Should the "default" <math> be changed to inline in the future?-- Debenben ( talk) 22:47, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Background information

Some time ago I did a little survey in the German Wikipedia on how to resolve several problems with the current markup for inline and block equations. The solution with the most support was turning "default" <math> into true inline equations, equivalent to <math display="inline"> or <math>\textstyle and using <math display="block"> or a new shortcut notation like <math block> for block equations, replacing the current :-indented markup.

Since technical limitations of the current math extension prevent several types of block-formulas from using the new notation and/or such a conversion would negatively impact the appearance on certain devices/browsers, this Rfc does not propose to implement such changes immediately. If this Rfc is successful, the intention for such a change should be written into Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Mathematics along with a recommendation: For formulas that are not block equations but still look better with large symbols, editors should specify \displaystyle explicitly instead of relying on <math> being displaystyle by default.

Some problems the proposed solution might solve in the future

• "default" exists for historic reasons and backwards compatibility. For most purposes "default" without further modifications like : indentation or \textstyle is technically wrong.
• Using <math display="inline"> or <math>\textstyle for each inline formula makes the source code difficult to read and type.
• New editors are confused by the "default" layout. They expect one notation for inline and one for block formulas with the inline markup using textstyle by default.
• Some editors might not be familiar with the textstyle and displaystyle commands since they are used to LaTeX, MathJax etc. choosing it automatically.
• Some editors do not bother to select textstyle explicitly, especially if there are only marginal differences e.g. ${\displaystyle \textstyle e^{x}}$ vs ${\displaystyle \displaystyle e^{x}}$.
• Editors using the VisualEditor cannot create block formulas with : indentation and can get frustrated trying to get a comparable layout example
• : is a definition list that creates invalid HTML and can be annoying for screen readers. It also creates its own paragraph <p> which is technically wrong and leads to inappropriately large separations in some browsers/devices.
• Having two markups for block formulas, i.e. :-indentation and display="block" parameter creates inconsistent layout. For most browsers/devices the visual appearance of both is only similar in the English Wikipedia due to common.css.
• The optimal layout of block equations depends on other layout choices such as placement of figures which can be different for mobile devices. Editors should not hard-code those choices manually e.g. by number of :-indentations. Instead, indentation would be with respect to the surrounding text without creating surplus indentation if block equations are chosen to be centered.
• Some more advanced features such as a referencing/numbering system for block equations and automatic line breaking require a clear distinction between inline and block-equations.

Some alternatives to this solution

Alternatives that were discussed in the survey:

• creating new HTML-tags or keywords for inline and block equations and <math> retaining its behavior,

a solution which got slightly less support and people indicated that they regard it as the second best choice only. Alternatives that got mostly oppose-votes were:

• keeping the :-syntax for block formulas and trying to work around some of the issues
• solutions that involve templates

Some technical problems that hinder implementing the solution

If people are interested I am happy to write and discuss these further. I don't expect much progress here and it is only worth discussing if the general intention of the proposal receives enough support.

And last but not least: I don't have any experience with Rfcs and the conventions here. Feel free to change things I did wrong and notify people that might have some opinion on this matter.-- Debenben ( talk) 19:56, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

@ Debenben: We discussed this topic recently. Please review WP:Village pump (policy)/Archive 138#RfC: Accessibility versus convenience in indentation. -- Izno ( talk) 20:20, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

And especially, the discussion I started at WP:Village pump (policy)/Archive 138#Math block display. -- Izno ( talk) 20:22, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

@ Izno: You are right, I should have mentioned this previous Rfc. I got a ping from user:Whatamidoing (WMF) because I discussed the issue with him a year ago [1] and I also left a comment. I had the impression that the closing statement "Final note, since much of the opposition was related to the mode of resolving this screen-reader compliance problem, rather than the underlying idea of addressing the problem in the first place, it's of course all right for someone interested in the discussion to formulate a new proposal without waiting for days or months to pass." referred to my comment. Therefore the above focuses on addressing the problem without providing a technical solution. A possible technical solution (also solving other problems) would have been [2] but it did not get enough support. Still, if this proposal gets through it might encourage Media-Wiki developers to do something about it.-- Debenben ( talk) 20:52, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

I added the Question and RFC-template to the above in order to get more input.-- Debenben ( talk) 22:47, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Survey: Change default <math> to be inline

• Oppose. Surveys of English Wikipedia editors on English Wikipedia policy have no jurisdiction over Wikimedia technical formatting issues. The actual solution is up to the developers, but even if we wanted a survey of readers and editors to suggest better directions for the allocation of the developers' time, the correct place for that would be meta because this affects all Wikimedia sites not just this one. But regardless of all that, this proposal would break the formatting of all displayed (on a line by themselves) equations on Wikipedia. That's a lot of damage in exchange for very intangible benefits. — David Eppstein ( talk) 23:42, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
• Changing is not a good idea, there must be 100000s or more pages that would need to be altered. It would cause such a huge mess, including in the knowledge of the people that use the tag. Graeme Bartlett ( talk) 00:47, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose unless benefits are clearer. Xxanthippe ( talk) 01:47, 7 February 2018 (UTC).
• Oppose. In principle this would have been a good idea, but formatting is already entrenched. Among many proposals to do with math formatting that English Wikipedia could decide to approach devs with, this has very minimal benefits. Sławomir Biały ( talk) 11:16, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Some remarks: For the survey in the German Wikipedia I did a rough estimate on the numbers of affected block-formulas: There were in total 237 779 occurences of math tags (in the main namespace), among those roughly 55 435 block-formulas. A simple algorithm similar to the one implemented in the old MathJax rendering mode or the one still existing today on scholarpedia, transforming all : indented math tags on its own line (without anything except for a space or punctuation mark) into a block formula would recognize around 82% of them correctly. The others have different number of indentations, text-elements or labels on the same line. They would get "broken" (meaning that they get an unconventional, less beautiful layout) and need to be marked as block formulas manually or by a bot using a more sophisticated algorithm. I guess there would be a slightly higher percentage of block formulas on the English Wikipedia and the total number would roughly scale with the article count.

For all those oppose votes I would be interested in their preferred solution. As I said, the alternative of introducing new tags (something like <imath> <dmath> <ichem> <dchem>) and avoid breaking the current math formatting had only slightly less supporters. A similar solution that involved creating a new markup for inline formulas was proposed on phabricator around 2012, but blocked due to the lack of community support. The WMF has no view on the issue, currently all development and maintenance of the math extension is done by one volunteer.-- Debenben ( talk) 14:00, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

I think the ideal solution would be to implement \( \) and \[ \] as math delimiters. This would also solve the most recent problem of the non-accessible way that Wikimedia interprets the colon operator as part of a definition list, when the colon is used for indentation of inline equations. Sławomir Biały ( talk) 19:47, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

That is probably the dream of every mathematician and LaTeX fan. It would need an equally strong concensus and I would be concerned that other people don't like it. Like: If you ask for too much you don't get anything.-- Debenben ( talk) 15:58, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

On the contrary, I think the approach solves a lot of problems we've been having lately. Offer the developers and editors a solution and they might implement it. Think big! Sławomir Biały ( talk) 19:41, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Just as a more "stupid" idea: What you suggested would already work today: \(\sum_{n=0}^\infty \frac{x^n}{n!} \text{this should become inline}\) and \[\sum_{n=0}^\infty \frac{x^n}{n!} \text{this should become block}\] if one would simply write something like

$("head").append("<script type=\"text/x-mathjax-config\">MathJax.Hub.Config({'HTML-CSS': {preferredFont: 'STIX', webFont: 'STIX-Web', mtextFontInherit: true}, 'SVG': {mtextFontInherit: true}});</script>");
$("head").append("<script type=\"text/javascript\" async src=\"https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/mathjax/2.7.2/MathJax.js?config=TeX-AMS_HTML\"></script>");

into Mediawiki:Common.js. -- Debenben ( talk) 21:40, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Fairly easy in principle to implement, I'll grant. Sławomir Biały ( talk) 01:16, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

True. I improved the configuration a little:

$("head").append("<script type=\"text/x-mathjax-config\">MathJax.Ajax.config.path['mhchem'] = 'https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/mathjax-mhchem/3.2.0'; MathJax.Hub.Config({TeX: { extensions: ['mediawiki-texvc.js', 'AMSmath.js', 'AMSsymbols.js', '[mhchem]/mhchem.js'], equationNumbers: { autoNumber: 'AMS' }, mhchem: { legacy: false }}, displayAlign: 'left', displayIndent: '2em', 'HTML-CSS': {preferredFont: 'STIX', webFont: 'STIX-Web', mtextFontInherit: true, linebreaks: { automatic: true }}, 'SVG': {mtextFontInherit: true, linebreaks: { automatic: true }}, 'CommonHTML': {mtextFontInherit: true, linebreaks: { automatic: true }}});</script>");
$("head").append("<script type=\"text/javascript\" async src=\"https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/mathjax/2.7.2/MathJax.js?config=TeX-AMS_HTML\"></script>");

I think cloudflare wouldn't mind if we use their servers since they get an easy way to track all readers, but it probably violates some guidelines. Does anyone have access to something like a Wikipedia-toolserver that he can spare, so we can have our own cdn? I would be really looking forward to present some of the new features:

• Working math also for devices like Ipads (In case someone is interested delivering the good news to the poor guy [3])
• Working textmode, especially for all languages that don't use latin charakters
• Working mhchem package
• Copyable formulas, proper HTML
• Fully editable in the VisualEditor (unfortunately the alpha version is lacking support for the visual formula editor)
• Support of automatic referencing and numbering, support for linebreaking, support for missing commands like \middle
• Support for defining macros, linking websites, popups etc. (Some of those features should probably be disabled in production)
• Great user support, if you find a bug and report it at Github you probably get a patch within days

-- Debenben ( talk) 18:55, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

Ahh, and I forgot: An excellent accessibility explorer, where you can navigate through the formula with arrow keys and any average screen-reader can read out the generated text piece-by-piece.-- Debenben ( talk) 19:01, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

@ Xxanthippe: I wanted to avoid a lengthy explanation because I was hoping for other peoples comments to highlight some of the current problems. Since this is not the case and you explicitly asked for the benefits to be clearer, I will attempt to illustrate some of the bullet points above:

A lot of inline formulas use the "default" layout, usually because the editor did not bother to specify it or is not familiar with the \textstyle command. For example if I write ${\displaystyle A^{T}}$, then for me, if I use a standard setting in firefox in combination with the svg rendering that most people get, the expression is just a little bit too large to fit into a normally spaced line, therefore the spacing of the lines in the text is not equal but a little bit different. For most people this is only the case for larger operators like ${\displaystyle \sum _{i=0}^{\infty }}$. This can be avoided by using the correct inline formatting, either by adding \textstyle or the parameter display="inline", resulting in ${\displaystyle \textstyle A^{T}}$ or ${\displaystyle \textstyle \sum _{i=0}^{\infty }}$. If you happen to have a browser/device where the ${\displaystyle A^{T}}$ example already uses a little bit too much space, then for you there will be more inline formulas that would get fixed by the change than those that get broken. Of course adding an additional \textstyle or the parameter display="inline" for all inline formulas would already be possible today. However the wikitext would become increasingly hard to read. In the survey I used the example of w:de:Satz des Pythagoras having three sentences with seven inline formulas each, where you don't want to clutter the source code with \textstyle or display="inline" parameters for each of them. Pythagorean theorem has a similar amount of inline formulas, however they are, probably due to other deficiencies, not using math-tags. That is what I wanted to express with the flawed "slightly higher percentage of block formulas" comment above. If you had a math extension were formulas are copyable, look good etc. for everyone, then you would want to use inline math for each of them. With the proposed change, editors could forget about \textstyle or display="inline", because it would have the correct formatting by default. This is the behavior people outside of Wikipedia would expect and how it works in LaTeX or any other typesetting system. The reason it is different in Wikipedia is, that originally the math extension was not designed for inline formulas, but as a replacement for images and ascii-art block formulas. Because a lot of mathematical expressions cannot easily be obtained with normal HTML-characters, editors also used the math extension for inline formulas, even though it did not have proper size or alignment for the text (and today this is still a problem, at least for a lot of browsers/devices).

Since the original idea behind math was to create images, and you would want to be able to use those images for example in tables etc., it did not have a proper layout for block equations either (and today this is also still a problem). Editors used the : markup because it is the easiest. However it is part of a definition list markup and produces invalid HTML. As far as I know it gets indented in every major browser, but in principle the layout of a definition list can be anything and the behavior of an invalid definition list is undefined. When I select "print this page" in firefox, everything indented with : gets printed with a large font size, which I guess is due to broken definition lists. An average screenreader would tell you for every :-indented block-formula that a definition will follow, which I guess can be annoying, especially in the middle of a sentence. The other thing that is wrong is the paragraph <p> that gets created, which means that there will be a space before and after every block formula that matches the space of a new paragraph in the text and depending on the browser/device can be inappropriately large. It is also semantically wrong, because the whole point of indenting or centering block formulas is to show readers that the early line-break is not a new paragraph, but just for accommodating a large expression that cannot easily wraparound into the next line. With the proposal above, those 82% of block formulas (or whatever the exact percentage on the English Wikipedia is) would get proper HTML like the one you get on websites like math.stackexchange that is not broken, does not abuse definition list markup or create a new paragraph. The others would get proper HTML if they get fixed manually or with a bot.

Another problem concerns editors unfamiliar with the wikitext or LaTeX markup. I cannot tell first-hand, but only from looking at strange edits of new accounts or when they ask for help. Imagine you are unfamiliar with wikitext-markup. Then you would assume that you can use the VisualEditor to edit mathematical articles. You effectively cannot because you can't add :-indentations or change them. However you would not know what those indentations are. You click on an equation that is clearly an inline equation and it will show you that it is "default". Maybe it begins with \textstyle - a command even some mathematicians or physicists don't know because normally it is not needed in LaTeX. If you click on inline - nothing happens. If you click on "block" you generally get a block formula that is centered (and the English Wikipedia uses commons.css to make it indented, solving this issue and creating different problems). If you want to edit another block formula - it is also "default". If you create a "default" formula yourself you cannot get it indented. With the proposal above this would get fixed, because there would only be one inline and one block option to choose from, and if you add a new formula and don't select anything it would be a correct inline formula. If you select block formula, it would become a true block formula. I believe it would especially help people not familiar with LaTeX because they could use the formula editor of the VisualEditor, since the formula is rendered or the error message is shown immediately. They also wouldn't need to search for a formula they want to edit in the source code, where you often rely on searching for generic LaTeX commands or words somewhere next to it.

These are the main points. As you can see from the bullet points above, there are some other (in my view minor issues) that would get solved. There is also a whole bunch of things problematic with current usages of the display="block" parameter which I have not touched. Since this fortunately only concerns 165 pages at the moment I have left this out for now.-- Debenben ( talk) 15:58, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose anything that would break the formatting in thousands of existing pages. Maproom ( talk) 08:07, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

I don't know what I did wrong: I did not expect only support votes, but I expected some comments and discussion on the issue. I'll try to discuss with myself the comments so far:

• Its a global issue: True. The purpose of this Rfc is to gather feedback directly from editors affected by such a change that can be used (e.g. in a discussion on meta) to supplement the feedback I got from German Wikipedia and Wikisource editors. So far I get the impression that the English Wikipedia editors just don't care.
• It's up to the developers: As I pointed out, I had a discussion with Whatamidoing. For now it seems, the WMF does not have any resources to spend on working out a solution or fixing some of the problems.
• The proposal breaks a lot of block formulas: True, although I think "breaking" is a strong word for a less beautiful layout for some equations which is compensated by a more beautiful layout for others. I respect people that do not want the existing articles to change at all. For the math tag this essentially means it cannot get fixed (unless someone can come up with a miracle solution nobody has thought of so far). Consequently this translates into the alternative, which is support for introduction and migration to a new notation.
• It causes confusion among the editors: I would say this proposal would rather reduce the confusion. The argument of creating even more confusion was the main reason why at the German Wikipedia this solution was preferred to the alternative of creating a new notation. Editors can continue to use "default" in the text and get the proper inline formatting. If one is worried by a solution that would treat the indentation markup as a modifier as opposed to also replacing those 82% with a bot: This is not part of the proposal and (in my view) can be discussed after it is decided if the current <math> notation should be rescued or not.
• The benefits are unclear: This could be a reason why people don't want to vote on the issue, but please leave a question or comment, this would help others to make up their mind.
• Introducing \( \) and \[ \] as math delimiters: A great solution. Some background: The two delimiters are the minimal set of LaTeX commands required to get all necessary features. For those that wonder about commands like ref, eqref etc: They can be used inside the delimiters like it is done for align today, which, from a LaTeX (and MathJax) point of view is correct, only a bit more complicated than necessary:

The example
\[\begin{align}
one \label{thefirstlabel}\\ 
two \label{mysecondlabel}
\end{align}\]
as a fraction 
\[\begin{equation}
\frac{\eqref{thefirstlabel}}{\eqref{mysecondlabel}}=\frac{ne}{tw} \label{theresult}
\end{equation}\]
does not make sense. Also, equation \(\ref{theresult}\) does not show that \(\ce{H2O}\) means water.

