If this is not the correct place for this discussion, please suggest where it should be.

Articles on "Deaths in (year)" and "Deaths in (month) (year)" have substantial noncompliance with WP:CITEHOW, which says

Citations for World Wide Web pages typically include:

• URL of the webpage – that is the URL of the webpage where the referenced content can be found, not, e.g., the main page of a website when the content is on a subpage of that website (see Wikipedia:Shallow references)
• name of the author(s)
• title of the article within quotation marks
• title or domain name of the website
• publisher, if known
• date of publication
• page number(s) (if applicable)
• the date you retrieved (or accessed) the webpage (required if the publication date is unknown)

Recommendations for news citations are similar. This section of Wikipedia:Citing sources does not offer any category, group, or type of article where these typical components of citations should not be used.

The current article, Deaths in 2015, which has entries for deaths only for the current month of December 2015, instructs editors in the top comment section:

References should be in<ref>[url & title]</ref> format, as full citations make the page too slow to load, and too big to edit.

If this instruction, or any similar instruction elsewhere in Wikipedia, is allowed to remain, I believe that WP:CITEHOW should specifically note any and all such exceptions.

I believe this instruction should be removed (pursuant to a proper decision-making process in the appropriate forum). I believe that the author name, publication name, and publication date, among other items, are useful for a number of purposes, including tracking URL changes, finding archive URLs, and assessing the reliability of sources. I believe that "full citations make the page too slow to load, and too big to edit" is utterly without merit. For example, I recently edited Deaths in March 2012 to include full reference info for most incomplete references, and this increased the article size by 5,463 bytes, to 153,940 bytes. It is ludicrous to argue that a 153,940-byte article is too big to edit, but a 148,477-byte article is not to big to edit. Of course, the article already had a significant number of full references, but still.

For the past, there are articles by year starting with Deaths in 1995 and ending with Deaths in 2003. After that, there are articles by month starting with Deaths in January 2004. Only the current article includes the instruction for providing stripped references. On the 7th day of each month, the article for the preceding month is launched by extracting that month's info from the current article. (At year-end, it's slightly different but similar.) Thus, each "Deaths in (month) (year)" article is initially loaded up with only stripped references, and most editors follow the existing pattern of stripped references. Over time, some editors insert non-stripped reference information that should have been there all along, and would be much easier to create if the comment were removed and editors followed the instructions of WP:CITEHOW in the first place.

(For Deaths in October 2011 and older, instead of using footnote references, most or all of the references are inline external links. These should be converted to normal footnote references. Before mid-2005, most entries don't have even inline external links. These articles should be brought into compliance over time with a full reference for every entry, but that is beyond the scope of this discussion.) — Anomalocaris ( talk) 08:37, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

Just a bit of background: the current state of affairs is a compromise arrived at following a 2012 RfC about the use of inline external links vs. full references. I do think the time is ripe for another discussion on the subject. Personally, I agree with the OP; no-one should be enforcing the use of incomplete references in any area of the 'Pedia, and the size argument is pretty silly. DoctorKubla ( talk) 12:07, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

• WP is a collaborative project. If you think the citations in these articles need to be fixed... don't just sit back and complain, (expecting someone else to take care of it)... step up, and WP:FIXTHEPROBLEM yourself. Blueboar ( talk) 14:32, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

Blueboar: I have already worked on Deaths in March 2012, Deaths in February 2012, ‎ Deaths in September 2012, and Deaths in December 2011, but the full project of repairing all such articles is quite large, and this is all beside the point. The main point is that the unlawful compromise needs to be replaced, the instruction in the current article needs to be removed, and editors should be expected to follow WP:CITEHOW. — Anomalocaris ( talk) 17:17, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

Please note that the concept of an "unlawful compromise" does NOT exist at Wikipedia, because two of the most important bedrock rules governing Wikipedia are WP:CONSENSUS and WP:IAR. That doesn't mean that the we shouldn't decide to change the process and make the links proper references, but the reason we should do that has nothing to do with the process that came up with the current system. The process that put in the current system for the "Deaths in..." articles was perfectly valid, and the same process will be used to change it to something else. -- Jayron 32 16:25, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Jayron32: It is a violation of WP:CITEHOW for no valid reason. There was never a WP:CONSENSUS that acknowledged and justified this violation of WP:CITEHOW; there were few participants in the discussion, which was rather minimal for such a blatant violation that would automatically infect 12 more articles each year. WP:IAR is a one-sentence guideline that simply states "If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it." That doesn't apply here; the requirements of WP:CITEHOW don't prevent anyone from improving or maintaining the Deaths in current month article. I stand by my early remark: it was an unlawful compromise. — Anomalocaris ( talk)

Best to avoid words like "law" and "rule" around here. "Poor editing judgment" would work better imo. I would have started an RfC at WP:VPM or WP:RSN rather than looking for a policy change/enforcement here. ― Mandruss  ☎ 06:24, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

@ Anomalocaris: Rather than removing the current instructions, I would opt for the additional instructions being included along with them, perhaps as optional: for example, being included on all references on articles where this seemed more appropriate, and not being included on articles where the page length is already a cause for concern, but only if there is substantial evidence that the page is taking too long to load. I'm not an expert on this, though. Rubbish computer ( Merry Christmas!: ...And a Happy New Year!) 00:38, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Rubbish computer: Do you understand that only one article at any one time has the instruction in question? That article right now is Deaths in 2015, and if nothing is done, soon that comment will be stripped from Deaths in 2015 and that comment will appear in Deaths in 2016. With this fact in mind, I can't make any sense of your suggestion. — Anomalocaris ( talk) 04:28, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

@ Anomamlocaris: I didn't read the above text through properly: sorry about that. Rubbish computer ( Merry Christmas!: ...And a Happy New Year!) 12:30, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

After noticing User:JamesBWatson tag a primary school for deletion under WP:A7, I started to wonder why high schools and colleges, even if they are not important because of a sport (for example college football) and keep them while we delete most primary & middle schools (all per WikiProject School guidelines). Also, this topic has been raised before quite a bit. I either suggest all of the school articles to be under the same keep criteria or that they get kept only if they pass the normal A7 notability guidelines. Dat GuyWiki ( talk) 23:15, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

Your suggestion is for the status quo, so your proposal seems redundant. The point being made by Wikipedia:Notability (high schools) is that they with rare exceptions, have been kept when nominated at AfD, but explicitly must be able to meet notability standards, such as those at Wikipedia:Notability and Wikipedia:Notability (organizations and companies) specifically. So WP:A7 is and continues to be an approprate test for any school article. But as said, when put to the test, the community has generally decided that articles overcome the A7 criteria. -- Tagishsimon (talk) 00:29, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

This is a documented aspect at WP:OUTCOMES, in that school articles for reasons are nearly always kept even if GNG-type notability cannot be readily shown. Yet in trying to formulate something like notability for schools, we then get the issue that there are schools out there that are for-profit, or unaccreditated, or the like, and makes defining any notability for them difficult. I would be in completely agreement that there should be no special treatment for any grade school (or equivalent) and that GNG or NORG must be met. I suspect most can be kept, but we need to actually practice what we preach when it comes to organizations which schools absolutely qualify under. -- MASEM ( t) 00:45, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

Dat GuyWiki, this perennial discussion rears it head when school notability is questioned by new and/or inexperienced users who are not aware of our Guidelines for School Articles, the function of our topic projects in general, and our rather complex notability guidelines. The Category:Redirects from school articles with over 2,200 entries is ample evidence of the long-standing tacit consensus , based on policy ( WP:BLAR, WP:ATD-R), to redirect non notable mainstream primary and middle schools to their school district article (USA) or locality (rest of the world), rather than outright deletion. Strengthened by a consensus to exclude genuine education establishments from WP:A7, this has become the accepted norm ignored at AfD only by nominators and voters who are not familiar with it. This is one reason, for example , why New Page Patrolers should be encouraged to read WP:NPP and ought to be subject to a user right. Pinging DGG on this as one of our most experienced editors on the topic of notability for educational establishments. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง ( talk) 01:56, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

This compromise is one of the relatively few rational things we've done in the area of determining suitability for WP articles; the alternative will be hundreds of thousands of individual afd debates, which will achieve a result based mainly on the amount of attention paid here to the high school or elementary school. The result will be no matter, but the amount of work will be much greater. We ned similar compromises in other fields also, and then we'd have time to pay attention to the real problems. DGG ( talk ) 02:07, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

DGG has produced the first rational justification for the present situation that I have ever seen. I had previously seen attempts at justification that just aren't valid, such as "all high schools are big institutions with thousands of pupils, so they are bound to have received lots of attention somewhere", which is based on the perspective of editors in a limited range of countries, particularly the USA, where high schools are typically enormous (in many countries most high schools are far smaller), and which even in the USA ignores the existence of small private schools, some of them certainly un-notable. DGG's argument makes sense, though: there is far too much of an attitude that deleting/keeping has to be based on some sacred rules, and far too much time wasted on arguing about exactly how those rules should be applied in particular cases, rather than just applying fairly simple principles and then getting on with more useful work. — Preceding unsigned comment added by JamesBWatson ( talk • contribs) 12:10, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

• As I understand it, the current position is based on something Jimbo said originally. Andrew D. ( talk) 15:38, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

  ...if someone wants to write an article about their high school, we should relax and accomodate them, even if we wish they wouldn't do it. And that's true *even if* we should react differently if someone comes in and starts mass-adding articles on every high school in the world.
  Let me make this more concrete. Let's say I start writing an article about my high school, Randolph School, of Huntsville, Alabama. I could write a decent 2 page article about it, citing information that can easily be verified by anyone who visits their website.
  Then I think people should relax and accomodate me. It isn't hurting anything. It'd be a good article, I'm a good contributor, and so cutting me some slack is a very reasonable thing to do.

  —  Jimmy Wales in Partial solution to rampant deletionism

Which was in 2003 and we've drastically changed back then. In 2003 we had articles for each Pokemon but since have been much smarter and more selective about which Pokemon to include. We've developed the notability guidelines since then. We've put more emphasis on secondary sourcing (as opposed to a school's website). Things have significantly changed on en.wiki since that point. -- MASEM ( t) 15:41, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

• Educational institutions should continue to be exempt from CSD A7. High schools and colleges should continue to be presumed to merit an article. We should, however, go further than that and impose additional restrictions on the use of CSD A7. The impression that I get is that A7 is so vague that it is applied almost indiscriminately. James500 ( talk) 04:04, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

A7 isn't that vague. It clearly states it's for people and organisations (and specifically excludes 'educational institutions'), organised events, named animals and web content. I can see vagueness to a degree in 'educational institutions'. Schools for kids and universities obviously fit that, but what about a driving school? Or a training centre for sewing machine operators? People get taught - is that 'education', and is it an 'institution'? One problem IMO is the Page Curation wording of 'db-significance'. That's far too general. If it said 'db-A7' like Twinkle does, it might be easier to get it through to some patrollers that it is NOT for books, shovels, wines or handbags. (Yes, I do still heartily dislike Page Curation...) Peridon ( talk) 16:04, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

It is the words "significant or important" that are very vague (though we do have some editors who are so illiterate that they don't know what an event or organisation is, as attested to, for example, by their persistent attempts to apply ORG to buildings). "Significant or important" could mean almost anything as significance and importance are relative concepts. Moreover, admins are not necessarily equipped to assess the significance/importance of some topics. Thus it would be good to create more exceptions. James500 ( talk) 01:29, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Hello all, a discussion regarding the fair use status of text within the Timed Text namespace is being held at Wikipedia_talk:Non-free_content#Fair-use_status_of_Timed_Text, if you are interested please join the discussion there. Thank you, — xaosflux ^Talk 04:11, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

See current discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Classical music#Meanwhile at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Classical music/Guidelines#French capitalization rules – seems like some rules might benefit from being harmonized across WikiProjects and more general standards. -- Francis Schonken ( talk) 07:08, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Hello. You are invited to comment on this RfC concerning clerking at RfA: Wikipedia:2015 administrator election reform/Phase II/Clerking RfC. Please do not comment in this section, but rather make all comments in the appropriate place on the RfC. Thank you. Biblio worm 22:33, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

I started a discussion about review aggregation websites such as Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes. I would appreciate some feedback from some more people. Thanks. SharkD  Talk  23:42, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

Long-term protection is generally a bad thing unless there is a good technical, legal, or privacy reason. The WP:Protection policy even says that administrators may review and unprotect pages if the protection is no longer needed. The reality is that this usually doesn't happen unless someone asks, leaving long-term-protected pages in "protection purgatory" far longer than needed.

To keep things simple I'm going to make this proposal apply to article-space and keep the time-frame longer than I personally would prefer (I would prefer 1 year but that would get too much opposition):

Proposal: Pages in the main encyclopedia ("article space") which are protected indefinitely or for longer than 5 years must have their protection status confirmed (re-protected, with an up-to-date justification) or reviewed at least every 5 years. This includes all forms of protection (e.g. create, move, semi, full, pending-changes, etc.).

davidwr/( talk)/( contribs) 18:01, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

Discussion of "Review long-term-protected pages at least every 5 years"

• It is expected that over time, certain practices will develop and certain types of pages will be "all-but-summarily" re-protected without much thought. An obvious example would be a protected article-space-shortcut to a non-article-space page, where the only "check" would be whether the redirect target is still what it was 5 years earlier and a 2-second "yes it does" or "oh wait a minute maybe not" as to whether the original protection-justification is still applies. Another would be public figures which have long-term-pending-changes protection. With the possible exception of celebrities with pending-change-protection, I expect these and other possible "special cases" are a minority of long-term-protected pages. davidwr/( talk)/( contribs) 18:01, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
• In the case of "OFFICE/Refer to ARBCOM/Refer to WMF for justification"-protections, simply asking the WMF or ARBCOM to confirm if the block is still needed is all that is required. But this should still be done at least every 5 years. davidwr/( talk)/( contribs) 18:01, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
• You're talking about roughly 6000 pages (about 3000 in Wikipedia indefinitely semi-protected pages, about 900 in Wikipedia indefinitely semi-protected biographies of living people, and between 2 and 172 pages in Semi-protected articles with unusually long expiries depending on how you define "unreasonably long", plus the 34 Indefinitely fully protected articles and about 1800 Indefinitely fully protected redirects). This seems to be creating an awful lot of work for very little apparent benefit (the status of very few of those is likely to be changed as the result of any review, yet you're apparently demanding someone go through the time-guzzling task of unprotecting and reprotecting each of them), especially given that anyone trying to edit one of the protected pages will immediately see a huge blue "Submit edit request" button and a detailed explanation of exactly what they have to do to either get the edit made, or request the protection be reviewed. Would I be right in assuming that you're not volunteering to do all this work yourself, but are instead demanding that someone else do so? There's nothing to stop you going through the lists yourself, and approaching the blocking admin/submitting WP:UNPROTECT requests as appropriate if there's something you consider inappropriate; demanding an automatic review of everything just seems to be creating work for work's sake. ‑  Iridescent 18:31, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

👏 BethNaught ( talk) 19:32, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

@ Iridescent: Earlier today, I went through the complete list of non-redirect articles with indefinite full edit protection and asked the protecting admins of some of them to downgrade the protection. A good chunk of these (maybe half) are "pseudo-soft-redirects" to Wictionary using the {{ wi}} template. davidwr/( talk)/( contribs) 23:13, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

• Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy. Iridescent says everything I'm thinking very well so I won't repeat it. BethNaught ( talk) 19:32, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
• Comment there is actually nothing stopping you from doing this now, and proposing unprotection at WP:RFPP for anything you think should be unprotected. I'd suggest putting the information on a page in user space and linked at RFPP. Prodego ^talk 19:35, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
• I think that if a protected page is preventing productive activity then someone will draw attention to it. No need to pre-emptively make work. HighInBC 20:34, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
• (Adding) I didn't see that you also want to extend this process to create-protected pages. In which case, to the 6000-ish I list above, add the 45,000 pages which are currently salted. If you want to compile a list of those you feel are unreasonable and submit it to WP:UNPROTECT, feel free, but don't demand other people do your work for you; there's no need to insist admins unprotect-and-reprotect Jews did wtc, Go eat shit fuckers or All wiki admin are bastards‏‎ just because you object to the concept of indef protection. ‑  Iridescent 20:42, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

  Yeah, I should've checked that list before I made this proposal. davidwr/( talk)/( contribs) 23:13, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

• Reply to everyone who has commented already it's obvious I didn't think this out well and will need to revisit it. I still think that long-term protection of pages that have articles or which could plausibly have articles someday need to have their protection-levels re-assessed from time to time. This is especially true for fully-protected existing articles, which is why I went through the complete list of non-redirect articles with indefinite full edit protection earlier today and asked some admins to downgrade the protection on some of those pages. davidwr/( talk)/( contribs) 23:13, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
• Comment to anyone reading this: Some of the reports that list or count protected pages are woefully out of date. You can get a list of protected pages and protected titles by going to Special:ProtectedPages and Special:ProtectedTitles. You can get an estimated count by fiddling with the "limit=" parameter in the URL: This shows fully protected page titles 5000 at a time, there are between 30,000 and 35,000 such pages right now. This shows there are less than 5000 indefinitely-fully-edit-protected pages in "article space," including redirects (warning - that last link takes awhile to load). davidwr/( talk)/( contribs) 23:28, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
• I think the real issue is very simple: A newcomer who can't edit to first page they want to is less likely to end up joining our community, and I believe we need to increase the number of new members. The pages these newcomers want to edit is probably highly correlated with the pages we have protected. I think we need a very simple policy: Any existing non-redirect article which is not a serious BLP issue or obvious vandalism magnet should be protected for no more than 5 years, although placing it up as indef and subsequently it being reduced may cause the vandals to move on; if issues come up again, we can always re-protect. ArbCom and OFFICE, of course, override normal community policy. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 08:03, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

• They can go to the talk page and the notices say that, IIRC. - Sitush ( talk) 08:40, 3 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Yes, but the need to do that reduces their likelyhood of actually doing this edit, and eventually becoming Wikipedians. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 08:43, 3 January 2016 (UTC)
    • Really? Has someone done a study? - Sitush ( talk) 08:46, 3 January 2016 (UTC)
      • I doubt there's any way to actually do such a study (these users who give up before actually editing can't be found), but common sense indicates that this is a very likely possibility. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 08:54, 3 January 2016 (UTC)
        • I would have thought it at least equally likely that a new contributor would be discouraged from participation if their first edits were reverted ... and on the type of article that is subject to long-term protection the chances are high that the type of edit they want to make is the type that caused the protection to be put in place. At least a decent explanation could be given on the talk page. (I'm speaking largely from my experience of caste-related articles here, where practically every edit request to such articles relates to the same ridiculous POV-pushing etc). - Sitush ( talk) 09:01, 3 January 2016 (UTC)
          • So the question is:Is a page which was protected five years ago still more likely to attract edits which would be reverted, than a never-protected page is? I think that the answer is probably no, with the exception of BLPs and likely vandalism magnets. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 09:15, 3 January 2016 (UTC)
            • This seems like a lot of "probablys" etc. Perhaps add caste-related articles to your watchlist: neither BLP nor vandalism are the main issues there. - Sitush ( talk) 09:18, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

