youtube" articles either but we do have articles such as The Angry Video Game Nerd whose scope basically coincides with a YouTube channel. 169.231.53.116 (talk) 23:23, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

One significant difference is that Shit My Dad Says is notable for being a twitter account. Entertainers are notable for being... entertainers, singers, actors etc. Their participation in social media is a sideline, just one aspect of many of their life outside of the reason for them being notable in the first place. Siawase (talk) 00:42, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, I don't think that's a valid comparison. There aren't the same WP:CONTENTFORK issues with that twitter account. IMO, if that account were the activities of an already notable comedian, perhaps we would merge them there. But since it's uniquely and separately notable, with no other redundant article, the best way to cover it is as a separate article about twitter activities. Shooterwalker (talk) 15:51, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

And on the flip side, there are personalities that have become notable by their blogs/social media (eg Angry Video Game Nerd, Doug Walker), but we generally keep the person and their blog/social media together. --MASEM (t) 17:03, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

If there are sources about accounts and they are copious and widespread I don't mind them, but the bar should be higher than the GNG, as for accounts of notable people or organizations they are superfluous and belong in a public relations or social media section of their owner.LuciferWildCat (talk) 03:00, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

Just to be specific, since I want to collect as many opinions of this nature as possible; how much higher than the GNG, exactly, would suffice? Darryl from Mars (talk) 10:50, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Discussion

...Umm... Shall we move this to WP:village pump (idea lab)? Well, there is no policy on exact accounts used by people; just X on Y policies and guidelines, which might be vague. --George Ho (talk) 19:14, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

Depending on how this discussion goes, this might fall under existing policy (like WP:BLP) or guidelines (WP:BIO). It is something that needs addressing. --MASEM (t) 22:59, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

I think there's a wider discussion that needs to be had on forking out single aspects from BLPs. There was also the recent AfD for Personal life of Jennifer Lopez (and current Articles for deletion/Bennifer.) If we simply use the standard of "possible to cobble together enough news coverage to satisfy WP:GNG" there are almost endless aspects that could be broken out as separate articles for high profile celebrities. Siawase (talk) 20:19, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

I don't know for sure if the scope should be expanded to include general split off of BLPs - I'm not saying that the issues aren't related but I'm more worried on the current issue of this "On Twitter" articles which are starting to pop up. If this goes that way, then we should add it. --MASEM (t) 22:59, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

• I would have to agree with DGG here, that X on Twitter should be the exception rather than the rule, and only when it has the proper coverage that isn't fansite like, or no more than recent news. There may be a few exceptions, but in general, most X on Twitter articles are not encyclopedic for a host of reasons, particularly those listed in our policy WP:NOT. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © 01:39, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

I would even agree to that but not for DGG's reasoning that they need extra special scholarly sources and thus a new policy, but because most do not have notability, under current policy. Alanscottwalker (talk) 02:16, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

• I have listed this discussion at Template:Centralized discussion and added an {{rfc}} tag at the top of the discussion. Cunard (talk) 18:18, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
• Update: Ashton Kutcher on Twitter is deleted. --George Ho (talk) 19:29, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
• I'm new to this, but is the way this discussion is broken up really going to allow us to draw to anything? Half of this page as a far too indented discussion of 'nuh-uh/yah-huh's on something irrelevant, and the rest is a series of individual knight-templar 'no's and long-winded 'only barely's; there doesn't seem to be any exchange or comparison of the arguments offered, if any? Darryl from Mars (talk) 08:23, 5 July 2012 (UTC)
  • In response, this whole discussion is getting too big. Administrators, I want to split this discussion into WP:village pump (policy)/On Twitter articles or WP:requests for comment/On Twitter articles or something. Please, admins? --George Ho (talk) 08:56, 5 July 2012 (UTC)
    • Why would you split it??? Its the same discussion. Moving it to its own page may be a solution if there's more involvement but right now there's actually a pretty clear consensus that has very little rebuttal about it. --MASEM (t) 12:34, 5 July 2012 (UTC)
      • Well, ignoring for the moment that it's not actually clear to me what that consensus you see is, the fact there's very little but is to my point; this is a good format for collecting a variety of opinions, but I can't fathom having a coherent back-and-forth on the arguments presented in this format.

And, ending the moment of ignoring it, what exactly -is- the 'un-rebutted' consensus you see in this? Darryl from Mars (talk) 12:49, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

There's about 15 to 1 that say that X on Twitter articles are generally unacceptable (yes, not a vote, but at the same time there's reasoning for each entry that's pretty clear what policies apply). --MASEM (t) 12:54, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Yes but that's the nature of the divisions made. I dare say that, if we consider the space of possible noun phrases as essentially infinite, almost all things are generally unacceptable. But I worry that you want to apply these general votes to specific situations? For example, as many as four or five of those fifteen express caveats that would lead to 'keep' votes for some of the specific 'on Twitter' articles under consideration, although they say rightly that this kind of article would be -generally- unacceptable. Moreover, there are arguments outside the first two sections, if you don't consider them to be rebuttals because they aren't directly juxtaposed, I can do something to that effect myself, if you like? Darryl from Mars (talk) 13:27, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

I wrote the titles as "generally acceptable" etc. because like all policy/guidelines, ultimately IAR comes into play. Yes, the 15-to-1 doesn't mean that no "X on twitter" article should exist, but that they should be avoided. When can they be created? Assuming that this consensus remains, that's the next question, what are good metrics to know when a "... on Twitter" article is appropriate, or alternatively, when it is not. For example, in the latter case, based on the discussion here and at AFDs of the existing ones, issue like WP:IINFO come up, as well as UNDUE, as well as being wary that this is BLP-related material. At the same time we have Barack Obama on Twitter which, while at AFD, doesn't appear to be going to deletion any time soon as it is less a personal Twitter account as opposed to one done in the course of a job. So there's more to discuss, the first step was to get the feel for where consensus agrees things were. --MASEM (t) 13:37, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Hn, put like that, I can't help but feel this was foregone then. But fine, that next question is one worth moving to. Might I suggest consideration of each potentially relevant policy in it's own little section, or something like that? Something that winds the arguments into cohesive threads, because I suspect strength in numbers doesn't reflect strength in policy in this case. Darryl from Mars (talk) 13:52, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

My opinion is to deal with these articles on a case by case basis. By setting a policy in stone, we may find ourselves in a tricky situation in future when there is a highly notable incident involving Twitter's use by a celebrity. However, we should also not get carried away and create an article on Twitter use by top-10 celebrities by the number of followers.EngineerFromVega^★ 07:11, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

• Update: The former article has been userfied into User:TonyTheTiger/Ashton Kutcher on Twitter. --George Ho (talk) 07:44, 6 July 2012 (UTC)
• At first, I thought this discussion was about the "X on Twitter" links, i.e. {{Twitter}}, until I noticed there are such articles xD. --The Evil IP address (talk) 17:15, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

• generally acceptable vs generally inappropriate are highly misleading divisions and much of the posting above is therefore wasted energy over it. As such even replying to this discussion seems out far left. The requested comment is perhaps best closed and restarted without this misleading setup. Regards, SunCreator ^(talk) 13:22, 17 July 2012 (UTC)
  • Those were the two initial options but editors were invited to add other suggestions (as done with the heading about not grouping them together). No one else bothered to do so, suggesting there weren't many other options. However, it is clear discussion has favored the concept that these are generally unacceptable, therefore we work from there. --MASEM (t) 13:26, 17 July 2012 (UTC)
    • That doesn't seem like a fair comparison, making a new section all for yourself requires a certain amount of will/ego/indignation, that I wouldn't compare it to just adding another few lines to the given opinions. And I'm still not convinced the 'there' you wish to work from is that different from the 'there' we started at. almost anything is generally unacceptable, cf. buildings, Willis Tower. Darryl from Mars (talk) 13:44, 17 July 2012 (UTC)
      • I disagree with the argument about creating new sections in a discussion (At least one editor did). And even if you think the initial discussion breakdown was bad, more than enough arguments in the decision point to a clear consensus about these types of articles not being appropriate except under certain conditions. --MASEM (t) 13:55, 17 July 2012 (UTC)
        • Yes, but you suggested that 'x editors made new sections' implied 'only x editors had other opinions'. Anyways, the point is that there's always 'certain conditions'. Every article on Wikipedia had to/has to meet 'certain conditions'. The interesting discussion isn't learning that those conditions exist, it's coming to consensus on what they are/should be. Darryl from Mars (talk) 14:20, 17 July 2012 (UTC)
          • But again, its pretty clear from discussion that the times where it is appropriate seem far and few between (but never impossible) that IAR is a perfectly fine means to justify the outliers. In general, we should not have "X on Twitter" articles (there's better means of organizing info about a famous person's twitter account) but there's always exceptions. --MASEM (t) 14:30, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Let's translate this to other topics

Let's write similar articles, but about people who are not internet celebrities:

• Rossevelt on stamps. Did you know that Franklin D. Roosevelt was a stamp collector and made several designs for US stamps? And then he was depicted in several stamps. And you can find coverage in books.
• Goebbels on poetry. Did you know that Nazi propagand minister Joseph Goebbels wrote an autobiographic novel, two plays and several poems? And that he used poets to write propaganda? Yes, that side of Goebbels is covered in books

And so on and on. When a person is famous enough, articles about him start digressing about minor aspects of his life. By picking pieces here and there, you can write tomes about any minor aspect of a famous person. (see also Siawase's comment above) --Enric Naval (talk) 11:02, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

• You've mistranslated. The "Y" in "X on Y" is supposed to be a social networking WWW site where the person has an account. After all, that's what the "on" connotes. Per our usual naming conventions, your articles would be properly named Joseph Goebbels discography and Franklin D. Roosevelt in popular culture or some such, which aren't really the point at hand and aren't the "X on Y" form.

  For what it's worth: When researching Harriet Hanson Robinson recently, I found that she has two Facebook accounts. ("Activities: Women's Suffrage Interests: Books, Sewing". I kid you not. No, they're not in the mirroring-Wikipedia section, obviously, since Wikipedia has only just gained an article.) This is fairly good Internet-fu for someone who died in 1911. FDR only gets a page in the mirroring-Wikipedia section of Facebook. So come back with FDR only when you can write Franklin D. Roosevelt on Facebook to match Harriet Hanson Robinson on Facebook. ☺

  Uncle G (talk) 11:38, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

  • Well, Roosevelt has appeared in many stamps of many countries[1], so I could still write Roosevelt on stamps. "Seventeen foreign countries have honored the stamp-collecting President with total of 85 denominations, more foreign stamps than have been issued for any other American."[2] Heck, I could even write about his stamp collection[3] (OK, OK, I mistranslated that) --Enric Naval (talk) 07:10, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Spinoffs

As near as I can tell, these "Twitter" articles are spinoffs of famous people. Now normally such things are Bibliography of X (for books) or Filmography of Y (for films) or Album of Z. I can't imagine why Social Media Activities of X would be any different, as its just another form of media. Yes, its recent media, yes its hard to judge its impact objectively, but SO much ink has been spilled its hard to see why such activities should be forced onto RandomCeleb's main page. Its a fairly natural sort of break, and obviously some of these activities attract a lot of attention. Treat em as subarticles I say: Consideration must be given to size, notability and potential neutrality issues before proposing or carrying out a split.  The Steve  06:39, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

The "...on twitter" articles have very different contents from spun out bibliographies, filmographies and discographies. The latter are almost always lists of works that are in themselves notable. Siawase (talk) 15:44, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

(EC) But when twitter is being taken as a creative medium, the twitter account is usually taken as a discrete creative unit. Individual tweets are never going to be notable, just as we have articles on blogs and not blog posts. Maybe that's the fundamental disconnect, I think of these articles as no different than an article on a blog, it just happens to be one with a 140-ccharacter limit. Not all blogs are independently notable of their authors but some are. Regarding X on the phone, Y on Facebook, I have never seen those discussed as creative forms ( though you could make a case for the Obama campaign's use of Facebook). If we just get away from the distracting "X on Twitter" formulation, the question at stake is whether @justinbieber is independently notable of Justin Bieber. Just like we might argue about whether The Daily Dish is independently notable of Andrew Sullivan.169.231.55.10 (talk) 16:03, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Well, I'm saying we should take the whole twitter account as a single work of new media (starring Celeb X), with each tweet being similar to a line of lyrics in a song or a line of dialog in a movie. Obviously very few twitter/facebook/whathaveyou should be split, but we already have a guideline on splitting articles - use that one.  The Steve  05:24, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Considering the exceptions

By no means am I trying to infer that these two are acceptable, but while the Bieber and Kutcher's have been deleted:

• Lady Gaga on Twitter seems to be accepted
• The Barack Obama on Twitter has an AFD that seems to be heading for keep at this stage, and at least to me, does seem to be a different function/approach than either the Bieber or Kutcher articles.

If we recognize these as exemptions to the general !voting trend about that "'X on Twitter' articles are generally not appropriate" above, then what type of advice can we give to reconcile these exceptions?

My observations is the argument WP:NOTDIARY is strong and prevailing in both previous AFD closures; when much of the page is repeating the events of the person's life as lived out by twitter, the "...on Twitter" article becomes redundant and/or excessively detailed. This is combined with the overall BLP aspect, which is something that we have to be very careful under the Foundation's guidance. For the above counter examples, the Lady Gaga Twitter article has little to do with her as much as that Twitter account; in Obama's Twitter case, its more on his use professionally for the account, there's no diary aspects or BLP aspects that seep into them.

Thus, to start some type of division, we have to look at how the sources discuss the Twitter account, praising or criticizing the accounts as a whole, and not at what is necessarily actually said on the account. In otherwords, there is a GNG aspect here in that we're looking for secondary sources specifically on the account and not on the person themselves. Just having a Twitter account isn't sufficient, and having many sources use the account often to iterate information out from it isn't sufficient.

There is also the Summary Style issue. I think for both Gaga and Obama, their personal articles are already quite long and merging those above Twitter articles back in wouldn't help. This was definitely not the case for Bieber's or Kutcher's, once the NOTDIARY aspects were removed, in that the parent articles are reasonably sized to have a section to talk about their use of Twitter. Thus, the "... On Twitter" articles should only be created when there's a SIZE issue with the personality's main article. Otherwise, a summary of the personality's use of social media is certainly not unwarranted within their respective articles.

A final consideration is that focusing on "...on Twitter" might be a problem. I'm sure, 2-3 years ago, we could probably have some "...on Facebook" pages, and years before that "...on MySpace". I'd rather see encouraging those personalities that use social media to have sections and/or articles towards all social media aspects and not just Twitter; eg "Social media use by Justin Bieber" may be more acceptable (if it was needed) than just "Justin Bieber on Twitter". Social media is here to stay (I would think) and while the means of social media will change with time, the general class of applications and interactions holds true. I think the same can apply to both Gaga's and Obama's articles too, renaming them and including more (IIRC, for example, the President doing YouTube Q&A. --MASEM (t) 16:38, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Actually, I think the Gaga article is at the bottom of the accounts being mentioned as her Twitter activity appears to mostly get coverage for being popular, without any clear significance beyond that. However, even there I would say it is a case for merging the article, not deleting it. Obama on Twitter would be at the top I think, with the Kutcher article next. I am seeing way too many arguments being thrown around in these AfD's that amount to "I don't like the way the article currently looks based on my selective reading of it and therefore I presume it must not be a worthy subject for an article." Those sorts of arguments should be getting tossed out as invalid, not heeded by an admin as though it were gospel.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 18:54, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Wow, Masem, I agree with all your points. 1)These articles should be massively trimmed to have only the significant and widely reported stuff. 2)Twitter may be too specific, and generally articles should be some form of "Celebrity + social media" 3) Such articles are only necessary when a section on social media wouldn't fit into the main article. Also, merge not delete is probably a much better choice.  The Steve  02:48, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

So, just to be specific, we have had a variety of arguments that there must be some additional thing to justify inclusion for these articles. Supposing for a moment that you see these articles as potentially having that thing, could you sort of...describe it in a few words, or potentially give an example of a good thing in comparison to a not-so-good thing? Darryl from Mars (talk) 08:37, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, no problem. For me, its all about sourcing. If Time magazine or Businessweek mentions what you twat in a serious article, there it is. If you only get one sentence every now and then, in the nature of "Oh yeah, and the twit is @celebX", that's not it. Quality sources vs. occasional mention. YMMV, naturally.  The Steve  04:33, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

Indeed, the mileage varies. While the three of us may manage to agree on that, I worry about how effective touting 'the quality of the sources' would be against WP:NOTDIARY and IINFO in an actual AfD, since sources seem to fall under notability and verifiability requirements, which those policies explicitly disregard. Darryl from Mars (talk) 11:25, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure those policies were NOT intended to do an end run around good sourcing. Typical AFD misuse really. It doesn't make much difference to me, since back when I started editing here, I like it/don't votes were pretty much the only thing we used. It all comes back to editorial discretion really. If a majority of the editors are convinced that all twitter articles are beneath wp's notice, that's good enough for me.  The Steve  02:22, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Typical misuse indeed...Well, that is a discussion that would interest me, if it comes up; I can't say I'm as comfortable with that extent of democracy on these issues. Darryl from Mars (talk) 02:24, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

How can someone write a reliably article about "... on twitter" when twitter is supposed not to be a reliable source? Besides of that, most stuff is fancruft. To me, "... on twitter"-pages are not acceptable. Night of the Big Wind _talk 09:39, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

If you look into whichever articles are remaining/userified, you'll see that most of the sources are news reports from more or less reliable sources that do some degree of analysis of the account or tweets, and not primary sources (that is, directly from twitter/tweets). For example, . You probably wanted to make this comment in a section further up though, I think? Darryl from Mars (talk) 10:47, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

It is a quite chaotic discussion by now. You have my permission to move this to the appropriate section. Night of the Big Wind _talk 19:36, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Summarizing to date, possible route forward

So considering what we have said:

• There's general consensus that "X on Twitter" articles aren't encyclopedic and have problems considering we're careful with BLPs as well.
• A celebrity's use of a social media service may be notable but its got to be more than just reiterating what the celeb says on the service.
• Even if in such cases, spinning these off prematurely from a celebrity's bio article is not wise.