When adding the javascript above to common.js and removing the syntaxhighlight it already works today. The drawback: This is similar to what was proposed around 2012. I am especially worried that it will be me, having to convince people that mixing the HTML-like wikitext notation with LaTeX commands is worth it and that at the end of the day I have wasted even more time with discussions and achieved nothing.

• A question which did not come up: What does it have to do with MathJax? In principle nothing, because all the problems mentioned in the bullet points are caused by the notation and don't get solved by a new rendering system. I wanted to show how other websites handle it, that Wikipedia is essentially the only website with these problems and some features necessary for being able to convert all current block-formulas. There is some hope: The Mathjax-Node spin-of currently generating the svg images and MathML in Wikipedia will be eaten up by MathJax version 3.0 in the future, creating the possibility that some developers take the opportunity to get MathJax 3.0 fully implemented in MediaWiki.

-- Debenben ( talk) 16:14, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose for reasons given. I have not done much (any?) editing along these lines, but would have little or no objection to a new format if it has any clear benefit, even in moderately unusual situations, but not as a new default. It would have to be a newly added facility and would be up to those benefiting, to discover the documentation. JonRichfield ( talk) 05:14, 14 February 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose in favor of helpsheet or templates. As noted above, the users can be advised to insert the "\textstyle" to show an inline, text-styled formula, as could be noted on a helpsheet page. Also, consider creating simple templates for users who search for common templates to format typical table or formula patterns. A template could be written to force inline format of a formula in parameter 1 as in: {{#tag:math|\sum_{i=0}^\infty|display="inline"}} to show: ${\textstyle \sum _{i=0}^{\infty }}$ where the limits i=0 to ${\displaystyle \infty }$ would display after the sigma summation symbol. Templates have enormous power to simplify work for new users, but people keep deleting such smart templates for sketchy reasons. - Wikid77 ( talk) 22:47, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for your suggestion. I believe you are suggesting to use something like {{ tmath}} that sets display="inline" automatically? The main drawback that I see with the solution is that one cannot use the usual LaTeX markup like {{tmath|\frac{1}{\sqrt{|f(x)|}}}}, but instead one has to write {{tmath|\frac{1}{\sqrt{\vert f(x)\vert } } }} to avoid clashing with the template markup, or is there a way to avoid this? There was a similar suggestion some time ago: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Mathematics/Typography#Consequences_of_a_lack_of_consensus_concerning_inline_text_style_mathematical_formulae, but it seems like the initiator has given up on the subject.-- Debenben ( talk) 16:56, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

Per previous discussions over at Wikipedia talk:Days of the year, it seems that there is some level of support for some kind of inclusion criteria for what articles to include on the Births and Deaths sections. There are some concerns that these sections are too-Western centric (i.e. people from North America or Europe are over-represented).

The question now is: should we have some kind of guideline for inclusion in Births and Dates articles? Or is the status-quo fine? In my case, my pet proposal is that a proposed inclusion criteria would be similar to what's currently done at WP:DYK, where no more than half of each set can be about US-related topics. Though of course, other editors are free to propose other proposals here. Narutolovehinata5 ^{t c csd new} 03:16, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

• Just axe these sections. They're useless trivia. KMF ( talk) 04:12, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

I agree with KMF that this is trivia. There is no possible way to develop an objective criteria for inclusion, and any volunteer time wasted on this would be better spent actually improving the encyclopedia. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 05:10, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

If you're reading the Wikipedia article about a particular day of the year, I would surmise that probably you are very much in the market for useless trivia! CapitalSasha ~ talk 05:18, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

With the exception of a few incidents which are frequently referred to by their dates (e.g September 11 attacks), or dates which represent holidays on the Gregorian calendar (e.g Storming of the Bastille, which is the source of Bastille Day), all data on date pages are trivia. I see no reason why it's any less trivia that the Titanic sank on April 15 than that the actress Emma Watson was born on this date. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 07:59, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

• The best option in my opinion would be to branch out "Born on ..." and "Died on ..." into separate articles (many of these lists online, but lots of misinformation, and none that are verifiable), maintained by bots and linked to on the DoY pages. This would reduce editor time spent to practically zero, does away with arbitrary inclusion criteria, and makes sure the info is still there for people who want it. The only objection that I've come across is that this could be done by category instead, but this makes it a nightmare to sort by year, and prevents the brief summary of what the people were notable for. ‑‑ Yodin ^T 12:19, 28 January 2018 (UTC)
• I think the inclusion could be based on quality of linked articles. For example, limit inclusion to articles that have 500 words of pure prose and have no major clean up tags. Renata ( talk) 14:44, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

That makes sense for a internal stuff...but that's not exactly an encyclopaedic inclusion criteria? That's the same problem with Narutolovehinata5's proposal - "than half of each set can be about US-related topics." is fine for internal inclusion, but not for an objective encyclopaedia. Galobtter ( pingó mió) 14:50, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

Well, Wikipedia is mature enough that truly notable people generally have bios that are pretty decent. Of course, there are all kinds of exceptions and anomalies. But I think it would be very useful to have some sort of arbitrary criteria based on article quality to avoid lengthy discussions on who is more notable. Renata ( talk) 03:56, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

In my view a notability criterion would be relevant, but that may be different from an article quality criterion. Many highly important people from (e.g.) the 18th century have short, underdeveloped articles, while many largely irrelevant sports or music (mainly US and UK) people from today have lengthy well developed articles maintained by fans. So a quality criterion developed along lines of development of article, would not solve the problem raised at the start of this post and in fact may even worsen it. Splitting off list of births and deaths on this date as Yodin suggests would not be perfect, but would at least largely solve the problem. This not in the least because such lists would allow much more entries, without overwhelming the rest of the entries on the day article (thus taking the sting out of discussion there). Arnoutf ( talk) 07:11, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

• It's simple. Include every single individual who was born/died on any given day. The Rambling Man ( talk) 07:34, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

@ The Rambling Man: Wouldn't such list articles (assuming the sections get split, as proposed above by some users) end up being very long and potentially falling afoul of WP:IINFO? Narutolovehinata5 ^{t c csd new} 13:15, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

Policy has nothing to do with it. It's too unweildy. As a quick Fermi approximation, Wikipedia has 5.5 million articles. If 10% of those were about people (not an unreasonable guess) that'd be 550,000 biographies here at Wikipedia. We'd guess about 1/365 would have any random birth or death date. That's approximately 1500 people per day born, and 1500 people per day die (a bit less, since some of those people haven't died yet). Aproximately 3000 lines of text just to keep track of birthdates and deathdates is unreasonable. -- Jayron 32 16:11, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

• I don’t know if this is possible tech-wise, but what would be helpful to the reader would be to group “on this day” entries into sub-lists... non-birthday events that occurred on the day go in one section... birthdays in another (I would even divide the birthday listings up into sub-sub-sections by profession groups: Performing arts, business, politics, etc). This would help readers USE the lists more efficiently... to more easily find the information they are looking for. Blueboar ( talk) 11:35, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
• Could this be better handled by categorifying the data? That way, the category "Born on XXXX" would automagically be populated. Surely there is some better semi-automated way to handle this better than relying on people randomly coming by to add a name to a page. -- Jayron 32 15:11, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
  • See above: Categories don't allow readers to see a brief summary of each person, or even display which year they were born. Also, if you wanted to try to sort these categories by year it would be problematic and very counterintuitive (even if you add leading zeroes to account for years < 1000), B.C. dates would still be sorted alphabetically (so 1 BC first, 300 BC last), followed by A.D. sorted alphabetically (1 AD first, 2017 last). If not, then you end up with just an unreadable list of names sorted alphabetically, something I doubt any of the readers (for example those mentioned above by CapitalSasha and Od Mishehu) would be interested in. With Wikidata, it should be straightforward to get a bot to maintain these lists as articles, rather than resorting to categories of use to neither man nor bot. What do you reckon? ‑‑ Yodin ^T 16:17, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

I'm against this, primary because I fear it would have potential to creep over to the "years" article, in which the inclusion of everyone that has a wikipage is very useful. I also glimpsed at two random dates in January and it did not seem that outrageous, when you consider the attempted scope of the article. (Granted this was on the desktop version) We could include tools to make it easier to navigate however on mobile,but I'm not in favor of limiting the amount of people that could be there. -- Deathawk ( talk) 22:37, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

I would say that, in line with some others here, we should get rid of these sections; they seem irrelevant to information about the date (so most people on the page for a given date probably won't care about this information) and it's inherently too hard to come up with an objective standard for who should and shouldn't be included. Perhaps a set of categories for people who were born or died on a given date would be an improvement (i.e. Category:People born on January 1, etc.) Every Morning (there's a halo...) 00:34, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

I think much of this debate comes from a fear that these pages will get too long too quickly and will become out of control. This, for the most part, is unfounded, as the pages are edited by humans and most people will not actually have time to edit these in such a way that it gets unmanageable. And if they do, we can split it off into a separate article. I agree with a sentiment explained already in this threat that the people who go into a date article probably are looking for a list of who was born and who died on that day. What I'm saying is, I don't think this is a feature that our readers are annoyed by, so much as editors are, and we should be in service to the reader. -- Deathawk ( talk) 02:07, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

I agree with Deathawk's position. It is trivia, but the reader looking up a date like January 30 probably is looking for this kind of trivia. Coming up with DYK-like restrictions for it seems to serve editors more than readers, IMHO. Double sharp ( talk) 05:56, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

• No. Critreria is not needed. L3X1 Become a New Page Patroller! (distænt write) 15:29, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

There has to be some way to manage these lists. Right now, Category:1980s births has approximately 15,000 people per year. Given that everyone born will die, and that Wikipedia continues to exist, that's roughly 1,000 new entries per date every ten years. That's untenable. The argument that this won't happen because people won't do it strikes me as flawed because that's not a guarantee that it won't happen, and it wouldn't be hard to write a bot to populate those lists or for one determined editor to do so. The fact that it hasn't happened yet is probably due more to the fact that these lists are currently curated, even though we don't have clear guidelines. Personally, I think it'd be best to create a new article People born on (x date) and leave a tiny subset of the most notable (determined perhaps by restricting it to a certain number per article or by set criteria) on the actual date article itself.

As to the other arguments, I agree that these lists are largely trivia, but that does seem to be the purpose of the DOY articles, and I’m okay with that. I don't think a category suffices because it doesn't include the brief descriptions and because categories are merely alphabetical and not chronological. -- irn ( talk) 14:16, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

• A summary of my opinion:

1. These sections are of value and are the kind of thing people expect to see in an article about a given year or date.
2. They should not be allowed to become too long. 100 names in each section should be the absolute limit.
3. An effort should be made to ensure a spread of nationalities, occupations, and historical period.

There will be a lot of work needed to establish criteria but to me it seems essential that we make the effort. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Deb ( talk • contribs)

• If nothing is done we'll have to put up with seeing the Births and Deaths sections grow to enormous length – I recently saw someone going through methodically adding all the footballers from a particular country, and we have no rule against this. I've estimated potentially 3,000 names under Births for each day. Otherwise we need criteria for "super-notability" to go on these lists. Something on the lines of Deb's suggestion may work if we have subsections for each date with really tight and unarguable eligibility, such as "Monarchs, presidents and prime ministers born on this day", "Nobel prizewinners born on this day", "Olympic gold medallists born on this day" ... then "... died on this day", all chosen to ensure Deb's "spread of nationalities, occupations, and historical period" : Noyster (talk), 17:19, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

I like that suggestion a lot. The unarguable eligibility for super-notable subsections seems a little difficult to me, though, when dealing with entertainers and sportspeople. (Michael Jackson and Pelé come immediately to mind as examples.) I think it should be doable, but we might need to elaborate the criteria elsewhere and just label the subsections "Entertainers" and "Athletes", for example. -- irn ( talk) 17:42, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

• Any notability criteria is likely to be subjective and devolve into protracted discussions over personal preference of notability, to the detriment of time spent actually improving the encyclopedia. I suggest adopting the type of standard used at "On this day - born/died" which is (I think) B-class articles or above. This would encourage editors to improve their favourite biographies to B-class to get them included on the day page, and would also be an objective standard. I have seen editors going through the day pages removing names which they personally consider non-notable and it's very subjective of course - "not her, she's a porn star and that's not on" etc etc. It should also be easy to get this automated if it's pulling on the pools of B, A, GA and FA articles only. MurielMary ( talk) 09:39, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

B-class isn't exactly a objective criteria..anyone can change ratings. Galobtter ( pingó mió) 09:44, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

• I really like the incentive for editors to improve the articles. While it might not be a perfect solution, I think it would address the concerns of editors who work on DoY articles, in that the lists won't become unmanagable (for at least the next decade or so), and we shouldn't allow the potential fixing mentioned above to prevent a good idea from being implemented. It also seems to follow the pattern of WP:ITN, in that it's not just about "more or less notable", but quality of their coverage on Wikipedia. Would love to help with an improvement drive to address WP:BIAS on this. ‑‑ Yodin ^T 12:39, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

• Just tossing out an idea here... If we really want to base inclusion on article quality, then perhaps the criteria should be “good article” status. “Good article” status is a more defined process which means the article has been reviewed and has achieved a substantive quality standard. The down side is that some notable subjects may not be listed (if the article about them is poorly written) ... the up side is that this would encourage editors to work on these articles, and bring them up to “good article” standards. Blueboar ( talk) 13:37, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
  • The snag with this is - what do we do if, for example, "Michael Jackson" has not achieved GA status? Deb ( talk) 09:39, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
    • Work on the Michael Jackson article and GET it to “Good article” status? Blueboar ( talk) 11:17, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

• There are 6,490 biographies classified as GA and above, [4] making about 18 per day of the year. No Thomas Jefferson, no Mussolini, no Beethoven, no Mozart ... All these are B's and I'm starting to think we may have to go with B-class and above, recognising the flaws. I'd have preferred to base it on importance of person rather than quality of article, but neither Top-importance nor Vital articles will yield nearly enough names, and the difficulties of establishing any other criterion of importance are obvious : Noyster (talk), 11:10, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

I'm thinking limiting it to B articles might work quite well. Deb ( talk) 11:44, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

The problem I see with limiting this to a certain class of article is that it's not exactly user friendly. I imagine that the majority of editors adding content to these pages are relatively inexperienced to Wikipedia, and would be unaware of what a "B class article" means. It would be devastating for them to come and have there edit reverted. I could imagine some editors who might prove useful to the project being turned away from it as a result. It's just too much CREEP. One thing that might work is instead language that encourages the inclusion of "high class" articles as opposed to underdeveloped ones. A good example is how Wikipedia: Unusual Articles, states that the articles should be of "decent quality" but does not further expand on what that means, as a result the editors somewhat police themselves. -- Deathawk ( talk) 03:41, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

"Decent quality" is rather subjective, and, if editors got together and put a definition on "decent quality" I suspect they would just be re-inventing the wheel - WP already has definitions of quality in the Stub/Start/C/B/A/GA etc scale. I think In The News has a definition of "decent quality" for inclusion in their corner of the main page which is something like "no orange tags, all statements cited, no copy vios of images" but this is a pretty low bar and I think using something this minimal wouldn't go far to reduce the quantity of articles on the day pages. What I've noticed at In The News is that someone nominates an article for inclusion, someone else tags it with an orange tag, then the nominator gets to work fixing up the article, the orange tag is removed and it gets published on the main page. Good for the encyclopedia to have all that effort going into improving articles. MurielMary ( talk) 10:48, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

I still maintain that this is problem mostly imagined. Personally I find it a bit ridiculous to have a Wikipedia article for every day of the year, but I don't really see it as problematic and if people find it interesting I don't mind either way. Having said that if you include a list of every date and have a listing of birthdays and death dates for the page, then it stands to reason that you are going to get a lot of listings . However this is the purpose of the page and it is fulfilling that roll. To somehow modify that list, you are now making it actually less useful, and it's falling farther and farther from the purpose. -- Deathawk ( talk) 20:17, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

@ Deathawk: There are over 1.5 million biography articles at the moment, that's more than 4,000 births for each day, plus deaths, with more being added all the time. If we don't attempt to curate them, they would quickly reach article size limits. I would personally agree that complete lists make sense, and aren't a problem, but they would have to be split from the main pages. But either way, we've got three options I suppose:

1. No births & deaths on the DoY pages (and optionally splitting the lists into separate articles).
2. Having a list without the names of people that very few readers would have interest in (e.g. a very obscure mid 20th century sportsman compared to, say, Alexander the Great) – again, this could be done in conjunction with separate lists, but doesn't have to be, as at present.
3. Ignoring the DoY articles, allowing them to fill up, quickly becoming very slow, to the point of being unreadable on mobiles, and eventually reaching the absolute article limit, preventing editing, etc..