• Thanks Iridescent for the clear analysis. Not bureaucracy means we don't have detailed and universal rules, particularly when other people must implement them. Regarding the concern about all the great new editors we are losing because they can't click-and-edit on every page, bear in mind that we also need to be concerned about keeping the good editors who would like to develop more content but who are often distracted by dealing with repetitive disruption. Sitush has outlined the fact that such nonsense is a frequent occurrence in the many caste articles. Johnuniq ( talk) 09:52, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

I don't really understand what the purpose of this is. I understand that Wikipedia is trying to discourage block evasion, but that doesn't mean that you have to delete every single page that was created by a sock, as long as it is truthful and accurate. Sometimes, block evaders will try to improve Wikipedia as a way of covering themselves up, and even once discovered, I don't understand what the opposition to leaving their contributions in place is. Please comment on this. 73.47.71.127 ( talk) 14:36, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

• I'm personally of the opinion that we shouldn't delete articles created by socks without further reason. Permitting them to remain does somewhat encourage socking, and that is regrettable, but if the articles are actually good, their value most likely outweighs the harm of the minor encouragement to sock. But not all socks are created equal. Some people who sock produce undeniably good content work, and are blocked/banned for conduct reasons, and we should probably exercise discretion and not delete their contributions. (G5 permits deletion, but doesn't mandate it) But for every one of those, there are several socks who produce bad content, that may not be obviously bad at first glance. Subtle hoaxes, POV Manipulation, Copyright Violations, Source abuse, amongst other problems, may not be obvious at first glance, and it is often justified to delete the article of a sock as a precautionary measure. If we end up deleting some articles that don't have problems as collateral damage, it is regrettable, but at times necessary. Monty ₈₄₅ 17:34, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

• I think that maybe someone should open an RFC as to whether or not G5 should be repealed. I agree that allowing articles to stand does encourage socking. On the other hand, however, just deleting articles because they were created by a sock, to me, it's like saying "Oh, just because you're a block evader means that your contributions are bad and don't belong here", which is really not true. It is true that the editor who is evading a block doesn't belong here, but articles created by the editor before they are caught should be allowed to stand, as long as there aren't other problems with it. The invovled Wiki editor ( talk) 19:15, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

• • Except this can lead to gaming the system: a blocked user can create a sock, make a "good" contribution or three, then turn to whatever ways they had behaved before to their sock, with their "good" contributions retained. Then they can rinse and repeat through an endless number of socks. A wiley sock may be able to play this game for years. That said, I do think that if a sock/block evader is discovered and this CSD is applied, any other user in standing should be able to review the content, and perhaps through a simple revert/restore procedure, assert that the content is good with their name attached to it instead of the sock/block-evader. -- MASEM ( t) 19:26, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Licensing requires that we attribute the content to the sock that created it, though a good faith editor could certainly assume responsibility for making sure it meets all policies/guidelines. Monty ₈₄₅ 19:36, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Sure, but I'm thinking that we can link to a diff in the "responsible" editor reversion to what the sock had added, we are both following proper attribution and placing the "responsibility" of the content in someone else's hands. -- MASEM ( t) 19:41, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

This is another case where content is not attributed to the originator; see also here. It seems that nobody cares much about it. Carlotm ( talk) 20:14, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

I think I understand where you're coming from Carlotm, but I think it is right to focus on the contribution rather than the contributor, like Blueboar said in that discussion. We give our work freely to be used without credit or attribution. If some commercial website uses WP content that you originally wrote, you will not be credited there either, where money is being made from your work. If you, like many editors here, consider your edit counts to be a mark of success, I think that is misguided. We need to edit here because we want to be part of the greatest collection of human knowledge ever assembled, not because anyone else will acknowledge us for what we have done. You know what you have done. Isn't that enough? This is no competition. I have some 2,400 edits in 6 years. I'd lose that contest. I agree with Masem. If you don't want to let go of taking credit for your work, which is totally understandable, there are other places to publish it. Dcs002 ( talk) 00:28, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

• G5 only says that a page can be deleted, not that it should be deleted. If a page is notable and valuable I'm of the opinion that we're shooting ourselves in the foot to delete it outright. Sam Walton ( talk) 00:31, 1 January 2016 (UTC)
• G5 is an extension of WP:BMB, and is justified by the reasoning there. If we ban someone we have taken a decision that the negative aspects of their participation outweigh the positives. If we tolerate someone making contributions then we have to deal with the negative aspects of their participation as well and the result is a net negative to the encyclopedia. Banned editors do sometimes make positive contributions to demonstrate that they can't be banned or to make it awkward for us to get rid of them. The only way to prevent this is to remove all their contributions. Because of this anyone is allowed to remove any edits made by banned editors for any reason or no reason at all. G5 is just an application of this to edits which happen to create articles. Hut 8.5 17:25, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
• Sometimes we are dealing with socks whose puppetmasters created very defective articles, for instance full of copyvio, misuse of sources, etc. The master was blocked for those reasons. We could, I guess, go through several hundred articles hoping to find some that didn't have the problems that caused the original account to be blocked. That of course would be time that could be used to write new articles, find sources and improve old ones, etc. Doug Weller talk 19:10, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
• Both Hut 8.5 and Samwalton9 have it right. Per WP:BMB, "the measure of a site ban is that even if the editor were to make good edits, permitting them to re-join the community is perceived to pose enough risk of disruption, issues, or harm, that they may not edit at all, even if the edits seem good." Per WP:BE, "this does not mean that edits must be reverted just because they were made by a blocked editor (obviously helpful changes, such as fixing typos or undoing vandalism, can be allowed to stand), but the presumption in ambiguous cases should be to revert." As an extension of these two policies, G5 as it currently stands is based on editorial judgement, not blind process. Mz7 ( talk) 00:30, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

Sorry Dcs002, I am unable to follow a discussion in which I am manipulated by who put in my mouth things which never were there, nor have been envisaged. If you lack cartridges for your discourse, just stop it. And don't push me out of WP. I am able to pass over the threshold by myself, if and when I decide to do so. Carlotm ( talk) 04:52, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

I hope I haven't done that, and I'm sorry if I have. It was not my intention. I looked over the RfC you linked, and my post above was mostly concerning that attitude of expecting credit for our work. (It was a bit off topic concerning G5 and sockpuppets - the subject of this thread.) People make money off of what we do here in WP, and we will never be credited. Our names will be lost and forgotten in 30 years, or maybe next year, but what we have done will be seen as the 21st century's Library of Alexandria! I think that's pretty cool. :) Dcs002 ( talk) 06:21, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Someone wrote in to WP:OTRS ticket:2016010510012955 to raise awareness of the existence of Gale Cengage's product advertisements. Their current ad campaign shows a picture of Martin Luther King, Jr. and says, "Biographies much more reliable than Wikipedia". I cannot find this ad online. They market their database to libraries.

I thought that I would share this just to raise awareness that many libraries pay a lot of money to subscribe to proprietary databases, and libraries pay for access to these databases on the premise that they give better information to Wikipedia. This is an industry sector in which libraries invest USD 100s of millions of dollars annually to these proprietary reference works. At its peak not so long ago, Britannica alone had revenue of 200 million a year. Wikipedia has no such content development budget.

A lot of people write to OTRS and ask questions about disparaging comments said about Wikipedia in the mass media. Right now, neither the Wikimedia Foundation nor the Wikimedia community regularly responds to these sorts of things. I am not sure what response there could be, so I am only sharing the issue here that there is public demand for responses to criticism of Wikipedia. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:23, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Here is a copy of the ad in question. —  Earwig  ^talk 01:20, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

Opinions are needed on the following matter: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Images#"Articles about ethnic groups or similarly large human populations should not be illustrated by a gallery of images of group members". A WP:Permalink for it is here. Flyer22 Reborn ( talk) 23:54, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

If you have a free file of the poorest quality possible and you can find a non-free fair-use replacement of much better quality, is it wise to upload the latter and nominate the former for deletion?-- The Traditionalist ( talk) 04:35, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

• @ The Traditionalist: Unless the subject of the image cannot be identified in the least in the poorer quality picture, per WP:NFCC#1, the answer to that would be "no". Steel1943 ( talk) 06:57, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

@ Steel1943: The file in question is this. My proposed replacement is this. What is your opinion? I believe that he, indeed, cannot be identified in the least in our file.-- The Traditionalist ( talk) 16:41, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

There are also this file with this replacement and this file with this replacement.-- The Traditionalist ( talk) 21:17, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

@ The Traditionalist: It wouldn't be the best to nominate the former for deletion since some Wikipedias get their media from Commons only. -- Allan Aguilar ( talk) 16:10, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

@ Allan Aguilar: But it is better for an article to be left without an image instead of having images of so low a quality.-- The Traditionalist ( talk) 18:18, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

I vaguely recall previous discussions somewhere on the use of Google Books "snippet view" as a source. AFAICR, the concern was that snippets were often so small that there may insufficient context to reliably interpret the extract.

I looked for any mention of this in WP:V, WP:RS and some linked essays and guidelines. However, I found nothing.

Does anyone know whether there is any current policy or guideline on this? -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 17:29, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

Google Books is not so much a source as a container. I use Google Books to read sources (buying the books themselves is not logistically feasible to me) and to make a convenience link to them - if I am fairly sure that the bits I have read are sufficient on their own and don't have caveats and the like elsewhere. Jo-Jo Eumerus ( talk, contributions) 17:33, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

Maybe I was unclear, Jo-Jo Eumerus.

I am not asking about the use of page previews on Google Books. My question relates to books where page previews are unavaialable, and Gbooks offers only snippets like these. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 17:40, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

I see four very short extracts from the book. Neither extract is very useful as I see so little of the text. Since Google reports that no e-book is available, I would still have to find the book in a shop or at a library in order to find out more about the context. -- Stefan2 ( talk) 17:46, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

Keeping in mind that sometimes Google Books snippets deliver different snippets based on geolocation, I would not call them reliable on their own, but they certainly can be used to affirm that the book itself as a source and the specific page or the like, and there is no requirement to include Google Books snippet as a url for that. But caution against making sure that you are seeing enough context to make the right assessment. That is, Google Books is accurately showing you what the book lists, the equivalent if someone photocopied a few pages of a book for you to look at. -- MASEM ( t) 17:38, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

In these case, Google isn't photocopying a few pages. It is photocopying a small part of those pages. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 17:44, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

I'd recommend using such parts only when the snippet includes all context. Jo-Jo Eumerus ( talk, contributions) 17:46, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

If you have enough context from that snippet, then it should be okay to use , since you can site book and page number. But that's if you have enough context. Do note that Google has full scans of these books, and it will do OCR to allow them to be searchable, and if you are creative it is possible to see more on the context. So as long as we assume Google is accurate (there's no reason to doubt this), this is fine to build out a cite book reference. It's not a copyright violation since Google has negotiated with most publishers to allow this type of searching and use. I just would not include the url for the snippet in such cases. -- MASEM ( t) 17:50, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

Personally I don't think the Google Books snippets provide enough of the page to be useful as sources ("reliable" is perhaps not quite the right term). It would be easy to take something out of context by accident; perhaps the book is quoting someone else, but the small snippet doesn't let you see that. Howicus (Did I mess up?) 17:51, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

As with many things here, the answer is "it depends." A snippet out of a encyclopedia or other subject short-form book may well be adequate; a snippet out of a long-form text may well not be depending on the nature of the text in the snippet and the amount of context available. In either case, it's important not to discard a source only because it's linked to a Google books snippet. However, I'd like to know the context of the question here. If BHG is attempting to establish a general principal, then "it depends" is probably as close as we can get. If it's in a source that some editor has added and all we have to go on is the citation and the link, AGF requires that we trust them (just as if they had only listed the paper book and not linked an online source at all) until someone can look at the paper source and in good faith claim that it doesn't support the Wikipedia text, since the editor who added the source may have very well seen it in the actual paper book and only linked the Google book as an online source for the bit in the snippet. On the other hand, if the situation is that there is a dispute in which the editor who has linked Google Books admits here that he or she has only seen the snippet view, then what's in the snippet and what it's being used for and context all matter, but even then it shouldn't be rejected out of hand due to the sole fact that it's a snippet. If there's an active dispute, dispute resolution or Reliable Sources Noticeboard should be considered. Regards, TransporterMan ( TALK) 20:16, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

With some good google skills, quite a lot can be harvested from snippet view books. I can sometimes read through multiple pages in a book, by constantly doing new searches. It's a bit time-consuming, but very well possible. I think the key is what type of facts one seeks to extract, I usually do some spot checks to get a feel of other snippets (mainly, seeing if the fact is within quotation marks or not). -- Soman ( talk) 21:14, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

This has been discussed at WP:RSN in the past. My own experience is that far too often the snippets are taken out of context and when I get a hard copy I find that we have completely misrepresented what the source says. There was a particular classic in a convoluted discussion involving Qwyrxian and someone else maybe three or four years ago - some article about Kshatriyas in South India where numerous snippets were used out of context. I'll try to remember what it was (the article ended up being either deleted or redirected because, despite initial appearances and numerous sources, it was pretty much completely wrong). - Sitush ( talk) 00:38, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

• @ BrownHairedGirl: I view the book as the source, rather than Google Books (snippet view or otherwise), which is merely a place online where (some of) the book's contents may be seen. As to whether the view provided by Google gives one enough context to evaluate whether the content one sees is sufficiently verifiable, I would have to defer to the general guidelines. There is no requirement that any source be available online (event snippets online) or in a language accessible to the vast majority of the community. Sometimes, we are just not personally able to verify or not a statement, but we rely on the community's collective ability. For example, something published in a scientific journal not online, or another journal behind a paywall, or something in the Finnish language, would be impossible to verify for the vast majority of contributors in the English-language WP - but they don't fail as reliable sources for any of those reasons. (Snippet view is effectively, not available online if more context is required to know whether the book says what is purported). Carlossuarez46 ( talk) 23:22, 7 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Sure, Carlossuarez46 -- the book is the source. The medium through which it is read is irrelevant, and many of us use sources which are not freely available. (I make v extensive use of F.W.S. Craig's Parliamentary Election Results, having bought at great expense rare copies of the whole set. V few other editors have that.)
    But suppose someone cited a printed book, but confirmed that they hadn't seen a full copy or a complete chapter, just a few posit-it-note-sized scraps cut out of pages, with the page numbers on the back. That's the dead-tree equivalent of Gbooks snippets -- would we really regard that as genuinely consulting the book? -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 00:21, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

They are ok for very discrete factoids, where there is little possibility the missing next line will significantly alter the "fact", like say the dimensions of a painting. Btw, you can often tease more out of them by googling with the last line of the snippet as your search term, probably giving you another line or two, then repeat the process.... Johnbod ( talk) 03:25, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

I agree with Johnbod. I think that consulting just that portion of the text that sources the statement is sufficiently consulting the book. We often consult a dictionary for a definition, without having to assert we started at "A", or a newspaper obituary for dates of birth & death, without having to read the whole newspaper cover to cover. If several pages are needed to be consulted to provide sufficient sourcing for something, I think it be required that all those be consulted, but not necessarily the remainder of the book. Is there requirement to read the entire book, if it were on-hand in paper form? Certainly not. I see no reason to modify that due to the electronic means of access. Carlossuarez46 ( talk) 18:02, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

I think Carlossuarez46 is making a poor comparison, which misrepresents the situation. The issue is not whether a person consults the whole book; it is whether the fragment they have in front of them is sufficiently big to be clear about its context.

If I consult a book on a point, I will not usually read the whole volume, or anything near it. I will scan the book to find the section I want, or use chapter headings or an index to find the section I want. But having found that section, I am then free to assess how much of the context is relevant to form a valid understanding of the content.

Without Google snippets, that context is unavailable, which makes it impossible to asses the info. Consider this hypothetical example from a Gbooks search for "Ivan Abkhazia", in which I have used strikeout to denote parts not available in the snippet:

Humperdinck, in the 1897 memoir "Travels in the Kingdoms", reports that in 1643 the King of Ruritiania appointed Ivan Abkhazia as his emissary to the court of the Tsar of Russia. Abkhazia's mission was to offer hostages and tributes to end the long-running dispute over the fate of Russian merchants, and to negotiate safe passage for Ruritanian merchants through the Straits of Semolina. Unfortunately, this account is historically impossible. The Annals of Rutania record that the alleged emissary was only 6 years old 1643, and that the first King of Ruritania was Kardashian I, who took his throne in 1705. In 1643, the territories of what later became Ruritania were part of the Russian province of Foo. No other account supports Humperdinck's claim."

If this passage was consulted in a printed book, then the full context would be visible. Same if it was consulted as a photocopy of a few pages. But viewed as a tiny Google Snippet, the snippet would probably omit the facts which negate the information.

That is of course an extreme example. But there are plenty of less extreme situations in which a fact which is apparently asserted in one sentence may be qualified or negated by the sentences which precede or follow it. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 21:05, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

But, from another angle: If another editor post information using an off-line source as reference, can you 100% verify that the editor has fully understood and/or read through the enough of the source to represent the material correctly? Snippet view isn't the ideal solutions, but still give better option for verification than sources that are solely offline. And as snippet/previews change over time, sources that are snippet view now may be available for better scrunity in the near future.

Snippet view sources aren't diametrically different from other sources. It is usually possible to get an understanding of the text by searching around the snippet. And I would not rely on a single snippet as reference for an article (unless, for example, a complete bio summary is presented in the snippet), but if several snippets points in the same direction then an article can be constructed without going astray from the general demand for WP:V. -- Soman ( talk) 21:50, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

• There is always the potential to misuse, misunderstand, or misconstrue a source, whether by selectively quoting or otherwise. A source purportedly quoting another source (even to contradict it) as shown above is an example. But that is potentially true in anything short of the entire work. Many works have separate chapters or sections giving various aspects of the whole, without repeatedly reminding the reader of what chapter they're in. Carlossuarez46 ( talk) 22:01, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

• I discovered this past week that sometimes what appears as a Google snippet can be viewed if one signs in to an Amazon account. I did not know that was possible, but finding only a snippet and needing more than I could see, I googled again and found an Amazon link. Clicking on the "look inside" icon resulted in a message that I could see more if I signed in to my account. I was able to see the pages I needed in full in Amazon. Unfortunately one cannot link to Amazon in WP for sourcing. SusunW ( talk) 22:11, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

• Soman, sure -- any source can be misused.
  But the point about snippets is that on top of that general possibily of misuse (whether through error or or bad intent), every snippet places severe barriers to using it accurately. Even when a diligent conscientious editor like yourself makes multiple checks around a snippet, you cannot say with certainty that you have seen enough of the page to give the full context of that page, never mind make a wider assessment of the reliability of the book. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 23:45, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

  While fairly unusual, there are instances where a snippet view does provide enough context to use as a source without undue concern about loss of context. The last time I used a snippet was to source a wedding date for the biography of a 19th century politician. Three lines of text were more than enough to confirm the identity of the bride and groom and provide the date (I already had several sources for the year) which was missing from all the other sources I had located about the politician and his wife. -- Allen3  ^talk 00:04, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

If a user has the reference, you can ask them to quote the context so that you can verify the point in question, and you can check their understanding. If you have whole pages, you can generally see the full paragraph or even full chapter, which is normally enough. The problem with Google snippet view is half the time that you can't even see the full sentence, and you can almost never see a full paragraph. There is no context at all. Basic things like the "not" at the beginning can radically change the meaning and nobody knows about it.