Given that, I would suggest that the following courses of action be taken:

• We should never focus on one particular social media outlet; instead, the use of all manners of social media by a celeb to interact with fans or the like should be the thought process here, calling out specific services as examples if needed.
• Splitting this off should be avoided at all costs, simply to avoid the spinoff becoming bio-like and encouraging poor sourcing/additions. Most celebs will have other material (film/discographies) that can be pulled off first that are more neutral and less BLP than how social media is used.
• If the social media aspect is pulled out , such articles should be "X's use of social media"; these need to focus on the account itself and how its used, and not so much what actually is said by the account.

The current articles that are inplace shouldn't be touched, though editors involved are free to discuss issues, but we should strongly discourage other articles of the type "X on Twitter" if they are created in the future without considering other ways of discussing the topic. --MASEM (t) 16:28, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

I just was BOLD and moved Barack Obama on twitter to Communications of Barack Obama, some celebreities have extensive contact with the traditional media and social media and have noteworthy public relations teams often with spokes or lawyers that are of note even on here so this way we can avoid an unlimited amount of BO on facebook, youtube etc. and it can be more encyclopedic and comprehensive, however I highly suggest we add that since these articles suitability may be marginal we should set the bar very highLuciferWildCat (talk) 20:48, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Propose 'Toast' Block

No, I am not advocating that we eliminate slightly browned bread.

I am proposing that we create a new type of block mechanism that allows for a block to be enacted on a timer. Some blocks today are implemented on a primarily administrative basis against newcomers that have no ill will toward Wikipedia, they are just ignorant of the rules and end up making mistakes. A specific type of block that comes to mind is the block that happens when Acme Guillotine & Cake Suppliers, Inc discovers Wikipedia. They get ambitious and make a new article about their company under their new username AcmeSlicersandSlices and start editing promotionally. Before long, an admin notices this and smacks them with a block. Poor Acme, all they wanted was a chance for the world to know how great they are at making world renowned execution devices and popular pastries for peckish party people.

So, now they're blocked. They're confused. And the boss has finished his cake and is eying the poor sap who volunteered for the PR department, and wondering about how to best use the promo-model guillotine XT-1000 on his desk.

So, let's cut, if we will, to the chase. I think it would be nice to give some editors a good faith window to ask questions, get their affairs in order, and transition without hard feelings to a new account. After all, we do want to retain promising young editors who have everything to prove, don't we? Immediate unexpected blocks, especially when you're new, come off hard and abrasive. And when you're just doing your best, why do we need to put their head on the chopping block for that? Let's look for ways to get more cake, and even maybe eat it too. A block that takes effect 1 week later, 2 days later, whatever, would be a nicer way to say... we're giving you notice... now its up to you to avoid the inevitable. And so we end up with a much happier editor, which is clearly, icing on the cake. -- Avanu (talk) 21:32, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

PS - I call it toast block because it pops up after a time. -- Avanu

I am not sure I understand... How is it different from simply warning first and then blocking after the warnings do not work? And, well, why do you think that a notice "You will be blocked after x days!" is going to be perceived as nice, friendly and non-confusing? I would expect it to be perceived as more confusing than a simple block (or warning)... --Martynas Patasius (talk) 23:16, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

In some cases, our policy does not allow for a warning. It is clear that a block is the only appropriate action. It is friendlier to say, "You will be unable to edit after 7 days. Please take measures to create a new account. If you have questions, please ask at the appropriate forum or on this Talk page." -- Avanu (talk) 02:20, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Sounds absolutely bonkers. The blocks you are talking about, the ones without warning are generally performed when the account is spamming and has a promotional username ("BricksRUsPR"), which is as desired, because we want them to stop promoting and to have a different username. A time-delayed block would result in one of two things happening, either they just carry-on believing what they are doing is correct, keep editing and end up blocked, or they disappear and never come back, which is basically what happens now, PR accounts are blocked and they either just leave, or they make a few unblock requests where they attempt to justify their edits and why they should be allowed to continue but rarely actually read our policies or try to comprehend why they were blocked in the first place. It is an extremely extremely rare situation for a promotional account to be unblocked, purely because most of them just never get what we're trying to do--Jac16888 ^Talk 16:25, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

We have wp:SOFTBLOCKs for people editing with promotionally named accounts. If I thought that a worthwhile proportion of spammers could be turned into useful editors I'd support a compulsory rename system, (Hi your username was overly promotional so we've changed it from User:Buy cheap rockets from Acme rockets to User:Pyrotechnology fan). But I don't see any benefit in the "toast" proposal to give spammers a 7 day free pass. ϢereSpielChequers 01:20, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Yeah we generally just softblock those ones and politely inform them of our policies. Only their promotional username is blocked, they can still create a new account and hopefully the next time not be ignorant of our policies. -- œ^™ 05:20, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

It's not a bad idea. If the new editor is doing good work, and the only problem is the account's username, then you're not supposed to block the account. You're just supposed to point them at WP:CHU and hope they'll use the process to change usernames (which they cannot do if you block them, even with softerblock, because you have to be able to edit the separate request page to get your username changed).

Currently, the "enforcement" is "hope some admin remembers a week later to double-check that account". So something (a bot?) that let you say "one week to figure out CHU, or your account will be blocked" might be useful. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:32, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

Someone needs to start enforcing policy on article ownership

Until recently I didn't pay much attention to it but I think we need to get a handle on WikiProjects and individuals setting limits on what can be added to articles. This problem seems to be getting worse as time goes on and projects and individuals are getting more defiant and brazen in the innapropriate ownership they appear to be showing to articles in their scope. In particluar and as one example some projects and individuals have demanded that articles in their scope cannot contain Infoboxes. For example, the Featured articles Emily Dickenson even goes so far as to have an invisible comment stating that it isn't required or necessary. This article is just one example and I'm not picking on it, just using it as one example of what I see as a growing problem.

I have several problems with this:

1. Infoboxes are a standard fixture in Biographical articles, not an exception to them
2. Infoboxes allow a quick reference summary of key information about the article without having to read the whole thing
3. WikiProjects and individuals should not be demanding that infoboxes not be on an article
4. IMO an article that does not have an infobox fails FA standards (and anything above B for that matter) because it fails B5 of the B-Class checklist for supporting materials.

Any comments on this would be appreciated. Kumioko (talk) 15:09, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

• Basically, the consensus is that infoboxes are not required. There's no way of convincing some people otherwise -- many of them would say your point #2 is a reason NOT to have an infobox. It DOES create a silly inconsistency that, say, Alexander Borodin has one but most classical composers don't. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 16:07, 9 July 2012 (UTC)
  • … and a pressure to write daft content simply to satisfy the needs of the infobox. See User:Geogre/Templates for a more thorough discussion. Uncle G (talk) 16:38, 9 July 2012 (UTC)
  • Theres really no pressure to write draft content, if there isn't enough content to populate a few basic parameters of an infobox, the 5 W's so to speak, then there probably isn't much for an article either. The articles you identify, to me, seem like ultra stubs so perhaps the infobox could help those tiny little things look a little better developed. Kumioko (talk) 17:26, 9 July 2012 (UTC)
    • While I will agree that we shouldn't be forcing infoboxes on articles where the editors have decided they don't want it, we need to be aware that some infoboxes have been designed to create meta-data for search engines or the like that are important to have. For example, we have most of our templates for persons incorporating details of the hCard format. Now, such information is very trivial or even laughably unnecessary for someone like Dickenson that's long passed away, but perhaps we had the case where the birth/death dates and other simple facts were used by meta-searching tools? I'm not saying they need the infobox, but the editors need to be aware that not providing one makes this data absent to meta-tools, and they should find a way to recreated it - within prose, within hidden text, I dunno, but of some means - if they are forgoing the usual method of providing that. --MASEM (t) 17:38, 9 July 2012 (UTC)
      • Isn't that what the persondata template is for? Choess (talk) 16:07, 10 July 2012 (UTC)
    • I wrote "daft", and the pressure to write daft content most certainly does exist. It's not where there isn't enough content. That's a straw man of your making. It's when the infobox pressures writers into filling in infobox fields with things that are either misleading or wrong; like specifying a modern publisher and an ISBN for a book that was published in the 18th century because {{infobox book}} has an isbn= parameter. Uncle G (talk) 18:31, 9 July 2012 (UTC)
    • So, the article is very short, therefore we should make it "look a little better developed" by adding some horizontal and vertical lines and repeating the content again? That's like saying: "This speech is rather terse, could you try stuttering through it to make it seem longer?" See also Wikipedia:DISINFOBOX#Example 2 to see how silly this approach is in practice. Choess (talk) 16:07, 10 July 2012 (UTC)
  • @Melodia: "Basically, the consensus is that infoboxes are not required." Are you saying that's a general consensus, or specific to this article? I didn't see much in the talk page archives that resembled a consensus on this article. Without a discussion that produced consensus in the instant case, I'm inclined to agree with Kumioko that an invisible comment directing editors not to add an infobox smacks of WP:OWN. Acdixon ^{(talk · contribs)} 17:45, 9 July 2012 (UTC)
    • In general. I don't remember where it was, but there was a large RFC on the topic, mostly relating the the classical composer issue. The basic outcome was "they are not required, however no WikiProject can make a general ruling overriding local consensus either". ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 02:24, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

In the case of the Dickinson article, which was only used as an example, the only discussion I could find was on Archive 3 and was minimal. In regards to the arguments that infoboxes are not required I would agree that generally that is true, as an article progresses up the scale and approaches FA I would argue that it becomes less of an if and more of a requirement. If Infoboxes were not a necessity we wouldn't need templates like {{Needs infobox}}, parameters in WikiProject templates like |Infobox needed= or categories like Category:Articles without infoboxes which currently contains several thousand articles. We also wouldn't specifically call it out in B-Class checklists as "supporting materials". As another example what happens if one project argues that an infobox should be used and another argues against it? Who is right and who is wrong? Allowing WikiProjects or individuals to state that an infobox cannot be used on their articles causes unnecessary tension where none needs to be. If the author or WikiProject that is developing the article doesn't want it when its being developed then thats ok but they 1) shouldn't be telling someone else that they cannot add it and 2)the article shouldn't be promoted beyond B-Class because it fails the supporting materials criteria. Kumioko (talk) 20:47, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Appealing to OWN is not applicable in the general case described above. Some editors are regular contributors in certain areas, and it is unreasonable to label them as having ownership problems just because they happen to agree with past practice in their area, and resist attempts by someone-who-knows-better who wants to add an infobox. Like one of the above comments, I cannot recall where I saw it but I have participated in general discussions where a wide discussion concluded that "no infobox" was a reasonable conclusion for a particular article (a classical composer?). There is no policy that all articles must have an infobox. A template or category suggesting otherwise is either misguided or is for articles in which an infobox is generally considered appropriate (but which don't have one yet). Johnuniq (talk) 07:46, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Kumioko, I'm concerned that you fail to see the asymmetry of your position. Your raison d'etre here seems to be going to very large numbers of articles and adding templates to the articles or their talk pages. I don't see why your right to add these templates to articles, because you think the articles are better with them, somehow mysteriously trumps the right of other people to remove them, because they think they make the article worse, or are redundant or unnecessary. If anything, WP:BRD puts the onus on you to justify your additions when someone reverts them. Furthermore, in your excited attempt to prove that infoboxes are "supporting materials" necessary to achieve higher quality rankings, you're managed to overlook the phrase "should be included where they are relevant and useful to the content." If the people who have actually put work into composing the article feel that an infobox is *not* relevant or *not* useful, we should do them the courtesy of discussing the matter with them at the article talk page, rather than trying to slap then down with some misinterpretation of WP:OWN. In articles where the subject matter can most easily be harmonized with the standard parameters of an infobox (say, the taxoboxes in articles about species), article editors welcome them. In articles where creating an infobox requires one to simplify to the point of misrepresentation, article editors generally discourage them. We should respect this. Choess (talk) 15:39, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Choess can you clarify? I'm not sure what your talking about. The only templates I have been adding en masse is WikiProject templates but I opened this discussion due to seeing an increasing number of articles without infoboxes. There seems to be this interpretation that Infoboxes are bad, ugly or unprofessional and they are not. At least not any more than having a category, sections or images. It is a supporting material and it is a template/supporting material that has for the most part been adopted across the site. My problem is that I have seen some projects (or members of them) over the last few months tell others that they cannot add an infobox to an article thats in that X WikiProjects scope because WikiProject Y doesn't allow infoboxes. This is not something that should be happeneing. Additionally, we should not be putting comments on articles telling users not to add infboxes, we shouldn't be promoting one article to GA with an infobox and another without it that is similar (both biographies for instance). This is both confusing to us and our readers but it makes the site in general (article appearance aside) look unprofessional when we can pick and choose what policies we want to use. We shouldn't be letting editors choose not to use an infobox on say a Biographical article anymore than they can choose not to have categories, images or references. I would also argue that I and others have the same right to add a template as another has the right to not add it. If the template is valid and applicable to the article it should be allowed. Kumioko (talk) 15:56, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

I disagree. Infoboxes are not, as a whole, all good or all bad. Sometimes they are good and useful. Sometimes they are unnecessary and misinform the reader. This has been true for a long time. WP:DISINFOBOX, which is a nice capsule summary of cases where infoboxes are not useful, is about three and a half years old; Geogre's essay about templates and infoboxes is six years old. Please read over those two essays; they have a number of cogent arguments, and I think you would benefit from knowing what people have already said about the subject. Nor do I see what has changed between now and then that the use of infoboxes should suddenly become mandatory. Consistency is good, but a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds, as Emerson said, and the idea that we must be uniform in our use of infoboxes to look "professional" is one I utterly reject.

I also disagree with the idea that because a template is "valid and applicable" it *must* be alllowed. This gets debated fairly regularly on reference formatting. There may be five or six ways of linking out from a journal article in a bibliography–to the journal's website, via DOI, to NCBI, to JSTOR, to archive.org, etc. Trying to cram all of them into the references section just because you can is not necessarily helpful, and has been repeatedly rejected in the past.

I may sympathize a bit with the way in which WikiProjects conduct themselves. They shouldn't be able to impose rules, but I do think it's reasonable for someone to say: "Look, we already had this argument about whether these templates should be applied to our subjects, here's a link; do you have a substantial reason to contest it?" Must go now, but happy to discuss things further later today. Choess (talk) 16:26, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

So long as your "someone" really means "anyone at all" rather than "only those someones who have decided to call themselves a WikiProject", and the link is at the particular article's talk page rather than at some project page, then I'll go along with that.

The problem that we keep encountering, however, is that User X works hard for weeks to develop a good article, and then a couple of other users waltz in and, without lifting a finger to improve the article, demand the immediate addition (or removal) of an infobox because "we're the wikiproject, and we say so". And good luck if you're working on one of the many areas in which more than one wikiproject is interested, because they give conflicting advice on both whether to add an infobox and also on which infobox to use.