A fair number of editors are trying to prevent #3 from happening, but it's a complete pain without guidelines that would make the process easier (and hopefully automated, to free us up to do more positive editing!). I guess you're not actively trying to prevent this from happening, but opposing it on the grounds that it's imagined makes me think you don't do much editing on DoY pages? Either way, it seems that for the first time in a long while we're finally pretty close to reaching a consensus – would be great to reach the point where a clear guideline proposal could be made. ‑‑ Yodin ^T 21:53, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

A bit late to the discussion, but the original question was whether the pages were too America-centric. I've been attempting to correct this by deliberately adding people from around the world. A problem that comes up often is that many of these are stubs, or need content from another wiki. Add to that the new requirement that dates of birth and death need good Wikipedia references, and it's a lot more work to edit these pages with quality content.

For the record, I guess I'd go with option 2 above. There's a lot of interest in "born on this day" and "died on this day", so I think births and deaths are relevant. Natalie Bueno Vasquez ( talk) 06:23, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

As for the proposals above which suggests that all articles that are mentioned in Births/Deaths sections need to be at least B-class, I'm not sure it would work in filtering out systemic bias; if anything, it could only help worsen it. Some articles on even the most well-known Western people are at C-class or lower, meaning that they'd have to be left out; on the other hand, from experience, articles on non-American or non-European topics tend to be of a lower quality as well, meaning that even very popular names wouldn't be mentioned. So while article quality could potentially work as a standard for inclusion, it also has its drawbacks and might not solve the problem at all. As for the suggestion of simply making separate list articles and listing all births/deaths there, that would be wildly impractical: such articles would be way too long. Narutolovehinata5 ^{t c csd new} 07:37, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Lists of births & deaths could easily be broken down (either by the people's roles as suggested by another editor above, or by century). ‑‑ Yodin ^T 09:58, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

• Cut births and deaths entirely. This sort of navigation can be done on en-wiki via categories. Searching this sort of question is best done via Wikidata. Chris Troutman ( talk) 01:40, 17 February 2018 (UTC)

• I would support removing those sections completely. Besides the constant stream of non-notable people who get added to them, it's really questionable how useful that trivia is. Make it a category so that people can use cross-cat tools to find whatever intersection they're looking for. If we have to keep these lists, split them off into "List of people born on X" type articles (and then delete them as trivia...) Matt Deres ( talk) 18:21, 20 February 2018 (UTC)
• Please don't axe the "list of people born on this day" sections. Please don't. Keep them the way they are (or split them into a new thing). I strongly, STRONGLY SUPPORT Option #2. This "pointless trivia" is the exact type of thing that someone searching for a page about a given day of the year would want to see. Natalie puts it well above: there's legitimately "a lot of interest in "born on this day" and "died on this day", so I think births and deaths are relevant." Paintspot Infez ( talk) 02:51, 1 March 2018 (UTC)
• Isn't this the sort of thing that WikiData should be able to cover - i.e. queries such as people born on 1st Jan 1900, footballers who died in Feb 1901 etc? DexDor ^(talk) 06:35, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

Some observations, in part to provide a summing up, & in to offer some :

• IMHO, the consensus is leaning towards keeping this list. (Disclaimer, I favor keeping it, so YMMV here.)
• It has been proposed that we limit the number of people in these lists to 100. Or some such number.
• Assuming we limit the number to 100, this means we would need to compile a list of almost 37,000 more than notable people. (To be precise, between 36,500 & 36,600 depending on how many notable people we wish to include for February 29.) Of course, this list has already been started: take the names of people already in the Days of the year, & add/subtract from that. (From glancing at January 30, the date Double sharp mentioned above, it appears that a lot of professional athletes will be purged from this list.)
• Any such list of more than notable people would need to be balanced out between the various categories, such as "politicians/royalty", "religious figures", "writers/poets/playwrights", "artists", "sports", "military" & (the inevitable) miscellaneous. IMHO, having set percentages will force people towards adding only the more important figures in these categories. (And might add a little more encouragement to improving articles.)
• Any such list will need to add a lot more people who are not from Europe & North America. (Glancing at January 30, I only found 3 Japanese people, 1 Brazilian pro athlete I mean 4 Japanese people, 1 Brazilian pro athlete, 1 Vietnamese king, & 1 president of El Savador -- & no other people from Asia/Africa/South America. I would be surprised if no other notable people from those parts of the world were born on that date.)
• Having worked a lot on historical articles, I can confidently predict that any such list will be heavily weighted towards more recent names. It is difficult to find the years various notable people living before AD 1000 were born or died in; finding the day of birth for one is the equivalent of winning millions in the lottery! (It would be nice to find a way to indicate the approximate year a more than notable person was born or died in, but for whom more precise information is lacking. But that desideratum is tangential to this discussion.) -- llywrch ( talk) 18:03, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

• Suggestion - why don't we have this done by categories, which is what they are for? A bot could add Category:People born on 27 November to everyone with that birthday. A bot could similarly add Category:People who died on 11 June to everyone who died on the 11th of June. It's one or two additional categories per biographical article, but some have hundreds anyway. Then you can just click to that category if what you really want is to see who was born on a particular day. Having 5-6000 articles in a category is not an issue at all. You could have a direct link to the two categories on each date article (so 1 January would have a See Also pointing at Category:People born on 1 January and Category:People who died on 1 January, and so on. Fish+ Karate 12:29, 15 March 2018 (UTC)
  • We don't create categories for trivial or anecdotical similarities between articles. Years of birth and death indicate the period in which someone lived: day/month of death indicates nothing. That Farzad Bazoft and Charles Harrelson share the same day and month of death is a meaningless coincidence. Please don't create such categories. Fram ( talk) 13:21, 15 March 2018 (UTC)
    • It's just a suggestion. Your view on someone's day/month of birth/death being meaningless is just that: your view. Fish+ Karate 14:29, 15 March 2018 (UTC)
      • Well, no, it's not "just my view". Apart from pseudoscience like astrology, there is not really much meaning to be found in the coincidence that people died on the same day (considering that we only have 366 such combinations to start with). Feel free to show me wrong, but please don't dismiss someone else's point as "just" their view when you don't have any actual evidence that it is actually meaningful. Thisis not some random objection, but the essence of categories, which should be, according to Wikipedia:Categorization, about "essential—defining—characteristics of a topic" (and further "A central concept used in categorising articles is that of the defining characteristics of a subject of the article." See WP:TRIVIALCAT for more on this. "Note that this form of overcategorization also applies to grouping people by trivial circumstances of their deaths". Fram ( talk) 14:59, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

Quick comment on the numbers here. @ Jayron32 and Yodin: the number given by Yodin of "over 1.5 million" is probably from the value given at Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Biography articles by quality statistics - Jayron32's guess of 550,000 was a bit out, and in any case there is no need to guess, any well-designed website or database would have these statistics available, and with a bit of work it is possible to maintain statistics like "number of biographical articles". The current value at Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Biography articles by quality statistics of 1,558,032 articles is still only an estimate though as: (a) not all biographical articles are tagged as such on their talk page by the WikiProject Biography template (the number untagged is a bit hard to estimate); and (b) not all the articles tagged by WikiProject Biography are 'single person' biographies - that 1,558,032 figures includes a lot of articles about musical groups, and other 'group biographies'. Another estimate is to do some sort of count over the categories and subcategories of Category:Births by year. Number of living people (again, if tagged correctly) is at Category:Living people, currently 852,728. There may be other ways to do these estimates that are more accurate. (Over time, I think the proportion of biographical articles has remained fairly steady at about 20-30% of the whole encyclopedia, as measured in terms of number of articles. What is more surprising is that living people make up over 50% of those articles.) Carcharoth ( talk) 12:34, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

• Yes, I believe used those figures. There were a number of lists, books, categories, disambigs, templates, files and redirects etc., but they amounted to a small fraction of the total articles. Hadn't considered untagged articles or group bios, but I think between 1 and 2 million articles seems a pretty reasonably estimate. But even if was only half a million, it's more than the DoY articles could handle. ‑‑ Yodin ^T 10:30, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

Should articles about firearms include information about mass shootings?– dlthewave ☎ 17:11, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

Background

After several recent mass shooting events, edit warring has taken place over whether or not an article about a specific firearm model should cover the weapon's use in mass shootings. This has been centered around various AR-15 style rifles, but the argument could apply to any firearm used to commit a crime.

There is also disagreement over whether or not AR-15 style rifle should include information about the category's prevalence in mass shootings, which has received significant RS coverage.

Relevant WikiProject Firearms essay

"In order for a criminal use to be notable enough for inclusion in the article on the gun used, it must meet some criteria. For instance, legislation being passed as a result of the gun's usage (ex. ban on mail-order of firearms after use of the Carcano in JFK's assassination would qualify). Similarly, if its notoriety greatly increased (ex. the Intratec TEC-DC9 became infamous as a direct result of Columbine). As per WP:UNDUE, "Neutrality requires that each article or other page in the mainspace fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in the published, reliable sources.". Therefore, the addition of said information should be limited to a simple link in the "See also" section."

Relevant talk page discussions

• Talk:AR-15 style rifle#Use in mass shootings in the United States
• Talk:Smith & Wesson#Stoneman Douglas High School shooting
• Talk:Colt AR-15#Semi-protected edit request on 15 February 2018 (2)
• Talk:Ruger Mini-14#Rfc: Add major incidents to article? ( permalink)
• Talk:SIG MCX/Archive 1#RFC: Is the Orlando shooting relevant?

The first three discussions were consolidated to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Firearms#Use of AR-15 Style Rifles in Mass Shootings. The centralized discussion has developed significant support for an RfC outside of WikiProject Firearms.

Terminology

Editors should be aware that there is some confusion surrounding the AR-15 name. "AR-15" is a trademark of Colt and technically only applies to the Colt AR-15. However, many manufacturers produce their own generic versions based on the same design, and these are often referred to as "AR-15" by the media and general public. Within Wikipedia, AR-15 style rifle covers the general category of weapons that use the AR-15 design. The article was recently moved from Modern sporting rifle and the two terms are used somewhat interchangeably. Efforts to reduce this confusion is outside the scope of this RfC.

Survey Questions

Two questions, pick one answer for each:

• 1. Should an article about a specific firearm model include information about its use in mass shootings?
  • A. Do not include
  • B. Include links to notable shootings in the "See Also" section (Current WikiProject Firearms essay)
  • C. Include a paragraph-style section
  • D. Evaluate how much to include on a case-by-case basis
• 2. Should AR-15 style rifle include information about the category's prevalence in mass shootings?
  • A. Do not include
  • B. Include only statistical data
  • C. Include a paragraph-style section
  • D. Discuss at Talk:AR-15 style rifle Option added 27 Feb 18

Straw-poll: Coverage of mass shootings in firearms articles

• Situational: 1. C | 2. C - In the case of the AR-15, I am convinced that a neutral paragraph can be forged. These paragraphs should only be added if the school shooting in question has had an impact on the gun, or new regulations have been put forward as a result. - Knowledgekid87 ( talk) 17:19, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose. The current guidelines are sufficient. If a particular instance changes it, then we decide then. For example, the Douglas High shooting may, in fact, lead to legislative changes that result in the use being particularly notable. Currently, it has not. So the rush to make this change is premature. Slow down. Many editors I see trying to put this everywhere (dare I say spam it) seem to be more driven by something other than a desire for accuracy. And whether or not well-intentioned people incorrectly use the term AR15, using a Ruger AR-556 doesn't belong in the article about the Colt AR15. Niteshift36 ( talk) 17:27, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
• Depends (1D and 2C). More specifically:
  • For individual firearms (e.g. SIG MCX), firearm manufacturers (e.g. Smith & Wesson), and firearm types/classes (e.g. assault rifle or combat shotgun): Depends. Barring exceptional circumstances such as those suggested by Knowledgekid87, a major cultural impact (i.e. Tommy gun ( Saint Valentine's Day Massacre), Carcano ( Assassination of JFK), or AR-18 ( Provisional IRA) level), or a highly-publicised lawsuit against the manufacturer, they should generally not contain information on criminal use.
  • For Colt AR-15 and AR-15 style rifle: Yes, there should be neutral, factually correct, and in-context information about mass shootings, given the high level of coverage in the media - but which also notes that the media is often incorrect.

  Please ping me if anyone has any questions about my comments here; I won't be watching this discussion. ansh 666 18:10, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

  (Changed 1C to 1D, since we're using that now. ansh 666 03:14, 23 February 2018 (UTC))

• 1C if indeed that coverage is there. (Impugning others' motives, not a good thing.) If someone holds up a bank with a gun of a certain type, or shoots their neighbor with it in some dispute, that's never going to deliver the coverage necessary: that coverage needs to specifically address the weapon, and political discussion about the weapon will help--et cetera. This is nothing new.2C but duh, we're going to need a bigger paragraph. And, as I indicated below, the Colt AR-15 article should already include a brief summary of what weapons based on it have been used for. Drmies ( talk) 18:21, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
• 1C/2C Assuming that sufficient reliable sources exist to craft NPOV text then Wikipedia needs to address the issues brought up by the sources. I would not consider lots of articles consisting of mere mentions that a given weapon/class of weapons were used to be 'sufficient' in this context. - Mere mentions in sources are sufficient for mentioning and linking the weapon/type from the event article but we should avoid back linking that would result in "this weapon was used in list of events" sections. Jbh ^Talk 18:31, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

  I guess this is the same as the 'D' options that are being discussed. What I am against is any wiki-project guideline that relegates reference to criminal acts to a 'See also' if there are sufficient, detailed sources to support more. I also am opposed to laundry lists of crimes being placed in the articles. In other words - follow the sources per Wikipedia's content policies, not per some wiki-project local consensus. Jbh ^Talk 15:04, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

• 1 = A...2 = A Oppose addition of crime and mass shooting content -- RAF910 ( talk) 18:36, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

  Its no secret that guns are used in crimes and mass shootings though. If for example an AR-15 is modified due to an event then it would be notable enough for inclusion as an effect on how the gun is used going forward. - Knowledgekid87 ( talk) 18:40, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

  Yes..."Its no secret that guns are used in crimes and mass shootings though." In fact it's such common knowledge that there is absolutely no reason to even mention it in these articles. Like knives, we all know that they are used in crimes. In fact, world wide knives are the weapon of choice for criminals and killers, but we don't mention it in every knife article, do we.-- RAF910 ( talk) 19:32, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

  If a type of knife is modified or banned as a result of a deadly event then yes of course we would mention it per WP:N. - Knowledgekid87 ( talk) 21:59, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

  OK, since were going down the rabbit hole anyway...I recommend that this policy be applied to all knife, weapons, vehicle, aircraft, anaimal and anything else that could possibly be used to commit crimes and kill people pages. We can call it "WP:Murder, Death, Kill". for short-- RAF910 ( talk) 22:14, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

  We already do that... under aircraft types we have accidents and notable incidents, under car types we have recall mentions. The point is when people are killed and the killing device is changed to make improvements then it is noted. - Knowledgekid87 ( talk) 23:39, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