If you can genuinely see all of the context and can know that purely from the snippet then that may be one thing. But that's going to be rare. The vast majority of the time you'll at least be unsure that you're not missing something - a qualification, a negation - that may completely change the meaning of the claim. So as a rule, I would say that if the only access to a source is through Google snippet view you cannot reasonably say you have enough access to the source to use it. Kahastok talk 22:30, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

If I add to Coppo di Marcovaldo page a reference to [Fuglestvedt, Ingrid (2009); Phenomenology and the pioneer settlement on the Western Scandinavian Peninsula, Lindome: Bricoleur Press, ISBN 978-91-85411-07-8, p. 134.], in few seconds numerous editors' hands will reach my throat. Maybe not so if I add a reference to [Davis, R.H.C. (1988); A History of Medieval Europe, Longman, ISBN 0582-494001, p. 388]. Rest assured though that also the second book has nothing to do with Coppo di Marcovaldo, meaning: weather it's about Google snippet or an offline source, it's the editor seriousness that matters, and there are no rules nor other means to guarantee it in advance. Carlotm ( talk) 07:39, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

Carlotm, that comes across as deflection. Editor serious always counts; that truism applies to all aspects of editing. Similarly, a dodgy source is a dodgy source however accessed or used.
The issue here is whether (or when) snippet view can be considered as sufficient access to be considered a proper use of the source. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 12:07, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

BrownHairedGirl, the logical end of my platitudinous reasoning is in the last sentence where I tried to draw attention to the futility and counterproductivity of a new set of rules or codes of conduct. Carlotm ( talk) 21:39, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

Carlotm, many en.wp guidelines do not try to create hard-and-fast rules to set bright lines. The guideline which probably most relevant here is WP:RS, which uses the word "caution" in 4 different places. It advises "extreme caution" when relying on primary sources.
Why not have a similar warning wrt snippets? -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 22:24, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

BrownHairedGirl, my considerations were of a general kind and related to the already widely swollen status of guidelines and rules. WP:RS, for instance, which should be an helping tool on identifying reliable sources, pushes the reader to See also another forty pages on relevantly related issues. In this grotesque exaggeration what is needed is a scissor, nothing else. The matter on hand is really disentanglable by pure common sense and, as I mentioned, by editors' seriousness, without any other written emphasis. Carlotm ( talk) 07:10, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

A proposal has recently been made at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cycling proposing the use of new functionality getting data from Wikidata. It uses {{ Cycling race/listofstages}}; the module can be seen at Module:Cycling race. It can currently be seen in action at 2016 Tour de Yorkshire and at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cycling § New program Cycling race to list stages. This is behaviour that I have never seen before on the English Wikipedia and I am not sure whether it is permitted or whether there are guidelines about how information from Wikidata should be used. All the uses I have seen before are in templates like {{ commons category}} or {{ ProCyclingStats}} where it is doing a simple property lookup for information that doesn't need a source.

Is it permitted to use data in this way? Is there an approved style for referencing Wikidata? Wikipedia:Wikidata and its talk page do not seem helpful on the matter.

Many thanks for your help.

Relentlessly ( talk) 20:19, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

As far as I know, there is no general policy for this matter. There were a couple of discussions, with users opposing an indiscriminate use of Wikidata, with the main objection being that the Wikidata sourcing at this point is less reliable than the English Wikipedia sourcing. If you have objections about using Wikidata in this particular template, it is probably best to start the discussion at the talk page of the template, possibly advertizing it as an RFC.-- Ymblanter ( talk) 12:45, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

I am the author of this program. I use it on ten Wikipedias. This template can only works with datas from Wikidata, they are sourced by ProCyclingStats (that can be reused on articles thanks to {{ ProCyclingStats}}) that is the best database about cycling. If other sources are used, they are mentionned by the addition of references. This table have more sources than a classic table on a Wikipedia article, you can verify. For the rest, Wikidata tables are new and there is no rules about this (and it is a problem). Jérémy-Günther-Heinz Jähnick ( talk) 12:18, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

The problems are around verifiability, ease-of-use, transparency and (yes) aesthetics. I don't believe these conversations have happened yet, but I'm posting here in case they have and I've missed it! It's an issue wider than one template. Relentlessly ( talk) 16:02, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

Over the last several months I have been on a voluntary topic ban from the Gamergate area, but during that, I have witnessed several similar issues that had been happening there in other topic areas that cover ongoing controversies, both in terms of how the topic is being treated in the media, and how that lends itself to conflict in editing Wikipedia in these areas, where there has yet to a well-established conclusion of what the "right" answer is.

Many of these issues stem from what is happening in mainstream media today, which is a two-fold problem:

1. The first is the concept of “opinionated reporting”. This are news stories presented by a media organization that do not carry the typical “op-ed” or “opinion” by-line and presented in a factual-sounding manner, but are written in a way to include opinion and stances of the author, potentially eliminating coverage of opposing voices. Networks like Fox News and MSNBC are two examples from a 2013 Pew Research Center study, but also includes places like CNN. [1]. This is a problem for Wikipedia is that because there is no clear line between opinion and fact from these sources from a strict reading, what we normally take as a reliable source is not always reporting facts. Note that just because a source uses opinionated reporting does not invalid it as a reliable source, as most of these sources when reporting on non-controversial subjects will retain their objective stance. It does mean that we should not automatically accept every statement made by that reliable source as a fact when they are reporting on a controversial subject.
2. The second is the nature of generally lesser reliable sources (and sometimes even strong reliable sources) building up on easily-available social media and other user-generated content to substitute for actual research or fact-finding. This is because these works are trying to push out more news is shorter deadlines to stay competitive and have less time to actually report on a story. A very recent example is from [2] where Salon reports on a BLP based only on Twitter activity, and later learns it was a hoax account posing as that person, and where they made no effort to contact the specific person to start with. This is important to Wikipedia because of Wikipedia’s visibility in searches, it generally is pulled as the first such source to be used by these outlets.

This does not include the situation where the media itself might be an agent in the controversy which further compounds matters.

What happens with these two effects is that you create a feedback loop that, because of strict adherence to "verifyability not truth", any narrative bias in mainstream media (whether they are doing it intentionally or not) ends up as fact in Wikipedia which then other sources pull from and continue the cycle. Now we can't stop this loop completely, but we should be under NPOV trying to pull Wikipedia's involvement in the loop. And then when there are attempts to do distance Wikipedia out of this loop and say to a more neutral, cautionary, or conservative retelling, we get a combination of existing editors using "verifyability not truth" and policies like FRINGE as hammers to keep the media's take, and new editors and IPs trying to swing the article far away from the media's take.

As I noted, while this is evident for the GamerGate situation, it has happened in a large number of other venues. These include but not limited to: the current 2016 US presidential campaign (particularly the media’s stance to some candidates like Trump), the killing of Cecil the Lion, the Black Lives Matter movement and the various reactions to the police shootings in Baltimore, Ferguson, and Chicago, the U of Missouri and related student protests, the Ahmed Mohamed clock incident, the accusations against Bill Cosby, many of the shootings which are not terrorist related but the media aims to call them as such, several cases that have passed ArbCom including genetically modified foods and e-cigarettes, and so on. Notice that these are, for the most part, all ongoing or unresolved controversies which do not have the advantage of enough years since their occurrence to judge them from a more neutral, hands-off approach.

A common saying is that WP should document the controversies and not participate in them, but when we have media acting in a biased manner (intentionally or not), it makes it difficult to work against the sources. That said, we do have a number of existing policies that lead towards us as a tertiary source in judging the nature of media sources better in ongoing policies; in other words, what I believe we need is not 100% brand new, not-yet-in-practice guidance, but more of gathering all the existing practices into a single guideline or policy with clarifications to provide appropriate advice. Some examples of what I think this needs to include are:

• Reiterating WP:BLP as applies to individuals, but also with implications that we should be careful around WP:LABEL as applied to anonymous/unknown people and larger groups, and recognizing that much of the time the media that make up the RSes are not in a position of authority to make certain claims as they have (eg such as calling out "terrorists" or "hate groups" which have specific legal definitions).
• Emphasizing WP:YESPOV which allows us to avoid repeating opinions as facts, and instead as attributed claims, which can help to de-bias any article, and that this importantly keeps us on the neutral ground instead of adopting the tone and timbre of the media on a subject. This particularly holds true if within the controversy the media has been identified as influencing events or is an agent of the controversy and not just reporting on it.
• Recognizing WP:FRINGE is meant to limit coverage of minority viewpoints to well-established thought and theories, and not to eliminate minority viewpoints that contrast with a majority viewpoint in an ongoing controversy
• Recognizing that WP:UNDUE is still important and that we cannot create a false equal balance to make one side look better than presented by the media (we're not here to right great wrongs), but recognizing that there are times to make sure to document both sides of a controversies may require moving a small amount off the balance recommended by UNDUE.
• Recognizing that opinions from established people/groups involved in a controversy that may be from very weak RSes are still valid opinions to be included as opinions if necessary to document both sides of the controversy or to provide counterpoints. Further, recognizing that sometimes these minority opinions will be immoral, repulsive or offensive, but as long as they do not violate BLP, should not be excluded for that reason alone as we are not a censored work.
• Being aware of what is happening in the topic beyond what the RSes themselves say, even if we cannot include any of that information immediately ("verifyability, not truth" still holds), only so that we are aware of the landscape and know how to treat the sources reporting on it.
• Recognizing that while WP:COI does not apply to editors deeply invested about the topic itself, that it has been well established that deeply involved editors, if unable to cooperate or work with other editors, should back off from such articles (advice that Jimmy Wales has given)
• Establishing proper means to deal with SPA/IPs that include the use of the 500 editors/30 days editing restriction practice as to limit outside influence.
• That in ongoing controversies, sometimes WP:TNT might be a better solution than trying to recover from a imbalanced article.

What I ask here is to first if we should have such a policy (my preferred result) or a guideline (the more likely result) that is meant to provide this guidance. If there is consensus for that, the next step is to craft it which would be a separate discussion later. -- MASEM ( t) 15:39, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

I am extremely wary of anything that starts from the premise of "I don't like how Reliable Sources are covering the subject". Alsee ( talk) 21:26, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

I agree that caution should be given if this was the situation claimed to be happening to only one topic, because it could be looking to swing the topic. But I'm seeing this across the board with numerous cases of the modern media failing to be objectively unbiased, and it is known to exist. Since we are supposed to be unbiased, this works against our purpose and we need to be more careful on the use of media in a ongoing controversy. The key is to recognize that reliable sources are not perfectly infallible sources to start. -- MASEM ( t) 00:47, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

Linked articles in the mainstream press have indicated poor results for Mobile editing at Wikipedia. Here is one of the links from The Guardian last summer [3]. Here is the link to The New York Times article last summer on Mobile problems: [4].

Wikipedia editing by Mobile has used vast human resources to develop a good editing system with limited success. It might be better and offer more options if a two-part Mobile editing environment could be considered. For example, in the first part of the two-stage action center described here, Mobile editors would recognize that their edit environment is lacking in comparison to full-keyboard editing, and Mobile editors would simply have a way to "mark" or identify a short problem section in an article, with a short description of what needs to be done on a desktop full keyboard computer to fix it. The second part is then to relay the identified "problem" passage of a Wikipedia article to an Action center (really a type of Mobile village pump) in order for Wikipedia editors who are at a full keyboard computer to then do the fix, or send it back to the Mobile editor as either "fixed" or requiring further information. There are so many criticisms in the newspapers at this point about the poor Mobile editing experience that it might be nice to consider Mobile Wikipedia editing as a two-phase operation, rather than continuing huge human resource investments into improving Mobile editing capacity which is not really catching on as many might have once hoped for. Would it work? Cheers. Fountains-of-Paris ( talk) 17:52, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

We had a tool for this enabled on this WP called WP:AFT. Its trial is considered to have gone badly by a number of editors and it was subsequently disabled. -- Izno ( talk) 18:40, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

I imagine AFT feedback and article Talk page discussion are always there as desktop tools. The expedited Mobile edits I suggest above would need to be something more. Leaving a Talk page comment to suggest an article fix can often be overlooked. Cheers. Fountains-of-Paris ( talk) 19:13, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

MOS:CT and WP:NCCAPS encourages lowercasing prepositions with no more than four letters, such as into, but, as, and of. Shall we call "like" a preposition per guidelines? Why or why not? -- George Ho ( talk) 09:24, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

It can be used in lots of different ways, it depends on the context, see wikt:like. I think for uses in the names of a work I would probably mostly capitalize it. Dmcq ( talk) 12:34, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

" Days Like This (song)" is an example of its use in one article's title (as a song title) where it is capitalized, yet used as a preposition in the way Wiktionary says. I learned in school back in the stone age that it was a conjunction with an implied verb afterward ("Is", or "like this day is" in this case), though such a conjunction should also be lowercase. The Van Morrison album has all letters in caps - DAYS LIKE THIS. We're a mixed bag. Dcs002 ( talk) 20:26, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

"like" can also introduce an Adverbial phrase, which (as all adverbs) modifies the verb by answering "how?". For example, "He respected his topic ban like a hunk of rock - in silence". NewsAndEventsGuy ( talk) 20:31, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

Or an Adjective phrase, for example "Editors like me adhere to the restrictions of their topic bans" NewsAndEventsGuy ( talk) 20:35, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

I can just see it on Facebook, something like 'Like a like like Bro?" You might be amused by Teen slang: What's, like, so wrong with like? :) Dmcq ( talk) 12:22, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

Like, Luke's duck, like, licks like lakes. Luke licks, like, lakes Luke's Duck like licks NewsAndEventsGuy ( talk) 12:45, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

First of all I want to be clear that this is just a genuine question (since I don't know the details how Wikipedia deals with copyright), not I'm trying to blame Wikipedia or anything. Since English is not my first language, if my wording sounds like the latter, please forgive me.

Let's take File:Belgium - Location Map (2013) - BEL - UNOCHA.svg as an example. In "Creative Commons Attribution 3.0" it said "You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor". And on that page it clearly said

Using the map without modifications: ensure that the sources and the disclaimer are below the map. Credit as follows: "Credit: OCHA".

For use with alteration: remove the OCHA logo and disclaimer following any modification to the map, but keep the data sources as mentioned below the map. Credit the modified map as follows: "Based on OCHA map". You are responsible for the content of your map.

But on page Belgium you can see the source and disclaimer is NOT below the map (compare the source here: besides the author/credit, there is a disclamer sentense get removed as well).

Here raises a more general question I had in my head for years: is the way Wikipedia use free images on their articles appropriate? I mean, it never credits the author until you click and see the details of the file. If people are only reading the article itself, or maybe they have to (e.g. print version), they will never know the author(s). Does it even count as "BY" of CC? Even we count it (file page) as attribution, the way we credit this UNOCHA map in particular is still problematic since it's not the way they asked. -- fireattack ( talk) 11:46, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

You should look at the full license rather than the summary. Among other clauses: "The credit required by [the license] may be implemented in any reasonable manner", which has generally been accepted as including the placement of credits on the image description pages. The summary text saying: "You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor", really only means that the attribution must contain the names, titles, and URLs provided by the author. The license doesn't actually grant the original author control over where the attribution appears, provided that the attribution is presented in a "reasonable manner" and is at least as "prominent" as attribution offered on other similar content. Dragons flight ( talk) 12:18, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

Its complicated by the fact that someone created an image template that seems to contradict the CC license, with the indication that we should provide the credit, and not just "reasonable" attribution. As long as it has a CC license, we should treat it like any other image here on EN. If the image isn't really CC licensed because of the credit requirement is something commons would need to consider. Monty ₈₄₅ 19:52, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for your explanation. -- fireattack ( talk) 07:24, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

A small note on the English, since you mention it's not your first language - leading your question with "isn't" carries a more accusatory tone, implying that whatever you're asking is true. If you're not sure, you should stick to "is", so "Is the way we use these UNOCHA maps directly violate the Creative Commons license?". (Also, the grammar on that is wrong, it should really start with "Does the way..." or replace "directly violate" with "in direct violation of" or something.) Cheers, ansh 666 08:54, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

The WMF is deploying a new MediaWiki extension that automatically adds a second "See also" section to the bottom of articles. These links come with a decorative thumbnail, sometimes based on non-free images (which is apparently totally okay according to WMF Legal). Voice your dissatisfaction here: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Reading/Web/Projects/Related_pages. — Ruud 14:04, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

Delicious canvassing (re "Voice your dissatisfaction here").

On desktop this is a beta feature and you can turn it off at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures. On mobile, well, it's mobile. -- Izno ( talk) 14:21, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

I've obviously opted-out of the beta. But once this goes live, anonymous readers won't have that option. An extension that violates our core content policies shoudn't be opt-out in any case.

The problem seems to be that the "success" of this feature is going to be measured by click-through rate, and online advertisers have long since discovered that big, distracting images (whether free or not) increase the click-though rate. How click-through rate is correlated to user satisfaction is unclear to me (see Clickbait). — Ruud 14:47, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

I have made a suggestion there that would allow the editors of an article to determine what image to use for the Related feature, so that a per-wiki evaluation can be made; assuming this feature is added, then here at en.wiki we would require editors to try to offer a free replacement image for articles where no free image exists, which would alleviate the issue here. -- MASEM ( t) 15:09, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

I'm less concerned about the legality, but it seems like an obnoxious feature to me, substituting automatic content for curated content. It's often way off the mark, always distracting. Like a lot of weather pages, it may sucker you into clicking, but it will be a net worse overall experience. Dicklyon ( talk) 16:06, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

I'm concerned that the feature is going to be compared directly to existing functionality, when its various differences from existing functionality (your basic "see also" section) confound the comparison. For example, its placement at the bottom and inclusion of preview images might each be measures that would improve existing "see also" sections, without the downsides of automatically-generated content. Without controls on the tests, data-based support for the feature is fallacious. {{ Nihiltres | talk | edits}} 20:13, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

I've been looking at WP:GEOFEAT and I have ben thinking that we should make it clear on man-made structures of what constitutes notability. I have always thought that buildings or structures that have been recognised by governments as being of historical interest should be inherently notable. Hence why I propose adding to the buildings section of GEOFEAT the following after the current wording:

Buildings that have been recognised at a national level of government or been included on any national heritage list shall be considered notable.

This my first policy proposal so I understand if people would like to reword it to make it better. however this is what I think would be good to be included so it gives some clarity to the current vague criteria currently on GEOFEAT. The C of E God Save the Queen! ( talk) 23:48, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

Isn't this more or less what the first part of GEOFEAT says?

• Artificial geographical features that are officially assigned the status of cultural heritage or national heritage, or of any other protected status on a national level and which verifiable information beyond simple statistics are available are presumed to be notable.