The rule is that it's up to the people who are working on the article, not to a couple of self-appointed users. Users calling themselves a WikiProject may write WP:Advice pages and try to persuade users to voluntarily agree with them, but they may not demand that anyone follow their advice. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:56, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

"WP:DICTIONARY" should be banned

Can we please get rid of this silly policy altogether, or at least get everyone to stop using it as a solve-all policy?? In the wiki article on stubs, it explains that in its simplest form, a good stub simply defines the topic - giving the most vital information in a concise form: "Begin by defining or describing your topic. Avoid fallacies of definition. Write clearly and informatively. State, for example, what a person is famous for, where a place is located and what it is known for, or the basic details of an event and when it happened". This lowest common denominator the article speaks of, my friends, is the so-called "dicdef" that gets up some Wikipedians' noses to no end..... and it really annoys me. All over Wikipedia, I see good stubs being deleted on the grounds of being "merely" a dicdef... even though that's exactly how stubs are supposed to start out... (A recent example is here - obviously its not a good article by any means, but speedy deletion....??? .... seriously?!?!?). I say we can this ridiculous policy altogether! (or, as I've already stated, if the policy is a lot more than that, we can just spread the word that it is no longer a rationale for deleting those types of articles)

Oh, and while I'm here, I may as well inquire about something else: Many-a-time has a poor little editor (me :D) battled in vain against the cruel wiki-tyrants who have tried to rid the world of wiki-stubs on the basis that their current status was not perfect, even though they were on encyclopedic topics. While the Wiki-verse is still undecided over this controversial issue of current state vs. potential, I'd just like to point out a certain clause in the Wikipedia:Stub article (and this is just 1 example): "A stub is an article containing only one or a few sentences of text that, although providing some useful information, is too short to provide encyclopedic coverage of a subject, and that is capable of expansion".

I would greatly like to see these 2 topics discussed below. Yours sincerely, a disillusioned wikipedia editor.--Coin945 (talk) 16:05, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

On Reveal, it's just a PROD so you can go ahead and remove if it you disagree with the statement; if the PROD nominator still feels it is wrong, they can take it to AFD.

But the question is, is that necessarily wrong? I think it's not so much that NOTDICTIONARY failed, but that people forget that we have no DEADLINE. NOTDICTIONARY should only be applied when we have an article that looks like it can't be expanded further but otherwise appears to be a dictionary entry (likely backed by word entomology). It is still proper advice, because Wikitionary is set up to handle content that is like that, but not here. But applying it to starting articles is not appropriate. --MASEM (t) 16:16, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

• Checking what NOTDICT says presently as well: "Articles should begin with a good definition or description, but articles that contain nothing more than a definition should be expanded with additional encyclopedic content. If they can not, Wikipedia is not the place for them: look to Wiktionary instead." I believe this is actually capturing the essence of your issues on what we actually should be doing. It contains the key aspects of expanding and only deleting if there's no further expansion possible, which is obviously not the case of Reveal. --MASEM (t) 16:18, 9 July 2012 (UTC)
• As Masem says Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a dictionary addresses and discusses these points at length in several places. You should read the actual policy. The policy is not the problem, and (as our oldest content policy) is far from "silly". Uncle G (talk) 16:31, 9 July 2012 (UTC)
• As it stands the linked article is just an unreferenced dictionary definition, in fact it could just be original research WP:OR: I'm not even sure 'The Reveal' is a thing. A stub should at least indicate or establish why the topic is notable even if that just consists of one or two referenced sentences. It provides no reasoning for why it's a notable topic and no indication that it can be expanded, it just looks like an OR dictionary definition with no indication of how it could be expanded (I don't see a similar definition in wikitionary either). So I am not surprised it has been prodded. IRWolfie- (talk) 16:43, 9 July 2012 (UTC)
  • And that's why WP:AGF is a policy. I'm not an arts person, but I am aware of enough about the medium that the term "Reveal" as listed on that page seems to be an applicable concept to the medium. Oh sure, I want to see refs, I want to see works created for demonstrating this, or which authors are known for this, at some point. There's clear ways it can be expanded, if that material does exist (and thus AGF that it actually does exist). But enough to discredit that as a bad stub that should be deleted at this stage of the game? Heck no. --MASEM (t) 16:46, 9 July 2012 (UTC)
  • Wiktionary has had this sense for "reveal" since October 2005. It went to RFV and came back with quotations. Uncle G (talk) 16:52, 9 July 2012 (UTC)
    • I saw that reveal, it's not the same thing as the usage the article above describes. They are speaking of the event of the grand reveal at the end of a magic trick. IRWolfie- (talk) 22:07, 9 July 2012 (UTC)
      • No. When it was proposed for deletion, the article also said "book, play, or film plot". Uncle G (talk) 22:57, 9 July 2012 (UTC)
• Okay, first of all, don't let this discussion be based around "The Reveal" article. That was just 1 article I came across while hopping through the Special:newpages page. Whether it should be kept or not is irrelevant to my point, and was merely a recent example that crossed my mind while writing the previous comment. Second of all, it actually is a real thing, and a very important part of magic, cinema etc. Well... hmmm... perhaps if "The Prestige (film)" has anything to say about it, the correct title of the article should be Prestige (magic). I dunno.. anyways I do personally think that the article is notable.. but again, that's irrelevant. Thirdly, I was not ridiculing the policy on deletion. I do understand that it is vitally important, and I have read it before.. and I guess in the spur of the moment of writing the comment I just thought why not get rid of it altogether.. even though in retrospect that is just a ridiculous notion and totally disruptive. An added passage explaining when the policy should not be used is in order though.--Coin945 (talk) 16:48, 9 July 2012 (UTC)
  • What I think we're saying is that the language you want is there, just not flat-out "don't try to delete stubs that look like dict defs". We mention possible expansion, and only deletion when expansion is exhausted and still looks like a dictionary definition. Stubs, by definition, are articles waiting for expansion. So the language you want is there; if there's a repeated problem of one or a few editors nominating such for deletion, that's a behavior problem to be remedies and I don't think we need to change policy for that. --MASEM (t) 17:31, 9 July 2012 (UTC)
    • And that's exactly my point. Is there wiki-consensus that you should not delete an article so long as there is room for expansion? Is this considered by the majority to be the "correct" stance? If so, how is the best way to officially proclaim this the correct view, and end the ambiguity and uncertainty regarding this area of deletion?? (trust me... no matter how clear the policies are, this is still an extremely contentious issue on the AFD stage). Fine, let's not change policy, but if it about editors' attitudes, then what's the next step?--Coin945 (talk) 17:45, 9 July 2012 (UTC)
      • Well, first, if they are being tagged as PROD, you can remove the prod, possibly explaining the reasoning via the talk page if you feel necessary. If the editor that added the PROD insists, they will take it to AFD where the article will be judged by consensus. Most likely if we are talking cases similar to Reveal above, this AFD will close rather easily in terms of "keep". Likely, this will show the editor how stubs should work (that they should be given time to expand, etc.) , but outside of that, or discussing it more with the editor, there's little else we can do from this "first time" incident.
      • Now, if the editor keeps doing this, with every time the PROD being removed and AFD being closed as "keep", and yet they continue to persist, that's when you start taking about user behavior modifications via either something like RFC for users. Particularly if they have been approached before and told that these PRODs/AFDs are a problem because they're targeting developing articles. The repeated PROD/AFD can become disruptive, and thus we use RFC/U to try to help them adapt their behavior, and barring that, go to the next step of dispute resolution, WP:AN.
      • But given that our policies and guidelines are clear that stub articles should be treated as developing articles, there's not much else we can do. --MASEM (t) 18:07, 9 July 2012 (UTC)
        • I really don't think a Wiki-policy war is the best way to go at this. It will only antagonise people... Making decisions without informing anyone, and then rudely shoving policy shortcuts in poeple's faces when they try to defy you is the sort of attitude that led to my comment in the first place..... sending poeple to issue-resolving places due to their (supposed) "insubordination" can't possible help the situation either.... :/--Coin945 (talk) 13:32, 11 July 2012 (UTC)
          • When an editor continues going against established consensus after being told it was a problem, that's the only option left short of block/banning, which we really don't want to do. The point of an RFC/U is to get the editor to recognize such cases; yes, there will be shoving of various policies in their faces at this, but this is the point if they've been ignoring them or interpreting them different. Mind you, this practice outside of a structured discussion can be harmful and why we'd want to see other routes to resolve taken first. --MASEM (t) 15:14, 11 July 2012 (UTC)
            • But, the thing is, many of the people who work at AFD on a regular basis seem to think whole heartedly that the thing we've been discussing is wrong. Totally wrong. The question is, are we right? It's hard to take the de-facto morally high ground when this is still a rather contentious issue. For every policy/guideline that supports our argument, there another one that argues the opposite. It's wrong to say we're right "just... cos", and have an attitude that's like "you're wrong, so deal with it". An intelligent discussion must take place first in order to reach agreement on what the "correct" stance is. Otherwise we'll just end up annoying each other and turning arguments heated, in a cacophony of misunderstanding, vagueness and confusion.--Coin945 (talk) 17:33, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

If WP:DICTIONARY should be banned, then perhaps we should then merge Wiktionary into Wikipedia? --MuZemike 18:47, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

• I removed the PROD. I expanded the text and found some explanatory references (which I placed on the talk page). If anyone else would like to help contribute, they would be welcome. - jc37 21:09, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

How to fix Wikipedia

A lot of people have been leaving Wikipedia lately, and I think it's because of hostility, infighting, bureaucracy, and Wikipedia's no-longer-welcoming environment. For example, User:Fastily left for those reasons, and membership has been dropping off. To save the encyclopedia from more users leaving, I propose the following:

1. Scrap 3RR -- there are too many exceptions, it doesn't catch edit warriors (one can still edit war without breaking it, and still get blocked), it encourages wikilawyering, and overall it's just more trouble than it's worth.

2. Scrap the MoS -- it's more complicated than the U.S. tax code (it even has its own search bar!), it encourages admins to bite new users who haven't read it, it's much too long for anyone to read all of it, it's overly bureaucratic, and enforcing it wastes valuable time that could be spent creating new content and/or improving existing content.

3. Enforce WP:BITE and apply it to deletion -- When newbies are insulted via deletion by either having their pages deleted without explanation or with a rude explanation or being attacked in an XfD, they will not want to stay and contribute. We should also encourage newbies to be bold instead of belittling their contributions. If something a newbie does violates our standards, they should be gently reminded rather than slammed and belittled. WP:BITE should be made an official policy rather than mere guideline (so people will be less inclined to ignore it), and be enforceable with blocks and bans. Same goes for WP:AGF.

4. Recognize that admins are part of the problem, and take steps to restore the honor of being an admin -- My idea is to create a discussion board called something along the lines of Wikipedia:Administrator grievances where users could post grievances about admins. If an uninvolved crat decided that the grievance was real, he or she would then place the admin on probation (i.e., take away their admin tools temporarily) so the community could discuss the grievance (the crat would open the discussion). After 2 weeks, the following action would be taken:

• If the result was Retain: The crat would close the discussion as such, and the matter would be over, with admin tools given back (kind of like if it were a trial and the admin was found not guilty).
• If the result was Caution or No consensus: The crat would close the discussion as such and give the admin tools back, but the admin would be warned not to do whatever it is they did again, and the discussion and items from it would be able to be used as evidence in future discussions regarding the administrator's conduct.
• If the result was Desysop: Again, the crat would close the discussion as such, and admin tools would not be given back (kind of like if it were a trial and the admin was found guilty).

5. Encourage people (especially inclusionists and deletionists) to work together to build the encyclopedia rather than constantly fight. Everyone has things to offer the encyclopedia, and when we work together, we are equal to more than the sum of our parts. Let us take advantage of that fact and encourage peace and collaboration rather than strife and competition.

I know this is a big proposal, but when they left, Fastily and other users gave us a clear message: "This is what's wrong with Wikipedia. Fix it." That is why I am here today, writing this proposal. Please, take the time to think about this before !voting "oppose". ChromaNebula (talk) 21:35, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

1: 3RR is not a hard-fast rule, users can and are blocked for "edit-warring", regardless of numbers or time-span, but at the same time 3RR is a good way of saying "ok you've reverted this twice now, one more and you'll be eligible for a block".

2: Do you actually understand what the MOS style is? It's just about trying to keep articles uniform and general project wide consistency, it's what stops people changing english variations every ten minutes, randomly bolding for emphasis and capitalising Hims when referring to the big guy.

3:It's not biting to delete an article which doesn't belong here. Yes people should be nice to new users and yes people should be called out on it if they go yell at the new kid cos they wrote an article about their awesome band they just started in their garage, but trying to make a rule that says be super-nice and make sure you don't offend them otherwise you're blocked is just silly and unworkable.

4:Admins are part of the problem, sure they are. How exactly? If admins are part of the problem then all the non-admins must be the rest of problem, you can't just say "admins are causing all the trouble so they need to be kept in place" just like you can't say "the french are stealing all our women they must be kept in place" after one french bloke marries the girl next door. Yes we all know that there needs to be a better way of dealing with editors who have the bit and who misuse it and yes there should probably be a better way to create admins, but creating a big board for anyone to go have a bitch about the admin who just deleted their article or made a decision they don't agree with is just going to make things worse.

5:Not to be rude but is this your big Miss World ending? The whole point of wikipedia is to encourage people to work together, with so many people of course there will be fights, there is no way of preventing arguments--Jac16888 ^Talk 21:58, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

I did not recommend not deleting any articles. If a newbie creates an article in good faith that doesn't meet our standards, the article should be deleted, but the creator should be gently reminded of our standards rather than having policies shoved in their face. Likewise, terms like "trash" and "worthless junk" should only be applied to articles created in bad faith. Creators of deleted articles should be informed of our standards, but civilly, politely and without insult. As for the MoS thing, people know what proper English is, and any genuine mistakes can be easily corrected without an MoS. And I never said administrators were all of the problem, only some of it. Incivility from regular editors is dealt with via blocks and bans, but there's currently no way to discipline an admin (they can easily unblock themselves) apart from ArbCom, and ArbCom only handles the most serious cases. (By the way, I hope the noticeboard would rarely be used). As for 3RR, the edit warring/3RR noticeboard is mostly focused on 3RR, and as I said before, exceptions and the "you-don't-have-to-break-this-rule-to-get-blocked" clause make the rule pretty darn complicated and, in my opinion, more trouble than it's worth. I know there will be fights, but there have to be things we can do to discourage fighting and encourage collaboration and peace. We can't stop all fights, but surely we can reduce the number and severity of fights. How? Maybe a clause that says that the more aggressive warrior automatically loses the argument? ChromaNebula (talk) 01:16, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

The deletion notices that are generally provided are informative and polite, are there specific cases you know of where new users are being repeatedly insulted because I'm not aware of any major problem except for some robotism. Mos wise, the whole point is that people don't know what proper English is, or rather everybody has their own version, hence MOS, if everybody had perfect grammar and those yanks got over their z fetish then maybe we wouldn't need one. Well you've got one fact wrong right there, yes an admin can unblock themself, except that to do so is cause for an immediate desyop, as has been demonstrated on more than one occasion, and I suggest you start reading ANI if you think such a noticeboard would be rarely used, why not see how many cases of "Admin abuse" you can spot, and how many are actually "admin abused". If you think it's complicated now, how bad would it being if there were no rules at all, 3RR does in fact stop more experienced users from going crazy with the reverting, and can be a way to quickly stop an edit war if, just like a warning to both users in an edit war regardless of 3RR that if they carry on they'll be blocked can stop it too. Ff the noticeboard is that difficult to work with then its the noticeboard that is the issue, why not try to create change there? The simple truth is that so many people with such different backgrounds spread out so thinly that arguments are inevitable and finding them is hard enough, let alone preventing them. With most arguments the only way to fix things is look for common ground and reach out to other parties to form a consensus, having "because x did this, y wins the argument and z goes in the article" is just unpractical--Jac16888 ^Talk 09:01, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

I agree with Jac16888. But if we're doing some blue sky thinking, how about giving two extra reverts to the person who starts talkpage discussion about a dispute? If you do that, then the person to start discussion effectively wins. Knowing that would dramatically change the dynamics of edit wars. Hard to say exactly how it might work out in practice (definitional issues about "starting" and "discussion" might be a problem, possibly solvable by application of common sense), but it might be interesting to try. Maybe we can figure out a way to apply it on a limited basis to certain edit-warry articles, as a way to test it. Rd232 ^talk 22:11, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Vast thousands are still here, but not talking about WP:MOS: After months of examining the editor-count statistics, I have tried to explain that the "editors-leaving" view is something of an illusion, because many editors are also joining, but the edit-stats show only limited use of talk-pages. In fact, I am fairly certain it can be said: the majority of Wikipedia editors do not edit talk-pages much, but rather focus on article-edits. Meanwhile, the WP:MOS rules are only "suggestions", so the admins should be reminded to allow some slack there. However, we really need all those MOS rules, when people want to force a choice; otherwise, someone will claim there is no rule to prevent 1 million ("1,000,000") from being changed to a "better" format as "1.00.00.00" or "1\000\000". Ifever people want to add too much wild text, then WP:MOS provides a clear foundation to explain the typical format for articles.