• 1A 1D - 2B 2D - But it all depends, if a shooting took place and the specific model of AR used is important it should be mentioned on that models page. If it is general that an AR was used but the model is not mentioned or notable it should be on the AR-15 style rifle article. More specifically for individual models eg. Colt AR-15 and the like information should only be included if it lead to legislation or similar. An example would be Port Arthur massacre (Australia) where the Colt AR-15 was used and kicked off the legislation to ban guns. PackMecEng ( talk) 18:49, 21 February 2018 (UTC) Updated vote to 1D & 2D after discussions PackMecEng ( talk) 16:37, 14 March 2018 (UTC)
• 1C iff the sources warrant it for the specific model, otherwise 1B, or at least a link the use of AR-15 style rifles in mass shootings (rather than individual shootings). 2C should most definitely be done. Headbomb { t · c · p · b} 18:52, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
• 1C and 2C. Especially 2C. The amount of coverage that the AR-15 has gotten in relation to mass shootings (whether rightly or wrongly) is way too extensive to ignore. It'd actually be a WP:NPOV and WP:DUE violation NOT to include it. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 18:56, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose - any changes to the current policy (noted as "1B". This !vote is not based in any political ideology, (not "anti-gun" or "pro-gun") but simply the projects guidelines, such as WP:NPOV. If we start adding "paragraph-sized entries" to the articles of any firearm, or firearm type, brand or maker involved, these articles will quickly fill up with huge "mass-shooting and other related incidents" (or "Controversy") sections that will outweigh the remainder of the entire article. I'm not seeking to suppress this info in any way. These mass-shootings and other types of firearms-related incidents almost always have their own articles here already. Lengthy, detailed articles that always include extensive information about the firearm(s) used and links to the related pages of the firearm, it's type, brand and/or manufacturer. That is sufficient. (most of this I've already posted elsewhere, but I will add; there is nothing stopping anyone here from writing an article about "the use of "AR-15 style rifles" in mass-shootings", and linking it to every related article; mass-shootings and other related incidents, and articles about the firearms, related firearm types, brands and makers, etc. Just a thought. - ^theWOLFchild 19:13, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
• 1A, 2A (usually) These events are not related to the specific gun models. If an event impact sales, regulation of the specific gun model, or variant gun design (as in TEC9) - then that would ge a reason to cover it in the model. We do not usually document individual use cases in weapon articles - it would become an unmanageable list for some. Icewhiz ( talk) 19:29, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose as existing guidelines are sufficient, and this should be decided on the article talk page. We can't foresee every possibility, so to set a hard policy or guideline that dictates the content of an article is wrong minded. This is an issue of CONTENT, and guidelines shouldn't be getting this specific on what to include. That is what editors are for. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 19:59, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose. Existing guidelines (1B) are sufficient. What will be notable a year from now is hardly discernible today. See: WP:CrystalBall. Meanwhile, we should not conflate all firearms. Besides, a decade ago, every rifle used criminally was an AK47. Even if it wasn't. Now, every rifle used criminally is an AR-15, even if it isn't. The Firearms Project guidelines are sufficient. And, when something becomes notable, then more than a mention becomes important. Miguel Escopeta ( talk) 21:27, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
• 1-D This seems like an obvious case-by-case basis and any hard rules are just going to create poor articles. Let the editors decide through talk page consensus whether it needs to be mentioned and how much to mention. As an aside the current guideline (1-B) is the worst option. See alsos should not be used to shoehorn links into articles. AIRcorn (talk) 21:54, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
• Generally opposed to making sweeping editorial decisions on an untold (and many as yet unwritten surely) number of articles. This should probably be decided on a case-by-case basis. GMG ^talk 21:58, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose. Existing guidelines are sufficient. Regards, TransporterMan ( TALK) 22:47, 21 February 2018 (UTC) Clarify: General policies and guidelines, i.e. those unrelated to this specific topic area, are sufficient. - TransporterMan ( TALK) 02:01, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
• Comment Currently, these decisions are not being made on a case-by-case basis. When attempts are made to add mass shooting information to an article, the WikiProject Firearms guideline essay is often cited as a "policy" that prohibits anything beyond a "See also" link. – dlthewave ☎ 23:11, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

• The guideline needs to be looked at by the community then, remember that this isn't confined to just the United States in terms of English speaking scope. - Knowledgekid87 ( talk) 23:32, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose as I also feel the existing guidelines are sufficient. Springee ( talk) 01:06, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
• 1A, 2A per COATRACK. Please leave your politics on your end of the keyboard. Chris Troutman ( talk) 02:06, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

• Exactly, and how do you reconcile disallowing a particular aspect of a subject irrespective of how much coverage that aspect receives with Wikipedia policy and guidelines. IAR "because politics"? — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 06:27, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

• 1C and 2C according to notability. Articles on firearms such as Carcano Rifle, AR-15, Röhm RG-14, etc. that have been used in significant crimes should WP:DUE-ly contain coverage of those crimes. (How is including a couple sentences about the crime - in an article about a type of weapon that was used in a famous crime - being "political"?????) - LuckyLouie ( talk) 04:13, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
• 1A, 2A. I agree with Chris Troutman. These articles should remain Apolitical.-- Limpscash ( talk) 05:17, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

• The beauty of Wikipedia's policies and guidelines is that they are apolitical (actually, it's fraught to say that, so let's say they try to be apolitical). We cover a subject according to how reliable sources cover a subject, without imposing our own opinions (political or not) about what aspects of the subject must be covered or must not be covered. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 06:29, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose (1A/2A) - I am, personally, an extremely strong gun-control advocate, but I don't see where it serves any encyclopedic purpose to list in every firearm article what mass shootings it was used in. However, a specific article about "Mass shootings using X firearm" would be a different matter, and I would support the encyclopedic value of such articles, which would then reasonably be listed in the firearm article's "See also" section. Beyond My Ken ( talk) 05:19, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

• 1C/2C' - After further consideration, changing my vote. Beyond My Ken ( talk) 01:31, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

• 1A under the assumption the individual manufacturer's execution of the generic design did not impart any particular advantage or disadvantage in the event(s) described. & 2C If the rifle truly fits within the definition (given the potential problems of using a prototype designation to describe a forked spectrum of improvements which may not be evident to many writers focusing on casualties rather than causes.) The truly important part of the description would be why executioners have chosen this rifle as opposed to a different method of killing (vehicle ramming attack, fire, poison, pressure-cooker bombs, blades, arrows, clubs, etc.) or a different type of firearm (shotgun, handgun, machinegun, semi-automatic rifle, lever-action rifle, bolt-action rifle, pump-action rifle, mortar, etc.) The paragraph should focus on features (sales volume, distribution of ammunition, ease of concealment, weight, range, accuracy, cartridge energy, bullet design, magazine capacity, reloading method, etc.) making this firearm more effective than other firearms (or merely more available than more effective firearms) and the factors making the targets uniquely vulnerable to attack by firearms, as opposed to alternative killing methods, unless firearms are simply more widely portrayed in the popular press as the preferred method for mass killing. Since an appropriately meaningful description might be interpreted as a how-to article on mass murder, we might better keep the description in the event articles to avoid identifying inappropriate uses of inanimate objects. Thewellman ( talk) 07:01, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

• 1D - ????????????????? How is this not the !vote of every experienced editor in this thread? Coverage of aspects of a subject is based on the weight/prevalence of those aspects in the literature about the subject. Simply because a gun was used in a particular event doesn't mean it should be included. If a great deal of coverage of the subject/gun is about particular ways in which it has been used, that should be included. And everything in between. Both 1A and 1C (and to a lesser extent 1B) are blanket rules that have no connection with the rest of Wikipedia policies and guidelines. We don't ban a particular aspect of a subject when that aspect comprises a major amount of the subject's coverage, and we don't include specific instances of a subject['s use] just because they exist or because it's true. That it was used obviously doesn't need anything more than a mention, if that, but in some cases there's in-depth coverage of the particular weapon used, analysis of a weapon used in multiple attacks, etc. As such 2C is clear in that instance given the incredible amount of sourcing on that aspect of the subject, but that doesn't mean it should be included in all cases. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 06:17, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

• To be clear, regarding "How is this not..", I see that some have objected to this RfC and/or expressed opinions along the lines of 1D -- I'm just surprised to see so many 1As in general, and 1Cs without heavy qualification (the sort that basically turns it into 1D). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 07:21, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

Because 1D effectively says "this whole debate must be repeated in every mass shooting talk page". This is a poor use of editors' time. Maproom ( talk) 07:33, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

This is a debate about a general rule, not a specific instance. Each case needs to take the sourcing into account, and saying exclude vs. link vs. paragraph ahead of time is problematic. That said, to be clear, implied in my 1D is that sometimes it will call for 1C and sometimes it will call for 1A. I'm reading some of the 1C arguments, however, as perhaps operating under the assumption that if 1C is not selected, each individual case will be swarmed by people who don't acknowledge 1C is even a possibility. I don't have enough experience to know if that's true, but based on the fact that anyone at all has voted for 1A for a general rule lends some credibility to that idea. Still, I'm not going to build an assumption of bad faith into my !vote. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 23:49, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose any prescriptive outcome of this RFC. Complete WP:UNDUE consolidation of ill-defined information used in an attempt to draw a conclusion via WP:SYNTHESIS or make some kind of political point. Who decides which incidents get listed? Why stop at the model of rifle... why not go to gun and make a section of all shooting deaths? Do you see the inherent absurdity that this proposal can be extrapolated to? I get that people are in the midst of a bit of hysteria on this topic, but wikipedia is not here to "right great wrongs". We're here to be informative, not influential. -- Netoholic @ 08:17, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
• 1D I do not see why there must be a general guideline, nor why a project-based essay must be treated as such. Mass killings should be covered in a specific article if they are given significant mention in literature about that topic. That's all. Obviously, for a good many gun types, that means a paragraph; for a good many others, it means nothing at all. Vanamonde ( talk) 08:47, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
  • I agree with Vanamonde. There should not be a specific rule at all, it is already covered under existing policy and guidelines such as WP:DUE and WP:RS. This is WP:CREEP, and could create a temptation to WP:BITE. Naturally, people will be curious about a firearm that is used in a mass shooting, and it seems reasonable that they will expect to see some mention in the article. If they don't see it, they might add it. If such an addition is not WP:UNDUE and is well-sourced, there's no reason to remove it. On the other hand, there's no need to impose a formula so that every firearm article has an identical prescribed section on its use in crime. How can we ignore all rules when there are so many of them? Jack N. Stock ( talk) 09:07, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
• Support 1 C - When RS coverage of the weapons used exists, it belongs in the article. E.M.Gregory ( talk) 12:48, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose as I really do not see why this is relevant. It may well be verifiable, but seems to me we are making a special case with guns (after all do we do this with makes of knives or swords?). In fact I do not think (as I imply) that I do not see why this is ever relevant to a make of gun. Slatersteven ( talk) 16:25, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
• 1D, 2C this should be determined on a case-by-case basis, depending on the coverage and sourcing for particular weapons and particular incidents. In general, I think if many of the sources about the weapon draw attention to its use in an event then this should push towards including a brief description of the event in the article. On the other hand, if the only sources making the link are descriptions of the event that merely mention the type of gun used, then the event shouldn't be brought up in the gun model's article. In the case of AR-15 style rifles, I think the number of sources specifically about them and their use in mass shootings has probably reached the point where this connection should be mentioned in the article itself. Red Rock Canyon ( talk) 16:48, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
• 1C, 2C The fact that civilian access to AR-15 pattern rifles is politically controversial is just that, a fact. That controversy doesn't wash away when you spin off daughter articles dedicated to specific brands. The Colt AR-15, is clearly an AR-15, it's a progenitor of the design. Yet some are arguing that policy issues around AR-15s generally shouldn't be mentioned in the Colt AR-15 article if the sources never specify a brand. This is not NPOV. Geogene ( talk) 17:08, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
• 1A, 2C (with limited discretion on individual articles) We shouldn't mention that John Wesley Hardin or Billy the Kid used a .44 Colt, we shouldn't mention the Dirty Harry quote on .44 Magnum, and we shouldn't mention mass shooters on page about that specific brand of firearm. For lack of a better term, it's "negative promotion", and we should avoid it the same way we would avoid including normal promotion. I do feel it's absolutely necessary to talk about the general trend on AR-15 style rifle. power~enwiki ( π, ν) 17:24, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
• Unless the incident had relevance to the gun (i.e. legislation, design changes, etc.), it is generally well-intentioned WP:Coatracky to gather individual criminal events in the gun article. According to Gun_violence_in_the_United_States, Approximately 1.4 million people have been killed using firearms in the U.S. between 1968 and 2011. Even if you try to limit it to events with 'major news coverage', it's just a permanently growing craplist. Just because the gun is important to the criminal-event topic doesn't mean the criminal-event is important to the gun topic. Alsee ( talk) 22:46, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
• 1D, 2C. AR-15 style rifle in fact redirects to modern sporting rifle. If the category is broad like that, then discussion of the use of modern sporting rifles in mass shootings is appropriate, as Assault weapon (but not Assault rifle, for good reason) contains political and legal information about the previous ban. The use of AR-15 style rifles in mass shootings is a subject gaining substantial RS coverage and it should be mentioned. For 1, however, I think the decision should be made on a case-by-case basis. For example, Charleston shooting mentions the Glock 41 but the Glock article does not. Carcano mentions the Kennedy assassination and probably always will. Roches ( talk) 00:08, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
• Do like everything else and require coverage in reliable secondary sources. Do the secondary sources deem a specific shooting an important incident in the history of the firearm? Remember that news reports are primary sources, and most journalists are not reliable sources for this subject: reliable secondary sources in this field are scholars publishing well after the fact and relying on primary sources like news reports. This will weed out the political/coatracky type stuff without excluding the occasional momentous incident. Nyttend ( talk) 04:56, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
• Please clarify "C. Include a paragraph-style section", do you mean a simple reference to each such crime in paragraph form such as is currently the the case in Modern sporting rifle or do you intend that a paragraph be added per crime, or somewhere in the middle? Cavalryman V31 ( talk) 06:53, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

Dlthewave, as the nominator please can you clarify the above? Cavalryman V31 ( talk) 11:17, 26 February 2018 (UTC).

The format used at AR-15 style rifle and SIG MCX is what I had in mind for most firearms: List the most notable shootings and briefly discuss legislative changes or other significant effects, with links to more in-depth coverage. However, AR-15 style rifle could include a longer Cultural Impact section similar to AK-47. – dlthewave ☎ 13:27, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

1C & 2D. A discussion about a specific page's content belongs on that page's talk page. Cavalryman V31 ( talk) 14:26, 26 February 2018 (UTC).

• Our existing polices are not broken and do not need fixing. The particular policy that applies here is WP:UNDUE, and this particular situation is described in WP:COATRACK. -- Guy Macon ( talk) 16:47, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

• WRONGLY POSED QUESTION: There cannot be a general solution to this question, since the sources about the weapon in each case will have to determine whether the coverage of use in specific events is notable enough to include. It is completely wrong to seek to get a general across the board solution for this. Policy very clearly tells us that the SOURCES are what guides us in determining what is sufficiently relevant to include in the article. We do not need a general decision on this. ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 16:46, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

• 1D but the option feel for 2 is not there. In general, just because X was part of a crime does not necessarily make X notable, nor does it need to be the case to call out the crime on the article about X if it is already notable. X here can be anything - a firearm, a vehicle, software, whatever. However, if it is the case that X is specifically talked about after the crime where people are calling for legislation, regulation, or if the manufacturer takes steps specifically in response, etc. then the event can be named. A good example, Discord (software) was called out for harboring alt/far-right servers which were use to organize the "Unite the Right" rallys that became violent. In direct response, the developers affirmed new TOS and kicked out those servers. Same logic applied to guns. As for the second question, this is where we need sources that discuss broadly the number of crimes that the specific weapon has been linked to and if that has become a point of contention for the weapon. Just because the gun has been named as the weapon in numerous crimes, it is SYNTH to argue for a paragraph about that unless we have reliable secondary sources making that criticism about the gun. This is a case-by-case decision, and not listed among the options. -- Masem ( t) 16:57, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
• 1C / 2C , based on existing guidelines. I would also recommend specifically rejecting the current WP:GUNS section on the topic which has been used in the past to specifically exclude such material from articles based on project-specific consensus, including in very notable cases. For example, the use of Colt AR-15 semi-automatic rifle in the Port Arthur massacre led to the enactment of the National Firearms Programme Implementation Act 1996. Under the present WP:GUNS content guide, this would only warrant a "See also" link. Other samples:

• added a "See also" link per Wikipedia:WikiProject Firearms (while removing material), in SIG MCX.
• per Wikipedia:WikiProject Firearms and talk page discussions, as well as discussions on Colt AR-15 talk page. Where consensus agreed that this type info was best suited as a "See Also" link, in Bushmaster XM-15.
• We have a 9 to 1 consensus on Wikipedia:WikiProject Firearms to list crimes as bullet points in the "See also" section. Also in Bushmaster. Etc.

In contrast, here are two prior RfC which concluded with "Include":

• Talk:Ruger_Mini-14#Rfc:_Add_major_incidents_to_article?, in Ruger_Mini-14
• Talk:SIG_MCX/Archive_1#RFC:_Is_the_Orlando_shooting_relevant?, in SIG MCX. Note that this 2016 RfC is on the same article is in one of the diffs above, removing (in 2017) the content per "per Wikipedia:WikiProject Firearms".