I'll also note that there used to be "inherent notability" language in that section, but it was removed in 2014 on the grounds that there is no such thing as inherent notability. Also, you should probably drop a note on the talk page of WP:NGEO to notify watchers there of this discussion. ansh 666 08:49, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

In the past week, four discussions in which I've been involved have been closed by two admins who have previously told me to not post on their talk page.  (This [two] is also the total number of admins who have told me to not post on their talk page.)  DRV requires a discussion with the XfD closer before taking the case to DRV, and this is a vital step in the DRV process.  Since admins know who they've talk-page banned(?), should they find other discussions to close?  Thanks, Unscintillating ( talk) 01:35, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

If this was 4 discussions and one admin MAYBE there would be something that should be discussed here...but 4 separate admins. I am sorry but there is obviously something wrong going on here, there is little to no chance of 4 separate admins making improper discussion regarding discussions involving the same editor. Unscintillating should at least provide diffs regarding the above claim else close thing as unsubstantiated. Mrfrobinson ( talk) 04:29, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

• Sorry, four discussions, two admins.  Nor did I say that the closures were or were not "improper".  And how would you define an "improper" closure?  It seems to be argumentative, and I think we should assume that the admin didn't think it improper at the time of the closure.  Unscintillating ( talk) 05:27, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

• Why would so many admins be banning Unscintillating from their talk pages, and why is this a discussion for the VP/Policy and not AN? -- Kudpung กุดผึ้ง ( talk) 05:03, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

• Sorry, four discussions, two admins.  Unscintillating ( talk) 05:27, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

How big were the discussions? How much did you contribute to them? If you were, like, half the discussion, and the entire conversation was focused on your personal opinion to the extent where it felt like half a referendum on you personally, I could see it as maybe violating the spirit of WP:INVOLVED. On the other hand, if you just have one comment among hundreds (and excluding or including your comments would make no significant difference in the discussion), then it hardly seems to matter. -- Aquillion ( talk) 05:35, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

• Those are good points.  Were I to link to specifics, it loses the context of a policy discussion, yet if the people considering the issue don't have specific examples, that is also a problem.  Unscintillating ( talk) 05:44, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

• It's a bit of a tangent to your main concern, but DRV doesn't actually say that it "requires a discussion with the XfD closer before taking the case to DRV" - it qualifies that with " unless there is a substantial reason not to do this and you have explained the reason in your nomination". "The admin says he'll banninate me if I ever write anything on his talk page ever again" is as substantial a reason as I've ever seen brought up. — Cryptic 06:05, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

In general if a process strongly encourages one to contact an editor on their talk page about some matter then one should do so even if banned by that editor from their talk page. However any actual discussion is still subject to them being okay with that happening. If the admin tries to ban you point to the process. Dmcq ( talk) 13:48, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

• Have you thought about asking another (non-involved) admin to act as a "go between"... to notify the closer of your intended DVR on your behalf. This other admin could even agree to host any preliminary discussions on his/her talk page... and invite both you and the closer to discuss any issues there. This would satisfy the instruction to contact the closer... and yet also respect his/her desire that you stay away from his/her talk page. Blueboar ( talk) 15:53, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

Good suggestion Blueboar. I don't think the third (hosting) party even has to be an admin - any user could offer their talk page for this purpose although they might want to be aware they might be "responsible" if the discussions breach any PaGs.DrChrissy ^(talk) 16:53, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

• Being banned by someone from their talk page isn't actually an enforceable thing as such. Even full interaction bans allow you to post on someone's page if it's required (e.g. a notification about a deletion discussion or noticeboard discussion). ansh 666 05:23, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

I am having a dispute with someone over whether it is okay for the same person to openly mark two separate reasons with Keep or with Delete for keeping or deleting a particular X on Wikipedia. The issue arose because in between posting the first and second reason, an admin relisted the XfD. I am wondering the proper procedure.

Order of events:

1. User A (as user A) adds reason 1 for keeping to a XfD and marks reason 1 Keep or Delete
2. Admin relists the XfD, including the notice only to post below that notice.
3. User A (as user A) adds reason 2 for keeping, unrelated or barely related to reason 1, to the XfD and marks reason 2 Keep or Delete, the same recommendation they made in step 1. User A also explicitly mentions that they are the same user A that had previously recommended Keep or Delete, so there is no sockpuppet or meatpuppet issue. (And even a non-logged-in user with a dynamic IP address could disclose that it was they who made the step 1 recommendation, so logged in vs. not logged in is not an issue here.)
4. User B objects to user A marking the second reason keep.
5. User A asterisks the second Keep and notes that the fact that it reads Keep is under dispute.

Question: For future reference, what would be the proper action for step 3?

3A: User A acted properly. No changes needed.

3B: User A would have properly marked the reason with Comment, then stated that user A was submitting it as an additional reason for keeping.

3C: User A would have properly:

3C1: Copied the comment from step 1 to below the notice to accompany the comment made in step 3

3C2: Struck out the original comment made in step 1, and

3C3: Marked the new two-reason comment Keep

Thisisnotatest ( talk) 06:37, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

3A looks clearly wrong, as users should only have one vote. Options 3B or 3C sound OK, or the user could have embellished their reasoning under their original vote. Graeme Bartlett ( talk) 07:12, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

Thisisnotatest What you need to do now to stop the argument is strike out your second "Keep" !vote and add Comment instead. I don't know why you've brought this here instead of the Teahouse as suggested, or even the Help desk. Doug Weller talk 11:18, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

I brought it here because there was a claim by User B that I had violated policy, but the stated policy is silent on the correct action, and therefore it was possible that a policy discussion needed to take place. This is the place for discussion of policy. As for the teahouse, I perceived User B to be engaging in bullying behavior in general on the matter, so had no reason to follow their advice. Thisisnotatest ( talk) 05:25, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

• If, as numerous Wikipedian's have stated that it isn't a vote, then it really shouldn't matter, and this is just the making of mountains from molehills. Or, have I been correct all this time, and it really is a vote after all?! -- MurderByDeletionism ^"bang!" 21:23, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

Exactly. It's not a vote, this is elevating form over substance, and what the accuser there is doing really looks like an attempt by an experienced editor at intimidating a relative newcomer to me and coming very close to disrupting Wikipedia to make a point. Regards, TransporterMan ( TALK) 21:45, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

I did in fact take User B's comments to me at the page as an attempt to bully me into changing my recommendation (typed "vote" at first, so I can see why some people think it's a vote) but wanted to keep that separate from Doing the Right Thing, which is why I brought the discussion here. Thisisnotatest ( talk) 05:25, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

• Well here's the thing: AfD is not a vote, and there is no policy anywhere that says that you cannot "vote twice". But certain users get really upset if you do, because to someone quickly glancing at the thread, it looks like two different users have expressed support for a position, which can give the appearance of consensus where none exists. But closers aren't supposed to do that, because AfD is not a vote. The expensive answer is you should endeavour to never have more than one bolded keep or delete (or merge, rename, split, redirect, move, punt, fire into the sun) in any particular thread, if only because it will cause unnecessary drama.

When a thread is "relisted", it's intended to be a continuation of the same discussion, so generally if you've voted above then you wouldn't vote again, but you're definitely not the first to be confused about that. Personally what I would have done in your case is mark your second comment with comment and then simply present your additional evidence. In Human3015's case, I would have simply marked your "duplicate vote" with the {{ duplicate vote}} template, and moved on. This is all really a minor thing to get so worked up over. Ivanvector 🍁 ( talk) 22:06, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

Ah, but if it's not a vote, then why is it a duplicate vote template? Wouldn't it be an nth-recommendation template? (Although user B believes it to be a vote, so they would likely use the {{ duplicate vote}} template, {{ duplicate vote}} template has no usage notes as to where it would be appropriate. Thisisnotatest ( talk) 04:54, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

It's bad form to appear to "vote" twice, but it's bad form for anyone to get all worked up about it too. Very often, someone who has commented before has something else to say in the same debate: either a contra- argument needs to be considered and/or addressed, or the lightbulb just went off on something else that one thinks bears consideration of the community. Repetition of a bold recommendation does, and ought do, nothing to make one's point more or less worthy. Prefacing one's comments, by "another reason to (delete/keep/etc) is blah blah blah..." gives those looking to be offended less reason to be offended. Carlossuarez46 ( talk) 23:12, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

How about something like:

• Comment I want to add that another reason to Keep is...

Because it's important that it be taken as a new light-bulb-went-off recommendation for keeping, not as a neutral comment. Thisisnotatest ( talk) 04:54, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

• • Actually, I've gone with Amending Previous Keep as the clearest way to add a new reason without making it look as if I'm trying to slip under the radar that I'm recommending twice. It'll do until there's something more specific in place. Thisisnotatest ( talk) 08:08, 8 January 2016 (UTC)
• A thing I've seen people (mostly those unfamiliar with typical AfD behavior) do is to have a list of reasons on separate lines, all bulleted with Keep (or delete or whatever) in front; or sometimes they say Keep with a single bullet every time they respond to someone else's comments. That's pretty much what the guidelines are attempting to avoid, as it gets really confusing really fast when you see so many bolded comments - on quick glance it can create the false sense that there are many people supporting that position instead of possibly even just one. While it's not as bad in cases like this one, the potential for confusion still stands. So basically, while AfD is indeed not a vote, it's easier and more clear to stick to the one bolded suggestion and label everything else as a comment or something like what you did. Also, the suggestion to add it as an indented "reply" to your previous statement is good as well, since that keeps your arguments together - it's what I usually do. ansh 666 08:42, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

Either 3B, or the user should place the comment directly under the original vote (and any discussion it generated), based on the user's own preference. Under 3A, it looks like 2 separate votes, although the user is only entitled to one vote. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 16:51, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

• This has been blown out of all proportion. I'd normally mark a further comment as 'Comment' (comments aren't neutral, they're part of the discussion) or I'd indent it directly under my original 'keep' !vote. Dylanfromthenorth ( talk) 23:46, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

I though that consensus existed against the use of placeholders in articles. Still, this file is used in two articles.-- The Traditionalist ( talk) 23:35, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

I did a quick look and it's now showing no pages using it. I presume the two articles got edited to remove it. I also note that, if we *did* want to use placeholders in articles, we ought to be able to make one ourselves, rather than borrow one from Chromium. I'm not saying it's a copyright violation; the license info seems ok, but someone who wants to wander by and check it out is free to do so and disagree with me. It could probably also be deleted, as it seems unlikely to be used in the future, but I'm ok with keeping it for now if no one wants to run it through an XfD nomination. Wabbott9 Tell me about it.... 19:48, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

I have a question about relative weight when dealing with reliable sources. Should we assume a peer reviewed source is automatically more reliable than a non-peer reviewed source when both seem to be high quality? The WP:RS guidelines establishes a kind of hierarchy of source quality. It puts peer reviewed material at the top. Certainly for areas like science, engineering, and medicine this makes a lot of sense. However, it might be harder to establish that in areas like history that are more subjective in nature. A while back I found this discussion related to the intended meaning of the WP:RS guidelines [20]. The discussion focused around this passage from the RS guide:

Academic and peer-reviewed publications are usually the most reliable sources where available, such as in history, medicine, and science, but material from reliable non-academic sources may also be used in these areas, particularly if it appears in respected mainstream publications.

Specifically the question was should the later part of the sentence be emphasized to make it clear that non-academic sources should be given weight similar to academic in many subject areas if there is justification. The actual subject of the discussion was over a change to the RS guidelines, not, as far as I can tell, a question of if peer review automatically trumps all else. That said, I was hoping to get the views of other editors to see if they agreed with my read on the archived discussion as well as if they agreed with my understanding that RS does not mean peer reviewed automatically trumps non-peer reviewed. Thanks Springee ( talk) 19:54, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

An all too familiar problem is that of the fake expert, as depicted in the cartoon here NewsAndEventsGuy ( talk) 20:09, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

I absolutely agree. However, consider a case like a Dr. Stephen Ambrose book published by a non academic press vs an alternative opinion offered by another historian in a peer reviewed book. Both are reputable sources on the subject. Should we say that Abrose's views go away simply because he decided not to publish via a peer reviewed publisher. Note that someone like Ambrose might have picked the non-academic press because he can earn more on the book vs needing to get peer review to have the book be notable. Springee ( talk) 22:00, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

Possibly the case of established experts as described at WP:SPS should be highlighted more. That gives a criterion for distinguishing between people who call themselves experts and people who are acknowledged as experts on a subject. Dmcq ( talk) 23:40, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. That does seem relevant. However, would we consider a book by Ambrose, say Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors, published by Open Road Media self published? It's not a peer reviewed publisher though that doesn't mean Ambrose didn't have reviewers (nor does it mean he did). Anyway, would we say Ambrose is a noted historian and thus we accept his work as if it were peer reviewed or do we discount it if it disagrees with a peer reviewed source. Note: I'm asking this question in the abstract and Ambrose is just a historian I'm using as a convenient example given that he is well known and generally well respected and has published peer reviewed work though much of his current work comes from more main stream publishing houses. Springee ( talk) 00:45, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

Context matters; some remarks cited to books should be given inline attribution and others can be said in wikivoice. It depends on case by case basis. NewsAndEventsGuy ( talk) 00:49, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

I do agree but if for example we are talking about Ambrose vs another source on basically the same subject (say the historical actions of Custard as described in the book I mentioned above). This is not a case of Ambrose talking about say the physics of the Manhattan project but instead Ambrose speaking about an area in which he is well versed, American history.

What we'd be saying here is that we'd have to give both versions weight in the article. A peer reviewed source would normally get more weight but acknowledged experts should get weight in an article and I'd have thought quite often more weight if they specifically deal with a topic and it is only in passing in the peer reviewed work. As always there is a question of judgment when there is a disagreement and that's what discussions on the talk page and RfC's and noticeboards are mostly about. Dmcq ( talk) 11:57, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

I would agree with that. I was using the above as an example but from your reply I think we can say that you agree that peer review does not automatically mean the information trumps non-peer reviewed. The qualifier being the need to show that the non-peer reviewed source is actually of high quality with respect to the claims being made. This aligns with my reading of WP:RS, the passage I quoted above and what I view as the consensus of those involved in the quoted discussion. Springee ( talk) 13:07, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

• I'm pinging some of the editors from my link to get their feedback. MastCell, Lawrencekhoo, RJC, SlimVirgin, Crum375, 2over0, LeadSongDog, WLU, ImperfectlyInformed Springee ( talk) 00:59, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

I think it is too hard to make a general statement. There are far more non-peer reviewed sources that are reliable however when a peer reviewed source is available it should be given more weight. A great example of this is the surge in referencing modern news articles, I have come across many that are reporting on a peer-reviewed study. The peer-reviewed study should be used as the source and not the news article. On the same subject the number of news articles being referenced is far too high. IMO news reports are not always reliable and are given far too much weight. With regards to social sciences, history etc may not have as may peer-reviewed articles available thus alternative sources (text books, books etc) are probably more reliable and appropriate. Mrfrobinson ( talk) 17:26, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

Many primary papers in journals are accompanied by university press releases touting their faculty's findings. Low-to-zero budget pseudojournalism feeds ( Eurekalert, etc.) pick these up, then with little or no fact checking, "Hey presto!" the press releases become "secondary" sources repeating (sometimes verbatim) the university press release. We can't afford to trust these as if they were independent informed analysis when they generally are neither. Worse, this mirroring complicates the problem of identifying genuine secondary sources. As a rule of thumb, if it is published within a week of the primary paper, I'd assume it to be buzz rather than real analysis unless it is coming from an established expert at an unrelated institution. LeadSongDog come howl! 18:27, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

LSD, thanks for replying to the ping. I'm not really thinking about cases where we have a report talking about the results of a paper. Of course in that case we should use the paper if possible. The example I'm using here is a book by Dr Stephen Ambrose. Ambrose is a well respected historian, author, scholar etc. A number of his books were published via mainstream publishers vs academic publishers. Would we automatically discount his views if they conflict with a book out of say "University Press of ____"? I think WP:RS says we shouldn't so long as we can make the argument that Ambrose is an expert or RS on the topic at hand. Springee ( talk) 19:02, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

I agree with Mrfrobinson that we can't make a blanket statement. For example, I think most would agree that an essay from the acknowledged foremost expert about a topic in his field of expertise should be given more weight than an article written by unknowns in a third-rate journal. We should exercise some common sense and editorial judgement, like NewsAndEventsGuy pointed out, this article is a great resource on how to evaluate statements from scientists and experts. LK ( talk) 23:12, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

I agree with Mrfrobinson, when a peer reviewed source is available, it should be given more weight. A peer reviewed source passes inspection by multiple experts in the related field, while something that's privately published or self published doesn't pass the same scrutiny of experts. This is why WP policy states that peer reviewed sources are usually the most reliable. Of course, as LK points out, some publications appear to be peer reviewed but actually aren't or maybe they aren't scholarly journals at all. WP:RS also recognizes this exception to peer reviewed sources. Giving peer reviewed publications more weight/priority is an objective measure to determining reliability. Otherwise, anyone could just argue author "X" is an expert, and the next thing you know, quotes from Ken Ham are being pushed into evolution articles and are given equal weight as the vast amount of peer reviewed scholarly sources addressing the issue. If their views don't merit scholarly publication, then chances are they aren't worth mentioning on specific subjects that do pass peer review, especially when they attempt to contradict the view points held by multiple peer reviewed sources. LSD also brings up a good point as well. Even though you may not be thinking about news articles quoting primary research papers, attempting to redefine how sources get treated affects a variety of issues across the encyclopedia, allowing editors to use the guise of "expert" to refute scholarly material. I know you said your example focused on Dr. Stephen Ambrose, but questions about a specific source should be brought up at the reliable sources noticeboards, this noticeboard is focused on general policy. That being said, from Dr. Ambrose's wikipage: "Beginning late in his life and continuing after his death, however, evidence and reports have continued to surface documenting longtime patterns of plagiarism and inaccuracies in many of his published writings and other work." This is why WP places more importance and reliability on peer reviewed sources, over "experts". Scoobydunk ( talk) 01:30, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

That is the way it is supposed to work, in an ideal world, Scooby. In reality, some journals have higher standards than others and sometimes you can pay to publish. So although I agree with your rule of thumb, its still best to use excellent secondary sources reporting on the research, and to always look at every reference on a case by case basis, because there are always examples that defy the rule of thumb. NewsAndEventsGuy ( talk) 01:35, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

I think there are sometimes examples that may defy the rule of thumb. Also, I addressed your concern about lesser journals in my original comment and WP:RS does at well. Clearly, if the claimed peer-reviewed journal is one of those, then it's reliability is questionable. But when the source in question is Cambridge University Press or University Press of Chicago, then that's not really a concern. This is a slightly separate issue when looking at studies which are primary sources. I'd agree that reliable secondary sources would be better used, but WP:RS also clearly addresses that, and I don't think that's what's being discussed here. I think we're focusing more on 2 secondary sources, 1 being peer reviewed and one being privately published or self published. I'm glad you agree with my rule of thumb and I hope I cleared up any concerns. Of course, on specific issues, that's where the RSN is of great use! Scoobydunk ( talk) 09:17, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