Part of the illusion of "fewer editors" (by comparing editor-counts) is because experienced editors, who formerly made over 100 small article-edits per month, now have learned to branch out into other namespaces. The count of active editors with "100+ edits" is for the main article namespace, where talk-page edits, templates, files (images), categories, and "Help:" or "WP:" edits do not add into that "100+ level". Hence, as editors learn to edit categories, or make minor changes to "WP:" guideline pages, those edits are not counted in the main editor-counts, but rather, as talk-page counts, or "other" counts. We even have some admins who make "147 edits" in a month, many crucial edits, daily, fixing 50 grammar errors in an article as 1-edit-per-page, but at the end of June, have a total of only "78 edits" or such (in article namespace), appearing to fall from the core "100+ edit" group into the occasional "5+ edits" group. Instead, looking closely at the editor counts, at the monthly editor-statistics data, reveals there are over 10,000 editors who edit Wikipedia on a daily basis, just not all article-edits every day. That count of 10 thousand editors helps explain why so much happens every day in Wikipedia, but remember most of those people are not posting messages in talk-pages. They truly are the "silent majority" who are rapidly changing articles but not talking about it for several days at a time. -Wikid77 (talk) 23:52, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

They are not "only suggestions." If they were, it would not be possible to punish anyone for violating them. I got brought up on AN/I for going against WP:LQ. Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:25, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

• Yes we have a problem with editor retention, but it isn't a huge problem as overall numbers are fairly stable, and we are still getting around 200,000 edits a day. Perhaps MOS could do with being shorter, but what we need there is proposals for simplification not wholesale deletion. Deletion errors are a problem, and while it is rare that people delete or tag articles for deletion without informing the creator it is a damaging anomaly that we allow people to tag articles for deletion without informing the authors. We don't allow people to file an AN/I complaint on someone without telling them, and we shouldn't allow people to tag articles for deletion without informing the authors (except for a few exceptions such as dead, banned and retired editors). We do have a serious problem in that our number of active admins is declining, we have 300 less than at peak and recruitment of new admins is way below replacement level. One of the parts of the project that works fairly well is our desysoping process. Replacing or supplementing Arbcom with an easy desysop system that omits such elementary safeguards as dispute resolution would make the admin recruitment problem worse. ϢereSpielChequers 00:22, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

I would argue differently as there is a huge editor retention issue right now, and those who claim there isn't are mainly those who like the status quo which has been going on for several years now. I see it particularly when I get into a group of people who are tech savvy but are as a rule not involved with Wikipedia. Their experiences are all across the board with mainly negative experiences. Some of them don't really understand the core philosophies of the project like the five pillars, several of them have had very negative experiences with admins or the new page patrol, and a few just got confused from the firehose of information expected to be understood out of brand new editor/contributors.

My largest complaint is the automated tools that are used. I've gone the rounds with this and some of those who are trying to help out the proejct, but that personal touch from one person to another is really lacking right now on Wikipedia. With much of the automated bot editing and standard forms that people paste onto new user pages, they feel they are talking more to machines than to people and view the whole editing process as extremely impersonal. When I've gone out of my way (I'll admit not nearly as much as I could) to welcome new users to Wikipedia and even leave a paragraph of a personal nature behind usually commenting about the work they are doing that brought them to Wikipedia in the first place, I usually get a response like "wow, I didn't know that real people still existed on Wikipedia". That should be a more normal reaction than an exception.

If new editors are viewed as a pure statistic and some sort of flow of people from the aether that will magically or not contribute to the project over time, something is most definitely lost. It is the attitude of those on the front line of the project who are interacting with these new contributors that makes a huge difference. Sometimes when you are on something like the new page patrol (or simply reviewing edits in general) those people (particularly admins) see so much garbage from spamming, vandalism, and simply trolls who damage the project that it is natural to think everybody who has an IP address account or is a new user is a similar kind of troll wanting to destroy the project. It couldn't be further from the truth.

I'd argue that some of this is a training issue, and teaching people about Wikipedia, how to use Wikipedia, and in particular training those who are on the front lines of the project meeting these new users so they don't make an ass out of themselves or drive away those who might be beneficial to the project. None of that is happening right now, where the training consists of reading a bunch of dry policy pages, "on the job" training where you are forced to sink or swim (more sink than swim), and if you are very lucky you might be able to attend a Wikimania conference where one of the talks/discussions might be about how to be a more effective admin. The process of developing a competent editor on Wikipedia is a very Darwinian attitude right now, and Wikipedia is weaker because of that too. --Robert Horning (talk) 02:44, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

You aren't arguing that differently to me. I acknowledged that deletion errors are a problem, and you've given some excellent reasons why they are a problem. You also raised the issue of newbies and how poorly we handle them, I'd agree with you there as well. But neither of these are about people leaving the project, which is what started the thread, they are really more about people not being able to properly join the project. Yes we have huge problems in the way we treat good faith newbies, and its an important topic, but there are big differences between our problems in retaining experienced editors and our problems in recruiting new ones. There are some developments in the pipeline, WYSIWYG editing will make a big difference to newbies, though as with any change it may not be welcome to the regulars. There are some relatively easy fixes, template bombing would be reduced if we replaced maintenance templates such as deadend, uncategorised and orphan with automatically generated hidden cats. One of the most bitey aspects of deletions could be ended if we put an obligation on deletion taggers to inform authors. Other problems are more difficult, not least because the community doesn't agree on the problems. BTW don't assume that it is the admins who are most jaded when it comes to IPs and Newbies. most admins don't do ether newpage patrol or recent changes, and our most active hugglers and many of our most active patrollers are not admins. ϢereSpielChequers 07:05, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

I don't think the WYSIWYG editor is going to make all that much of a difference. I've seen what it does on the Wikia projects, where it is already in widespread use and even on wikis where it is the primary editing tool (turned on by default for new projects) where I've even volunteered as an admin simply because I'm familiar with project administration in general. There are a few people who are new to the whole notion of wiki editing that it does seem to help, but they tend to make just as many mistakes as if they were using the more traditional wiki mark-up language... if not more so. On top of that it tends to produce a whole lot of bloat to the size of the articles (see also the WP:SIZE discussion and note that relates directly to the WYSIWYG interface in a hugely negative manner if followed closely about keeping article sizes down) and in general it doesn't help as much as everybody hopes. You can't pretty up the interface for simply adding raw content, as that still simply takes writing skills that are hard to develop. It is a good thing if that 1% of those who would be turned away due to being technophobic but otherwise have the skills to participate decide to stay because the WYSIWYG interface is implemented, but it doesn't solve the much larger issues at hand. I still say that the reason why those on new page patrol and the admins who back them up are bitey is mostly due to a lack of training and skill in how to perform that task, knowing that it is a very steep learning curve in how to use those tools properly and how to perform that very important task. Some are very skilled at the task, some are eager learners, and a few in the NPP are destroying the project due to being over zealous, where they don't get stopped until they've stomped on far too many people. --Robert Horning (talk) 00:14, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

We desperately need new editors because we desperately need to improve the quality of our content. Our content needs to be GA quality or better, in my opinion. Of our core editors, I'd say maybe 10% are able to improve the quality of our articles in one way or another. Here's the numbers I think we need.

• We need 10,000 people that can properly reference an article with high quality references from reliable sources
• We need another 10,000 that can write high-quality prose
• We need another 10,000 that can organize content in a meaningful way for a proper encyclopedia article
• We need another 10,000 that can properly copyedit an article
• We need another 10,000 that are able to research and expand our stubs

That's 50,000 editors just to fix our existing quality problems. If only 10% of new users fit into one of the above groups, that means we need to go through 500,000 new editors just to get the fifty thousand we need to become a decent quality encyclopedia. I say we desperately need new editors because our quality depends upon it. 64.40.54.44 (talk) 07:22, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

The way to encourage good new editors, and to retain good experienced editors, would be to more rigorously enforce existing procedures with much less tolerance of "but I'm only new and I can't take the time to read all those links on my talk page because I have to tell the world about my wonderful news". Johnuniq (talk) 07:50, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Exactly, there is nothing wrong with the existing procedures and policies, there is something wrong with US as a community. Adding more red tape will not fix the problem, calling each other on grounds of civility and creating better tools to manage the information is the trick. WikiHow and the FB Places Editor have proven that last point to me. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:49, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

I would also add a couple more topics to this debate. W

1. We need to stop this nonsense of blocking all the bots because they perform a few minor edits. We are taking minor edits way way too seriously and its even leading to editors being banned from automation or kicked off the site entirely. Thier minor, IE not that big of a deal and although some, arguably don't need to be done, many others do including deleting deprecated parameters from templates and a wide range of other things that we are currently forced to keep cluttering up templates and articles because a few strong handed and high ranking editors refuse to allow these to be removed because they don't render changes to the page, of course they don't there broken and deprecated.
2. There are a lot of other things we need to do in Wikipedia too, some are outlined here and in other places. What needs to be done is to create a place for these topics to be discussed at length rather than continuously closing them for being in the wrong venue. If its wrong then fine, move it to the correct one but don't close it completely.
3. The list goes on, there are just too many problems to list and no good way to deal with them. Kumioko (talk) 14:43, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:WikiProject Editor Retention (WP:WER). (See also Help:Talk pages#Indentation. How can I follow it here now?)
—Wavelength (talk) 16:03, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Well we shouldn't scrap the MoS, but maybe there should be a way to keep people's whims out of it. For example, there's a rule called WP:LQ that requires British punctuation throughout Wikipedia, even on articles that are otherwise written in other varieties of English. An article on the American Civil War shouldn't use British punctuation. As a trained writer and editor, I find it insulting that I am required to use punctuation that is flat-out wrong within the context of American English.

I don't think that the length of the MoS is as big of an issue as it might seem. Most manuals of style are meant to be spot-used rather than read cover to cover. The table of contents (and CTRL-F) help users find the passages they need pretty quickly.

The MoS should be held to a standard at least as high as regular articles: every rule in it must be backed up by reliable sources, not people's pet peeves. Darkfrog24 (talk) 05:21, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Some elements of the MoS can be sourced of course, but others are a choice - quotation marks, serial comma etc vary between publications in the same country depending on a choice of house style, not reliable sources. pablo 08:19, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

That is true of the serial comma and title-style vs. sentence-style capitalization but not of American vs. British punctuation. In U.S. English the overwhelming majority of sources say, "putting periods and commas inside the quotation marks is right and leaving them outside is wrong." The overwhelming majority of British sources say "place periods and commas inside or outside depending on whether they apply to the quoted portion or the entire sentence." It's not optional. This is an ENGVAR issue and should be treated like one. Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:58, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

I would like an alternative to just blanking a page which does not meet the exacting specifications of the manual of style. rather than delete the page outright, place it in a user space or slap an under construction sign on it with a link to an article on how to wikify articles. Because an unfinished article is like an unfinished house, it may look rough, but given work it may be a featured article one day. And if you delete all the half finished articles there will be no new finished articles.... Washuchan (talk) 18:05, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Kind of a side issue, but would someone mind collecting links to the many, many archived discussions about editor retention problems? Most editors who start discussions like this are inexperienced, like Chroma here, whose first edit was less than seven months ago. So one of your friends leaves (or says he's leaving, which isn't the same thing; see meatball:GoodBye), and it seems like the sky is falling and Wikipedia's going to be abandoned forthwith. But you know what? People have been saying that for at least five years, since the number of editors peaked, and guess what? We're still here, and since then, people like you have joined us.

I think that if we did a better job of documenting these conversations, new people would have a better perspective on the reality of userbase churn, and those trying to solve the problem would have quick access to some of the many suggestions that have been made. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:07, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

• Just to throw my own tuppence into the mix, one of the problems I have seen with Wikipedia, that is completely invisible on the site, is I personally know people who could contribute to Wikipedia and get several articles up to GAN / FAC without too much sweat, but refuse to do so because of drive by biting, primarily due to a number of admins not recognising their research as being serious, threatening to take all their work to WP:RS/N and marking it as unreliable. There also was one instance of a bad speedy deletion which was challenged on the admin's talk page to no response - I can't remember what the article was, so the speedy delete might have been justified, but for an admin to blank discussion about it and not explain the deletion rules to newbies is very poor form and a great way to alienate people. I don't want to name names and give specifics, but I can if required. It's probably all ancient history to the admins involved, but it happened to rub enough people up the wrong way who are now giving a strong and consistent POV of "Wikipedia's crap, it's full of wonks, look at 'x', 'y' and 'z'" elsewhere on the internet, that people have no reason to disbelieve. In all fairness, this was all quite a few years back and I think things have got better since then, but the shit has still stuck. --Ritchie333 (talk) 16:58, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

Why must I follow WP:SIZE?

Why do we have to condense length of every article for the sake of mobile phone and smartphones and different browsers? If I follow it, then must I change the way I write? Should sun or cat be condensed because they have loading issues and irritating readability? As of now, its "Rule of thumb" is still disputed, and even user dmcq has compelling arguments about size. --George Ho (talk) 06:22, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Must you? It's a guideline; you've already found some obvious exceptions yourself. Of course, if you're wondering why some particular article you're writing isn't being given the same leeway that, you know, the Sun is...? Darryl from Mars (talk) 06:30, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Besides helping for browsers on limited/reduced bandwith, keeping size in mind does help to keep to our goal that we're an encyclopedia that summarizes information, not duplicates it all. No, per NOTPAPER we don't limit what can be covered for a topic, but it should help to guide how to organize information when it gets too large. It shouldn't affect how you write content but only how you section it up and place it across different articles (as needed). --MASEM (t) 06:33, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

According to WP:guidelines, "Editors should attempt to follow guidelines, though they are best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply." What kind of common sense, and what are exceptions applied? --George Ho (talk) 06:36, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

I guess I found some obvious exceptions without knowing it, but what are less obvious exceptions? Also, I would hope more servers mean less loading times, but the loading issues may be up to companies, like Apple and Microsoft. Wiki-technicians can take care of loading issues without our help, right? Or must we donate money for more equipment? Anyway, editing issues... and readability issues.... if they are neither minor nor major issues, how can condensation and splitting resolve them? --George Ho (talk) 06:53, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Your style of writing affects how something is read, and we don't want to disrupt that at all with SIZE. But readability is also affected by length: no matter how good your writing is, an article that goes on and on and on is not well-suited to reading. At some point you need to think how to organize the information; which pieces of information start to get into trivial coverage and can be removed (with the understand that we are meant to be tertiary and a summary work) and to put the most relevant stuff up front and the more detailed information elsewhere. --MASEM (t) 13:50, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

We have seen several cases about content forking of celebrities that may violate WP:BLP and WP:NOT, like Personal life of Jennifer Lopez. If WP:SIZE has nothing to do with this, then is this article consistent with other policies and guidelines? --George Ho (talk) 06:53, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

I don't know anything about Jennnifer Lopez but I feel if Elizabeth II of England can fit that sort of stuff in okay and practically every hour of her life is documented in reliable sources, then a whole article about Jennifer Lopez's personal life might just be fancruft rather than having separate notability. Dmcq (talk) 18:54, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

I've been in discussion on WT:Article size about the problems of what the rule of thumb about article size is in aid of and what additional considerations should also apply. It is quite interesting the arguments it seems have been put forward in featured articles to justify pushing their size way beyond even what is agreed is a reasonable size for reading in an hour and for duplicating large chunks of subtopics rather than just including a short summary. Dmcq (talk) 11:52, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

The fourth criterion of a featured article is that it has an appropriate length. I think people focus more on the "comprehensive" aspect. I think we should be as much concise as we are comprehensive in each article, actively using summary style and leaving lesser details to sub-articles. I have not seen the length criterion strictly applied at the review stage. SFB 18:01, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

What do you think of this argument for including more from a subtopic in a main article "These 100-to-1 or worse readership drop-off ratios are common, I've seen them across many time periods and article/subarticle combinations. So if there's something important about any of these topics, editors know it had better go in the main article, otherwise 99 percent of their readers will never see it.".

Also and perhaps more relevant to George Ho's query what do you think of my 'I see a bit in the guideline about size not being a reason to remove stuff. Sort of, but not quite true either. Size is a very good indicator that trivia is being put into an article if it can't be split out into subtopics that have some notability. It doesn't apply that way for lists but lists can be arbitrarily split for instance by ones starting A-E so the bits don't become too huge.' Dmcq (talk) 18:54, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Your arguments are reasonable and decent. Somehow, they do not reflect which information is or is not important. I don't know what else to say, but right now I'm losing my opposition to this guideline because... length issues cannot go away. Still, this guideline could force editors into pleasing mobile phones, laptops, older browsers and operating systems, and obscure, old equipment without considering article quality. Now I'll have no choice but to follow it and to "section it up" (or restructure and condense). At least I'm working more on subtopics than main topic itself; they are easier to edit than main topic itself.