I see such a project-specific consensus to be not conducive to building a neutral encyclopedia. K.e.coffman ( talk) 08:11, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

• In as much as this question has an answer, it's clearly 1D/2C, but it's rather disappointing that this is being presented as if it's some kind of overall question about inclusion of trivia, when actually it's all about trying to play down the role of assault weapons modern sporting rifles in mass shootings. That might be what the NRA want, but we are a neutral encyclopaedia and right now the main reason people are interested in that article is that it is the weapon of choice of American mass shootings. Which is to say: mass shootings, since almost all of them happen in America. If anyone is looking up the article on the AR15 right now it is almost certainly to answer the question: why is this weapon front and centre in the current debate over gun control in America. It's kind of hard to answer that question without discussing it, which is of course precisely why the NRA came up with its always-too-soon narrative on discussing gun control. We should have a policy page: Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not Newspeak.  Guy ( Help!) 09:00, 24 February 2018 (UTC)
  • We must take care to avoid the narrative of the gun control lobby as well as the narrative of the NRA. For example, we know that some terrorists/mass murderers use guns, we know that some terrorists/mass murderers use bombs, and we know that some terrorists/mass murderers use trucks. Yet our article on Mercedes Benz doesn't mention the many times that brand of truck was used in an attack, and our article on Vehicle-ramming attack and our articles on individual vehicle-ramming attacks don't appear to mention what kind of truck was used. Nor do we ephasise what kind of explosive was used in the making of the bombs. Yes, some guns are better or worse choices for shooting up a school, but it is also true that some trucks are better or worse choices for plowing into a crowd. The ASR15 is front and center in the current debate over gun control in America because the gun control advocates want to make that particular weapon illegal even though other weapons are just as capable of being used in a school shooting (for example, a sawed off semi-automatic shotgun would be far more effective at such close ranges). If we are to be a neutral encyclopaedia, we should not let the pro-gun or anti-gun lobbies decide what the narrative is. -- Guy Macon ( talk) 09:37, 24 February 2018 (UTC)
    • I agree with all of this but would throw in a consideration of WP:RECENTISM. If just now the debate is above banning the ASR15 due only to the recent school shooting, it might be too soon to consider including it because of the nearness of the event. If in a month that debate is still going, then that issue has legs and inclusion is reasonable per Guy's logic related to UNDUE/WEIGHT and staying neutral. But if this debate evaporates in a few weeks, it might not be appropriate to include. On the other hand, if the ASR15 has a history of people wanting to ban it after shooting events like this, then its reasonable to discuss that as a whole. (I just had to do similar with video games after Trump's statement this week; games have been attributed in several past shootings including Sandy Hook - though here, no specific games, just the form in general). -- Masem ( t) 14:31, 24 February 2018 (UTC)
• 1C or 1D (which probably amount to the same thing, because use in a mass shooting is likely to have attracted a lot of RS about the gun) and 2C. These articles are subject to the content policies like any other. Therefore, if a gun is used in a mass shooting and there is coverage in RS about the gun as a result of that, it belongs in the article, preferably in its own sub-section. If there's a lot of coverage it belongs in the lead too, per WP:LEAD: "It should ... summarize the most important points, including any prominent controversies." Wikipedia:WikiProject Firearms#Criminal use should be rewritten to reflect policy. SarahSV ^(talk) 19:08, 24 February 2018 (UTC)
• 1C/1D I would surmise by extrapolation reading Derringer perma-link, and the prominent picture concerning its most famous killing. As for question 2, go to the article talk page where all the sources can be discussed and have consensus decide based on those. Alanscottwalker ( talk) 19:52, 24 February 2018 (UTC)
• 1C, 2C - we include exhaustive lists of notable incidents for aircraft, I don't see why notable incidents involving specific firearms should be treated any differently. Ivanvector ( ^Talk/ _Edits) 12:16, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
• Case by case. The key point is how much was the specific model discussed by reliable sources in reference to the shooting. If reliable sources merely mention that shooter happened to use this model, but didn't go into detail, and imply it might as well have been any other of a dozen models, we probably do not want to mention it at all; they might as well mention the kind of car the shooter drove up in. If reliable sources say the impact that the shooting had on the company or sales of the model, we might want to have a sentence. If reliable sources state or imply that the specific item was an important factor in the event (like the bump stocks in the Las Vegas shooting), then we want a paragraph or more. -- GRuban ( talk) 17:06, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
• 1C, 2C - Mass shootings are highly notable, and the weapons used are highly noteworthy. There may be rare exceptions to 1C, for example where a firearm is so generic and common (e.g. Glock n) or several firearms are involved, but some did not have a significant role in the shooting. Notably, some of these firearms articles read like product brochures and are overly-dependent on primary sources from the manufacturer. Adding information about how products are used (or misused) would tend to make the articles more well-rounded and compliant with WP:NPOV.- Mr X 🖋 22:38, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
• 1D, 2D Both depend and should be on a case by case basis. Emir of Wikipedia ( talk) 22:51, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
• 1D but that will often lead to 1C: If the weapon is an unremarkable part of mass shootings, and is indeed not remarked upon then lesser levels of coverage are warranted, but if RS either highlight the fact that the weapon is either a common part of said crimes, or an enabling factor in their commission, then we should have in-text coverage of that fact. With regard to the AR-15, 2C is probably the lower limit of coverage, given the abundant RS coverage of both the weapon's role in shootings, emerging coverage of effects of its shooting velocity on mortality, and the need to also cover legislative initiatives to control it specifically. In any case, the notion that societally important products should be discussed on Wikipedia primarily in the way they are sold, marketed, and collected, and not based on their larger social impact belies the purpose of a general encyclopedia.-- Carwil ( talk) 16:44, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
• 1D, 2C Each should be evaluated on its own merits, but it's clearly justified in the AR-15 style rifle case.-- Pharos ( talk) 23:36, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
• 1D, 2C There is no policy or guideline that constitutes a blanket ban or restriction on including this information. Even the oft-cited essay at Wikiproject Firearms includes a caveat: "In general, WikiProject Firearms goals are to work on improving the quality of project-tagged articles without imposing WikiProject Firearms guidelines as mandates." Inclusion and level of coverage should be considered on a true case-by-case basis, regardless of any local consensus that has formed at another article. Edit 3/3/2018: Additionally, Wikipedia:WikiProject Firearms#Criminal use should be changed to reflect the outcome of this RfC.

"AR-15 style rifle" would benefit from a Cultural Influence section similar to AK-47, as well as a mass Shootings section. This is a relatively undeveloped article with plenty of room to discuss its characteristics and the reasons for its popularity along with its use in mass shootings. If this is referred to as "America's rifle" and one of the "most beloved and most vilified rifles", not to mention its role as a "sporting" weapon, then surely there's a story to be told here. That said, our coverage of mass shootings should reflect the significant weight given by reliable sources. The prevalence of AR-15 style rifles in mass shootings has received significant coverage, and this is the appropriate place to include it. – dlthewave ☎ 01:42, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

• 1D, 2C Generally, a case-by-case decision is preferred. In the specific case of the AR-15, I think there is definite cause to include it, with RS such as this NYT article clearly emphasizing that this gun in particular is a preferred weapon of mass shooters in the US. Regards So Why 11:24, 1 March 2018 (UTC)
• Generally not - 1A, 2A, the existing guidance (and firearms essay shown above)seems generally sufficient. The article on any mass killing should list the weapons in the infobox as a key part of the event detail and how it happened. But it would be WP:OFFTOPIC at the weapon article as that is not information about the weapon and is not actually specific to the weapon where the killings could just as easily have taken place with some other make/model. Las Vegas used AR-15; Orlando used Sig-Sauer and Glock 17; Aurora used S&W, Remington shotgun, and Glock 22; Columbine used TEC-DC9, High-point carbine, and a couple of shotguns. The assault-gun ban was for features of weapons and not specific models. I could perhaps see the firearms essay being tweaked to add that if there is some unique feature about the weapon such that only it could have been used, or if the weapon is specifically singled out in a law just for that weapon then it should be mentioned. But to put in a mention at the weapons seems more advocacy than encyclopedic. Cheers Markbassett ( talk) 04:40, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
• 1A, 2A. The specific weapon used in a shooting is unimportant trivia. Go ahead and add it to the article on the shooting, but unless there is something very special about the weapon used (e.g. the shooter used a 3D printed gun because no other was available) there is no reason to keep a list of when the weapon was used. It could just as easily been substituted for any other gun. Natureium ( talk) 15:42, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
• 1D/2D - Anything other than a !vote for case by case decision is probably motivated by POV. (Invited randomly by a bot) Jojalozzo ( talk) 03:14, 3 March 2018 (UTC)
• 1C/2C. Various specific models or types of weapons have been characteristically used in specific types of crimes--not exclusively, but either as a usual element , or as what is in popular opinion --or popular imagination-- a usual element, just as in military service specific models or types are typically used for various purposes. The use of the model name cannot be understood by the reader without knowing such connotations. Guns are normally intended for use, and the use is part of any article about them. DGG ( talk ) 05:16, 3 March 2018 (UTC)
• 1C/2C. This seems the most sensible solution to me. Guns are used in crimes may be "common knowledge" but actors act in movies is common knowledge too and we'd never have an objection to listing an actor's filmography, no matter how small the role. Step away from the whole gun argument. If some person, place, or thing, kept appearing on the national news for various incidents, would there be a strong argument for ignoring those incidents? The Boeing 757 article mentions it was one of the models used in the 9/11 attacks. It's not an indictment of the plane, it's not political. I think by the same token notable crimes where this gun is used should be included, in a neutral, but intellectually honest manner. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ForeverZero ( talk • contribs) 09:20, 7 March 2018 (UTC)
• 1C/2C. Special interest projects should not be able to dictate the tone of coverage for the entire encyclopedia. An encyclopedia article about anything, a toy, a gun, an appliance, a movie, should include the cultural and historical context or else it is just a Wikia fan page. Gamaliel ( talk) 17:24, 7 March 2018 (UTC)
• 1.C / 2.C, or as a second choice any other option but A, provided of course that reliable sources of sufficient depth exist for such content. The use of certain types of firearms in mass shootings (or other high-profile crimes) is an important element in what I understand to be the current discussion about gun regulation in the US, as covered by many reliable sources, and as such is part and parcel of a complete article about the topic. I see certain parallels to our policy WP:WAF concerning fiction: we want to cover our topics from the perspective of the real world, and not only from a "fan interest" / "in-universe" perspective. Sandstein 13:12, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
• 1A / 2C. Rationale:
  1A per WP:NOT#INDISCRIMINATE, WP:NOT#ADVOCACY, WP:NPOV, WP:NOR, etc. The principal, obvious reason some people want to include this stuff on a per-model basis is anti-gun advocacy and to lead the reader to an opinion against the firearm in question. Shall we also include statistics on how frequently the model is used for hunting of particular game? How frequently it is used by private citizens to thwart crimes? How many police departments use it on a per jurisdiction basis? How frequently it is implicated in accidental injuries? How often it is used by suicides? (etc., etc.) If you answer is "no", then thank you for confirming that the mass-shootings thing is just PoV pushing. 1D could also work, but the answer is going to almost always come down to 1A anyway. Exceptions would be rare, e.g. the Uzi was the subject of intense public debate in and of itself, but this is quite rare.
  2C because we "teach the controversy": as a general (though poorly understood) class of firearm, there is noteworthy public policy debate, in multiple countries, about restrictions on AR-15s or even banning them entirely (though much of it is pointless and unrealistic – manufacturers would simply develop a similar modular platform; the appeal of the AR-15 is its modularity, its adaptability, which has nothing to do with "assaultness", an emotive nonsense concept made up by the anti-gun crowd to scare people).
  —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 11:53, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
• 1D 2C - It would be ridiculous to remove this information when there is so much press coverage and proposed legislation specifically mentioning certain gun types. However, including that a certain weapon was used by Charles Manson in the weapon's article seems like trivia to me, to just pull an example out of my butt. Nessie ( talk) 15:03, 15 March 2018 (UTC)
• 1C / 2C - A neutral, extremely well-sourced, SENTENCE has been forged and rejected with a spurious edit summary, and the deletion has been identified by an admin as tendentious editing. DS warnings have been issued. That edit should be restored.

Our existing policies are sufficient to deal with this matter, if the stonewalling on the article is broken by topic banning several tendentious editors. Otherwise it's a battle zone and time sink.

The lack of mention has already caught the attention of the media, to the embarrassment of Wikipedia:

• How gun buffs took over Wikipedia’s AR-15 page. After Parkland, gun control information was strangely hard to find. The Verge
• Pro-gun Group Edited AR-15 Wikipedia Page to Hide Mass Shootings, Newsweek

False requirement: "These paragraphs should only be added if the school shooting in question has had an impact on the gun, or new regulations have been put forward" is not a policy-based requirement, but one created by Wikipedia:WikiProject Firearms, and as such has no legitimacy as it violates several policies. Tendentious editors have created that ad hoc rule. They have no right to use it in article space, and even thinking that way is wrong. -- BullRangifer ( talk) PingMe 05:07, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

The Verge article and the NW article which simply says "The Verge said..." are simply poor articles. The Verge writer gets basic facts wrong and mischaracterizes many events and takes quotes out of context. The article's speak to the poor reporting standards of the author more than anything else. Springee ( talk) 11:41, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

• 1C / 2C - The discussion of the use of particular firearms in mass shootings is absolutely appropriate, as it speaks to their technical capabilities. For example, in the Las Vegas shooting, we learned a great deal about the characteristics of rifles when used in conjunction with bump stocks. Further, remember that future mass murderers rely upon Wikipedia too. If you remove information about mass shootings from firearms articles, how will they be able to make an informed choice of weaponry? Cinteotl ( talk) 06:41, 16 March 2018 (UTC)
• 1A/B and 2C - Pretty much WP:MNA. A lot of this content comes from recent events, and political opinions around gun control. So we don't have the gun control argument on every single gun talk page we should keep the bulk of the content on these incidents on articles dedicated to them, and at most post a link that directs us to the incident. The generalized article should only contain generalized information on the subject. -- Kyohyi ( talk) 13:58, 16 March 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose as existing guidelines are sufficient. – Davey2010 ^Talk 00:13, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
• 1C/2C On the page for the Boeing 767, we mention that it was used for the September 11th attacks. On the page for sonar, we mention the link between active sonar and deaths in marine mammals. When an topic has become associated by the media with a certain kind of event, even if that event itself has an undeniable negative impact on the reputation of the object or topic, it belongs in the article. We cover what is shown by reliable sources; not what we wish was true. Icarosaurvus ( talk) 22:09, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
• 1C, 2C These are highly notable events, including the model of weapon used. No reason to exclude besides pushing a POV. Casprings ( talk) 04:04, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

poll update

Threaded Discussion: Coverage of mass shootings in firearms articles

Just a quick question on item 1. Is it asking if information should be included on say the Colt AR-15 article even if it was not a Colt AR-15 used but another AR type rifle? PackMecEng ( talk) 17:24, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

No, I would consider that to be a separate discussion – dlthewave ☎ 17:57, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

On second thought, I would consider that to be part of item 2.