Scoobydunk, Mrfrobinson didn't say it should be given more weight. He avoided making that blanket statement. We have had this discussion in the past and you made it clear that you felt even an otherwise reliable non-peer reviewed source should be dismissed if it didn't agree with a peer reviewed source. How would you address a case such as a peer reviewed source that disagrees with say a claim made by Ambrose? I've authored a number of peer reviewed articles (no books) as well as reviewed others. I can say it's not perfect by any stretch but it's better than nothing. While you are correct that a specific case (Ambrose was used as an example because he is a well known historian) should go to a RSN, this is actually a question about a WP policy and thus this is the correct place. I wanted to verify that my reading of the policy is correct. My reading is the policy does not automatically mean peer reviewed sources should trump and even exclude other sources just because they are peer reviewed. The consensus here seems to lean in the direction that if the non-peer reviewed source is highly reliable then it should be given weight. What people here seems to be, correctly, stating is that we need to be cautious when crediting the views of experts if those views aren't coming through peer reviewed sources. If a US Supreme Court judge offered a non-reviewed opinion that something was legal I think we could give that opinion a lot of credit even if it wasn't peer reviewed. Springee ( talk) 02:41, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

Directly quoting MrFrobinson: "There are far more non-peer reviewed sources that are reliable however when a peer reviewed source is available it should be given more weight." You can hit "ctrl-f" and then copy and paste what's quoted, and you'll see it verbatim in Mrfrobinson's comment. So, he did say that. I see that people seem to agree that reputable peer reviewed publishers should be given more weight. What I'm interested in, is how should we treat a non-academic source that contradicts multiple separate peer reviewed sources. Like, is it okay to include Ken Ham's point of view on evolution articles to refute what scholarship says on the issue? I think the answer is an obvious "No" and that multiple WP policies clearly supports this to prevent insignificant minority viewpoints from being pushed into articles. Scoobydunk ( talk) 09:17, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

And you can also find where he says no blanket statements. How does the text of the actual policy support your view? I know you are trying to dismiss Ambrose as an example but let's suppose we use a historian who hasn't had some issue, say Robert Massie. Are you again going to say policy says we must dismiss his work if it disagrees with admittedly quality peer reviewed work? That doesn't seem to be supported by either RS or the conversation I linked to at the beginning of this question. Springee ( talk) 12:52, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

I know I'm opening a whole can of worms here, and I'm not suggesting a change in policy in either wording or practice, but there are a whole lot of peer-reviewed academic journals out there that print low quality stuff. To pick on one, the Pakistan Journal of Statistics and Operation Research is, as far as I can tell, a real peer-reviewed academic journal out of the perfectly decent University of Punjab. However, I would consider a blog post by a tenured Statistics professor at a top 10 University as more reliable than a paper published there. I think we need to be a bit discerning about peer-reviewed journals, it's not a binary 'real peer-review is RS, fake or no peer-review is not RS'. We need to exercise some judgement. LK ( talk) 10:13, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

• Trying to move the topic a bit back from examples of clearly unreliable or unknown journals and getting back to what the actual policy says. My reading of the policy and the archived conversation I found is that there is no blanket view that a high quality RS should be dismissed if it doesn't agree with a quality peer reviewed source. It seems this is more relevant as the topics become softer in terms of hard science. Thus historical views of General Washington might have more room for non-peer reviewed sources by reputable historians while the topic of climate change science studies would have far less room for non-peer reviewed opinions. Springee ( talk) 13:23, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

That would be about right I think. In some subjects peer review seems to mean that the paper was well written according to the reviewers and has lots of references rather than that the conclusions pass any sort of check. Dmcq ( talk) 16:14, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

Peer review does analyze conclusions. It doesn't mean that the reviewers agree with those conclusions, but that those conclusions can be drawn from the sources and the data the author provided. They don't just glance at the bibliography and then check off on the work. Scoobydunk ( talk) 16:54, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

To address Springee's concern, there are policies that dismiss these works in the example I outlined above. According to WP:NPOV: "Generally, the views of tiny minorities should not be included at all, except perhaps in a "see also" to an article about those specific views." So, when an article covering a topic of science, history, or medicine has numerous peer reviewed works discussing a specific aspect of the topic, then there is no reason to include a viewpoint that isn't covered/given any weight by the same degree of scholarship. Furthermore, WP:RS states "Base articles on reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy." Peer reviewed sources meet that criteria with the exception of fraudulent journals. Most private publishing houses don't meet that criteria. WP:RS makes no exception for "experts" save for the self-published section, which also states that if their views are really worth inclusion, then another third party source would have already covered the view. These types statements are consistently communicated throughout multiple policy pages and are there to prevent insignificant minority viewpoints from being included when there are multiple examples of scholarly sources covering the issue. Scoobydunk ( talk) 16:54, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

You actually aren't addressing my concerns. You are creating a strawman for me. While I appreciate the help I don't think anyone here is claiming that we should treat fringe theories with the same weight as peer reviewed material. In this case I'm trying to verify the intent of the policy with regards to what might be considered expert views published via non-academic channels. I've been doing more searching on the subject and it is clear that others have had my same concerns over the years. These archives contain two more conversations specifically concerned with the subject [21], [22]. So if we had a case where say 4 peer reviewed books made similar claims and 4 acknowledged experts in the field disagreed with the common claim but their disagreements were published in non-peer reviewed channels (mainstream publisher, op-ed etc) how would you handle the situation? Springee ( talk) 17:19, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

have you got such a case? Wikipedia's policies and guidelines are for covering the general cases that come up reasonably often, not every case under the sun. They normally follow from accepted practice on actual examples rather than the other way around. That's also one of the reasons why WP:IAR exists. Dmcq ( talk) 21:23, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

No, I'm asking this as a general understanding of the policy. I fear that if we use a specific case then we discuss that case instead of the general policy. Springee ( talk) 21:27, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

@Springee (2 comments above); You speculated about 4 experts saying Y in peer reviewed books versus 4 'perts saying NO in common media. When I saw that, my brain froze. Peer reviewed books? Sure sometimes a book gets a prepublication review, but that isn't quite the same process, as I understand it, as passing peer review in a journal that has established editorial standards and reputation. NewsAndEventsGuy ( talk) 21:37, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

@Springee (2 comments above) Part 2, Also, you seem to be asking whether this source is RS and that source is not. I'd say in the battle between the Y 'perts in peer reviewed anything and the N 'perts in common media, all of those sources are RS for that 'perts views on the matter. But you seem to be asking if Y can be stated in wikivoice (to the defeated tears of No) just because Y appeared in something that was peer reviewed. In essence, a statement of scientific fact (which always has at least some uncertainty), otherwise known as Scientific consensus. On topics where such a consensus exists there should be ample sources of all sorts and types and media that discuss that consensus. So I kinda agree with DMCQ that the abstract navel gazing is a bit too amorphous to really nail down specifics. NewsAndEventsGuy ( talk) 21:43, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

When I say peer reviewed books I mean books that come out of a [University press] or other academic press. I have not had any of my personal work published via a university press. I'm not sure what level of peer review they get vs a journal paper (I do have experience here as a reviewer and author). I think where things can get murky is say when we have one historian (Ambrose as an example) who's work we well enough known to interest a for-profit publisher vs some other author who's work is of similar quality but is not as well known and thus publishing via a university press. If the resume's of the authors are similar and both would be seen as experts on the material do we promote/demote the one who's work went out via the commercial vs university press? This is especially true if the motivation for publishing via a commercial publisher wasn't easier QC but instead was simply better royalties. Alternatively, consider if a few authors publish historical works via university presses (say the theory that Russia had intended to attack Germany first). If a few other historians state in interviews that they think the theory is wrong do we leave those views out of the WP page because those historians haven't made those statements in peer reviewed articles or university press books? I understand I'm inventing cases but again, I think the answer is things should be case by case and there is not a blanket policy that says a university press book is automatically considered more authoritative than a commercial press book. (note: Edit conflict with the second of the two edits above) Springee ( talk) 21:59, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

The notion of "authoritative" is a question of WP:WEIGHT, rather than one of reliability, as WP uses that term. NewsAndEventsGuy ( talk) 22:18, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

I can see that. Using my Ambrose vs other example, if both have similar resumes would we automatically give more weight to the other (university press published) book vs Ambrose or do we say they are basically equal in weight? Again, this gets back to the heart of the RS question regarding the quote and archive discussions I started with. BTW, incase my tone is hard to decipher here, I'm asking your view, not trying to tell you what view to have. I appreciate your input. Springee ( talk) 22:26, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

No prob, I like the communication. "Weight" is an element of the Neutrality policy so when you bring it back to RS, I'm confused. NewsAndEventsGuy ( talk) 22:43, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

The peer reviewed source automatically has more weight unless you can prove that the peer reviewed publisher doesn't have a reputation for fact checking and accuracy. The WP:RS policy clearly defines the exceptions that would disqualify a journal or scholarly publication from being a reliable source, and mentions things to check for when a source claims to be peer reviewed. Barring those exceptions, they are the "most reliable sources" and should be used, especially when the articles "rely on scholarly material". Scoobydunk ( talk) 08:09, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

You have already said this but it is not consistent with the wording of the policy. Thus if a source, say a book by a well known historian is published through a commercial vs university publisher that doesn't mean we automatically consider it a source of less weight than one published though a university press. Often we would but we don't automatically as you claim. As noted by a number of editors the issue is that some people have tried to use the claim that a source isn't from a university press as a way to exclude otherwise reliable information. Springee ( talk) 12:04, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

WP:RS is a guideline rather than a policy. It doesn't talk about weight but the ordering there is a pretty good indication of the initial weight one can associate with sources. For instance its section about self published work by experts is under questionable whereas scholarship is right at the top. However if someone like Donald Knuth says something on his webpage about computer algorithms that's going to be counted as a reliable source and have quite high weight. Discussion can often be required when there is an inversion of the normal order like that. Dmcq ( talk) 12:31, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

I think that is a good way to put it. At first glance we would assume a peer reviewed source is more reliable. However, that doesn't have to remain that way after review. I would also note that we should consider why a book is published by a university press. It is often because the material simply wouldn't be commercially viable through a traditional for profit publisher. Thus a historian might start publishing via a university press but move to the commercial publishers if his/her work becomes successful enough. This would be the case with someone like Ambrose. If we have two works by the same author, both cited widely, would we assume the one published via a university press is automatically more reliable than the one published via a for profit publisher? This is yet another reason we should not dogmatically assume that a university published book automatically should have more weight, or even worse, should be used to exclude the views of book published through commercial channels. Certainly we should expect that stuff that comes out of say Oxford University Press, is of generally high quality. That doesn't mean that works of equal quality won't come out of Penguin Press or that should just claim "peer reviewed vs other" as reason for discounting one vs the other. That is certainly inline with my reading of the policy. Springee ( talk) 13:22, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia gives Bible stories more weight than peer reviewed sources. Keith McClary ( talk) 03:48, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

I directly quoted policy, so what I said is consistent with policy. You gave no counter argument based on policy, merely just the assertion that what I said was not consistent. What isn't consistent is your position because there is nothing outlined in WP:RS that claims non-scholarly material is as reliable and/or should be given equal weight to scholarly material. Again, one of the only explicitly stated hierarchies in WP:RS is that peer reviewed sources are the "most reliable". The following lines merely state that other non-scholarly sources can be reliable too, but no where does the policy claim that non-scholarly is equivalent to scholarly peer reviewed material in any way, shape, or form. Scoobydunk ( talk) 14:59, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

There is no reason to be so argumentative. You didn't quote policy, you quoted a part of the guideline. I quoted a key paragraph from that same guideline that gives the higher level view of the topic. It says peer reviewed is generally the most reliable. It never says always the most nor does it say other sources should be excluded if they disagree with peer reviewed sources. It is clear that previous editors have been concerned about exclusion of sources by editors who want to treat peer review as a golden seal that trumps all else. The guideline doesn't support that in both the obvious case of a less than high quality peer reviewed source but also in the case of a high quality, non-peer reviewed source.

Earlier you made some claims about the peer review process.[ [23]] I'm not sure if you have ever peer reviewed papers or books. Anyway, what you stated was that the peer review process means the reviews don't have to agree with the conclusion, just that the evidence provided supports the conclusion. Well in that case it seems very likely that a book review process would result in a book where the logic and effort are sound but there is plenty of room for disagreement. In other words, the peer review process is giving us a lower bound for reliability, not an upper bound. You also have ignored the motivations for books vs papers in the peer reviewed space. The choice to go with a commercial publisher vs a university publisher isn't clear cut. It would be interesting to see if the editors who crafted this policy were thinking as much about books by academics vs journal papers. Regardless, thank you for stating your opinion several times over. The guideline certainly says that at first blush we should give a peer reviewed source more weight/consider it more reliable but it doesn't say non-peer reviewed sources can't be considered highly reliable. Springee ( talk) 16:08, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

Like the Bible if a consensus of believers decrees it to be reliable. This whole discussion has no relevance to how Wikipedia actually works. Keith McClary ( talk) 07:40, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

Actually, I did quote policy as the parts I've quoted appear on WP:NPOV and WP:VERIFY which are policy pages. Again, nothing in the policies or guidelines state that non-academic sources are as reliable as peer reviewed, scholarly sources. Also, I didn't address your "motivations behind publishing" because Wikipedia doesn't make such considerations with the exception of maybe WP:QS. Scoobydunk ( talk) 16:55, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

I missed where you quoted a WP policy that said a non-academic source can never be considered as reliable as an academic one on any subject. I did find information that said that in general academic and peer reviewed sources are considered the most reliable. "usually the most reliable" is the phrasing from WP:Verify. That is basically the same thing as what is said at WP:RS, ie peer reviewed is generally the most reliable but nothing that says it will always be nor that non-peer reviewed sources can never been considered as reliable. NPOV doesn't mention the word "peer" (as you told us, ctrl-F allows Windows users to search) and the word "academic" is only used to caution against false balancing fringe theories against peer reviewed work. That is something we have already agreed on here. Again, your opinion is clear even if it isn't supported by your references. Springee ( talk) 18:26, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

My position is directly supported by multiple policies that I've referenced and thoroughly explained. Your attempt to treat non academic sources as equally reliable and deserving of weight as scholarly and peer-reviewed sources is what lacks any backing in WP policy. Scoobydunk ( talk) 01:09, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

Repeating your opinion doesn't make your argument stronger. I have stated my case. You have not shown that the policies support what you claim. They support the general case but they do not support the absolute case you are attempting to claim. Springee ( talk) 02:17, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

The argument is not that in general non peer reviewed sources carry equal weight to peer reviewed ones. It is that in special circumstances a non-peer reviewed source may have greater weight than a peer reviewed one. If available usually peer-reviewed sources are the best. That a source is not peer reviewed source is a good argument that a source has less weight than a peer reviewed source but if someone brings along reasoned arguments otherwise on the talk page they should be considered. For instance it might be a minor matter in the peer reviewed article that they just got wrong. It would not even be an WP:IAR matter.

A more problematic case would be like one I had a while ago where what was said in a textbook was wrong and I removed it and a person insisted that it be in because it was in the textbook and nothing said otherwise. The reason nothing said otherwise was because other authors didn't think to have to deny a falsity. The textbook had just got something it really wasn't about wrong and I had to ask some other editors to check that it really was wrong to get it removed. That is WP:IAR. Peer reviewed sources normally have greater weight but not always. Dmcq ( talk) 10:53, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

I'm joining this discussion late, but I have a few things to say on this topic, some of which have been touched on already. The most important point I have is that we need to remember why there is a peer review process. Peer review is employed on the cutting edge, where we are uncertain of new knowledge. It is used because the facts are new and don't necessarily make a slam-dunk case. It is used when our knowledge is the least certain, and we need to do everything we can to insure the reliability of that information. It is used when we have little more to go on than the author's word that the data presented is factual. Peer review fails miserably time and again. Anyone remember cold fusion? Or the MMR vaccine causing autism? Those papers passed peer review and were published in two of the world's most reputable journals. Peer review in science is a sign of new information that has not been fully established in its respective field. It is applied to primary sources that are just as fallible as any other primary sources. Primary sources sometimes lie, as in the two previous cases, and they make mistakes, which happens much more often. Peer review is a means of doing the best we can with uncertainty.

Books that are published by the University of X Press are subject to editorial review, but usually not peer review. Some university presses publish a wide variety of books, from cutting edge science to consumer how-to guides. Some books present original research that has been peer reviewed, and in that way they are like journals. I have reviewed textbooks before, and they are not subject to peer review. They go through editorial review, and then the quality publishers send them out to instructors for review of their content and presentation (where I participated). This is different from peer review, where there is an expectation of academic skepticism. In this type of review, there is no assumption that the information presented is incorrect unless supported by quality evidence. Standard college textbooks do not use inline citations like we do. (Advanced ones do, especially those presenting content that is very new in narrow fields.) They are beyond the need to support or defend their factual content. They generally present safe and well accepted content in the field, but this is not always the case. There is a huge difference among publishers. I will not assign any textbook published by Thomson or its imprints, for example. The last time I used one of their textbooks I began every lecture by asking my students what errors they found in their reading assignment. Their content is consistently a mess. (The publishers I have considered more reliable have been bought up by Pearson, such as AWL/Benjamin Cummings.)

Peer review is generally applied to primary sources. Two types of review articles (reviews and invited reviews) are secondary sources, and I have not authored either type, so I am not familiar with any peer review of such articles. My assumption is that invited reviews are not peer reviewed, but I don't know. If a review article in a journal passes peer review, I would imagine that is the gold standard.

Remember, peer review is only applied because the reliability of the information has not yet been established. In itself, it does not impart reliability. It is just another level of culling out mistakes. Dcs002 ( talk) 19:49, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

Dcs002, thanks for the comments. I generally have not dealt with university press books. They just aren't common in my field. Journal papers and to a much lesser extent esoteric math text books are the norm. I am curious if there is a way to establish that a university press book has gone through a real peer review process. I can certainly see treating a journal paper, especially a highly cited journal paper as generally more reliable than a book published by a large, reputable, commercial publisher. However as an example, two authors who both seem respected in the field and are both discussing say the politics leading into WW1 (this is an invented example). One book is published by Random House, the other by University of X. Is there any reason, based on the publisher, to favor one vs the other? My reading of your post suggests no. Springee ( talk) 03:35, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

Springee, regarding your example, and provided they are equally well sourced, or unsourced, they both represent the opinions of their respective authors. Since the authors are, in your example, both similarly respected in their field, then they both represent primary sources for their differing opinions, and they should be treated as such. IMO, the publisher is not a factor in a case such as this, with everything else being equal. (The fact that they are already equal indicates that the publishers have both done their jobs well.) The reputations of the authors and the quality of their evidence and reasoning (as covered in other RS) mean far more than the publishers in an example like this. I don't know this to be true, but I wonder if it is easier for a faculty member to publish a book through their home institution's press as opposed to a major reputable publisher. If that is the case, it would argue against giving more weight to University of X Press. That's an open question I have for anyone here who has published through that route.

I need to clarify something. You said, "I can certainly see treating a journal paper, especially a highly cited journal paper as generally more reliable than a book published by a large, reputable, commercial publisher." If the paper is a peer-reviewed review paper, then yes, I agree. If it is a peer-reviewed paper reporting original research, I disagree completely, for reasons I gave in my previous post. Such papers should be treated with the customary skepticism with which we treat other primary sources. These papers do not report well established and widely accepted consensus in their field, as is typically the case with "a book published by a large, reputable, commercial publisher." Even widely cited papers can be suspect because we don't immediately know why they have been widely cited. The paper by Andrew Wakefield that originally reported the relationship between the MMR vaccine and autism was widely cited at first because it was influential, and later it was even more widely cited for its notoriety as a fabrication that had adverse health effects worldwide, especially on children. That paper was published in what is (or was) arguably the most reputable medical journal, the Lancet. There are many examples. This might be the most egregious in biomedical sciences, but it clearly illustrates the uncertainty of primary sources. Many rresults in the biosciences are reported but nor replicated. Accepted statistical methods always leave uncertainty, and there is never more uncertainty than in the first report of new data, regardless of peer review. There is no way for peer review to check for the randomness of an observation. Peer review is far from being any kind of insurance against statistical anomalies and observer bias, which are far more common sources of error than falsification of data.