As for page views that you mentioned, well, I guess general knowledge is everybody's goal. When people do not often surf to subtopics, as I guess, quick learning and quick knowledge are a reader's goals. So sad that, even with hard work on subtopics, main topics are reader's priorities. --George Ho (talk) 19:21, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

I have yet to see an article that is long that cannot have some reasonable section split off naturally that would still remain comprehensive after said split (usually through the use of a 2-3 sentence summary left behind). It may require editors to reconsider their present breakdown of an article if it is in a non-standard format, but usually this isn't the case. The harder part is knowing what that natural split is. Generally, as per advice at Summary style, detailed information that may not be necessary for the reader, learning about the topic for the first time, needs to know about, for example, if talking about a musical artist, their full discography is likely less important that their bio, musical background, styles, and success. It is not as difficult as it is being made out to seem here. --MASEM (t) 20:50, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

My feelings entirely. I thought there was some advice in the Summary style guideline to base a summary on the lead but I see in fact it talks about the summary often being twice the size of the lead. That would be at my top limit as I would be wondering what is the criterion for information to be put in a summary, it just seems like a pass to stick the whole subtopic in I think.

As to shoving stuff into the main article because it won't be read if in a subtopic article, that is quite a wrong headed argument I think, but it isn't straightforward to explain exactly what is wrong with it. Just saying it is against WP:NOTPAPER won't convince someone who believes in doing that. I see Wikipedia as like a shop selling information, how should one go about selling the most information to a customer? Putting more and more information into an article does not mean that readers on average will take more and more information away from the article nor does it I believe encourage them to look at other articles. I don't know however if anyone has even formulated the right questions about what we want a reader to do or take away never mind how we measure or improve on how well we do that. Dmcq (talk) 00:46, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ Am I the only one sensing that this guideline could also be a disclaimer? Look, why not mentioning phones, dialup, and older equipment as disclaimers? That way, we'd be concerned less about them, as we did to "spoiler" templates? --George Ho (talk) 01:22, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Makes no sense that way. We actually have reasons to make sure we can serve information to devices on limited bandwidth, and to wave it away as a disclaimer saying that WP's only targeting large bandwidth devices is not a good idea at all. --MASEM (t) 09:28, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

I agree with Masem. We don't really cater to the low-end of users, but then neither does any aspect of the internet (issues run from complex coding styles, to high memory usage in browsers, to the lack of options for throttling high memory/cpu web content). Also I think the size issues and solutions of articles and those of lists are profoundly different so it is not a great idea to consider them equally. George – can you demonstrate an instance where key information on a topic has been deleted from of an article and moved to its sub-article? I've never come across this problem. The sub-article readership stats aren't relevant if the information is appropriately summarised. I would expect to see large viewing variations within the very sections of an article (if we could magically see what readers were viewing). SFB 16:35, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

I'll try: Social Security (United States) and History of Social Security in the United States. I'm not sure if they are right or wrong examples. However, here's a bad example: List of Codename: Kids Next Door episodes. --George Ho (talk) 16:43, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure I follow what you're saying there. I think the lead of the History of Social Security in the United States could be expanded a bit more in line with the summary in Social Security (United States) which could have a bit of cleanup on it, but overall nothing too untoward seems to be happening there that I can see. What I see in the list of Kids Next Door episodes is that it doesn't seem to have any real citations even as a list topic and I really wish people would leave out such lists unless a number of the entries have some notability, however I haven't figured out what it is you're trying to say about it. Dmcq (talk) 17:06, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

I vehemently object to characterizing mobile device users "the low-end of users." There are large swaths of the world where mobile Internet access is the economic and cultural norm. Moreover, even in the U.S. there are particular populations where mobile Internet access is more prevalent. To dismiss those people as "the low-end" is ignorant at best and outright offensive at worst. ElKevbo (talk) 18:01, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

I mean technically low-end. This phrase is not derogatory in any way and is in wide use. If you have low memory connection/equipment, then you are a low-end user. SFB 06:38, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

When I first started here some 4 years ago, I tried to follow WP:SIZE whenever I could. However, I really no longer do, at least on the technical side. That is because I have realized that technology and bandwidth have been ever-increasing for many years, now – moreso than the recommended 30KB recommendation that we used to have for a long time.

That being said, readability is different and separate issue altogether, which I would argue is a more important issue when merging or splitting articles than mere physical size. Sometimes that simply cannot be avoided; Abraham Lincoln is a good example of this, and a lot of people I think would reasonably expect that to be a big article (which it is) with a lot of information in it. That is where Masem's WP:NOTPAPER argument comes in; we don't have a strict limit on how large (or even small) articles can be, and not all articles are uniform and equal. --MuZemike 21:37, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

WP:SIZE is a good idea so long as we make it clear that splitoffs made purely due to size are not independently subject to notability requirements. I have seen far too many AFDs in which it is claimed that "the early life of John Foo is not notable" or "the list of episodes from Foo: The Series is not notable, with arguments that John Foo or Foo: The Series are notable, their articles overly long, and these are encyclopedic subtopics and thus valid splitoffs, wrongly dismissed as WP:NOTINHERITED arguments. This is not only an incoherent way of analyzing the content, but it also fails to serve the underlying purpose of notability guidelines, and serves only to improperly constrain article content growth. So I'd like to see a way to preclude such AFDs, so that the decisions of how much detail is merited for a subtopic/section, and when a section should be split off because of article size, are clearly identified as purely ordinary editing decisions, not deletion decisions. postdlf (talk) 23:27, 11 July 2012 (UTC) (painstakingly typed on a mobile browser)

Even when mobile phones will evolve, the readability issues won't go away? Is there a way or no way to resolve readability issues, even when we can edit articles very well? Either way, what's the point of having this guideline if readability, editing, and loading issues will go away or won't go away, even after evolution of technology? --George Ho (talk) 23:58, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

We do have a very basic readability guide at WP:Article size#Readability issues "A page of about 30kB to 50kB of readable prose, which roughly corresponds to 6,000 to 10,000 words, takes between 30 and 40 minutes to read at average speed, which is right on the limit of the average concentration span of 40 to 50 minutes." If you have anything bigger than that you definitely start degrading the user experience is my feeling compared to having separately loaded pages. If something is larger than that readers will be spending quite a bit of their time skimming not reading - and we should enable them to skim better to find out what they do want to read. The Abraham Lincoln article is a very good one - as a paper article. It is not so good as an internet resource. The bits that are dealt with as subtopics should be summarized a bit more and have less in them. Have a look at a shop window. Do they cram everything they've got into it? They summarize and entice you in by quickly showing the main things and how good they are.

As to the business of splitting without any notability constraint - the current size limits are way far beyond causing problems that way except for the most fanatic collector of trivia or for list articles which simply are long lists. If one goes beyond the current guidelines that is an obvious indicator of a problem. People are shoving too much that should be in subtopics into a main topic. The subtopics are notable in the case of good articles, it is just editors can't bear not to have the pageviews denied to their nuggets of information that makes them pad out the main article. But what they really do is clutter up the shop front window and hide the inportant stuff amongst the clutter. Dmcq (talk) 07:51, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Further to that, while WP:Article size#Readability issues states that the average concentration span is 40 to 50 minutes, our average reader spends less than 5 minutes on Wikipedia according to Alexa stats, and as our articles increase in length, the tendency has been to spend less and less time on Wikipedia, with the recent drop below the 4 minutes mark. This is compared to people spending over 20 minutes on facebook and over 15 minutes on youtube. This also explains why readers prefer GA articles to FA articles. I think we need much more summary style than we currently have. It is too often assumed the quantity = quality, which is detrimental to the project. --ELEKHH^T 08:15, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

I guess quite a few would find "Abraham Lincoln i/ˈeɪbrəhæm ˈlɪŋkən/ (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865" gave them everything they wanted, if they'd only read the snippet of text in their Google results they needn't have bothered coming to Wikipedia. People might like looking at the Google results and see how they can help us. I was proposing something at WP:VPT#Section viewing but I don't think people really see what the gain would be. Dmcq (talk) 08:54, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

I think it's worth noting that that tiny figure of our average reader spending less than 5 minutes on Wikipedia might have something to do with the Wikipedia game, in which players jump from wiki-article to the next..--Coin945 (talk) 17:28, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

Amazing Article re: use of Wikipedia Information on ESPN.com (content theft)

http://deadspin.com/5924851/espn-entertainment-writer-has-a-wikipedia-habit — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.60.14.235 (talk) 02:07, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

CSD A7 & A9: kill "indication of importance" in favor of "documentation of coverage"

So here's a thought. On the one hand, CSD A7 and A9 are completely stupid, distorting the content of articles with their weird, archaic pre-GNG requirement that the article claim in some way that its topic is a big fucking deal, and creating special categories of content that have article-existence requirements orthogonal to notability as it is normally understood. On the other hand, lots of people would like it if a higher burden were placed on new article creators to document some form of notability-establishing sourcing for their articles. How about we chocolate-and-peanut-butter these factors and change "indication of importance" in CSD A7 and A9 to "documentation of coverage in independent reliable sources"? Then the incentive is not to make the article less encyclopedic with gee-whiz language, but to do the basic legwork involved in beginning to demonstrate notability. Since that's, y'know, actually useful, and tends toward keeping all our article-existence tests working from the same basis. Who's with me? —chaos5023 (talk) 15:46, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Unfortunately, many newbies have no idea on how to cite a reliable source, and I fear that overbearing NPPers (not to offend them—there are some great ones) will take it as a license to CSD any article that doesn't have citations to reliable sources (i.e. almost any article new editors write). David1217 ^{What I've done} 15:50, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Well, the idea would be that the content categories of A7 and A9 wouldn't change, so only individuals, animals, organizations, web content, and musical recordings would be affected. So "almost any new article" shouldn't happen. The bulk of A7 and A9 nominations should stay the same, but the idea is we wouldn't get any more nominations of sourced articles that lack only gee-whiz language (which does happen, and is a ridiculous state of affairs), nor would adding gee-whiz language be an affirmative defense against A7 and A9 nomination. —chaos5023 (talk) 15:59, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

So it's easier to Speedy delete things? Doesn't appeal to me. If it's basic legwork, anyone can do it, no need to say 'well, they didn't, so why bother trying?' Darryl from Mars (talk) 15:53, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Possibly a bit easier, but at least it'd be based on sensible criteria. I'd also argue that it would make more sense for NPP to add citations instead of nominating for deletion under these circumstances; if there are readily searchable citations for the topic available, it kinda makes more sense to throw them in and call it a day than it does to edit an article so that it starts asserting importance for its topic. —chaos5023 (talk) 15:59, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

From what I've heard, most of the NPPers are too swamped with work to add talk page tags and {{DEFAULTSORT}}, let alone researching and sourcing articles. David1217 ^{What I've done} 16:03, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Hmm. Well, after about 5 minutes in NPP you have feelings of hostility toward new content; that's just how it works. Psychologically, it feels a lot easier to me under those circumstances to hit up Google Books and Scholar and News Archive real quick and throw in a minimal citation if you find one than it is to, basically, argue for the importance of a topic you didn't care about five minutes ago and now hate a little. Citation finding is relating a statement of fact; asserting importance brings in opinion, which is a way higher bar in that context. —chaos5023 (talk) 16:39, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose. That's contrary to WP:V, which requires that article content be verifiable, not verified: "It must be possible to attribute all information in Wikipedia to reliable, published sources that are appropriate for the content in question. However, in practice it is only necessary to provide inline citations for quotations and for any information that has been challenged or that is likely to be challenged." (emphasis in original) And even WP:BLPPROD, involving a far more serious interest than simple notability, uses a WP:PROD process, not speedy deletion, and only requires one reliably sourced statement to avoid deletion. And then there's WP:BEFORE, which expects an AFD nominator to take the time to check whether there are sources available, not to just nominate an article because it currently lacks sources. So a whole lot of WP practice and principles are against such a change, and for a good reason. If the claimed "big fucking deal" in the new article is a blatant hoax, we can already speedy delete it on that ground via WP:CSD#G3. Otherwise, there's no rush and we lose out on both new content and (relatively) new editors if we don't give these things time to grow. postdlf (talk) 16:00, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Well, okay, but how does any of that make it make sense for an article that clearly passes the GNG with citations actually present to get speedily deleted because it didn't blather about how important its topic is? —chaos5023 (talk) 16:03, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

When has that happened? Can you give an example? postdlf (talk) 16:05, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Hmm. I don't personally know of any successful deletions of that kind, but I have gotten such a nomination on an article I created, Dune II (MUSH). It wasn't a valid speedy because MUDs aren't web content, but probably could've been carried out anyway, and the article had unambiguously notability-demonstrating citations when it was nominated. Nuclear War MUD got a PROD under similar circumstances that, though I can't prove it, I would claim is reflective of the content-category biases that A7 encourages. —chaos5023 (talk) 16:28, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

I personally would consider the presence of reliable sources in an article as possible indications of the subject's importance (depending on what was sourced, beyond the subject's mere existence) and probably would not speedy it (AFD might still be valid though). I'd support an express addition to CSD#A7 to that regard. postdlf (talk) 16:40, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

I remember the A7 and A9 language being "assertion of importance", and it seems to be "indication of importance" now, so perhaps strides have been made in that direction. Cited sourcing arguably satisfies "indication of importance" where it didn't satisfy "assertion of importance". —chaos5023 (talk) 16:45, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

I can see that the letter of your argument has concerned the odd language, true it could be changed to mention notability and sourcing, just that the change you proposed also changes the -spirit- of the policy. I too doubt that anyone is actually deleting anything because of the ambiguity you're questioning, but it's not like I know that for a fact. Darryl from Mars (talk) 16:19, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

It does change the spirit of it, yeah. I would say that's a good thing; isn't the assertion-of-importance thing just a weird holdover from the days before the GNG when articles' "notability" was partly about them claiming their topic was notable? —chaos5023 (talk) 16:28, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

It still is. You'd get booed from the gallery if I posted a new, unsourced article about a now-deceased member of a national parliament, thus satisfying WP:POLITICIAN (and avoiding WP:BLPPROD) and you listed it at AFD just because it presently lacked sources without regard to whether it could be sourced. Claimed importance implies that there are sources out there, but there are certain topics that we have decided belong in the encyclopedia regardless of whether GNG is technically satisfied so long as they are verifiable (the aforementioned parliamentarian, named populated places, animal species). postdlf (talk) 16:37, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

But the article content on the politician doesn't have to get distorted to make claims about his importance. You can just say, oh, hey, he was a politician and he's dead, and the positive bias about the content category takes care of the rest. The negative bias against content categories, on the other hand, explicitly calls for unencyclopedic hoops to be jumped through in the article content, like we did in 2003. That seems a lot more silly to me. —chaos5023 (talk) 16:44, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Actually, y'know, never mind. The language change from "assertion" to "indication" is a different call to action that doesn't necessarily imply what the criteria once did. It's probably fine. :) —chaos5023 (talk) 16:49, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

We've changed the wording to "indication of importance" in the hope that it will produce what we want.

• N "Foo is terribly important and notable" is an "assertion of notability", but it's worthless.
• N "Foo is an organization in Ruritania" does not contain any information about why anyone should care about the subject.
• Y "Foo is the largest manufacturer of widgets in Ruritania" is what we're looking for: an indication of why this subject is worth writing about. Even if that sentence is the only thing on the entire page, it is not and should not be speedy-able. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:22, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

Blurry intersection between notability guidelines and verifiability policies?

I wonder if perfection on any policy or guideline is needed. I was a starter on WP:articles for deletion/Olivia Hack before I was blocked and then unblocked with mentorship. Anyway, that AFD concluded as no consensus because guidelines do not reflect actual significance made by the obscure person, according to policy. Even one or two roles can help her become notable, although she might (not) meet WP:NACTORS. --George Ho (talk) 23:22, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

I'm not seeing the WP:V intersection issue. This is a matter of understanding the relationship between the GNG and the subject-specific guidelines like NACTORS, and which has been a long-discussed matter on notability pages. Generally, for a topic to be presumed notable and thus have a topic it has to meet either the GNG or pass a specific criteria listed out in a subject-specific guideline. The presumption of notability is important to remember here is because other factors (such as other policies) or consensus may disagree with the evidence provided and disallow the article on that topic, so for example, you were completely in your right to challenge that her notability give by NACTORS was a problem; consensus may not see it that way, but the approach your argument took seemed fine.