• It would be undue to include the complete list of murders and massacres committed with AR-15 type rifles. But it would be disingenuous to not have a single mention of the ubiquity of the AR-15 type rifle in the Colt AR-15 article. And the whole Kleenex/paper tissue argument is just a red herring: you can't have an AR-15 type rifle without the original AR-15; not mentioning it (prominently, in the lead, since it is that well-sourced and that important) does no service to the reader and is intellectually dishonest. We do not need to defend Colt, and including a neutrally written paragraph is no attack on Colt, who I am sure are well aware of this matter. It is our job to inform the reader about where these guns come from and what their relation is to the "original". Drmies ( talk) 18:16, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
• I just want to state for the record that I oppose the idea of putting a list of school shootings in the "See also" section for gun articles. The event in question either had an impact on the gun or it didn't. - Knowledgekid87 ( talk) 18:33, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
• Didn't we have this discussion at some time in the past? What was the results of that discussion? I'm sure there's an old RFC out there that was about this exact issue. If someone remembers it as well, and knows where to find it, reading it may give some insight into the existing community consensus on this. -- Jayron 32 18:54, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

That is a significant part of the problem here. Every now and then, a small groups of editors have discussions on various talk pages which often result in a "local consensus", that they then try to rely on when making edits to other pages. Edits that often come in conflict with the "local consensus" established by yet another small group from a different talk page. We need a one-time, centralized discussion with a solid community-wide consensus that can also be written into the guideline (or policy), so that going forward, we can actually rely on that guideline or policy, and not another local consensus cooked up by a yet another small group of editors. At least 3 such discussions started on 3 different pages. They were closed and directed to the talk page of the project that the articles fell under the scope of. There was a discussion going there, but suddenly, it seems we're having it here now. - ^theWOLFchild 19:38, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

@ Jayron32: Here's a relevant RfC that was held on a Talk page of a firearm article: Talk:Ruger_Mini-14#Rfc:_Add_major_incidents_to_article?. The result was "Include". K.e.coffman ( talk) 23:39, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

I recall that one, it was close. Here is another recent RfC. The result was exclude. The results were also close. [ [5]]. Here is a related RfC about adding use in crimes to automotive pages. Interesting that since it was about automobiles instead of guns, the results were strongly against inclusion.[ [6]] In that RfC, claims of censorship were made as were WP:NOTE. Both are effectively addressed by the idea that not everything has to go in every article. No material is being excluded as it appears in the articles about the topic. Springee ( talk) 01:05, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

These two RfCs mentioned directly above (by K.e.coffman & Springee) completely validate my previous comments about conflicting local consensuses. Any group of 5 or 6 pro-gun guys can put together a pro-gun consensus on a particular issue on one page, while at the exact same time, 5 or 6 anti-gun guys can put together an anti-gun consensus on another page, about the same issue. This is one of the reasons we have projects, and the appalling lack of faith and baseless accusations of bias have basically negated the very project that covers this topic and now we're having debates all over the place. What's next? - ^theWOLFchild 01:54, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

• If it wasn't a Colt AR-15 then no, it shouldn't be mentioned. We have a parent article about AR-15s (which seems to be changing names quite often) then we have this article about one particular model. If the crime didn't involve this model why would we even consider linking the two. It's like linking James Dean to the Mustang he didn't drive to his death. Springee ( talk) 19:24, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

• To me, trying to pin people down would go against our WP:Editing policy by imposing a global rule where it should depend on the circumstances and the consensus of editors. Thus I would stick with my original opposition. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 00:23, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

• @ Masem: the reason question 2 doesn't have a "maybe" option is that it deals with only one article (which currently, but not for much longer, resides at modern sporting rifle). ansh 666 02:25, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

• If the information to be included in the generic firearm article doesn't describe the why as explained above, I would change my response to 2B since mere identification seems comparatively trivial. I am concerned about the preponderance of reliable sources treating mass murder as a macabre competition by describing events as a US record or annual record. Professional and amateur contenders are differentiated by exclusion of events like the My Lai Massacre and the Waco siege. Perhaps the next step will differentiate individual achievement from team participation events like the Columbine High School massacre or the 2015 San Bernardino attack. This competitive focus may encourage individuals with self-esteem issues to seek recognition by achieving a higher body count using similar methods. Thewellman ( talk) 20:11, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

Why? Why do we discuss jello shots in Jell-o, it's something people do with it that RS talk about. Alanscottwalker ( talk) 21:12, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

I don't understand the basis for comparison. I suppose we discuss jello shots in the Jell-o article because there does not appear to be a separate article for jello shots, while this discussion involves potential duplication in the event article and the firearm article. Thewellman ( talk) 00:24, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

No. We also discuss jello shots in Gelatin dessert -- we discuss many (most?) things in more than one article because that's how encyclopedic topics work. And really, you don't understand, it's something people do with it that RS talk about. Alanscottwalker ( talk) 00:41, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

Some may not understand the value of links to avoid a duplicated description at every mention of an unfamiliar term, and separated sources without Wikipedia's spectrum of information may require independent discussion because of a lack of linking options. I acknowledge the benefit of a separate description if sources describe firearm characteristics significant in the context of that event, but I consider a simple tabular link adequate if sources merely identify the firearm. Thewellman ( talk) 22:39, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

• FWIW I have closed an RfD on a number of AR-15-related redirects. ~ Amory ( u • t • c) 22:24, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

@ Amorymeltzer: I think you meant to post this in the AR-15 discussion below. – dlthewave ☎ 21:29, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

Indeed. Moved. ~ Amory ( u • t • c) 21:38, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

• Sooo... what's the latest news here? Do we have a consensus on this matter yet? There doesn't seem to be much activity here and we are past the 30-day mark, when most RfCs are reviewed for a possible consensus... and then closed. - ^theWOLFchild 02:45, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

I put in a request at Requests for closure a few days ago. There's a backlog, so we're just waiting for someone to close it. – dlthewave ☎ 02:59, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Well, I guess we'd better hope for some uninvolved admin to come along to do the close, and try to determine if there is a consensus at the same time. Though they might have to individually ask each editor who !voted "oppose" just what they meant, and how it applies to the criteria you set out (especially those editors who contributed before you added additional criteria a week later). There seems to be a difference of perception as to just what they were 'opposing'... - ^theWOLFchild 16:43, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Coverage of mass shootings: RfC wording & prior RfC

• Comment -- I have concerns about the structure of this RfC and the language used, which can lead to misunderstandings. For example, [[Relevant WikiProject Firearms [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Firearms#Criminal use|guideline]] is presented as a guideline. This is, in fact, a project-specific essay and does not supersede actual policies and guidelines, such as WP:NPOV or WP:NOT. This language has been included in the RfC and several !votes (emphasis mine):

1. B. Include links to notable shootings in the "See Also" section (Current WikiProject Firearms guideline) (language in the RfC)
2. Oppose - any changes to the current policy (noted as "1B")
3. Oppose. Existing guidelines (1B) are sufficient.

Some of the resulting votes are therefore subject to varying interpretations. For example:

• Oppose: as existing guidelines are sufficient, and this should be decided on the article talk page.

this could be read as "Oppose, use WP:NPOV instead" or "Oppose, use WikiProject Firearms guideline" (I think it's the former, but if you look at vote #3 above, it's also an oppose based on a "guideline". ping @ Dennis Brown: for clarification.

The selection of prior discussions also appears to be limited. I therefore suggest that:

a. the language in the RfC be changed to [[Relevant WikiProject Firearms [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Firearms#Criminal use|essay]] & "B. Include links to notable shootings in the "See Also" section (per Current WikiProject Firearms essay)"

b. this past page-specific RfC be added to the section on "Relevant talk page discussions": Talk:Ruger_Mini-14#Rfc:_Add_major_incidents_to_article? permalink. I believe that the RfC is relevant since it addressed the same question.

Ping @ Dlthewave: as the author of the RfC to see if these two changes can be made. I don't think we should be conflating project-specific recommendations with community policies and guidelines. K.e.coffman ( talk) 23:25, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion, I've made the requested changes. – dlthewave ☎ 23:53, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

So, after numerous editors have posted !votes with attached comments in the RfC straw-poll, the wording of the RfC is now going to be changed? wow... - ^theWOLFchild 01:59, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

• • I've already clarified above. This kind of hamstringing goes against WP:Editing policy, which is a policy. Let editors decide on a case by case basis. Twice I've been asked to explain, but my objection is much simpler than it is being made out to be. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 02:31, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

Possible Wikipedia:Canvassing

K.e.coffman added this notice to the Wikipedia:Fringe theories/Noticeboard.

RfC notice: Coverage of mass shootings in firearms articles

An RfC relevant to this project has been opened at:

• Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#RfC: Coverage of mass shootings in firearms articles

Interested editors are invited to participate. -- K.e.coffman ( talk) 01:23, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, but... how does this relate to fringe theories, which are the focus of this noticeboard? Shock Brigade Harvester Boris ( talk) 01:25, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

I too wonder..."how does this relate to fringe theories, which are the focus of this noticeboard?"-- RAF910 ( talk) 02:16, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

@ Shock Brigade Harvester Boris: I've been advised by a WikiProject Firearms member in this discussion that nothing stopping you from posting notifications on the "WP:NPOVN or WP:VP" talk pages, or anywhere else for that matter, to involve as much of the community as possible. I assume various noticeboards qualify as "as much community as possible". However, I'd be happy to remove the notice if there's a concern. K.e.coffman ( talk) 02:24, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

No concern at all. My first thought was that there might be some kind of fringe/conspiracy angle to the RfC that I had missed. So I was a bit puzzled but now see that you simply were casting the net as wide as possible. In any event accusations of canvassing are off the mark. I can't see how participating at WP:FTN implies a view one way or the other on issues like gun control, or favored firearm brands, or anything else related to the RFC. Shock Brigade Harvester Boris ( talk) 02:36, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

I was the one that made that comment. That was of course, in support of having the discussion on the project talk page where it belongs in the first place, and where it had been moved to once already, (3 times actually), and where it had already begun, and where several editors had already contributed. I made that comment in response to your claims that editors from the Firearms Project were "biased" and that it wouldn't be possible to have a fair discussion there. But the discussion has since been moved (yet again) to this page, (though I'm not entirely sure why, possibly to quiet your concerns and accusations I suppose). So now that that the discussion (and RfC) is on "neutral ground", your multiple notifications are needless and indeed bordering on canvassing. You've also posted notices at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Crime and Criminal Biography and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Death. Where else are you going to post notices? "WikiProject:Mothers Against Guns"? At what point could one be considered "getting carried away" with all this? - ^theWOLFchild 03:28, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

I have not participated at all in this little kerfluffle but it's hard to imagine those notifications as canvassing. Why would participants at either of those two projects be biased one way or the other on the subject of this RFC? Shock Brigade Harvester Boris ( talk) 04:22, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

If you suspect canvassing, you should follow the process at WP:CANVASS. Bring it up on the user's talk page and take it to ANI if it continues. This is not the appropriate place to discuss.– dlthewave ☎ 04:31, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

User:K.e.coffmans notice to the Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Crime and Criminal Biography is appropriate, because we are talking about crime. His notice to the Wikipedia talk:WikiProject United States seems reasonable, because this is a major issue in the U.S. right now. His notice to the Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Death is a stretch, but I can see it. His notice to the Wikipedia:Fringe theories/Noticeboard, I wonder about that one myself. Also, there’s nothing wrong with shining light on this matter here and asking involved editors for their opinions. That's what we're suppose do here.-- Limpscash ( talk) 05:51, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

• Posting to the Fringe and Paranormal noticeboards can be a form of canvassing. For example, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/John Traynor (Royal Marine) was posted at Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Paranorma. Traynor was a Lourdes pilgrim, an ex-soldier from Liverpool crippled by a wound during WWI who announced that he had been miraculously cured at Lourdes in 1923, an era when pilgrimage to Lourdes was a mass phenomenon; a mainstream Catholic religious practice. The Traynor story turned out to be unusually well sourced; SIGCOV in both popular and academic books and in major newspapers ongoing for over a century. Yet when I began to clean up and source the page, I was assailed by accusations of "adding sources written by believers into the article that support fringe claims. This is a problem for WP:Fringe." Similar attacks on Young Earth creationism, a religious beliefs that is mainstream in some Muslim and Christian circles, but Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Is Genesis History?, about a film supporting Young Earth creationism, was posted at fringe. It is, of course, an "theory," with no support among scientists. The problem is that the debate was not an evaluation of notability. After it was posted at Fringe theories/Noticeboard, editors arrived who treated the AfD as a debate about ""A fringe subject... inside the creationist universe.", asserting that "The fact that it is a film promoting a fringe theory and not an article about the theory itself doesn't really change anything." which as closing editor said, shifted the discussion to the question of "do we apply the notability standards for fringe theories (which require sources independent from those associated with the theory), or for other subjects like films (which just require reliably sourced coverage independent from the subject itself, i.e., the film)?" As with the current AfD Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Spark: A Mother's Story of Nurturing Genius, the point of posting an article about a film, a book or a Lourdes pilgrim to the fringe or paranormal' boards appears to be to draw the attention of true believers who take up the cudgels, against Young Earth creationism, against ways of conceptualizing autism, against Lourdes water, against the lack of effective gun control. In other words, for a certain range of issues, posting at fringe and/or paranormal is effectively a type of canvassing that brings out holy warriors to join the crusade against... whatever is intensely disliked. They rush to articles posted at these boards and iVote delete without - as is very clear at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Spark: A Mother's Story of Nurturing Genius - arguing that editors should IGNORE ALL RULES, in comments that too often show that they have not read the policies or the sources that they cite. E.M.Gregory ( talk) 11:11, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

In this case, however, the post at FTN was NOT canvassing. It was a simple notification, phrased in neutral language. Blueboar ( talk) 11:34, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

• Posting on a noticeboard unconnected with the topic of the AfD can be a form of canvassing if the point of posting there is to attract a group of editors likely to share the posting editor's perspective. User:K.e.coffman has responded that there is no bar on posting to noticeboards, but has not explained his reasons for posting to this particular noticeboard, and, as I explain above, it such postings can skew discussions. E.M.Gregory ( talk) 14:04, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

In order for requesting outside input to be canvassing, it has to be done with the intent to selectively recruit participants to sway the result one way. Maybe on some subjects simply alerting the fringe noticeboard could be canvassing, but I can't for the life of me guess what bias regulars on the fringe noticeboard would bring to this particular discussion. The topic is completely unrelated. That certainly makes the decision to request input there odd, but it was a completely neutral notification that the discussion exists. Unless you have an argument about how this particular instance constituted a deliberate attempt to fill the debate with anti-gun editors, calling it canvassing would really be assuming bad faith on K.e.coffman's part. Your argument amounts to: "It happened before, so it's also happening now. He hasn't explained himself, therefore he's clearly up to no good." Red Rock Canyon ( talk) 20:32, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

I have been volunteering at the Fringe Theories Noticeboard for several years. Can someone please tell me what my political position should be, and what things I should "intensely dislike", because I didn't get any instruction in that regard. - LuckyLouie ( talk) 23:35, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

I think you are expected to be against fringe weapons, and in favor of mainstream ones. So no mention of mass murders in any article about Tesla’s “death ray” (or even “Tesla style death rays”). ;) Blueboar ( talk) 02:58, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

Page move request notice

User K.e.coffman has moved Modern sporting rifle to "AR-15 style rifle" without first seeking consensus. As a controversial and contested page move, made while related discussions were actively taking place (including here, hence this notice), the page has been moved back and a proper page move request has now been posted. Please see Talk:Modern sporting rifle#Requested move 22 February 2018 for more information, and if you wish to participate in the page move discussion. - ^theWOLFchild 03:03, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

@ K.e.coffman: - You should take some time to cool down, this is the second thing I have seen you involved in here. Just hope the editing isn't getting to you is all. - Knowledgekid87 ( talk) 03:09, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

I agree this is a controversial move, as were the edits to change the article scope without consensus. These should be reverted pending a full consensus discussion. These are not the same topic; a sporting rifle is a rifle used for sporting. AR-15 is a specific firearm platform, used for sporting, hunting, defense, military, police, and other rifle types. Also "AR-15 style rifle" is ungrammatical (missing hyphen from compound modifier "AR-15-style"), but such a modifier is potentially confusing, since it has two different kinds of hyphens in it, the first being part of a model name. It also doesn't make any sense, and strongly implies to the reader "rifles styled to look like AR-15s but which are not". —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 12:08, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

@ SMcCandlish: This been discussed and resolved at Talk:AR-15 style rifle/Archive 1#Article Title. Consensus was to move to AR-15 style rifle. This is outside the scope of the RfC, so please bring any concerns to the article talk page. – dlthewave ☎ 16:13, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

If it's quite recently been argued over, I won't re-open it so soon. I suspect others will realize the rename was a bad idea and do a re-RM at some point anyway. —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 22:29, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

First, let me say that I'm a middle-aged white male, raised in the suburbs of a West Coast city, married with children. Which means that I'm often not an example of progressive thinking; I often find that my preconceptions are out of date by a few decades. Second, I need to say I'm more than a little angry about the following; he following may achieve nothing more than allowing me to vent.

When I learned that Tammy Duckworth, a sitting senator in the US Senate, had given birth, I knew it was a big thing. For those of you under the age of 40, you may not know that within living memory women were actively discouraged from holding "serious" jobs due to the fact they could create life. Employers were worried that if they hired a woman (instead of a man), she might decide to get married & quit her job. Or get pregnant & quit her job. Or need to leave for a while to give birth, raise her kid, then expect to be hired back after a few months. Apparently they expected the job came before family in all regards. But sex discrimination was a very real thing that happened at many levels of society, mostly excused due to the fact women could create life. (Have a look at the article American Association of University Women: one of the first studies that group commissioned was to refute the belief that a college education harmed a woman's health & could cause her to be infertile.)