Original research papers offer the first introduction of new evidence to the broader scientific community. Peer review does NOT does not offer that. Peer reviews assess the paper's evaluation of the evidence (and methods and thoroughness, etc.) and assess whether the conclusions are reasonable, not correct. A single research paper is almost meaningless when describing a new phenomenon. It is a starting point for discussion and further research to verify or falsify the conclusions presented, and not in itself a conclusion or a consensus in the field. Dcs002 ( talk) 19:57, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

For those who are not aware both Forbes.com and HuffPost allow unreviewed contributor content that is paid based on ad revenue. This basically amounts to a blog posting under their banners. There is no journalistic oversight nor do they have to disclose their sources or even fact check. Action is only taken on a complaint basis. Therefore I propose that we no longer allow these types of sources to be used as they do not meet the requirements to be verifiable or reliable as we cannot guarantee their journalistic integrity. I wasn't sure is this was a good place to post this however I figured it would be a great place to start. Mrfrobinson ( talk) 13:25, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

The NYT and almost every other "reliable source" now allows advertising content to be easily confused with actual journalism, and most papers run press releases on a regular basis. Nor do modern newspapers do "fact checking" as a regular process at all. They are all "competing with the Internet" at a time when their traditional revenue source - paid advertisements in hard copies - has substantially evaporated. And all of them stress "clickbait" headlines so that the difference between current newspapers is not whether they are good, bur whether which is worse than the next. Journalistic integrity? That, alas, is gone with the wind, evanescent for a short period, and now so rare as to beggar belief. "Journalists" regularly cherry-pick quotes to promote controversy, and not to convey matters of fact. Instead of humour, derision is the norm. Irredentism is seen across the globe, frequently with insane amounts of violence. And the concept of "neutral reportage of facts" is one of the main victims. Collect ( talk) 13:38, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

I just brought this concept up here (but now archived) [24], in that in the age of opinionated journalism and clickbait-style reporting that is meant to compete with blogs and citizen reporters, "verifyability , not truth" can lead us as WP editors into closet-minding thinking that works against our NPOV policy. We need to be taking middle ground a lot more when it comes to these types of sources, citing them as claims rather than facts and taking them with grains of salt, particulary on on-going developing topics. -- MASEM ( t) 17:57, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

There's an ongoing discussion about this very issue at the reliable source noticeboard: Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#Is the Huffington Post (original content) a reliable source? (2016). ~ ONUnicorn^{( Talk| Contribs)} problem solving 18:54, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

And in general, if there's an issue with whether a given source is any good, the relevant talkboard and that noticeboard are the best places (in that order) to evaluate it on a case-by-case basis. I don't think we want to issue any blanket source bans unless the content is always pretty useless. This isn't Facebook we're talking about. Plus, sometimes a source may be fairly reliable for one topic but not so reliable for others. Wabbott9 Tell me about it.... 19:54, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

The problem is see is there is no oversight over contributed stories on these sites. They amount to personal blogs rebranded under a known banner. Mrfrobinson ( talk) 00:58, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

I agree with all of this so far, but we have a middle ground between RS and banned sources. I think it's a mistake to have as many banned sources as we have. A notable person might write a notable opinion in one of these sources, and we should be able to cite that person's opinion as just that - their opinion, and give the source. That is not a RS, nor does it add to the requirement of in-depth coverage in RS for establishing notability, but as something other than a RS, it's still a source, and we shouldn't have to go through the headache of requesting an exception to the blacklist to use a source in that context. We could simply maintain a list of unreliable sources and use our present system to tag these sources as unreliable when used, thereby assuring readers have a context and giving the admins a break from all the requests for exceptions.

I lament the fall of journalism, like the rest of you do, but information can still be found in non-journalistic sources. If I can use the liner notes of a CD (written by the artist) or the instruction book for a game (written by the game's publisher) as sources (both with have a monetary motivation for their writing), why not these pseudo-journalistic sources? Why are the pseudo-journalistic sources blacklisted when the financially-motivated liner notes and instruction books are not? I say we use them but keep them in context. Dcs002 ( talk) 20:12, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

Chinese mainland people couldn't use Chinese Wikipedia for abut 8 months. I also like Chinese Wikipedia but I can't use it...I had been blocked. Can someone unblock it?

I'm trying using English Wikipedia, but I'm Chinese and I can't speak English well. (Maybe there are some mistakes in what I'm saying.) Also, I'm new in English Wikipedia and I can't see the notices in English easily. (Maybe I broke some rules.) Sth in other pages says we can use "代理"(may be it means "agent" in English), but I don't know how to use.

Please try to let Chinese mainland people use Chinese Wikipedia. Thanks!--来自中国的 SolidBlock ^talk 05:12, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

There's a screenshot:

--来自中国的 SolidBlock ^talk 05:31, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Advice to users using Tor as well as meta:No open proxies#Exceptions. Jo-Jo Eumerus ( talk, contributions) 09:13, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

A proposal for an addition to the Wikipedia:Non-free_content#Images has been made at Wikipedia_talk:Non-free_content#Motion_to_modify_WP:NFC. Your !vote and comments are welcome. -- Hammersoft ( talk) 18:33, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

Our page Wikipedia:Images linking to articles explains how to make an image link to something other than the image description page, and mentions "Care should be taken that this is done in compliance with the licensing terms of the file in question, particularly if they require proper attribution." I have a question about this. Is it a correct assumption that linking an image to an article in which it appears and from where the image description page is then linked will satisfy the attribution requirements of all our free licenses? (For example, or ). I am asking this question because there are several WMF coding projects (especially for mobile) currently in beta that pick an image from an article, found by mw:Extension:PageImages, and then link it to that article without providing image credit directly. An example is for example Special:Gather/id/15307/People. As I understand it, we have traditionally required direct visible credit next to an image unless it is linked directly to its image description page. I could not find a page that explicitly allows or prohibits my or the Gather example, though (this type of linking is common elsewhere on the Web, for example on Facebook). While I personally believe we should be role models for the internet and provide proper image credit and attribution above and beyond what is legally required (just like we do not rely on Fair use defences except in special circumstances), I think we should at least be consistent in what we allow. So I think we should do one of the following:

1. Forbid linking images to articles and restrict mw:Extension:PageImages and similar tools only to use PD images (or only those whose license explicitly allows such a use)
2. Explicitly allow use of images as in the examples above, in all namespaces.

In any case, I think we should settle this policy question one way or the other before various WMF-written extensions that are currently in beta become widely used, and make it clear what our policy regarding images as links to articles actually is. — Kusma ( t· c) 19:39, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

Even providing image credits only when clicking on the image, as we currently do in all our articles, may already be somewhat sketchy license-wise and more so for fair-use images (the common practise outside of Wikipedia is to give credit in the image caption). Using images for navigational purposes would put the image credit at least two clicks away, with a search in between. Creative Commons licenses are extremely vague about attribution requirements, only stating that they should be reasonable for the medium and context [25]. Two clicks certainly seem less reasonable than one... — Ruud 16:13, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

I note that the 4.0 versions of the CC license add "it may be reasonable to satisfy the conditions by providing a URI or hyperlink to a resource that includes the required information" as an example of a reasonable method of providing the attribution. Anomie ⚔ 19:57, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

OK, so our standard method on Wikipedia is probably acceptable, but the method used by tools such as Special:Gather might even not be OK from a legal point of view? — Kusma ( t· c) 20:24, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Attributing Creative Commons Materials notes that for images and photographs one should "provide the relevant attribution next to the photograph, or close by (eg on the edge or bottom of the page) if that is too obtrusive." And as Anomie points out, CC 4.0 states that a hyperlink to an attribution page may also be sufficient. So Special:Gather pages should probably include either 1) a small link or icon to the image description page on each image, 2) attribution near each image, or 3) a list with image credits at the bottom of each list. If not legally required, then it would at least be good etiquette. — Ruud 03:02, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Also, not all of our free images are CC 4.0, and some may have differing requirements, so even if CC 4.0 requires less, Special:Gather pages should conform to what Ruud said. — Kusma ( t· c) 09:04, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Opinions are needed on the following matter: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Images#Fixing images below the default size. A WP:Permalink for it is here. The discussion concerns whether or not we should keep the following wording: "As a general rule, images should not be set to a larger fixed size than the 220px default (users can adjust this in their preferences). If an exception to the general rule is warranted, forcing an image size to be either larger or smaller than the 220px default is done by placing a parameter in the image coding." The latest aspect of the discussion is the 1.4 Amended proposal (2A) subsection. Flyer22 Reborn ( talk) 07:02, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

This discussion has progressed to a WP:RfC: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Images#RfC: Should the guideline maintain the "As a general rule" wording or something similar?. A WP:Permalink is here. Flyer22 Reborn ( talk) 21:44, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

When an article is deleted by consensus of the community, using the usual process, the decision should stick. An identical or nearly identical article on the same subject should not be allowed to be put up a few days later as a way of getting around the deletion. In this case I am talking about the article on John Michael Greer, which is basically a puff piece on someone clearly not notable. Soon after its deletion the article simply went up again. The same can be said for many other articles which are nominated for deletion, such as the old article on Edward Forchion, which was deleted at least twice. The purpose of deletion is to discourage people from using Wikipedia for self promotion, or boosting their own ego. some policy should be wired into the system, such as deleting an article for a year. Catherinejarvis ( talk) 17:44, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

• However . . . if no one created anything on Wikipedia, deletionists, such as yourself, wouldn't have a thing to do!!! -- MurderByDeletionism ^"bang!" 18:35, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

@ Catherinejarvis: I see no signs of abuse there. It was deleted in 2013 after an AfD, but an administrator restored it in 2015, if you look at the logs for the page. You could AfD it again, if you feel strongly about it in its current state (past history doesn't count, only the content of it today). Given it was restored by an admin around 12 months ago, I don't believe CSD G4 could easily apply (which would be the way to address a non-admin re-create of a page). If the concerns from the previous AfD are still clearly there, you could cite them and the previous AfD in a new AfD. Murph9000 ( talk) 17:59, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

More importantly, deletion is not a death pact among Wikipedia editors to never have an article exist ever again. For any number of reasons, an article may be deleted at a certain point in time. If the world has changed in the intervening time, then the reasons why an article was originally deleted may be invalid; an admin can make that decision without having to start a new poll. If, however, you think the new article needs to be deleted again, you're allowed to start a new AFD. -- Jayron 32 18:01, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

@ Jayron32 and Catherinejarvis: Yes, i agree with you, Jayron. Now I look at it again, I realise I didn't respond to the, frankly outrageous, policy proposal. I strongly oppose the entirety of that side of your message, Catherine. The purpose of deletion is most certainly not as you stated, it is to remove a page which does not currently meet WP standards for one of a large number of reasons. An overly promotional article could easily end up being deleted on a person or company which has clear WP:NOTABILITY, due to collective disinterest in improving it at the time. That should in no way be an impediment to someone (with no WP:COI, etc) coming along and creating an article which meets the required standards. Let me give you an example of precisely why that proposal is massively flawed. There's lots of buzz in the industry about the new "Pineapple uPhone", so an article appears. Unfortunately for the uPhone, a month later the article has failed to establish notability and gets deleted via AfD (and the AfD closure notes that it both lacked notability and was too promotional). Two days later, Pineapple launch the thing and it saturates media worldwide, with an abundance of reliable sources and notability appearing in an instant. Your policy would harm Wikipedia by preventing it covering the uPhone for the next 363 days. Murph9000 ( talk) 18:14, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

• User and draftspace are filled with hundreds (maybe even thousands) of content already deleted. Generally, it could go through DRV if you'd like to require that but I don't think anyone wants DRV to become a clog when most of them are simple requests for restoration (and AFC refunds have teh advantage of G13 again). -- Ricky81682 ( talk) 18:20, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Catherinejarvis, in my experience with AfD discussions, most of them seem to be about notability. A LOT of articles get deleted for not having notability established by RS at the time of the AfD, and many are indeed about notable topics. They simply lacked sourcing and TLC. (IMO, they should have been tagged, not deleted.) They did not lack notability, just the sourcing. They are repairable. I created an article about a rock opera ( Pink World) that had been deleted 5 years earlier (making the album 30 years old at the time I resurrected the article). I sourced it and built it up (along with the artist's page), and it's a pretty decent, stable article now, and has been for a year and a half. All the sources to establish notability (over time) were easily obtainable with simple Google searches. It just seems that no one tried. I think we need to keep the option open for this reason, as well as those mentioned above. Some articles get deleted when they are repairable. Let's not close the door on fixing our mistakes. Dcs002 ( talk) 18:27, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

• Hmmm . . . based on my experience with AfD's, a whole lot of them seems to be about some vendetta against some editor. But, I do agree with you, if only editors would spend time repairing articles (and overcoming their petty grudges), AfD's wouldn't be quite the time sink they have become. -- MurderByDeletionism ^"bang!" 19:26, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Your sources are largely from 2014. Don't forgot that it's entirely possible that these results actually didn't exist five years ago (Google didn't crawl as much and a lot of stuff wasn't published online). Still, valid point. -- Ricky81682 ( talk) 18:41, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

That's true Ricky, but it brings up another point. A lot of the sources needed for that article have been in print media since 1984. We have become addicted to online sources. (Myself included.) If we can't find it online, we tend to think it doesn't exist rather than thinking it's just not available online. Yes, it's more difficult to go to the library than Google, but I think our dependence on immediate, convenient, free, online verifiability is a real problem. There were plenty of print sources in 2009 for that article. (I cited several issues of Billboard, one issue of Faces, and the liner notes from the CD itself, all available in print since 1985 at the latest, and all of which show the access date of 2014 because that's when I wrote the article and accessed the scanned print versions online.) Our default assumption is that if no one has searched them out, then there is no notability. We don't tag and ask for help with print sources, we go right to AfD, whether we're familiar enough to understand the subject's notability or not. The subject of that Pink World article was notable in 2009. Notability is permanent, but no one got out of their chair to figure it out. Dcs002 ( talk) 23:38, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Also, Google books hadn't scanned as many old stuff as they now. Even their snippet view is quite helpful. -- Ricky81682 ( talk) 10:35, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

Ooh Ricky81682, there's another hot-button issue for me. Snippets and abstracts can be a minefield. We can't really tell what context is missing. They are useful, but I think we also rely on them too much, and I think many editors get their information from abstracts without labeling the citation as a abstract, suggesting the content came from the actual article. I think that should also apply to snippet views. Yes, they are quite helpful, but they should be labeled as such when used as sources to indicate the reliability issue related to their incompleteness and lack of context. Dcs002 ( talk) 18:18, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

People can do that with the full context. There's enough instances of "here's a string of words that use the words I want" as a citation for me to be used to that. The problem is we don't know whether the person who is adding the citation itself was using the snippet or the full version itself and the person who is most likely to be misusing a snippet is the person least likely to report that. George Akerlof would have plenty to say about that. -- Ricky81682 ( talk) 20:44, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

In response to a few recent DRV's, I've started a discussion to hash out a uniform policy on deletion of stale drafts. Please see Wikipedia_talk:Deletion_review#Policy_discussion:_When_is_it_appropriate_to_delete_stale_drafts.3F to participate in the discussion. -- RoySmith (talk) 23:48, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

There is a RFC at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters. Please can people go and comment. Thanks, Tom29739 ( talk) 16:04, 31 January 2016 (UTC).

One of the most popular features for me on Wikipedia is the tab called "page view statistics" in which one can, quickly and easily, view the number of page views for an article during its history. This feature disappeared about 2 weeks ago and I see some discussion of a new system. Hey, keep it simple for those of us who are computer illiterates, keep it accessible -- but keep it! It's important. And we like it. The way it is. Or was. Smallchief ( talk 23:50, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

This has already been talked about in many other places. But I guess here is also good. The feature was maintained by Henrik who (seemingly) left Wikipedia. As part of the m:2015 Community Wishlist Survey the WMF is going to take over page view statistics. They already have a demo set up, it is working, and up-to-date. It can also be used to compare different article views with each other. See https://analytics.wmflabs.org/demo/pageview-api/ for the demo. -- Majora ( talk) 23:55, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

I looked at the demo. It's very slow and cumbersome -- and only accessible with research and effort. Smallchief ( talk 00:07, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

Also, WP:VPT may be a better place for this discussion. This is a technical, rather than policy, issue. -- Jayron 32 23:56, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

What I know about policy and technical subjects can be put in a thimble, but I liked the page view feature where it could easily be found and required a single click. I'll check out WP:VPT. Thanks. Smallchief ( talk 00:07, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

The existing policy is: Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest

It seems that you have a Conflict of Interest system that does not work. In any organisation with integrity, a Conflict of Interest has a mechanism to be investigated and resolved. I am discovering that Wikipedia has no practical way of doing this. I am being told (perhaps incorrectly) that provided you do not disclose your Conflict of Interest within Wikipedia, then you can do what you want. If you establish yourself with other users and understand the rules, then you are effectively above suspicion. So a person could be using a range of social media, perhaps even promoting themselves as Wikipedia PR specialists, and there is nothing that can be done to stop them (or their team) to full-time edit content, promote clients or their organisations. I have seen some indication that the people who are running the Conflict of Interest page, may be full-time PR professionals. Your Conflict of Interest system should not be defeatable by allying with other conflicted editors other means.

Here are the recommendations:

1. There should be a clear reporting procedure for Conflict of Interest
2. The people with authority and training to discuss Conflict of Interest cases should be identifiable by editors.
3. Conflict of Interest policy must align with best practices, and cannot be watered down by PR companies.
4. Evidence for a conflict of Interest from outside wikipedia should be allowable, provided it is not public. Surely there is a way of blocking a page from all users except for the parties involved.
5. Conflict of Interest and other serious violations claims are not, in themselves, personal attacks. It should be expected that the suspicion of a Conflict of Interest is going to be connected with reasonable complaints about editing.
6. Conflict of Interest applies to the past and the present. An editor under contract to do work, their edits exist and they are not free because the contractual relationship ended. So the sanction must be to remove the edits generated by the contract and not allow them to be restored. Otherwise, they will return after a few months.
7. Conflict of Interest must extend to clearly to political attacks and commercial attacks.
8. There should be different severity levels for Conflict of Interest. A president of a small community group should not face the same level of scrutiny as the PR team of a presidential Super-Pac.
9. The sanctions for Conflict of Interest must be to ban users from editing all pages. The person cannot go ahead with other contracts.
10. The benefit of declaring a Conflict of Interest must be obvious advantageous and provide protection.