The only place where WP:V comes into this is that to show that one meets the subject-specific guidelines, we need a source. It doesn't have to be a secondary source, but something that affirms the criteria was met. A person wins a Nobel Prize, we can like to the Nobel's website for that, for example. With the Olympics, I'm sure the various competitors will be listed out by national media of each country, making them presumed notable for participation. Yes, the GNG is not met, but that's not a requirement for presuming notability as noted. (That said, we do hope that such articles can be improved over time to meet the GNG, and thus if they can never be improved beyond that single facet of notability, consensus may opt to delete, hence the presumption of notability). --MASEM (t) 23:46, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Woody Interruptus and conflicts with policies and guidelines

Many proposals to make a special notability guideline for fiction were attempted but failed. Therefore, we have something to reduce more preposterous, like Woody Interruptus, which I have copied-and-pasted into List of Cheers episodes. WP:PLOT doesn't apply to this topic due to its Directing Award win, but Outstanding Directing? Unfortunately, I have twice proposed merger and then failed because compelling arguments are weighing on awards that do not relate to writing or do not indicate why episodes were awarded for such. Still, there is nothing I can do to change consensus of that article. Maybe I can propose a general consideration, but not now.

Why not Writing? Look, there may be other stand-alone articles written like this article, but we must do something about them for notability considerations of episodes before we have more articles like this. And I don't think "idea lab" is a good idea right now, but I wonder if I must establish a straw poll. --George Ho (talk) 09:33, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

Why are the awards not sufficient notability grounds? Why exactly would one want to have more than a one or two line description of those episodes in the list? The list is a list of episodes, it is not about each episode - that is one remove and that sort of thing should only be done for short lists where each entry is a significant part of the whole. If you want to remove the article propose it for deletion and see what the consensus says. If you think the consensus is against you then don't do what you were trying to do. Dmcq (talk) 10:04, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

This is an episode, not a book or a film. How would this article help readers recognize significance if it won Outstanding Direction (even if more than one)? Also, a plot summary in a list can be 100-300 words. --George Ho (talk) 16:00, 13 July 2012 (UTC) Template:episode list says so, as well as WP:MOSTV. --George Ho (talk) 16:19, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

As said before, I've proposed merger twice, and they want it kept. --George Ho (talk) 16:02, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

You're getting off topic George. You're not going to get a page merged here. You said you were coming here for clarification after I removed the banner you posted stating editors are not allowed to use arguments you don't like. Joefromrandb (talk) 17:38, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

There must be coming on to 300 episodes of the business. Just 100 words by 300 comes to 30000 words which is far more than is reasonable for any article never mind going to 300 words each. One can split list articles into pieces much more easily than normal articles but this just strikes me again as stuffing content up front and disimproving the user experience. If there were only 30 episodes I might see a point but I don't see what is being gained here.

Anyway you seem to be saying the article would not be deleted. Fine, in that case accept the consensus and delete the stuff you stuck into the list. As far as the article is concerned the way to get outside editors to overrule the local consensus is with an WP:AfD or a WP:RfC. If you think a policy or guideline needs changing they have their talk pages and there are RfC's for them too and you could say a bit more here if that's what you're doing. But at the very least the stuff shouldn't be in the list in the meantime.

As to episodes just try deleting one of the Star Trek episodes and see where it gets you. They are all notable by that test. The policies and guidelines are supposed to follow practice, and AfD are a very good way of establishing their limits. Dmcq (talk) 17:45, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

In other words, just one plot and one rating in one article, right, even if no awards? --George Ho (talk) 17:51, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

Anyways, I am planning to split all Seasons into stand-alone articles, but I'm doing the Season 1 first before others. Therefore, I'm doing the best that I can. By the way, I'm not planning to remove that entry from the list just because it must be very, very short. --George Ho (talk) 17:55, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

If you split the list by seasons I guess that might fix the problem about shovelling stuff into the list. That is definitely a good idea before you go back to the talk page of that episode and stick in a third merge proposal and really get their backs up. Dmcq (talk) 18:00, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

Regulating content on user pages

Questions have arisen on how much regulation should be applied to the content editors put on their userpages. Generally, policy has stayed clear of this, leaving it to the editor to decide what they like to do there within reason. Lately it's been brought to the attention of a few that some users like to redirect their userpage into article space, with the ensuing discussions moving in the direction of regulation.

Some of the suggestions go towards the content of a userpage and it's purpose, which would see regulation of the content itself, which side-steps the issue of how it got there, through a redirect, or transclusion, or straight copying. Regulating the content naturally is a dynamic which goes on and on and on and on and on.

Some suggestions circle around idiot-proofing, so people don't leave personal messages to their favourite article by following the link from the article they have arrived at to it's talkpage instead of the user-talkpage. A valid point, as there is no shortage of idiots out there, hmm, must be a factory or something.

So on one hand, we either put up with the occasional note to Elvis on the article talkpage about his reverting my blue suede editing, or we merrily head down the tack of regulating content, WooHOO!!!! more Dramas and how. (no I'm not trying to sway anyone, honest) Penyulap ☏ 07:57, 14 Jul 2012 (UTC)

It is already regulated to some extant WP:UP#NOT. Jeepday (talk) 10:13, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

yes, I like this part, the way it speaks of community building.

The Wikipedia community is generally tolerant and offers fairly wide latitude in applying these guidelines to regular participants. Particularly, community-building activities that are not strictly "on topic" may be allowed, especially when initiated by committed Wikipedians with good edit histories. At their best, such activities help us to build the community, and this helps to build the encyclopedia. But at the same time, if user page activity becomes disruptive to the community or gets in the way of the task of building an encyclopedia, it must be modified to prevent disruption

Penyulap ☏ 11:08, 14 Jul 2012 (UTC)

Fry (Futurama) vs. Apu Nahasapeemapetilon

Great, I even did it. I learn how to spell Apu's surname... Ack... Even I didn't copy-and-paste... I did it.... I did it.... I did it.... I did it...

....Immaturity aside, Apu's surname is preferred over parenthetical disambiguation per WP:PRECISION. However, this may contradict "Fry (Futurama)", which is now an official title, while Philip J. Fry is now a redirect. Is there a need to treat fictional character naturally or parenthetically? If either, I wonder. If neither, I somehow wonder if we can continue using another case or a policy for a reason to either move or not move. Right now, I'm confused... --George Ho (talk) 13:38, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

Doesn't this come down to using a bit of common sense, rather than going into the intricacies of what exactly policy mandates? I've watched Futurama enough to know who Fry is, but wouldn't know his full name. On the other hand, though I surely couldn't spell Apu's surname, when I see it written out, I know who it refers to. Anyway, Apu (Simpsons)) is a redirect, and entering 'Apu' in the search box would have found him quick enough. What exactly is the problem? AndyTheGrump (talk) 13:48, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

Does a policy, like WP:article titles, need amendments? If not, shall I propose a renaming back to "Philip J. Fry"? If not, is a guideline about naming a fictional character needed? (Honestly, there is no guideline about what to do with naming a fictional character. WP:NCP doesn't apply.) If not, what else can I do? I mean, Kendall Hart Slater became Kendall Hart by a move consensus. There are some editors who prefer Lucas Horton because he recently changed his name, but the consensus chose "Lucas Roberts". --George Ho (talk) 14:01, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

You've not really explained what you think the problem is. What needs fixing? AndyTheGrump (talk) 15:03, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

...and why is it a Village Pump issue, instead of something you could just resolve on the articles' talk pages? This is getting to be a habit. See also WP:NOTBUREAUCRACY, re: your apparent need to have every content issue specifically provided for by written rules. postdlf (talk) 15:44, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

Canvassing

Im looking for clarification on a current Wikipedia:Canvassing. On 11 July the following AFD was created, well over one hundred nomination and no article creators informed, some articles were still being tagged over 24 hours later. As courtesy if not policy would suggest i advised two creators out of the six who created them using the standard notification template. An admin warned me that by doing so i was canvasing. Other commentators at the AFD pointed out that this was not canvasing.

Having read the policy if this is the case it needs clarification.

• Spamming says Posting an excessive number of messages to individual users, or to users with no significant connection to the topic at hand.
• Campaigning: Posting a notification of discussion that presents the topic in a non-neutral manner.
• Vote-stacking: Posting messages to users selected based on their known opinions (which may be made known by a userbox, user category, or prior statement). Vote-banking involves recruiting editors perceived as having a common viewpoint for a group, similar to a political party, in the expectation that notifying the group of any discussion related to that viewpoint will result in a numerical advantage, much as a form of prearranged vote stacking
• Stealth canvassing: Contacting users off-wiki (by e-mail or IRC, for example) to persuade them to join in discussions
• Soliciting support other than by posting direct messages, such as using a custom signature with a message promoting a specific position on any issue being discussed.

Ill address my view on these points. Spamming two or even six is not an excessive number and in this case they all had a concoction to the topic as they created these articles. Campaigning a standard notification is posting in a neutral manor. Vote-stacking posting based on knowing opinions, i do not know there opinions or have even conversed with them in the past. Or actually edited that topic ever. Stealth canvassing, a notification is on wiki so its not that. And finally Soliciting a standard notification does not cover that section.

If it is agreed that this is canvasing then Wikipedia:Canvassing needs update to include advice on AFDS. I feel advice here [[4]] in section Notifying substantial contributors to the article allows standard notification.Edinburgh Wanderer 14:55, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

Even if hundreds of editors have contributed to articles later nominated for deletion, maybe that should "skew" the discussion. I certainly don't see any real concern over notifying six. That's what you get when you nominate over a hundred articles for deletion. (Incidentally, I learned of this AFD through deletion sorting lists, and don't recall ever editing these myself). postdlf (talk) 15:53, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

Neithier did i never edited them, only came across them because of an edit war report on the nominator let me to look why he was still tagging over 24 hours later never tagged them all, or notified even one editor.

As the admin in question, I don't have a great problem with two. The discussion was whether to notify all article creators on a large AFD: that would have resulted in six people being notified, all of whom were likely to vote to keep, based on the fact that they had created one or more of the articles. It goes against the vote-stacking issue, even if the notifications were in good faith, because the voters were all more likely to vote one way than the other. Six votes is enough to distort any AFD result.—Kww(talk) 15:57, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

You cannot prove six is excessive and [[5]] seems very clearly to allow use of a standard notification template. That is shown in this section Notifying substantial contributors to the article Edinburgh Wanderer 16:20, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

What do you want for proof that six is excessive? A statistical analysis of how many articles attract six voters? Omitting a courtesy notification is harmless, and notifying a biased group of editors is not. Erring on the side of caution would argue for not notifying in a case like this.—Kww(talk) 16:26, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

There is something wrong with your sig causing and error to appear every time you reply until i reply. Other commentators disagreed with you in the AFD, also the link i provided shows you should notify as a common courtesy. Your accusation and threat against me is unfounded based on the current wording at canvasing and by the link at the AFD page. That AFD was well over one hundred nominations some weren't even tagged six creators is not canvassing. Unless you can prove that six notifications when people viewing over one hundred noms would only lead to six replys you don't have a valid point. there were more than six replies in just over 24 hours with six days left to run most of them in a few hour period none of them were who i advised. Since you cant back up that claim the why don't we let other people reply. Did you read the comments made at the AFD that it was not canvassing.Edinburgh Wanderer 16:31, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

Well the real question here is not the number of people but specifically whether you can count these article authors as a "Partisan" audience, per the Canvassing guideline. Obviously, we are the encyclopedia that anyone can edit, and those who have actually taken an interest in an article actually have a stake in the outcome, since they've invested time in the article. Does this necessarily mean they will vote 'Keep' as a rule? Are they partisan? Our general principle at Wikipedia is that anyone is welcome to edit any article, and that we want to encourage more of that. Whether people are willing to admit it or not, a poorly attended AfD is just as partisan-biased if people aren't able to pay attention during the short window it may be active. The Wikipedia Deletion policy has a strong bias in favor of finding alternatives to deletion, and the AfD guideline even says "While not required, it is generally considered courteous to notify the good-faith creator and any main contributors of the articles that you are nominating for deletion". AfD debates should be decided on the merits and strength of arguments not the number of people who show up and !vote Keep or Delete. If admins or editors are not closing debates on that basis, then we need to remind AfD closers what the actual policy is and enforce that. But keeping people out of a debate who have an obvious stake in it, especially if it is a neutrally worded notice seems to fly in the face of our Deletion policy, our AfD process, and our Civility pillar. -- Avanu (talk) 16:43, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

This does not "fly in the face" of anything. The purpose of an AFD is to have an objective evaluation of whether the article merits inclusion, and that means that one should not invite any group of people that are predisposed to either delete or to keep. I don't know how you can argue that people don't have a predisposition to keep their own work.—Kww(talk) 06:33, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

By that metric, having the nominator put their reasoning at the top of the AfD for all to see is another largely predisposing thing. For objective evaluation, the article should simply be anonymously listed, and then anyone who wishes to participate in the discussion must investigate the article for themselves to see if it merits inclusion. Objectively, of course. Anyways, so long as AfD isn't just a vote, but an evaluation of arguments, six people that are voting keep just because it's their article shouldn't be hard to discount, since we're assuming the case where their reasons don't actually justify their votes. Darryl from Mars (talk) 15:38, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

This is the exact wording on the notification page

• While not required, it is generally considered courteous to notify the good-faith creator and any main contributors of the articles that you are nominating for deletion. One should not notify bot accounts, people who have made only insignificant 'minor' edits, or people who have never edited the article. To find the main contributors, look in the page history or talk page of the article and/or use Duesentrieb's ActiveUsers tool or Wikipedia Page History Statistics. Use {{subst:AfD-notice|article name|AfD discussion title}}. At this point, you've done all you need to do as nominator. Sometime after seven days has passed, someone will either close the discussion or, where needed, "relist" it for another seven days of discussion. (The "someone" must not be you the nominator, but if you want to see how it's done see the next section.)

Edinburgh Wanderer 16:46, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

Whether the admin that closes a discussion looks at whether there may be a conflict of interest that is there role not the nominator or someone who notifies them. A standard notification template isn't canvassing when following the above policy, it even states main contributors not just the article creators. Edinburgh Wanderer 16:50, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

I take great issue with the notion that participation from the content creators or contributors at an AFD causes "distortion," as if the policy-wonks likely to wander through an average AFD (myself included) are somehow a more important community than the editors who have actually worked on the content. If there are so many creators of the content you have nominated in a single AFD that their participation will outweigh others, then that says something about the scale of the nomination; and compare a situation in which one editor has unilaterally created a mass of articles no one else supports with what we had here. I simply see no merit to excluding notification of creators because there were a lot of creators, instead quite the opposite. One might as well argue against putting AFD notices on articles at all, on the claim that the greater number of visiting readers interested and editors who have it watchlisted will "distort" the results. Kww was wrong here. postdlf (talk) 16:59, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

• If a policy or guideline requires or even suggests that you notify certain individuals, making a neutral template notification should never be considered impermissible canvasing. Maybe the wisdom of the AfD notification should be evaluated, but as long as it tells you to notify people the notifications are permissible. Monty₈₄₅ 17:08, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
  • That's a very good point; when done with the AFD of a single article, that's not going to be a problem, but a nominator should be aware that nominating 100+ articles at the same time and expected to get a delete needs to realize how the potential number of article creators should be notified and what their disposition will be to the mass AFD. If they know they're knocking on a wasp's net, maybe the solution is not a mass AFD but an open discussion on the matter at an appropriate talk page. --MASEM (t) 15:48, 15 July 2012 (UTC)
    • I entirely agree with postdlf, Monty845 and Masem: who is more likely to give (or not give) appropriate reasoning to keep an article than those who created it? AFD is not a vote: a poorly reasoned keep by an article's author will likely work against an effort to keep it. Not notifying content creators is frankly offensive to their work and only re-enforces the impression that AFD is frequented by people who are not involved in content creation. SFB 15:55, 15 July 2012 (UTC)
• I believe that notifying the authors would be fine, but if you didn't want to do that for some reason, it would probably be just as good to notify the relevant WikiProject, which is another thing that the AFD advice suggests. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:55, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

Kww, if people follow the rules of closure, then even 1000 people showing up shouldn't be a problem. AfDs are supposed to be based on consensus, which is supposed to be grounded in good arguments, based in policy and guidelines. If people don't base their arguments on that, the argument should be tossed. Consensus is not supposed to just be what is popular, unless you feel that WP:Ignore All Rules is the best way to close AfDs. -- Avanu (talk) 06:24, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

I wish I shared your faith that other admins would stop counting votes. I've found that any effort to evaluate consensus that results in an evaluation different than simple counting would achieve causes controversy.—Kww(talk) 12:39, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

I have no faith that they are doing it correctly, simply that I know what the rules are supposed to be on AfDs. If these are being run like votes, then we need to either change the rules, which I think would be a bad idea, or enforce the rules, which is what we should be doing regardless. -- Avanu (talk) 13:10, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