Further, this sexism is very apparent to many women. One of the problems Wikipedia has is attracting a proportional number of women editors, & it would make sense that acknowledging this achievement on our front page might encourage a few more women to edit Wikipedia. And despite WP:Other stuff exists, the fact that a woman having a child while serving as a US Senator was at least as important as discovering a distant star, or a bus crash that killed 15 people. So I submitted it for consideration at Wikipedia:In the news.

Now I'll admit that my judgment about things can be wrong -- & sometimes I'll even admit that I was indeed wrong. However, what made me angry about my submission wasn't just that it was rejected. It was that a total of two men decided it was not newsworthy, & on the basis of these two votes it was rejected as a SNOW CLOSE. All within 2 hours, & without any chance on my part to explain the larger context to those who may not understand it. So I consider this rejection a big fucking deal: we are trivializing the concerns of about half our audience & potential editing pool after insufficient discussion.

We men often act in sexist ways out of ignorance. I know I do, as hard as I try, since I'm married with two daughters: not so much to set a good example to them as to avoid embarrassing myself in front of them. So I have to wonder if this submission would have been given the bum's rush had we far more women Wikipedians; maybe proportional to how many men & women out in the real world. And that we won't get there if we don't consider the interests of people who aren't college-educated, suburban white men under the age of 40. -- llywrch ( talk) 23:57, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose I'm not sure what policy suggestion is being made here, but I almost certainly oppose it. If no policy suggestion is being made, it should be speedy-archived as irrelevant to this page. I note WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS in response to the OP's comments power~enwiki ( π, ν) 00:02, 10 April 2018 (UTC)
• Support Proposal that SNOW closes require more than two votes in two hours. "I'm not sure what policy suggestion is being made here, but I almost certainly oppose it" is paraphrasing Groucho Marx? Hawkeye7 (discuss) 01:30, 10 April 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose. I'm not exactly sure what I'm opposing because In can't figure out what you're proposing, but I don't think any change in policy is needed in response to a senator giving birth being declined by ITN. I agree with that decline, and if it weren't closed, I would have opposed. Natureium ( talk) 01:44, 10 April 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose close, that seemed way too premature for a SNOW closure. I do not see a policy change that could reasonably be considered based on this incident however. Tazerdadog ( talk) 01:47, 10 April 2018 (UTC)
• While I agree that 2 comments in 2 hours is far too short a time for a snow closure (personally I would have just reopened it if it was my nom) "Woman gives birth while keeping job" may have been significant 30 years ago. Its not significant today as you point out Llywrch. Everyone knows how difficult it was to do so historically, but ITN is about significance *now*. This nom was unlikely to pass under the current ITN criteria. While being the first senator to do so is interesting (as TRM pointed try DYK where this sounds like it would be a shoe-in), it would happen sooner or later. Plenty of women for decades have managed the feat. Only in death does duty end ( talk) 01:52, 10 April 2018 (UTC)
• Also this discussion really belongs on the talkpage of ITN candidates rather than here, because this is about site-wide policies, not appealing local discussion closes. Could someone who hasnt commented please move it (rather than just close it) as it does merit further discussion - at least regarding the overly speedy close. Only in death does duty end ( talk) 01:55, 10 April 2018 (UTC)
• If there is any policy change being proposed in here, it seems to be lost within the sociopolitical diatribe of the original post.-- WaltCip ( talk) 11:37, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

I am not sure if this is the correct place for this, but someone has made a clear threat of violence here: https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Lara_Croft&curid=312314&diff=841345395&oldid=841345355 Is there a policy here? Is there an agreed mechanism ? MrMarmite ( talk) 10:17, 15 May 2018 (UTC)

They were temp-blocked by Oshwah an hour before your comment. If any further action were necessary, I assume Oshwah would have taken it. ― Mandruss  ☎ 10:26, 15 May 2018 (UTC)

It has been taken care of and reported. ~Oshwah~ ^{(talk) (contribs)} 10:31, 15 May 2018 (UTC)

To answer your questions, MrMarmite, please see WP:Responding to threats of harm. ​— DoRD ( talk)​ 10:41, 15 May 2018 (UTC)

Thanks..felt I should say something, and glad it's been dealt with. Thanks for quick replies MrMarmite ( talk) —Preceding undated comment added 10:54, 15 May 2018 (UTC)

Hi

I recently discovered that Children in emergencies and conflicts has been blanked and turned into a redirect because of a discussion between 4 users on Teahouse here. I've never seen this kind of process before where rather than something going through improvements by users or a nomination for deletion, a group of users can decide to remove an article from the public's view. My question is, is this a recognised process? I've looked at several policy pages and can't find anything similar described. If this isn't a recognised process what should happen?

Thanks

John Cummings ( talk) 14:39, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

Per WP:BLANKANDREDIRECT, blanking and redirecting can be done by anyone in good faith as a bold edit if they feel the article is problematic. Pages are easy to retrieve from the page history of the redirect if there is disagreement. -- Ahecht ( TALK
PAGE) 16:07, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

Thanks very much @ Ahecht:, the policy says 'relevant talk page', in this case does that mean the article talk page? Thanks again for your help, John Cummings ( talk) 16:30, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

Don't focus on the process, focus on the result. Do you believe the page should not be a redirect? Do you think it should remain in the state it was in before the redirect? If so, that determines a different course of action than if you don't object to the redirect itself. So far, all you have noted is an objection based on procedurals, not on results. At Wikipedia, we're primarily results oriented... -- Jayron 32 16:39, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

@ Jayron32:, thanks, I don't agree that the page should be a redirect, I'm just trying to find out the correct process to dispute it. John Cummings ( talk) 16:46, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

See WP:BRD. If you see a change that you disagree with, revert the change, and invite those who made it to discuss it with you. They should be willing to do so. -- Jayron 32 16:52, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

I've started a discussion at the appropriate article talk page to see where consensus does lie. Please contribute there. Closing this, as the general policy question seems to have been answered here. -- Jayron 32 16:58, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

Should articles on professional football teams (any sort of football) specify what kind of football the team plays, at first reference? 19:42, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

Background

The use of the word "football" is contentious, particularly among sporting fans from different countries. Wikipedia long ago came to an accommodation whereby the main football article would cover all kinds ("codes") of football, rather than choosing one of them to have the unmodified name "football".

The question here is what should be done about articles on football teams. In general, articles on professional American football teams specifically say "American football" at first reference. However, many articles on professional association football ("soccer") teams simply say "football" at first reference, albeit usually with a piped link to association football. I have not checked in detail about the practice for other codes (such as Canadian football, Australian rules football, rugby union, rugby league, Gaelic football).

There are related questions about other articles related to one of the codes of football (the most obvious one is players) but I prefer not to raise those here. That brings in a complication with the word "footballer", which is arguably specific to association football (or at least not used much for American football), so it is possibly less of an issue. Also I prefer to concentrate on professional teams, to avoid having to worry about the locution college football, which is arguably specific to American football.

Survey question

Should articles on professional football teams visibly call out the code of football, at first reference?

Straw-poll: Specifying the code of football at first reference

• No - because in the vast, vast, vast majority of cases it's not ambiguous. Giant Snowman 19:46, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

Actually, in the vast majority of cases, it is ambiguous to me, and to many others. This is because the vast majority of articles are about soccer, and in my mind "football" means something else. You already know this from the previous discussion elsewhere. Why do you repeat your false claim here? Very poor behaviour. HiLo48 ( talk) 23:57, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

• Yes. Or failing that, we should stop doing it for American football. -- Trovatore ( talk) 19:50, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
• Yes It is ambiguous for most of the major primary English-speaking countries (Australia, USA, Canada, Ireland) who have other football codes (and as far as I know there is rugby also in the UK, though I have no idea if it is referred to as football there). Furthermore the first reference should be full, just as the first mention of a person's name is their full name and afterwards they are referred to by the family name. -- SuperJew ( talk) 20:37, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

At least in this bit of the UK, you would only use "football" to mean rugby if it was obvious from context that you didn't mean association football. And even then it would be a touch strange. Kahastok talk 22:23, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

If I remember correctly, Andy Capp used to refer to rugby as "football". At least I think it was rugby. It was some ball sport where you carried the ball. The comic strip appeared in our paper when I was a boy. A lot of the cultural references were lost on me, I think. -- Trovatore ( talk) 22:46, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

• Yes per the ambiguity concern. Usually other context makes it fairly obvious, but sometimes not. -- Izno ( talk) 20:41, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
• No this appears to be primarily a gridiron problem. For the vast majority of football related articles, a football team means association football. It seems ridiculous to specify the type of football played in a Kenyan professional football team article because Americans use the term to describe a purely American sport. SportingFlyer talk 20:56, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

• @ SportingFlyer: As I mentioned above, it's ambiguous in at least Australia, USA, Canada, and Ireland, which all have other football codes as well as association football. -- SuperJew ( talk) 21:18, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
• Even if a majority of football articles may be about association football, but for about half of English Wikipedia's readers, the term is ambiguous at best (or misleading at worst). -- Ahecht ( TALK
  PAGE) 16:37, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

• Yes. I prefer to avoid piping when I can, so [[association football]] rather than [[association football|football]]. It takes only a little writing skill to avoid repetition like "American [[American football]] player." I don't see much point in editing every football-related article to achieve this, but it should be the preferred style and corrected when convenient. Jack N. Stock ( talk) 21:08, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
• No For countries that it maybe ambiguous then sure use what will be easier identified for those articles like what already happens in Australia with WP:NCFA but in countries like Germany, England, even my country New Zealand, piping Association Football to football is fine. NZFC ^(talk) 21:59, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
  • Is it obvious to non-New Zealanders that this is the case, when visiting an article on an NZ club? -- Trovatore ( talk) 22:06, 11 April 2018 (UTC) I think if you asked most people here to name a "New Zealand football club", they'd look puzzled for a second, and then come up with the All Blacks. -- Trovatore ( talk) 23:31, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
    • No most could name a football club and would name either the Wellington Phoenix or Auckland City as the two they would know if they knew very little about football in this country. All Blacks and everything else like them use Rugby. Competition is called Rugby Championship, Super Rugby, they don't use football. Also one of the reasons New Zealand Football officially changed their name from New Zealand Soccer to New Zealand Football in 2007 as it was more commonly used term for the sport in the country. NZFC ^(talk) 23:21, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
      • I think you missed the use by Trovatore of the word "here". HiLo48 ( talk) 23:36, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

• Yes per MOS:COMMONALITY and per WP:PARIS. On first reference (and only on first reference in general) it makes sense to make it clear what sport we mean. I accept of course that most people know that football in Germany generally means association football, but not everyone will - young people or people less familiar with European sporting traditions may well be unaware - and those people may be using Wikipedia as well. Kahastok talk 22:23, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

Addendum: my comment assumes that the common term to be used is "association football". If the word to be used is "soccer", then this changes. MOS:COMMONALITY says that we should "prefer vocabulary common to all varieties of English". The word "soccer" is not used in British English - the variety most likely to be appropriate on these articles - and so MOS:COMMONALITY does not apply. Kahastok talk 17:58, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

The word "soccer" used to be used in British English. That's where it came from! Has it really completely disappeared? When? Why? HiLo48 ( talk) 23:10, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

The British English word for this sport is "football", and is not ambiguous 99.9% of the time. "Association football", the name of our article by consensus (after exhaustive discussion that I see you have been part of), is a sensible compromise if for some reason "football" is not clear (e.g. you are at Rugby School). You'd only use "soccer" if you were actively mocking Americans - you'd probably be putting on a fake Appalachian accent at the time. Kahastok talk

• No - In general, the code of the game is not ambiguous when you consider the context of the article (i.e. any obvious national ties the subject may have), and in cases where it is ambiguous, the link should be sufficient to allay that. If that means articles about players of American football start referring to their subjects as "football players" whereas before they would have said "American football players", I'm okay with that. – Pee Jay 23:10, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

To a fan of another football code, it is always ambiguous, until one reads enough of the article to figure out the context. Why put that load on readers? HiLo48 ( talk) 00:10, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

• Yes — given the sudden and inexplicable movement, within the Australian press, apparently driven by the death of one Johnny Warren, to sequester the term "football" for soccer. Lindsay658 ( talk) 23:40, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
• Yes Players of Australian Rules football are universally described as "footballers" by fans of that game and in local media coverage. The sport itself is described as "football" by its fans. The clubs (many of them older than almost all Association football clubs, beginning in the late 1850s), are similarly described as "football clubs". In relevant articles on Wikipedia efforts are made to make the sport involved 100% clear at first mention. The same should apply to Association football articles. HiLo48 ( talk) 00:05, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
• Yes Why risk ambiguity, when it can easily be avoided? It is highly unlikely to be ambiguous if a German reader reads and article about a German footballer, but much more to be so if an Australian reader reads about an Irish footballer (Does he play association football? GAA football? Aussie Rules football?) Avoid ambiguity as soon as possible. By the way, Encyclopædia Brittanica seems to always refer to it as "football (soccer)" eg. in this article, which seems sensical. TheMightyPeanut ( talk) 00:59, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

I would personally agree, but for reasons I have never understood, a lot of soccer fans seem to actively dislike the name "soccer", at least here in Australia. It's stronger than simply preferring the name "football". I have even been told "soccer" is offensive, but have never been told why. (These discussions can be quite difficult.) HiLo48 ( talk) 03:06, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

My understanding is that the "soc" part of "soccer" derives from "association". So etymologically at least, soccer is an informal colloquialism. In America, it's the name of the sport, notwithstanding the efforts of a few extremists enthusiasts to popularize the name "football" for it. I gather the same may be true in Australia. But it's not an Americanism or an Australianism. It is arguably informal, at least in origin, and I can understand why the more serious sort of fan might not like that. -- Trovatore ( talk) 04:25, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

That makes some sense, but it's only a recent thing in Australia. Until 2004, the peak competition in Australia was the National Soccer League. I have felt like it's a form of Newspeak to which we are all expected to conform. HiLo48 ( talk) 04:37, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