Travelmite ( talk) 08:24, 29 January 2016 (UTC) (changed by Travelmite in this dif, fixed by Jytdog in this dif))

The first problem is to identify conflict of interest edits. This is not easy, unless the cases are very blatant. This is the more tricky since we allow anonymous editors on Wikipedia and allow (and even encourage) editors to use pseudonyms we cannot take action before the behaviour gives prove of conflict of interest.

Persistent Conflict of Interest editing can be, and are considered as disruptive editing and can (and has led) to blocking the involved editor (and evidence from outside Wikipedia is often used to make the case); and the included material is usually removed, regardless whether stuff was written under contract, under personal interest or otherwise. Wikipedia just does not allow sentences to be removed permanently and changing that would touch the fabric of the encyclopedia.

These procedures are not perfect, but the statements above give little practical advice how to get to better procedures.

E.g. how can we find authorities and training? Whose best practices (and where do we find those)?

Your other suggesitons tend to be followed already (e.g. while a declared CoI may lead to removal of material, blocking editors entirely is rare - because the editor was open; while this happens frequently for hidden CoI's.).

So before we continue this. Could you provide a practical way in which a community that prides itself with the slogan that everyone can edit; and which is based on anonymous volunteers; to make your suggestions work, without changing these core values? Arnoutf ( talk) 16:43, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

• The first problem is to identify conflict of interest edits. Actually this is really easy because no one is free of COI. So every editor here has a COI. Not one individual editor here is bias free including myself. Which is why I find all this stone throwing pointless bullying a complete waste of time.
  

Or . . . more accurately, it has become a Wikipedia sanctioned witch hunt! -- MurderByDeletionism ^"bang!" 20:48, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

• • • So far I've seen just about every editor who gets stuck with that COI tag on them banned. It really is a death sentence here on Wikipedia.
      

So . . . can someone show me a COI editor that hasn't been harassed or bullied? One will do, however, more would be preferred, especially if they can speak for themselves. Or . . . do they in fact not exist??? Because, if so, then this is a huge, problem. -- MurderByDeletionism ^"bang!" 06:15, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

People being paid to ruin Wikipedia articles for the financial gain of other entities have more resources to continue to do so against the purely volunteer editors who do so solely for the benefit of having a quality, neutrally written source for the world to use. That is, as long as people are being paid to push a particular, and decidedly non-neutral, point of view in support of the entities paying them will always win against people who are just here for the love of it, unless we have specific policies in place empowering the unpaid volunteers to refuse to admit the paid liars to the club merely for being paid liars. Unless we do so, the paid liars have the resources to simply overtake Wikipedia by brute force, so long as we take the false notion that anything anyone cares to write is equally valuable, without regard for principles such as adherence to neutrality and verifiability. -- Jayron 32 07:02, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

• People being paid to ruin Wikipedia Wait? What? First off, I do not believe any COI editor comes to Wikipedia hoping to ruin it. That would also effectively ruin their source of income. Second, I believe most paid Wikipedia editors are only doing it to put food on the table. I have a huge luxury here, I can walk away from all this and still maintain a roof over my head. I would never call the level of harassment I see inflicted upon COI editors as winning. In fact, what I do ascertain from your description is a power hungry, narcissistic, sense of entitlement. My point is that any editor, paid or not, are of equal value to Wikipedia as long as they both ascribe to the terms of neutrality and verifiability. But Wikipedia seems determined to put some proverbial star on certain editors.
  

fyi - The issue most of Wikipedia appears to ignore is the COI with Google and Jimbo. They're ballin' due to Wikipedia! -- MurderByDeletionism ^"bang!" 00:00, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

• "I have seen some indication that the people who are running the Conflict of Interest page, may be full-time PR professionals." That's quite an accusation. Please provide evidence or take it back as soon as your current block is expired. Fail to do so and I will block you again. For the information of the other editors here, the above post seems to be fall-out from this post to the COIN noticeboard, where this user accused another editor of having a COI without ever providing any evidence. -- Randykitty ( talk) 09:57, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

Perhaps, slow down? The COIN board is by its nature a place with those with COI (and others) are going to post, it seems that is the context of the 'running the board' comment. But what that comment does not take into account is basically no one runs anything around here, and that seems to be the realization of the other comments, ie., we only have limited ability to deal with COI, as we have limited ability to deal with most things, and our only fall back is the good faith of those involved. I have noticed, over and over again, that this situation of uncertainty is often quite stressful to new users, and even experienced users. If there is any solace to be had, here, philosophically, I might recommend reading one of the first things I read on Wikipedia, negative capability. Alanscottwalker ( talk) 14:33, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

No accusation was intended. As requested, the wording has been removed with my full-agreement. I should have made clear that I only intended to mean it was theoretical possibility. I apologise and can explain. In my opinion, this serious risk comes first from several news articles -- well resourced PR firms were identified being paid to edit Wikipedia articles. There are weaknesses with the COI pages. I agree, most crucial to this view was the severe reaction to my complaint, despite following (or trying to follow) the guidelines. This includes (and I mention it to help understand the connection to this policy proposal):

1. being told I must publish "evidence" before I had finished collecting it or assessing it
2. having unknown ordinary editors contact me, explaining some points, but also issuing what I felt were inexplicable directions
3. being directed to steer away from COI to just NPOV
4. no answers to questions about process or how to protect the other user's privacy
5. being directed to policies that were, at best, obscurely connected to the matter at hand
6. being rushed, and at the same time being told to prepare carefully
7. having the thread summarily closed

Again, may I make clear that various possibilities crossed my mind. Reasonable risks, some of which are relevant to designing systems.

I hope the admin understands that not presenting the "evidence" immediately was the right decision. I am wary of public publication, even if I am only linking Wikipedia pages. Every person deserves fairness and protection from overreaction. Without making an accusation, voluntarily COI disclosures are better than punitive action. What happens after evidence is presented? That is so unclear. At the moment, it's just unconnected words on system. Let's be aware there is a real world out there too - jobs and reputations. We should be seeking positive outcomes. Travelmite ( talk) 15:59, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

I am not going to engage with you here Travelmite except to say two things. First, you say that your now-struck statement was not an accusation; that is not credible - the statement was a direct claim of corruption and plainly stated, and was clearly directed at me. Second - You don't understand how we think about COI in Wikipedia, you don't understand WP:HARASSMENT, and you don't understand how the community navigates the tension between the value, very deeply held by the community, on privacy, and the not-as-deeply-held value of protecting the integrity of WP. Yet you are full of judgments and accusations. As you have been advised by others many times, I suggest you stop making accusations and trying to change things, and instead try to learn. I would be willing to re-engage with you on your Talk page, whenever you like. Jytdog ( talk) 16:39, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

I wrote a full apology on my talk page, regarding the struck out section. I hope that it's accepted. Irrespective of my faults, I absolutely assure you that nothing you have done was suspicious of anything resembling corruption. Whatever our disagreements or misunderstandings, it seems to me you are genuinely interested in doing the right thing in a less than workable system, which maybe you were warning me to stay away from. If you see my point 3, it says "PR companies" plural. I do make a number of criticisms of the whole COI system, it occurred to me that maybe (some level of possible) a PR company had an idea to somehow make their activities easier by making COI complaints harder. I want to make clear that this is only a theoretical possibility. Travelmite ( talk) 19:07, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

You wrote an empty apology on your Talk page, denying what you have actually done. But I don't care about that - I don't need an apology from you. What is most important is that you get properly oriented to how Wikipedia works. You do not understand Wikipedia nor its COI management approach well enough to criticize it. There are so many things wrong with what you have done, including trying to create drama here at the Village Pump, and the things you are still writing are incorrect or are based on incorrect assumptions. Like I said, I would be happy to try to teach you, on your Talk page. Jytdog ( talk) 19:33, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

Please try to discuss the content. I am not intending you to see these as personal criticisms, but system criticisms. This is what I experienced as a first-time trying to report something. Why couldn't it happen to the next person too? Have a look at what is have written in the recommendations? Travelmite ( talk) 16:03, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

I see no way to police conflicts of interest, and in some cases it may not be a good idea, since sometimes only those directly involved in a topic are motivated to update Wikipedia. As someone who hangs out at AfC, the main COI problem that I see is that it pays off. If it didn't, then we wouldn't have a problem. In particular, the use of WP to gain SEO for companies and certain individuals makes COI inevitable and the results highly rewarding. I think we need to tighten up some of our policies regarding CORP and BLP so that it's less easy to exploit WP for gain. LaMona ( talk) 21:49, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

The obvious cases are policed now, and these obvious cases come up because the users just naively think it's a reasonable thing to put their company or organisation online here. Part of the solution above is to make it less of a big deal to have a COI. Then editors can declare their COI, and be mostly treated the same as everyone else. They would be doing the right thing voluntarily. If that happened then, any tricker editors trying to beat the system would be easier to spot. Travelmite ( talk) 16:03, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

• I find it highly amusing that Wikipedia has determined that being paid must mean that those editors are "bought and paid" for. Yet, at the same time, Wikipedia will only use RS that someone was paid to write. Wikipedia refuses to use individual blogs, blogs that were written by unpaid editors. Wikipedia admires and strives to be just like Britannica Encyclopedia, an encyclopedia written by paid editors. That's some ironic set-up right there!
  

But here's the best part, all of Wikipedia got played by Jimbo, and now it's Google's turn. Well, done! -- MurderByDeletionism ^"bang!" 19:10, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

Sources with a reputation for reliability and editorial control, as opposed to randos who claim to know The Truth. You can have one or the other. Not both. -- Jayron 32 23:58, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

• All of the sources that Wikipedia believes are reliable are created by individuals who are paid. Wikipedia won't use a single source that was written by an unpaid editor. That's what's called an oxymoron. Also, Wikipedia has nothing to do with "The Truth," only about verifiability! -- MurderByDeletionism ^"bang!" 06:56, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

• Wikipedia doesn't delve into the employment status of the people who write reliable sources. Wikipedia does not want people to edit whereby they have a financial motivation to violate Wikipedia policies in order to use Wikipedia's popularity to promote untrue or inaccurate, but flattering, writing about the people or organizations paying them. I'm not sure why you refuse to acknowledge that people have motivations other than "to build Wikipedia", and that we don't want those people using the established popularity of Wikipedia has a means of promoting themselves through writing that is in direct contravention of the very principles that made Wikipedia itself popular as a source of information, like NPOV. That's the issue. -- Jayron 32 11:48, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

• Wikipedia instead delves into the employment status of their own editors. See how this isn't any better?!
  

Editors are motivated by all kinds of things, having a financial motivation does not mean that an editor will violate Wikipedia's policies. Or, are you implying that all financial motivations are suspect? That editors should mistrust everything, ever done, that anyone got any financial reimbursement? Because then Wikipedia should distrust the sources it uses.

Also, why isn't Wikipedia more suspect about Google? They have the biggest financial motivation here. Or, is it because Google is the only reason Wikipedia remains a top web site? I've got to wonder, "Would Wikipedia be as popular as it is now without the of Google?" -- MurderByDeletionism ^"bang!" 00:56, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

There is not going to be one solution that fits everything. It seems you're both making interesting philosophical points that are not in major disagreement. Thanks for your points of view, but if you could be a bit specific and maybe have a comment or two on what was recommended. Travelmite ( talk) 18:20, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

• Work on NPOV edits, not on the witch hunting of editors! -- MurderByDeletionism ^"bang!" 00:56, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

I have been participating in AfD for a few months now. The culture of deletion is becoming rather aggressive. Is anyone else experiencing this? Is there any way that we can look at policies to help slow down the process?

My suggestions would include:

1. requiring AfD nominators to do WP:BEFORE. I've found quite a few articles nominated with so-called "no room for improvement found" as the reason for AfD and I and a few other users are able to find reliable sources within hours (or minutes on Google nonetheless!)
2. give articles breathing space. Several new articles have been up for AfD. This is especially problematic when we have a new user who doesn't know about putting up a template to indicate the article is still under construction.
3. create additional criteria surrounding topics that are more difficult to research, such as areas where there is a language barrier or where history has ignored the achievements of various groups based on race, culture, religion/lack of religion, gender or non-conformity.

I know this has been discussed in the past, but I think it needs to be discussed again. I just witnessed a new user give up over an AfD. (See Malissa A. O'Dubhtaigh: which I'm not saying necessarily meets GNG, but it wasn't given time and the user was handled brusquely.) Wikipedia is about amassing all human knowledge, as I see it, and all voices should be welcome and feel welcome. The aggressive culture of deletion is frustrating even to most hardened editors.

Any suggestions out there? Thanks! Megalibrarygirl ( talk) 14:10, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

There has been this culture in some quarters for a long time, for example look at the very early history and discussion of Oscar Werner Tiegs. Also have a look at WP:ODNT.

Perhaps no one is allowed nominate an article for deletion unless they have actually created somewhere in their history at least a few new articles themselves, which did not get deleted . . ? 152.91.10.22 ( talk) 00:09, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Megalibrarygirl I would be loathe to work on this article because the lawsuit involved, which stretched out ten+ years, appears to be the only source. There was a name change during the process and since there are no sources to guide us, how can we be sensitive to the preferred name of the party. Further, in reading the suit, the party has felt her medical privacy was not protected. While I encourage diversity and would wish that Wikipedia did as well, this particular article seems like an invasion of privacy. SusunW ( talk) 15:02, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

But that being said, the culture of deletion on here is ver frustrating. If one must check boxes and give rationale to even post a picture, it baffles me that anyone and everyone can nominate an article for deletion without the skill to weigh notability or do any sort of research beforehand. I cannot understand why improvement rather than deletion is not the key. SusunW ( talk) 15:05, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

While you can see my postings on deletionism above, I'm not even sure it's a culture. What I've seen is the positive practice of a few people "patrolling" for vandalism and other negative stuff turn into "I'll delete every new page and let the admins/other editors sort it out." Given the effort involved in getting something into Wikipedia these days, such intellectually dishonest activity discourages nearly anyone making a new article. With some of the articles I commented on in AfD, the creator would ask simple questions about the rationale for the deletion and get absolutely nothing, except the odd "per nom." Once the drive-by deletion happens, the editor in question almost never returns. My favorite had to be an article that was discussed in AfC for ages. Someone took responsibility, wrote the page, and had it marked for deletion essentially as soon as it was submitted. This is how Wikipedia actively drives away contributors.-- 69.204.153.39 ( talk) 15:51, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

@ Megalibrarygirl: I would like to echo the above suggestions and well as emphasize Wikipedia:CSD: unless the article created meets said criteria, don't nominate it for speedy deletion; if it is up for deletion, calmly let creators know tips and give them time to improve the article and send words of encouragement, maybe an encouraging emoticon along with the words. Sam.gov ( talk) 20:54, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

@ Sam.gov:, I like that idea. I really think we need to nurture editors more often. I was on Wiki for a long time before I felt confident enough to edit, let along create my own articles. It is intimidating. Megalibrarygirl ( talk) 21:32, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

Thank you. Yes, It can get intimidating during the time before editors become more confident. Sam.gov ( talk) 22:09, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

The culture of "bigger and more is better" has been proven troubling to reputations again and and again. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 21:01, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

Agree entirely with TRPOD. Wikipedia is not and has never been "about amassing all human knowledge"; it has a very specific remit to only cover material which is demonstrably covered in multiple independent non-trivial reliable sources, and admins deleting material which doesn't fit that remit are acting entirely correctly. As this is an absolute core policy of Wikipedia, there is no realistic prospect of any discussion ever changing it as long as Wikipedia remains in its current form. ‑  iridescent 21:06, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

There is no absolute requirement for multiple sources even today. GNG does not say that: "generally", where it appears in GNG, means "most", not "all". Also, it is the sum total of coverage in all sources which must be non trivial. James500 ( talk) 10:05, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

I'm not saying bigger is better. You're right, all human knowledge is impossible, I was being hyperbolic in my attempt to describe why I think it's important to have diversity in Wiki. Thanks for calling that out--I should write more concisely sometimes. However, what I am worried about, and why I brought up the topic is that I think that there really is a deletionist culture. I've observed a pattern over time, and so have a few others on WikiPedia:WikiProject Women/Women in Red. For example, I have run into plenty of AfD pages where the nominators often say they've done WP:BEFORE, when they clearly haven't. Sometimes, the nominator will even say they have additional information, but because it's "not in the article," the article should be deleted. I understand that editors want others to follow through and add information when they say they will, but just because someone else didn't add that info, why can't you add it? I only tag articles when I don't have time to add the info myself. If I see an article with a tag, I fix it. It doesn't take long. Why aren't we doing that more often? Megalibrarygirl ( talk) 21:32, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

The obvious answer; because you have 3458 active editors (with "active" defined loosely as 100 edits in the last month), of whom 580 are admins, dealing with 5 million articles, and it's not reasonable to expect us to do everyone else's work for them when they can't be bothered to do it themselves. If you haven't already, it's a salutary exercise to look at the new pages backlog; those highlighted in yellow are the ones that nobody has looked at. "If you see an article with a problem, fix it" is a laudable aim, but completely impractical unless Wikipedia can drastically grow its editor base or throttle the article creation rate; the former has resisted every effort to address it, and every attempt to address the latter has been vetoed by the WMF. ‑  iridescent 22:08, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

That is nonsense. No meaningful attempt whatsoever has been made to increase the number of editors, active or otherwise. Quite the opposite has happened. The editor retention problem is caused by excessive deletion. The only way to increase the number of editors, active or otherwise, is to reduce deletions by performing corrective surgery on the (unsatisfactory) deletion processes and (vague and questionable) deletion criteria. James500 ( talk) 10:05, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

@ James500: No meaningful attempt whatsoever has been made to increase the number of editors See Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Editor_Retention -- this wikiproject appears to be dead?