Concur with Avanu, if anyone has a reasonable argument that an AfD was closed as a simple vote count, over consensus grounded in good arguments, they should bring it up for discussion. If there are 100 "Keep because I like it" votes and 3 "Delete per BLP" it should close delete. There will always be border line cases, but where it is clear, bring it up, first with the closing editor (tactfully). Then elevate as needed. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 15:06, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

• I agree with everyone above concerning contacting those who may have edited a page (indeed, it's part of why we place a notice on the page - the idea that those who may read or edit the page may have it on their watchlist. However, Kww makes a very good point. All too many closers count "votes". Part of the problem of course is that when a closer doesn't, there's often a firestorm. If we find a way to deal with these issues, then the canvassing issue becomes less of a concern. - jc37 15:55, 16 July 2012 (UTC)
  • I looked at this and Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)#Thoughts on AfD.2FCSD Reform ([6]) and wonder - would some sort of informal optional checklist for closer of AfD discussion (recommending, among other things, let's say, to list the arguments and judge what support each of them has) help..? --Martynas Patasius (talk) 00:52, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

• I for one would be all for upgrading the notification of major contributors into a formal requirement to nominating an article for AFD. I've nominated several articles for deletion, but I always inform the major contributors, even if there are many of them; it seems to me unethical not to. If you've contributed significant content to an article, then you should be informed when that content is about to get deleted. Some people seem to take the attitude "Well, if they care about the article, they should keep it on their watchlist", but that just seems disrespectful to content creators. And if you're saying "But that means I would have to notify 40 people after nominating this article! And they'd probably all say keep!" - well, maybe that's a sign you should think twice before nominating that well-established article, isn't it? If you don't have a solid argument that would result in a delete outcome at AFD, and are hoping to 'win' merely because the article's supporters don't turn up, you shouldn't be there in the first place. Robofish (talk) 16:16, 16 July 2012 (UTC)
  • I never notify the creator. Never have, never will. It's not "unethical" at all, it's simply avoiding the presence of an inherently biased !vote.—Kww(talk) 17:42, 16 July 2012 (UTC)
    • Regardless of whether a deletion nominator should feel compelled to notify creators, I think we have a clear consensus in this discussion that it was inappropriate to warn someone with a block for doing so. So let's not see that happen again. postdlf (talk) 18:11, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard no longer marked as a guideline

Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) has been edited so that it is no longer marked as a guideline. It was previously marked as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

File:Paint 7.png

Um... it should use the {{Microsoft screenshot}} template? 68.173.113.106 (talk) 16:58, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

It probably could. I also suspect the drawing needs a separate notice. Anomie⚔ 20:37, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

On closer look, maybe not. One of the requirements for {{Non-free Microsoft screenshot}} is that the screenshot not contain third-party content, which might include the drawing. That might be a question for WP:MCQ. Anomie⚔ 20:56, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

Images of fictional characters and/or shows in Getty Images

File:Jaleel White Steve Urkel.jpg (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) was deleted because it is licensed to Getty Images and is used commercially, and prior publication does not erase later commercial intent. File:Cheers cast photo.jpg (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) was deleted for the same reasons. I tried deleting File:Frasier Crane.jpg (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) because it is licensed to Getty, even if the original author is NBC or Paramount. Nevertheless, someone challenged it, and I am almost ready to nominate it for deletion. I wonder if any image of a fictional character or show fits the bill of WP:NFC#UUI, as these images themselves are not notable enough as stand-alone articles. If not, shall they be excluded from fitting the criteria of photo agencies? --George Ho (talk) 18:06, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

Working on the assumption that a character is notable, either a photo of the character (from a press agency kit, most likely) or a screenshot of the character is generally accepted, but as you note, if that photo is coming from an agency like Getty that are publishing the photos commercially, we can't use them, and need to find another source. That is, the respect for commercial opportunities and the issue with photo publication entities trump the UUI aspects. Same if we're talking a cast photo to be used within the description of a show. --MASEM (t) 18:11, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

There is a question to be asked too: where did the original photo come from? Is it the case that a press agency pack get to Getty, who put those photos up for commercial redistribution? (In this case, if we can demonstrate the photo actually came from the press agency pack and thus Getty doesn't own the rights to it, we can use the press agency photo) Or is it that the photo is exclusively from Getty's archives, meaning that we can't use it at all. This is a tough question to answer and so if Getty images or other agencies are involved, and we can't positively determine the original photo source, we need to play it safe and delete such images. --MASEM (t) 18:14, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

But what about original and subsequent intentions of original authors? Have photos been originally distributed as publicity photos or commercial photos? Either way, would subsequent intentions triumph original intentions, or the other way around? Does commerciality triumph publicity? --George Ho (talk) 18:25, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

I don't know, is the short answer. Given the *broadness* of Getty's catalog, and the fact that you can click a button on Flickr to publish an image via Getty, probably means that there are copyrighted photos belonging to party A, uploaded elsewhere without copyright licensing (read, possibly fair use) by party B, and picked up by Getty based on party B's intentions, ignoring what A had intended. I have no idea of how Getty works to assure uploaded photos are owned by the person that says they are (just as with Flickr, there's lots of images "licensed" as CC-BY but are clearly copyrighted elements without validation the copyright owner said it was ok). Unfortunately, because it's Getty, we have to play bad cop here. --MASEM (t) 18:31, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

George, your question goes to the source information, which is as good a proxy for "intention" that we can have. If the original source of an image hosted by Getty was a press kit, then it shouldn't matter that it is now part of Getty's archive. And a screenshot has none of these concerns, and should be readily obtainable for any TV or film character. Your initial post made it sound like you were (incorrectly) thinking it was the subject matter of fictional characters that was at issue. postdlf (talk) 18:37, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

Then why was the "Steve Urkel" image deleted? Should deletion be reviewed? One of my mentors MGA73 says no review. However, ask Nyttend; s/he challenged speedy deletion proposal. Masem is uncertain, but you said it doesn't matter. Now I'm confused. --George Ho (talk) 18:47, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

What do you mean, why was the Urkel image deleted? Your question implies we just contradicted something when I thought it was explained very clearly and consistently. The Urkel image was deleted because it was from a commercial source (Getty), there was no evidence it previously originated from a non-commercial source (such as a press kit), and a screenshot was already in use to depict the character that had none of those problems. This is what we just explained, and it was quite clear from the FFD itself, so your confusion confuses me. Maybe you should take some time to re-read and think through these comments, and then come back later when you've had a chance to digest it all if you still have questions. postdlf (talk) 22:34, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

Very suspicious image. Getty credits the image to "Bill Reitzel/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank". The image was made by NBC and NBCU Photo Bank appears to be another commercial image host belonging to NBC. The site contains information about image licensing and pricing, so I would assume that any image on that site would count as a WP:NFCC#2 violation. I tried locating this specific image by searching for the term "Frasier Crane", but the NBCU Photo Bank returned 40 pages with 25 images per page, so it takes too much time to search through them all, but I assume that the image is there somewhere. I would say that it should be deleted per WP:NFCC#2 since it seems that individual copies of the image are sold not only by Getty Images but also directly by NBC through the NBCU Photo Bank. I am aware that anyone can make photos available through Getty using Flickr, but wouldn't Flickr images normally be credited to the Flickr account holder? I would expect Getty to treat Flickr images as own works by default, even if the images are copyright violations on Flickr. This image is not credited to some obscure Flickr user but to NBC directly. --Stefan2 (talk) 20:30, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

You simply missed this, which I saved in image description: GettyImages.com. --George Ho (talk) 20:36, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

Hello, Village pump (policy). You have new messages at Wikipedia:Files for deletion/2012 July 16.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Stefan2 (talk) 21:18, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Blocking policy

The blocking policy is one of the key policies used to stop wikipedia from suffering harm. It also shows that Admins don't have the right to block a user they have a conflict of interest with or are in dispute with.

This is an RFC to re clarify consensus on Wikipedia's blocking policy. Specifically the section on Conflicts of interest it states

• Administrators must not block users with whom they are engaged in a content dispute; instead, they should report the problem to other administrators. Administrators should also be aware of potential conflicts of interest involving pages or subject areas with which they are involved.

This is not being followed by all admins at the present time for a varying reasons. I request the community decide whether we still feel this statement is appropriate and must be followed. Also do the community think actions should be taken against said admin if they do not follow the blocking policy.Edinburgh Wanderer 19:38, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

• If the block was otherwise good, and the only issue is they made the block while involved, the admin should be summarily {{trout}}ed and then everyone should move on. If the block was bad, and they were involved, and it can't be resolved to satisfaction at WP:AN/I it should be sent to WP:RFC/U and eventually Arbcom if the recalcitrant admin doesn't respond to the problem appropriately. Monty₈₄₅ 20:36, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

A block can be good or bad by nature, to me the problem then is the wording. I think we have to be clear on something as important as the blocking policy, if the policy states Must Not then they are not allowed to do so for any reason. If we feel there may be circumstances where they can block then the wording should be made less harsh. An admin will know whether they are involved or not before they block, or be aware they could be considered involved.Edinburgh Wanderer 21:53, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

Well, no. I've seen plenty of instances where "But you were involved!" was followed by a rejection of that assertion either by consensus, WP:IAR, or WP:COMMONSENSE. Determining involvement is sometimes a matter of judgement and if an admin, who has a good record, errs, they shouldn't be raked over the coals. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 22:06, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

Right, the rule against acting while involved serves two purposes. First and most importantly, it is designed to stop an admin from letting the heat of the moment get the better of them and using their tools to give themselves an advantage in an editing dispute. The second purpose is avoid the appearance that an admin may have used there tools to give themselves such an advantage. If the block was otherwise good, the second purpose is still at issue, but its not as big a deal. If the first purpose is at issue, it raises a question about their fundamental suitability to remain an admin. Monty₈₄₅ 22:16, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘In case it is not clear, this issue was raised here WP:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Block_review_please. Leaky Caldron 22:24, 16 July 2012 (UTC) ┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Thanks for that Leaky but lets make this clearer. This is not about one admin or one particular situation if it had been i would of named several admins. this is about whether in general the community feels it correct to allow an admin to not follow the blocking policy specifically word such as Must Not. If the community feels they can under certain circumstances then the blocking policy has to be changed to exclude the words must not, possibly admins are strongly advised not to would be a better wording. Admins have the extreme trust of the community to follow key policy and that includes the blocking policy. Therefore the community needs to decide whether we trust our admins judgement fully and allow them to make that decision, or we feel they cannot exercise judgement in a situation where they are perceived as involved. Edinburgh Wanderer (talk) 23:22, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

Sounds like WP:CREEP to me. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 00:41, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

The Atlantic article on declining ranks of Wikipedia admins

I wanted to steer people's attention to today's article in The Atlantic online: 3 Charts That Show How Wikipedia Is Running Out of Admins. The author, Robinson Meyer, discusses several charts shown at Wikimania and discusses the drop-off in admin counts at en-wiki:

In June 2010, six people became admins. March of that year saw only two promotions...

There are reasons for this. Andrew Lih, author of The Wikipedia Revolution and a professor of journalism at the University of Southern California, told me the process by which new admins are promoted is arduous and extensive...

"The vetting process is akin to putting someone through the Supreme Court," he said. "It's pretty much a hazing ritual at this point..."

For the past few months of 2012, no more than one or two Wikipedia users have been promoted to admin status. This slow trickle of new talent means fewer people perform the encyclopedia's upkeep -- sorting, categorizing, correcting vandalism. And the arduous application process also fails to provide a little karmic reward for involved editors, which means they're less likely to devote time to improving the encyclopedia's structural weaknesses, like how, for example, to adapt the encyclopedia's sourcing to an age of social media.

I'm deeply concerned that we have a culture that pushes away many of our best contributors and a process that seeks to promote only those editors best able to worm their way through an incredibly bureaucratic and adversarial process. If we want Wikipedia to be a more welcoming and less fighty place, then it doesn't make sense to select our admins through a trial by fire that is anything but. It seems to me that one of two paths is worth seriously pursuing at this point:

• Radically refining the RfA process to grant the tools upon request, or at least most of them, to relatively active users in good standing without any of the usual 20+ question grilling, endless hypothetical, digging through every past edit that could be seen in a remotely negative light, wildly different definitions of required qualifications from different users, requirements for article work, requirements for non-article work, expectations that the user be an expert in virtually everything, etc... In short, the community should agree on a much more clearly defined criteria and apply that criteria to all requests without interposing personal judgements on what that criteria should be. If a user has a concern about the criteria, then they should put that up for discussion, not make every candidate uphold individual personal standards. Going along with this, we should feel free to remove the admin bits from users when things don't work out, with an explicit promise to fairly reconsider in a few months if improvement is demonstrated.

• Eliminate adminship entirely and spread its constituent privileges across a range of smaller permissions. Editors could separately request the right to handle deletions, blocks, interface changes, protect pages, etc... Each privilege would be comparatively easy to obtain and would be available to editors with relevant experience in a particular area. This approach would de-emphasize the role of administrators by focusing on the actual tasks to be performed rather than conferring an overall status of authority.

Zachlipton (talk) 21:15, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

RFA is to a veteran user, what Wikipedia is to a new user. It is a symptom of the community being overly critical. It will only change when the community decides to change itself. Nothing else will fix it. It's that simple. 64.40.54.3 (talk) 23:38, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

Seriously, adminship really isn't that big of a deal, and the special tools available really aren't necessary for doing most things on Wikipedia. You mention "sorting, categorizing, correcting vandalism" -- none of those actions require admin tools -- although in some cases they could be handy, I could see. Where admins are particularly needed is cases of persistent vandalism, or when a particular topic is in the news. Then, you need someone with extra tools to protect pages until it calms down. But 99.9% of what Wikipedia needs is more people to actually improve articles. Who really cares that we now have 4 million plus articles on the English Wikipedia when there's only about 20,000 that are rated as Featured or Good, and even only about 100,000 are B-class. That's only about 3% of our articles that are even halfway decent (and there's a lot of grey area because B-class really doesn't have any specific or enforced standards like FA & GA do).

I've been editing here since about 2004 or 2005 -- under a different username earlier. I was here in the heyday of editing, and I even was nominated for adminship (failed). Yes, the adminship process is ridiculous. It's easier to defend a Ph.D. Dissertation than a successful RfA! Even Jesus Christ would probably fail at RfA. So, I no longer care about adminship. Today, most ofusers what I care about here is improving articles and helping to develop some sort of consistency in articles such that people can generally trust the encyclopedia for the information that is here. I really don't care to get too involved in hot button topics prone to edit wars -- I don't have time for that. I tend to focus my efforts more in some of the smaller articles and ones that may not have been touched in awhile but desperately need attention. I don't need admin rights to do that. WTF? (talk) 02:56, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

The other problem is strong disincentives for existing admins to use the tools: they get nothing but stick for it. In an all-stick and no-carrot environment, dedication to duty only goes so far and only increases the burnout. (And that's not even considering stalking from lunatic troll sites or gibberingly weird arbcom decisions.) We have an impending serious problem with lack of administrative effort on the way, because the incentive structure is completely wrong. I'm at a loss to think what would make a suitable carrot, but surely something could be done about the amount of stick - David Gerard (talk) 11:18, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

How to fix Wikipedia? Tags

I guess the big hot topic of the month is the declining number of editors we have here on Wikipedia, and ways to help remedy that situation. One of the things I've noticed develop is an overall increase in the number of articles being littered with tags of all sorts. Either the article needs to be tagged because it doesn't have enough references, or it needs images, or it's NPOV, or it doesn't have an appropriate "worldview", etc, etc, . . . ad nauseum. While I do understand that there is a certain purpose to these tags, as they do seem to warn editors that the content may not be up to par, and many of them do add articles to various categories for easy tracking, I also question the necessity of many of these tags. I also see lots of editors who seem to have developed a favorite pasttime of not really editing by just sprinkling random articles with various tags at their whim -- the favorite one these folks like to use is the "citation needed" tag. And I notice many of these tags are simply added by someone who neither provides a reasonable explanation in the edit summary nor explains why the tag is being added in the talk page.

Maybe what we should do to help remedy this is to encourage editors to use tags more sparingly, and try to improve the article first before randomly tagging it? If you add a tag, make sure to explain on the talk page why you're adding the tag, and give your rationale. We could also go ahead and remove tags immediately if no rationale is provided for them? Perhaps the tags could be redesigned to be a little less intrusive or less annoying as well? Does anyone have any other suggestions? WTF? (talk) 03:09, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Pretty sure this is a perennial proposal by now... ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 04:11, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

I'd personally rather that editors always endeavoured to flag issues with articles wherever they exist. Tags are the fastest and most effective way of drawing attention to problems with articles. Articles which are tagged are improved faster than articles which aren't tagged. The tagging system has been a phenomenal success. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 09:30, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Your suggestions in the second para are good ones, but I think tags are a service to the reader: they warn people that (a) Wikipedia has rough edges (b) they're on one right now. Wikipedia is useful but not reliable, and papering over this strikes me as a disservice to the people using it - David Gerard (talk) 11:20, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Part of the problem is that we undeniably have over-tagging, because people are sometimes reticient about removing tags from articles ("I haven't cleaned it all up", "I don't know if I'm allowed to") or simply forget to (especially with section editing). Even if the proportion of problem articles is constant, the number tagged will thus seem to balloon.