The only way to increase the number of editors, active or otherwise, is to reduce deletions I would not go as far as to say that reducing deletions is the ONLY way to increase the number of editors, but I agree it is a very important step. Here is a small example I just bumped into:

The article I started about Jenny Doan has been sitting as a lonely stub since I started it in February 2014. Then in April 2015 a new editor, User:Drbillnye added some info to it, but when I checked the editor’s history I saw he had only one edit. A check of the editor's talk page revealed that he tried to add more in the form of an article, but the article was deleted by user:NawlinWiki and remains as a red link on Jenny Doan. I assume User:Drbillnye will become one of the many missed opportunities we have had to add new editors? Ottawahitech ( talk) 15:38, 28 November 2015 (UTC)please ping me

@ James500:@ Ottawahitech: I think it's a stretch to say that the number of editors has gone down primarily or only because of article deletion. I also think it's a mistake to allow poorly-sourced articles to be left on this page in perpetua. As for the claim that we lost Drbillnye because his article was deleted, 1) the article was deleted because it was promotional/an advertisement, likely because it was sourced solely from the quilt company and maybe even copy-pasted from the quilt company's website, and 2) how do we know that he would've contributed on anything non-quilt company related anyway? p b p 16:04, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

@ Purplebackpack89: We don't know if the editor would have contributed anything to other topics, but if they only added some info to any of the articles in Category:Quilting that would be awsome. Just my $.02 & thanks for pinging me. Ottawahitech ( talk) 16:19, 28 November 2015 (UTC)please ping me

Off-topic @ Ottawahitech: Unless there has been a recent change in the code that runs Wikipedia, pings can't be corrected by merely fixing typos. You have to add a new ~~~~ at the same time you fix the typo, then if you want, go back and remove the signature (or remove the "original" signature if you prefer). And no, merely replacing your existing signature with a new one won't work. Since your ping didn't work, I'm going to mention Purplebackpack89 here so that he will get the notification and look up the screen and see your message. davidwr/( talk)/( contribs) 17:08, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

@ James500:@ Ottawahitech:I'm a great example, I had never tried to contribute to a wikipedia article before, took me about an hour to try and figure out the interface and tribal lore that goes around proper formatting and the like, then the articles I was trying to link to, if I recall correctly, were articles from the WSJ, NBC Nightly News, MSNBC and I was probably using the a history of the company that I'd written and used elsewhere (either on the site or on other articles) - if that was taboo, I didn't know. I had one article get deleted because it was promotion (the one about the quilt company I believe) and then my edits to Mom's page were nixed for some other reason, my takeaway was that the wiki editor circle were a bunch of pretentious pricks who would rather hack me down and the time and effort that went into my attempts to help build a good article rather than help teach me how to drive value and I didn't bother to come back. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Drbillnye ( talk • contribs) 18:12, 28 November 2015‎ @ James500:@ Ottawahitech: I think this is for you, it was unsigned so the pings never went out. davidwr/( talk)/( contribs) 19:35, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

I believe this is exactly the typical experience of most new editors. And it's happening multiple X's a day on Wikipedia. Frankly, I'd say Wikipedia would have a better chance of trying to get out a red wine stain by using yellow mustard, then it does of keeping new editors. Especially those editors who write! -- MurderByDeadcopy ^"bang!" 20:14, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

I totally get what you are saying Megalibrarygirl. I don’t see anyone asking the admins to do everything. I do agree that there is a “get rid of articles” culture on here and have pointed out on more Another example than one occasion to those who say “I would vote to keep if someone would edit the article” that good prose is not a requirement. Then there is the ever popular “editor doesn’t appear to be active” (isn’t that own?, who cares if the creator is active?), and “I see no better improvement” (because if the article is complete and notability is not debatable why would anyone need to improve it?) Seems like a lot of whining and little action on the part of some. Usually I just fix what I see that is problematic. I have rarely asked an admin for anything. What I see is a small group of people, who don't appear to be admins, who nominate every file they can for deletion. I also see a trend of an unwillingness to make Wikipedia an inclusive or welcoming platform, which will result in poor retention. Nothing is written in simple, straightforward or friendly language. (Admittedly, after a year, I still don't know what 1/2 the acronyms that are bandied about mean, and I don't think I want to). Group A and Group B are forever opposing each other as well as any ideas for improving the overall performance. I try to avoid all the drama and save what articles I can. When it gets too stressful, I walk away or just go silent. — Preceding unsigned comment added by SusunW ( talk • contribs) 00:29, 10 October 2015

Absolutely! I started this discussion because I believe we can change things. The place to create change is through discussion. I have spent time in the backlogs working to source tagged articles. With the amount of female bios at a measly 15%, I try to source as many as I can in order to at least satisfy GNG. I understand the frustration with many created biographies, but many are actually notable...just because the nominator knows nothing about the topic, doesn't mean no notability. Case in point: looking at new articles, hardly any are women, and the ones who are, are often sports figures or models. Interestingly, a female sports figure with 1 reference often gets an AfD pass, but not other women. Something's off with that. I want to see things change. Let's see what we are able to do. For example, how can we get hard data to support what I and others are observing? I might think there is a problem, but I'd prefer numbers to "it seems." Megalibrarygirl ( talk) 01:08, 10 October 2015 (UTC)

I was active last year for a few months in AfD discussions, and it bothered me deeply that most of them were about notable subjects, but nobody involved in the AfD discussions looked for RS to establish that. That is grounds for a stub tag. That is grounds for doing the work yourself before nominating. I found myself working long hours every day to save articles from deletion, regardless of the topic (I don't care about role-playing games or "onomastics", but I worked to save those articles anyway), and in the end there was only one I couldn't save. This onus has to be placed on the person nominating the article for deletion. So many of them talk about "your" article instead of seeing all articles as "our" articles. Megalibrarygirl, I agree with you completely on requiring WP:BEFORE in order to nominate an article for deletion. iridescent, "it's not reasonable to expect us to do everyone else's work for them when they can't be bothered to do it themselves." This is not "everyone else's work." This is our work. Right there is the problem. We are a community with a common purpose, not factions of "us" who do the work and "them" who don't. And we can never say why someone stopped working on an article (or "can't be bothered"). I think we would have more people participating if this was not such an adversarial environment. We don't have enough admins and people working clean-up, but we certainly do not have enough people doing the work to save good articles from the excessive AfDs for notable subjects that just need a quick Google search.

We are not supposed to "own" articles as editors, but I think we all know that people do. They will revert everything that did not originate with them. Try editing an article for a popular progressive rock album. Or worse, try starting a new article on any music album. It's often an exercise in futility to contribute and make meaningful changes. I got worn down. In AfD discussions I felt beaten down. Nobody tries to help articles before nomination, and discussions are full of competing acronyms, as if they were etched in stone, and everybody (myself included) is convinced they are right. But again, I rescued several articles from deletion, all but one. Had I not taken the time to provide the RS for notability, no one else would, and they would be gone. Then when someone decides to start a new article and sees that a previous version was deleted already, how likely are they to continue? A stub tag (or other tag) is enough to tell readers the article might be a little iffy. If editors have time to patrol and nominate AfDs, they could instead use that time to improve things. More editors might stick with it without all that unnecessary struggle. WP is always a work in progress, and that means a certain percentage of our articles are always going to be stubs under development. "It's been a stub for years," I heard. "What have you done to change that?" is my question. The answer is always the same: nominate it for deletion. Sorry about the tirade. If things were more cooperative, WP would be a lot more rewarding, and a lot more diverse. Right now we have a selection bias - editors who are willing to put up with the struggles are the ones contributing. Dcs002 ( talk) 03:16, 10 October 2015 (UTC)

Like Dcs002 I think you about covered the problem. It is exhausting. Mostly I work on women because as a member of several Wikiprojects on women, those are the alerts I see. But I recently saved a multiple award winning French male architect, and a couple of movies which I have never even seen or heard of because they came into my viewing range. I don't go to the Afd page, it is too overwhelming to think of all the files that have been nominated. Maybe there are indeed a lot that aren't notable, but in my experience most that I have worked on just needed sourcing and a little TLC. SusunW ( talk) 03:53, 10 October 2015 (UTC)

I also agree with Dcs002 and SusunW. I want to see the culture change. The same people are nominating articles for deletion without doing WP:BEFORE. Also, I love the way that you emphasize that it's not about us vs. them... it's about all of us creating a better resource. I think that deletion is especially problematic because others took time to create something and other editors are trashing the creations. Please note, I'm not saying that EVERY article needs to be kept! But let's exercise more care. Let's see what we can do to create a better environment for newbies and let's work on the AfD area. It shouldn't be exhausting or frustrating. How can we do that? Who do we need to get on board with looking at this? Megalibrarygirl ( talk) 17:54, 10 October 2015 (UTC)

While I would agree that there are many self-proclaimed deletionists active in Wikipedia and some good material gets discarded, not all all deletion-related discussions are groundless. Just a look at recent nominations reveals some obvious problems. An article about a video game which is entirely unsourced and contains very little information. A film-related trope pointed by Roger Ebert that may be notable but has otherwise received very little coverage. An article about a local police department in Alaska with not much material to cover. Articles about music performers and bands with no particular level of success (two album releases at best). A minor organization which was briefly in the news in 2007 but has not had any coverage since. A Star Wars-related podcast that got some positive comments a few years ago, with no evidence of lasting influence.

Unsourced articles might have potential for growth, but some are only of interest to their creators and others are potential hoaxes. For example, Wikipedia:List of hoaxes on Wikipedia lists examples of hoax articles that went unnoticed for years. An article on "Jack Robichaux", supposedly a 19th-century serial rapist, existed for 10 years before someone questioned his existence. "Pikes on Cliffs" was an article on a 16th century house with both historical significance and a related legend. It took 9 years before some people realized this article was fabricated. More embarrassing for Wikipedia is that some hoaxes are pointed out by newspapers critical of our accuracy.

Meanwhile, images that get deleted often are tagged for copyright issues. This includes book covers, album covers, screenshots, etch. All to avoid potential legal troubles for Wikipedia. That something is available does not make it free for use. This can get very frustrating when searching for some image that can be found everywhere except Wikipedia.

While habitual deletionists may get annoying, indiscriminately accepting any contribution may be the wrong idea. Dimadick ( talk) 23:06, 10 October 2015 (UTC)

Absolutely no one on this thread has advocated for "indiscriminately accepting any contribution". I believe that each person has agreed that GNG with RS should remain the norm. The issue is the "rush to delete". If it harms no one (i.e. is not a biography of a living person) there is time to review the article and fix any problematic areas. There is certainly time to communicate with the creator and try to mentor them through the process, as well. If one does not have the skill to search for sources to improve an article, then they also do not have the skill to evaluate whether it is notable and should not be allowed to propose it for deletion. (And we can tit for tat all day about deletions - I fixed Pakistan's trade secretary today who was prodded. Clearly notable, government bio, took about 10 minutes to add sources, at most). SusunW ( talk) 23:35, 10 October 2015 (UTC)

Dimadick, I agree with your entire post. I also saw many articles that were blatant advertising for investors and bios for clearly non-notable people (including one by a kid that broke my heart to !vote down, along with everyone else - I hope he eventually understood). While I was participating in AfD discussions, I don't recall seeing a discussion for any recorded work that I would not consider notable under WP:ALBUM, though there was the occasional local band with their own page, and I think they were usually written by fans. I could be wrong with my memory, but I recall about half of the articles on the AfD list being clearly articles that should be deleted, and half being either blatantly notable with inadequate sourcing or questionably notable. My belief is that it hurts us to delete articles because notability is questionable, so I guess I'm an inclusionist.

But the biggest problem, IMO, is the attitude of absolutism in AfD discussions. There is no discussion. Too often there is an acronym cited and an entrenched opinion. When I have fixed articles, or even tried to fix them, I have perceived an attitude of resentment and on many occasions warnings that "we" were just going to delete the article anyway because somehow they knew, without looking for sources or viewing my changes, that there was no way an article or subject could be "made" notable (made, as opposed to being notable). Sorry, another tirade. I guess my experience was more frustrating than I remembered, and maybe I've been carrying some emotional baggage for a while. Dcs002 ( talk) 00:37, 11 October 2015 (UTC)

@ Dcs002: I think you're spot on. It's a big encyclopedia, and there are a couple of great folks in AfD, but I would say that that there is this notion among many AfD editors that things like notability are these platonic sorts of things -- abstract ideals which a topic either does or does not embody. Also, if an article creator dares stand up for their work (few do), that's a paddling deleting. So, while we must assume good faith, people should try to acknowledge non-extremist views about notability and such.-- 69.204.153.39 ( talk) 01:28, 11 October 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the wake-up call. I need to say that not everyone in AfD discussions was as obstinate as I described. (They were just the ones that made it such a miserable experience.) There were many thoughtful editors as well, and the closers were always very thoughtful and considerate. Dcs002 ( talk) 07:49, 11 October 2015 (UTC)

FYI, the same culture exists throughout the XfD spectrum. Sometimes it seems that certain editors are more interesting in amassing stats for how many of X they successfully nominate for deletion. I have participated in a few of those discussions, and sometimes agreed that deletion was needed, but only after doing my own research on the nominee. I don't see how anyone can possibly research all of the nominees for deletion, and vote on every one of them, within the span of just a few minutes, but that's what some people seem to manage. Etamni |  ✉ |  ✓  04:35, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

Ok, several of us here agree that we have a problem. What is the next step after we're done preaching to the choir? What action can we take? What remedies are available? And more importantly, who wants to stick their neck out and take charge of that action? Dcs002 ( talk) 06:52, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

I'd suggest starting with Megalibrarygirl's initial proposal to require more work be done before a nomination can go through, echoing SusunW's points about adding files. There is also something to be said for enacting and enforcing a temporary freeze (perhaps a week) on nomination of new articles except where they need to be speedied. —⁠ 烏⁠Γ ^{( kaw)}, 07:58, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

I just saw this. The entire aggressive attitude of deletionists has been baffling to me for years. They do not seem to be motivated by logic, even when the debate points are overwhelming them. I understand there is a lot of junk out there that needs to be cleaned up, but once the substance of an article is established, a reasonable person would back off. You can see the wave of reasonable people switch their "votes" (I know they aren't really votes, but they are). These deletionists do not back off. They fight to their last breath trying to get legitimate content deleted. I have publicly suspected there is some accrual of brownie points for the most scalps. Worse yet, sometimes they find a corrupt administrator to back them up and they win, forever dooming a valid subject to the perceived WP:SALT, even if not specifically administered. What shocks me the most is how uninformed these people are. They dabble in subjects they do not understand, dismiss sources that are the top of their field, and do not do the required research WP:BEFORE posting their attack. Frustrated as I am about the cases I've seen lost, I have a pretty good record of successful defense when I get involved. I see some names over and over, pushing repeatedly against . . . facts. There should be a penalty for bringing too many unsuccessful (the only way to categorize unfounded) attacks on articles. Once they reach a quota, they should be prohibited from making another proposal for a period of time. If they continue to lose, add to that length of time. You'd think they would learn, but some just won't get it. At some point, ban the serious, serial abusers from ever making another proposal for deletion. Trackinfo ( talk) 09:05, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

Given that a large cadre of editors on Wikipedia could be categorized as deletionists, I think any steps taken would have to be modest and incremental. If we can get away from the culture of deleting most every new page straightaway for others to deal with, that would be a serious start. Some of my thoughts are: 1) require Prod'ing first, and only allow a second user to AfD, not the initial prodder 2) Make filing an AfD at least as hard as uploading an image. Lots of questions about "have you really done WP:BEFORE? and have you tried improving this page." 3) Prevent articles that have had a favorable AfC outcome from getting immediately AfD'd 4) Require each nomination to, if at all possible, bring up specific actionable items that could make the page suitable. I'm sure there are lots of better ideas out there, but beginning to talk concretely is a good start.-- 69.204.153.39 ( talk) 01:02, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

@ Etamni: you said certain editors are more interested in amassing stats for how many of X they successfully nominate for deletion.

I also made the same observation, noting that it only takes seconds for nominators to initiate a deletion discussion which requires at least three complicated edits:

• Creating a new page for the deletion discussion
• Notifying the creator of the page of the deletion discussion
• Putting a banner on the page nominated for deletion

optional:

• Adding a welcome template Ottawahitech ( talk) 15:47, 17 November 2015 (UTC)please ping me

Ottawahitech,

You missed transcluding the AFD page into the list, but it actually doesn't require any complicated edits at all. Instead, it requires three quick and simple steps:

1. Go to Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets and turn on Twinkle (this only has to be done the first time).
2. Go back to the page and choose "XFD" from the new WP:TW menu.
3. Fill in the form and click the 'Submit query' button.

Twinkle will do all the other steps for you. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 23:17, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks user:whatamIdoing — this is really useful. I wonder though, why it is not mandatory to notify page creators that the page they created has been nominated for deletion if it is that easy and takes only seconds? why do some nominators, and in particular wiki-admins, resist notifying page creators? (See for example user:Good Olfactory here and User:TexasAndroid here) Ottawahitech ( talk) 14:34, 23 November 2015 (UTC)please ping me

There is little point in notifying an inactive editor, and little need to notify a highly active one. Also, the question of whether the subject is suitable for its own article isn't really a question that requires the participation of the first name in the editing history (which, in the case of pages that began as redirects, isn't necessarily the person who wrote the article). WhatamIdoing ( talk) 20:54, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Ottawahitech, because notifying the first editor is an unnecessary hand-holding duplication of work. If a user is truly interested in whether or not their creations are nominated for deletion, all they have to do is use their watchlist, because it already is mandatory to tag the nominated content with a template. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 21:02, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

@ Good Olfactory: Believe it or not, there is a (speculation) large number of editors who do not use their watchlist. I am one of them. I figure if I did watch, I would never have the time to add content. Instead I would be be chasing discussions. I suppose this is because the items that get the most action on my watchlist are talk pages which I find suck up way too much energy. Ottawahitech ( talk) 14:19, 6 December 2015 (UTC)please ping me

I strongly contest that claim: watchlists are nearly universally used, and its clear to that when a new banner announcement appears on the watchlist or a change in the mediawiki happens and editors race it put in complaints of various degree to that change. Further, the watchlist while not required greatly increases the efficiency of any established editor; not using the watchlist would be like not using a TV guide to find when a program comes on but instead flipping through all available channels at random times to do so. (And speaking as one with getting drawn into talk pages, the solution is to not watchlist all those talk pages, or otherwise commit to using the watchlist more effectively). -- MASEM ( t) 15:39, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

• I agree with Masem: most users put pages they create on their watchlist. Furthermore, since many AfDs are done by Twinkle, many people get a talk-page notification anyway. Also, @ Ottawahitech: there's a function on your watchlist that allows you to limit what you view to article-space, and, as Masem noted, you need not watch talk pages. p b p 16:17, 6 December 2015 (UTC)
• If it's true that users are not using their watchlist (I acknowledge that some may choose not to), then I have absolutely no sympathy for the complaint that they aren't finding out about content they created being nominated. If it's something you care about, use the tools and processes that are provided to find out about them and don't rely on other editors to somehow flag your attention. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 23:22, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

• There's a couple issues with this:

1) If someone is sufficiently active, they will have a large number of items on their watchlist and it will become easy to miss things. (Although I admit this wouldn't likely apply to newcomers.)

2) Do newcomers even know there is such a thing as a watchlist or how to use it?

3) If someone hasn't specifically checked "Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent" in the Advanced preferences, there's an unfortunate chance that even if the article creator does check their watchlist for changes to that article that the AfD nomination won't show up because there's been a more recent change to the page. If the latest change is somebody fixing a typo they might reasonably not look at the article.

4) The watchlist defaults to the last 7 days. If somebody creates the article on Friday, and it's nominated for deletion on Saturday, and they don't come back to Wikipedia until Sunday a week later - Wikipedia is not compulsory ( WP:CHOICE) - then they won't see the notification because it will have scrolled off the Watchlist.

5) Actually, that's my biggest objection to leaving the onus on the article creator to discover that the article they created is subject to an RfD by requiring them to visit Wikipedia to view their watchlist. It violates the policy that Wikipedia is not compulsory. By doing something positive to ping them, it keeps Wikipedia voluntary for them.

Thisisnotatest ( talk) 07:11, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

Given that the Watchlist link sits at the top of the page, the argument "how many people know it is there" is not really a factor. I do agree that if there is an AFD nom, and then someone edits regularly, the AFD nom will not show up on the page, and that can be a problem, but also at the end of the day, for that and the rest of these WP:OWN applies: when you hit submit on any edit page, you no longer own that content (though you attributed for it). The community can decide if it is appropriate or not without the submitting editor's consent. Granted, there are a raft of problems that generally plague AFD overall, but a lot of the arguments here just boil down to what has already been covered at WP:ATA. -- MASEM ( t) 16:59, 7 December 2015 (UTC)