One approach that would help a lot is to get readers to interact the tags - I've wondered before about the practicality of a one-click system, a la HotCat, which allows readers to easily remove no-longer-appropriate tagging... Andrew Gray (talk) 12:30, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Only a tiny proportion of our articles have any tags. It is simply false that there is presently an "over-tagging problem". What's more, it is undeniably better to have an article with superfluous tags (which any competent editor can remove at will) than an article which is missing tags that apply (which means that it isn't categorised for appropriate cleanup and bears no simple indication of how to improve it). Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 14:02, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

What constitutes "tiny proportion" in your mind? Last I looked, about 6% of articles were tagged with {{unref}}—and that's just one template alone. About a quarter of WPMED's articles are tagged with some sort of clean-up template. I suspect that's reasonably typical, and I don't think that counts as "tiny proportion". WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:43, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

I'm at a loss as to what your answer is to 6% of pages being tagged as unreferenced. Should they not be tagged? Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 20:55, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

My use of "over-tagging" here is on a per-article basis, not an overall one - I do think that many more articles have problems than have problem tags, but at the same time there are a substantial number of articles which have too many tags because the problems are since resolved (or were never really present, in a few cases). I don't think these two issues are antagonistic, or that improving one is at the cost of the other - in fact, some of the root causes may be the same. Andrew Gray (talk) 23:07, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Whether you agree with the fact we have an "over-tagging" problem or not, I think the real concern should be focused on actually trying to fix the problem instead of simply drive-by tagging it in the hopes that somebody else will come by to fix it. The chances that somebody else will fix it is decreasing every time Wikipedia loses more editors. Plus, for articles that have multiple tags, I suspect that it may be scaring some people out of editing it, because there may be a perception that the article may have too many issues to fix and it's just an insurmountable task. Or others may steer clear of them because they might think there's some sort of edit war going on and they want to avoid controversy. WTF? (talk) 17:58, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Yes but it's often not so easy and/or very time consuming to fix problems that are easy to see are problems. Never forget we're all volunteers here. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 18:14, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Marking the problems is also a good thing, much better than doing nothing, which that "actually trying to fix the problem instead of simply drive-by tagging it" too often becomes. Not everyone who can notice a problem can fix it.

Anyway, there was one thing you said that is really worth notice: "Perhaps the tags could be redesigned to be a little less intrusive or less annoying as well?". So, to start, what makes you think that the tags are "intrusive" and "annoying"? Is it the shape, the size, the colours, the icons, the wording..? --Martynas Patasius (talk) 18:19, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

I think what bugs me the most is that they're generally placed at the top of articles, and for articles with multiple tags, you sometimes have to scroll down at least half a page just to see the content! That seems a bit excessive. Maybe for articles with multiple issues (or, let's just say, they totally suck), a single "THIS ARTICLE COMPLETELY SUCKS" tag would be appropriate and be done with it. Then, you don't have five or six tags going down the page -- leave the details about why the article sucks to be discussed in the talk page. WTF? (talk) 21:09, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

"[F]or articles with multiple tags, you sometimes have to scroll down at least half a page just to see the content!"? In such case, what is the size of your browser window (or screen resolution)? Having enough tags to cover the whole screen and half of another seems to be a lot (far more than "five or six" - unless you have a small browser window or meant something different) and I don't remember ever seeing so many tags... --Martynas Patasius (talk) 21:22, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

I end up fixing a majority of pages I tag by myself, I'd wager. The tagging helps with my workflow. What is nice is that I can provide hard data for that in the form of ~100,000 listed contributions. Personally, I'm more prone to believing hard evidence than in some personal hypothesis that an unknown number of editors are recoiling from Wikipedia like a vampire from sunlight because a page has a tag on it. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 20:55, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Notability (geography)

A draft proposal for the notability of geographic features is being developed at the frequently-cited Wikipedia:Notability (geography). Many AfD discussions suggest a threshold for notability below Wikipedia's General Notability Guideline and cite this essay as support. A failed proposal can be viewed at Wikipedia:Notability (Geographic locations). G. C. Hood (talk) 03:17, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Special case of CSD G7

Is one allowed to nominate mainspace titles for CSD G7 where (s)he:

1. Has overridden an existing redirect with an article (because RFD takes at least a week and is too slow)
2. Has been the only substantial contributor to that article ever since
3. After the nomination, the prior article content will be immediately used to recreate.

This is for the sole purpose of upping article creation count. GotR ^Talk 05:19, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

The answer is 'no'. Ruslik_Zero 15:01, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Is there a "Two Wrongs Don't Make a Right" policy?

Hi All,

I think there is a policy that says, "Just because there is a mistake on one page does not mean the mistake should be proliferated or tolerated on another page." Am I right, or is there something at least similar? If so, please post a link. Many thanks! Ebikeguy (talk) 15:49, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

I think you're looking for WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. rdfox 76 (talk) 16:02, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Otherstuff is a good argument, but note the message that "it is not a Wikipedia policy or guideline". The actual relevant policy for your case is WP:Consensus. Wikipedia:Civility and Wikipedia:Ignore all rules may also apply. Diego (talk) 16:18, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Are there any concrete Wikipedia policies to oppose bribery?

I brought up this issue at Wikipedia talk:Policies and guidelines to which User:Dmcq recommended that that this place would be better to address the issue. I have encountered a user who attempted to bribe me with an offer that he/she would support a position that I had taken on a talk page, and abandon their previous opposition, on the condition of an exchange where I would support that user's stance on another article that I was not involved with. Other users noticed that this involved a violation of WP:CANVASS, but they noted that there is no such thing as a Wikipedia policy opposing bribery. The user who bribed me was blocked on grounds of WP:CANVASS and WP:UNCIVIL. User:Art_LaPella claims that bribery could fall under Wikipedia:Conflict of interest and particularly Wikipedia:Conflict of interest#Close relationships. The problem I have with this is that I have had no close relationship with the user who bribed me, in fact I have strongly disagreed with the user in the past. I believe that bribery of any sorts - be it financial offers or an offer of favours - is contrary to the principles of Wikipedia.

User:Dmcq has supported the intention of my request, saying: "I have come across the same sort of thing myself with people trying to do horse trading between different articles, not just whether something would be better covered in one or the other but actually offering to suppor an RfC in one if others would support another RfC in a different article. I do think it may be worth a paragraph and a WP link about it somewhere." If there are no existing policies that deal with this, I suggest that such a policy needs to be created, I think it should be placed within the Wikipedia:Conflict of Interest with its own section titled Wikipedia:Conflict of Interest#Bribery - from the blue colour of the link, it appears that such a policy did exist but has since been removed, the policy could be linked through shortcut links titled WP:BRIBE, WP:BRIBERY.--R-41 (talk) 16:26, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, but calling such behaviour 'bribery' is not only misleading, but possibly libellous. Yes, it is wrong, and yes, it may well need explicitly spelling out in policy somewhere, but giving it a dubious label isn't going to help. AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:43, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

The link is blue because the COI page exists; the software doesn't evaluate section headings. Wikipedia:Conflict of Interest#Random garbage from mashing the keyboard is also blue. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:47, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Do we really need to spell out every instance of Things Wikipedia Editors Should Not Do? If someone's only excuse for doing something or not doing something is "Nothing says I have to/Nothing says I can't", then they have failed to be a good editor. postdlf (talk) 17:23, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

What is with the aggressive, cynical attitude of some users here? I mean is this a place for users to address issues or not? Because I think that my contributions are neither being respected nor welcomed here at all. So much for the Wikipedia guideline "Be welcoming"! If you are a user who is too worn out, too tired out, or too cynical to even address issues here presented by concerned users, then just say so, because being aggressive to two users (me and the User:Dmcq who agrees that the problem I addressed is real), is not helpful.--R-41 (talk) 18:33, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

How is it cynical to expect that editors refrain from bad behavior even when there is no rule prohibiting each and every type of possible bad behavior? Or that people not simply do whatever they think they can get away with according to what the rules say? Rather the opposite, I'd think. I was commenting on the assertion by the blocked user that he did nothing wrong only because "there is no such thing as a Wikipedia policy opposing bribery." postdlf (talk) 18:41, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

I could not think of another word at the time other than "bribery" to describe it, perhaps a better term of reference is vote trading. The user who Andy says I'm being "libelous" to, was banned for canvassing, gross misconduct, and immediately prior to being blocked, the user even admitted to being a sock puppet of the banned User:Chaosname. at the time to describe someone offering to support an edit of mine on the condition that I support one of their edits. I have seen policies that oppose financial offers - that deals with one aspect of what I addressed. User:Dmcq says that he/she has run into this editing as well. Due to Andy's address, I will revise the issue to vote trading, and propose a WP:NOVOTETRADE or WP:VOTETRADE to be added as a part of Wikipedia:Conflict of Interest.--R-41 (talk) 18:36, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

The scenario you describe is already covered under our WP:SOCK policy, specifically the WP:MEAT section. -- Avanu (talk) 18:37, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

The sock issue I know about. The issue is the evidence of vote trading, regardless of whether the user was a sockpuppet. It is an issue separate from that.--R-41 (talk) 18:39, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

It doesn't need to be explicitly stated, it's already covered by the use of WP:COMMONSENSE. IRWolfie- (talk) 18:44, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Understandable, but that is just an essay regardless of its relevance. The user in question attempted to argue that there is nothing wrong with vote trading.--R-41 (talk) 18:47, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Thinking about it, WP:NPOV already covers this. Horse-traded 'support' is self-evidently not 'neutral'. I see no need for further policy. If someone is 'trading' their credibility for support (or is offering to 'trade' support), they will soon cease to have any credibility at all - and can be shown the door per WP:NOTHERE as displaying "editorial dishonesty". AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:56, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

That is the response I was looking for, evidence of policy that bars vote trading. It is settled then.--R-41 (talk) 18:58, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Just make sure to distinguish from situations where editors compromise as part of positive dispute resolution, such as agreeing to stay out of each others' areas of interest. Agreeing that A will not edit Article One if B will not edit Article Two is still horse trading, but if it ends a stream of endless disputes it would be a good thing. Monty₈₄₅ 19:54, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Making an offer to stay out of an area of interest of another editor if they stay out of yours is very wrong behaviour I think. It is coercion with threats. Soliciting votes by swapping yours is bad enough without descending to that level. Dmcq (talk) 20:11, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

It should also probably be distinguished from compromises on content concerning matters like due weight; e.g. I think it would be ethical for an editor to support calling the UK a "parliamentary democracy" in one place on the condition that the term "constitutional monarchy" is used in another place. Editors should be able to "haggle" over which aspect should be given prominence, i.e. what constitutes due weight and how to express it. --Boson (talk) 23:33, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Already covered under WP:CANVASS and WP:MEATPUPPET. As you say, in your example the offending editor has been blocked. The fact that a deal was offered could be taken into account when the offending editor is sanctioned. However, it does not meet the criteria for bribery, unless you think you can prosecute offenders in criminal courts. Also see WP:BEANS - we do not want to explain to tendentious editors all the techniques they can use. TFD (talk) 20:53, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Policies: number and size

Policy name	Size (bytes)
Wikipedia:Administrators	38,502
Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/CheckUser and Oversight	11,144
Wikipedia:Arbitration/Policy	13,393
Wikipedia:Article titles	41,906
Wikipedia:Attack page	3,324
Wikipedia:Banning policy	25,822
Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons	40,608
Wikipedia:Bot policy	30,562
Wikipedia:CheckUser	26,261
Wikipedia:Child protection	3,621
Wikipedia:Civility	25,264
Wikipedia:Clean start	8,671
Wikipedia:Consensus	23,855
Wikipedia:Copyright violations	13,100
Wikipedia:Copyrights	27,245
Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion	52,873
Wikipedia:Deletion policy	31,020
Wikipedia:Dispute resolution	21,752
Wikipedia:Edit warring	6,624
Wikipedia:Editing policy	12,258
Wikipedia:Global rights policy	8,002
Wikipedia:GlobalBlocking	1,506
Wikipedia:Harassment	19,295
Wikipedia:Ignore all rules	3,476
Wikipedia:Image use policy	37,544
Wikipedia:IP block exemption	10,149
Wikipedia:Libel	3,963
Wikipedia:Mediation	8,812
Wikipedia:Mediation Committee/Policy	31,576
Wikipedia:Neutral point of view	40,785
Wikipedia:No original research	27,674
Wikipedia:No personal attacks	15,786
Wikipedia:Non-free content criteria	7,953
Wikipedia:Open proxies	5,347
Wikipedia:Oversight	20,341
Wikipedia:Ownership of articles	15,601
Wikipedia:Proposed deletion	11,614
Wikipedia:Proposed deletion (books)	9,230
Wikipedia:Proposed deletion of biographies of living people	10,106
Wikipedia:Protection policy	29,763
Wikipedia:Reusing Wikipedia content	13,134
Wikipedia:Revision deletion	23,087
Wikipedia:Sock puppetry	25,953
Wikipedia:Username policy	23,980
Wikipedia:Vandalism	39,981
Wikipedia:Verifiability	28,402
Wikipedia:Volunteer Response Team	12,028
Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not	56,798
Wikipedia:Wikimedia policy	814
Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a dictionary	18,612

Firstly, sorry for the large table, I just know that if I put it somewhere else maybe half of people only would not bother. As you can see, it lists the 55 Wikipedia policies currently identified at Category:Wikipedia policies and their respective sizes – the total is over a million bytes, at least 100,000 words and possibly more (although I think bytes are relevant, because other things like images and tables are relevant to understanding the policy). Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, and particularly their proliferation, has been noted as a principal reason among those preventing new editors from joining the community. We haven't ever really got a grip on the extent of policies and guidelines (let alone short summaries of them) and policies look like the natural place to start. Before I have a look at potential things to merge, demote, or copyedit with a view to shortening, how widely agreed is it that Wikipedia's policies should be fewer in number and more concise?

You see, if you propose a change in isolation the big picture is missed; the argument becomes one of whether we really care about the topic of the potential policy (which we always do) and therefore often the status quo appears to be policy rather than guideline. I would also note that there are two symptoms I see of two much policy: firstly, policy pages often summarise each other; secondly, we often deal with subsets such as "Procedural" or "Behavioural" policy. Both might be necessary but surely they aren't where we would like to be. So, first, that central question. Thanks, Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 19:21, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Comments

It's actually surprising how few of those affect a typical new user. What new editor is going to worry about Wikipedia:Bot policy? Policies related to the Arbitration Committee? Policies about checkuser, child protection, global rights, or global blocking. There's maybe a dozen of those polices listed that may have real impact on newbies: edit warring, image use, NPOV, NOR, and the like.—Kww(talk) 19:48, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

I'll add that most of the policies that are important to new users are actually "common sense written down". For example, is it likely that the good new users will have to read Wikipedia:No personal attacks to know that insulting strangers at random is not a good idea? Lithuanian Wikipedia actually manages to discourage insults (perhaps better than the English Wikipedia) without even having such policies written down...

And one more point: I don't think that the users who come to write encyclopedia are going to be discouraged by reading...

Of course, all that doesn't mean that the policies can't possibly be improved, but each case has to be considered separately. --Martynas Patasius (talk) 20:30, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

• If we required editors to pass some sort of test on these prior to editing, it'd be a problem. But we don't. As Kww says, editors need only concern themselves with policy (or even know about the existence of policy) as and when they want to. A lot of this is back-end detail that the vast majority of our contributors (who don't have accounts, don't use talk pages, don't know what an admin is, have never heard of any namespace except for mainspace, or all of the above) never need concern themselves with. And furthermore, this is the most highly active collaborative project in the history of the Internet, and in a great many ways in the history of mankind: we are not going to get by with a 16-page pamphlet and WP:IAR alone for the simple reason that if we have to reinvent what we presently codify in policy from first principles in every dispute we'd be even more bogged down in politics than we already are. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 21:05, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

In the spirit of George Carlin's Ten Commandments,[7] I don't think we need all those policies when only one will suffice. I suggest nominating all those pages in that list for WP:AFD except for Wikipedia:Ignore all rules. Remember, There can be only one. WTF? (talk) 21:15, 17 July 2012 (UTC)