• Yes - if it's an article about a football club/team of any code is "obvious" enough to not need the code mentioned, it's also obvious enough to not need the sport mentioned. Everyone who knows that Juventus is an association football club also by definition knows that Juventus is a football club, so why do we even mention that? The answer there is that we include it because - despite the presumptions of some comments here - many people have no idea what Juventus is, and more importantly because it's a very important piece of information about the club that is appropriate for an encyclopedia. Even if we want to pretend that it's immediately obvious to everyone on earth what Hungerford Town F.C. is, Wikipedia has no policy that something which is deemed obvious should be excluded from articles. In fact, WP:OBVIOUS states precisely the opposite. For example, Hand currently says "The human hand normally has five digits", and Sky has "During daylight, the sky appears to be blue [...] At night, the sky appears to be a mostly dark surface". I don't think that " Tokyo Verdy is a Japanese association football club" is an unreasonable clarification. Sellyme ^Talk 03:36, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
• No The first sense of the term is the one that is most popular in the world. All others may need some clarification, such as American football, Australian football, which in my corner of the world is called Australian rules football, Canadian football, and any of the other variants. It's appropriate to set it up as [[association football|football]] in the vast majority of articles as that makes it clear which code is being discussed in case it's not clear from the rest of the context of the rest of the first sentence. And why is this in the policy section rather than proposals? Walter Görlitz ( talk) 05:25, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
  • Taking the last point first, this is the "policy and guidelines" sections; this would be a guideline. As to your main point, frankly, that's the attitude on the part of association-football fans that's most objectionable, namely that association football is "real" football and everything else needs qualification. That's not the agreement that was reached at football all those years ago. -- Trovatore ( talk) 05:50, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
  • (On a less emotional level, no, the link does not in fact make it clear. You can't assume people will follow links. Context has to be established in the visible text. Links are good for background, but the reader needs to have notice that there's some background information required.) -- Trovatore ( talk) 05:54, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
  • The question isn't whether it's the most popular in the world, since this is a discussion purely about content on the English Wikipedia. According to the latest stats, 51.8% of enwiki readers are from the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and South Africa, where association football is refered to as "soccer". -- Ahecht ( TALK
    PAGE) 16:44, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
• Yes There are enough fans of different codes around the world that this can become ambiguous. Although a lot of articles would have enough context to state which code it is, most readers generally only read the very beginning of an article (unless there is a strong specific interest to read on), therefore, I don't think it hurts to provide clarity by adding one or two words to the first reference of football. Flickerd ( talk) 07:45, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
• Yes - I think User:SuperJew, User:Kahastok, and User:Sellyme have articulated several good points. -- Khajidha ( talk) 11:33, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
• No A blanket rule like this is pointless and will be in conflict with WP:ENGVAR. If an article begins with the sentence "Footown United is a football club based in Footown, England", then there's no ambiguity as to what is meant by the word "football" in that case. Number 5 7 13:24, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
  • For the editors claiming that "association football" would be less ambiguous, do you think editors who don't understand what code of football is being referred to in articles by the context are more likely to know what "association football" is? The sport is very rarely called by that name – it's either football or soccer, and as I noted in the section below, when I asked someone what association football was, the answer I got was "rugby". As such, I don't think "association football" is any less ambiguous than simply "football" because I'd guess that fewer people are likely to recognise that name for the sport than understand what "football" is meant by the context. Number 5 7 11:33, 13 April 2018 (UTC)
• Yes, articles should be written for a wide audience, not only for people who already know that in a particular locality "football" means one particular variety. older ≠ wiser 13:29, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
• Yes MOS:COMMONALITY directly applies here. The essay WP:POPE is also relevant. Anomie ⚔ 13:37, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
• Yes per BKonrad - no good reason not to (it seems the reason given is 'too much information', which is rather bizarre for a brief mention and also rather bizarre for writing an encyclopedia) and this is generally helpful in use of language for a broad audience (no one has ever been harmed by learning multiple words for the same thing, and they have most likely been helped.) -- Alanscottwalker ( talk) 17:19, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
• Yes To avoid ambiguity. As in the - slightly altered - example of User:Number 57 If an article begins with the sentence "Footown United GAA is a football club based in Footown, England", then there's no ambiguity as to what is meant by the word "football" in that case.. In fact I doubt that severely. How many non-Europeans would understand straight away that this is about Gaelic football? The Banner  talk 14:36, 12 April 2018 (UTC) By the way NFL is also not necessarily about American football as there is also the national Football League run by the GAA, as you can expect for Gaelic football.
  • Unfortunately I think that example is a bit of a straw man because you're combining Gaelic football and England. "Footown United GAA is a football club based in Footown, Republic of Ireland" would have been a proper comparison. Number 5 7 14:40, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
    • No, it is not. See for example: Scotland GAA and British GAA. The Banner  talk 16:40, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
• Whatever y'all decide is fine with me and I mean that!-- Paul McDonald ( talk) 14:37, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
• Comment the issue I have with this is the areas where football has multiple meanings already have been disambiguated. Sydney FC or Columbus Crew SC call themselves a soccer club in their article - for people in Australia and the United States, this is a much better descriptor than association football. North Melbourne Football Club call themselves an Australian Rules football club as well, but the continuing and constant disambiguation in Australia is normal (personally I've heard "footy" used to describe it much more than "football"). I'm not sure most Americans would know what "association football" is. (Columbus even call themselves a soccer team!) Shamrock Rovers F.C. Also, nobody uses the term "association footballer," a Google search shows it's only used basically twice and on Wikipedia. My concern is in the interests of clarity, we will actually cause more confusion. SportingFlyer talk 14:38, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
• Yes, except for cases where context already addresses the ambiguity (i.e. prefer "The Toronto Argonauts are a Canadian football team..." over "The Toronto Argonauts are a Canadian football team from Canada..."), and preferring [[association football|soccer]] to describe North American association football clubs ("Toronto FC is a soccer team..."). With the exception of a handful of defunct teams in Category:Canadian football teams in the United States, there is no cross-border overlap. Australian rules football teams seem to already describe themselves as "Australian rules football teams" ("football" doesn't predominantly describe Australian rules football in Australia the way that "football" describes gridiron football in North America, at least it seems that way to me) so that doesn't seem to be an issue. Doing this would match the treatment in other sports: for example, North American hockey teams are most commonly described in the lede as "xxx is an ice hockey team" even though ice hockey is the strongly predominant form of hockey played in the continent. Ivanvector ( ^Talk/ _Edits) 14:40, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

You really must visit my home city of Melbourne, Australia some time. You may get a surprise. The word "football" alone is used to describe the game invented there almost universally in local media and in conversation. (OK, it's also shortened to "footy" quite often.) We add "Australian" and sometimes "rules" when we know we have a broader audience. That is all we are asking of soccer and its fans. HiLo48 ( talk) 22:57, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

• No not because this would necessarily be a bad thing to do, but because it doesn't need to be policy. Especially because it might conflict with MOS:ENGVAR and specifically MOS:ARTCON and MOS:TIES. The sport of association football is referred to as "football" by the English and others of those that follow that sport, including those readers that do not come from Anglosphere countries e.g. Germany, France, Spain, various African countries, South America, etc. I don't see why the readership of other anglosphere countries means this should be rigid policy. The main reason this particular proposal isn't so bad is that it is referring to clubs rather than players. Imagine David Beckham being referred to as an "association footballer." No one would understand what that means or why it's different from just calling him a footballer. Whereas with a club there might be some ambiguity for those that haven't heard of a major club like ACF Fiorentina or Brescia Calcio. But since the lede then refers to the specific code of football, should the rest of the article use that code? Once using association football to describe a club, does one then use "football" for simplicity or "association football" for consistency? I don't see how this kind of blanket change is helpful.

As a side note, I think the discussion above referring to the pushback against soccer, and equilibrating it to Newspeak as HiLo48 did is entirely inappropriate. This is not the place to be having such discussions. Jay eyem ( talk) 15:24, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

User: Jay eyem: Just saw your last question above, about what to do at second reference. The question doesn't specify, but my assumption is that, once context is established, articles (about all codes) will fall back to just saying "football". There is no consistency problem here; calling out the code at first reference establishes what you're talking about, and after that you use a natural style.

(Though I suppose this would be modified for cases like soccer clubs in the US; for those articles you would use the common term for the English variety. Similarly, if there are American football teams in the UK, I would expect those articles to keep repeating "American football".) -- Trovatore ( talk) 03:45, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

1. Can you explain the "pushback" against "soccer"? I would truly like to understand why something acceptable for over a century suddenly became unacceptable?

2. Players of Australian football are (outside Wikipedia) known simply as footballers. Does that make David Beckham a player of Australian football? Please realise that what you see as common around where you live is NOT common everywhere. HiLo48 ( talk) 23:03, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

Because "footballer" is most commonly used to refer to association football internationally. If it is used in Australia, then that would make it the exception, not the rule. And I'm not answering your question about the pushback against soccer since you are competent enough to google that and see for yourself rather than making pointed arguments about it. Not only was that swipe at a large group of people unnecessary, you are starting to WP:BADGER people that disagree with you. You need to not respond to multiple comments, such as you did to GiantSnowman or NZFC and now to me, without trying to create more substantive arguments. Please watch your tone before responding to me again. Jay eyem ( talk) 00:00, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

Please drop the threats. My arguments are strong in this subject area. They have been well tested in other discussions. Please discuss what I say, rather than telling me to stop saying it. HiLo48 ( talk) 07:44, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

I'm not threatening you and you know that. You made a callous swipe at GiantSnowman and literally likened those pushing back against the word soccer to Newspeak. That's remarkably inappropriate for this discussion. And once again you have failed to bring anything substantive to the argument with this response. You repeating that "football" means something else to you several times in this thread already contributes nothing to the discussion. We are all aware that "football" means something different to people in different countries. You insisting that I answer your question about the pushback against the word soccer has no place here and you know it. You google the word "footballer" and every link you see for several pages only relates to the sport of association football. You are badgering others and not demonstrating good faith. So unless you are going to make a substantive argument, rather than accusing others of threatening you for calling out your behavior, don't respond to me again. Jay eyem ( talk) 15:00, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

Google tailors results for you based on what it knows you're interested in. The result of your search there is meaningless in a global discussion. I did not insist on anyone answering any question. I asked it, because I would truly like to know the answer. (Do you know the answer?) I keep repeating the fact that "football" means something different to me because I keep seeing posts here claiming that it's never ambiguous, even after I have pointed out that it is (maybe people should read other's posts first), or that it doesn't matter if it is because the people to whom it's ambiguous don't matter because they are a minority. I will respond to you or anyone else as often as I feel necessary, because I think facts and logic are important in Wikipedia. HiLo48 ( talk) 22:37, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

The objection to "soccer" boils down to WP:ENGVAR. "Soccer" is not a word that is used in this context in British English and if we were to use it it would rather imply that the article was written in American English or for an American audience. In British English Manchester United is a football team. "Association football team" sounds neutral and appropriate if disambiguation is needed. Calling it a "soccer team" is not far off referring to Shane Warne as a " pitcher" Kahastok talk 09:22, 14 April 2018 (UTC)

Sorry. Thanks for trying, but that doesn't work for me. I am Australian. In Australia we had a National Soccer League until 2004. I grew up in the 1950s and 60s surrounded by English immigrants who happily called the game soccer. They enthusiastically played the Soccer Pools, hoping to make their fortunes. Now soccer fans hate the word. Something changed. What? Why? When? HiLo48 ( talk) 11:46, 14 April 2018 (UTC)

In Australia we had the Victorian Football Association for nearly a century. For most people "association football" means "Australian football". Hawkeye7 (discuss) 12:50, 14 April 2018 (UTC)

I'm not Australian, so I can't tell you what happened in Australia. Maybe your English immigrants just accepted that "football" meant something else in Australia and were integrating. An English immigrant to the US might do the same. I can believe that the change might just have been a marketing decision that kinda took hold among the Australian fanbase. (Wasn't it around the time of the Greek Euro 2004 win? I seem to recall that being far more significant in Australia than previous European Championships had been.)

But more pertinently, I would note that the case that I have endorsed above for disambiguating to " association football" doesn't apply to "soccer", as you can't use WP:COMMONALITY to insist on a word that is not used in the variety of English you're claiming to be writing in. Kahastok talk 16:54, 14 April 2018 (UTC)

No, what happened was that the different codes of football are all descended from a common and recent ancestor. Complaining that they are all called football is like complaining that half your cousins share your surname. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 00:07, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

At this point I'd just like to mention that the question is about visibly calling out the code of football at first reference; it doesn't specify how. I have been consistently saying "association football", for that code, because "soccer" seems to engender a fair amount of dislike in some ambits. But if "soccer" is the better word for Australian articles (as I think it is for US articles), I think that counts as specifying the code. -- Trovatore ( talk) 03:31, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

Australian teams almost aren't the issue here - that ambiguity is something we should already be handling per WP:ENGVAR. The principle point of contention here is the use of "football" without disambiguator on articles about teams in Europe and South America, that are using British English per WP:ENGVAR (otherwise they wouldn't be using "football"). "Soccer" is unacceptable on these articles per WP:ENGVAR because it is not used in British English. Kahastok talk 19:05, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

How does this explain why Australian fans of association football switched from "soccer" to "football"? Kahastok talk 19:06, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

It doesn't. This was a marketing exercise that kicked off in 2004. The peak body, the National Soccer Federation, was struggling throughout the 1990s with the fact that soccer was an ethnic sport, and had not been embraced by mainstream Australia. The competition had been revamped, with the old ethnic-group-affiliated clubs swept away and replaced with new, regional ones. The culmination of the process was to re-brand the sport itself in an attempt to remove the ethnic association. The term "football" was chosen precisely because the term could not become synonymous with soccer. A multi-million dollar advertising campaign was launched, "Football, but not as you know it". As you can probably guess from the comments on the page, the effort has met with mixed success. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 04:50, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

Your final seven words may just be the understatement of the year. HiLo48 ( talk) 04:55, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

• Yes per user:older ≠ wiser among others. Gråbergs Gråa Sång ( talk) 15:54, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
• Yes per Hilo and others. Like it or not, the term football is ambiguos for a large portion of the English-speaking world. Calidum 17:32, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
• Yes to prevent ambiguity. By the way, the same policy should apply to "hockey". —  Stanning ( talk) 18:50, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

I'll second the suggestion about hockey. -- Khajidha ( talk) 18:54, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

• No, unless we're going to pipe to [[association football|football]], which would be fine. A vast number of people don't understand that "association football" means the normally understood code of football to 90% of the world's population. If we don't pipe, we're going to get a lot of timesink with people changing it back, and I don't see the utility of messing about with thousands of articles where for the the vast majority the sport is obvious. Black Kite (talk) 19:02, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
  • What you mean? We cannot link to football, there. Alanscottwalker ( talk) 19:05, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
    • I don't understand what you mean. I am saying that we should pipe association football -> "football" except in the minority of (association football) cases where there may be ambiguity (i.e. teams in Australia, Ireland). Saying that "Manchester United are an association football club" sounds simply ridiculous. Black Kite (talk) 19:08, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
      • But "Manchester United Football Club is a professional association football club", sounds fine. Alanscottwalker ( talk) 22:06, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
        • No, it's spurious. The article is completely fine as it is. We don't need to specify "association" where it is obvious, and should only be doing it where there is the danger of confusion. This is just another pointless change that will cause a timesink for many others. To begin with, there are 16,660 articles in the "Association Football Clubs" category alone. Black Kite (talk) 22:25, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
          • Who is going to define those times when it is obvious, and when there is danger of confusion? To me, the word "football" means Australian football, because that's what I was brought up with. Therefore, every time I see the word, I am potentially confused. In fact, you should be too. If not, you are pretending there is only one meaning. And that's the problem here. People who cannot see things from the perspective of others. HiLo48 ( talk) 23:10, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
            • I don't think I've ever confused an article about a UK football club as being about a different sport. But then, why would I? For the UK example, the very small amount of such articles that aren't about association football (i.e. London GAA) make it very clear what they're about, for obvious reasons. Obviously, articles about Australian (and possibly Irish) teams are different, and there's absolutely no problem there with making it clear. But in countries that have few or no professional football clubs of other codes, what's the point? Why mess about with tens of thousands of articles where it is perfectly obvious what their subject is? Black Kite (talk) 23:39, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
              • You haven't. But then, you apparently write on UK-specific topics (your user page mentions a couple of articles on British Rail or some such), so if not British yourself, you apparently have an interest and likely expertise in British culture. So the disambiguation is not for your benefit, but for the benefit of readers less familiar with British culture. -- Trovatore ( talk) 23:45, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
                • You're missing the point. If I was reading an article on an Australian football club (or an Irish one, for that matter), then yes I would expect the article to tell me explicitly what code of game it is. But that doesn't arise in 90%+ of countries. But I'm pretty sure that Australian readers, if they come across an article on a football club in the UK, or Germany, or Brazil (or pretty much everywhere else) are unlikely to be suddenly confused that it might be about an Australian rules team. There's also an issue of WP:ENGVAR and WP:COMMONNAME here. The COMMONNAME in those countries is "football", not "association football", and changing them all would appear to be against those guidelines. Black Kite (talk) 23:52, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
                  • Part of WP:ENGVAR is WP:COMMONALITY, which in my view supports naming the code of football at first reference. As for COMMONNAME, this is just disambiguation. Once the term is unambiguously explained (with text, not a link) I have no objection to falling back to "football" in the rest of the article.
                    By the way, in the States, the common name of American football is also just "football". So should articles on American football teams drop the "American"? That would be a possible way to restore equal treatment between the codes. But it would do it by removing information rather than by adding it. I would prefer to add information. -- Trovatore ( talk) 00:00, 13 April 2018 (UTC)
                    By the way, COMMONNAME is actually about article titles, which are not under discussion here. -- Trovatore ( talk) 00:02, 13 April 2018 (UTC)
                    • I can sort of see your point, but my view remains that it's an enormous amount of work for little return. Black Kite (talk) 00:05, 13 April 2018 (UTC)
                      • As with style guidelines generally, there's no work required of anyone. There is no proposal to immediately go correct all articles, or anything like that. It just would allow someone who wanted to make the correction, in a particular article, to do so, and to be able to point to this outcome as justification. -- Trovatore ( talk) 00:22, 13 April 2018 (UTC)
        • It sounds very pedantic, honestly. “Manchester United” “Association Football” brings up 720k results on Google, while “Manchester United” “football” -“association” brings up 6.6 million. Seems the pedantry largely extends to historical articles and academic journals. SportingFlyer talk 22:31, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
          • • You mean it's used where people are explaining things, like in an encyclopedia, we could go with "football (soccer)" [7], but since we have association football to distinguish the type of football it seems nice for people wanting to learn to do that. Alanscottwalker ( talk) 03:13, 13 April 2018 (UTC)
• Yes where it might be ambiguous, but no otherwise. In other words, we don't need a guideline for it. We just use common sense. I regularly create shitty stubs when newbies start at ITFC, and I always say they're an association football player but invariably pipe it because we never say "association football" any longer. But I get the issue, that some odd gridiron fan or Australian will be so confused by the article I've just written that they'll immediately assume that it means Australian Rules Football. Or, when I was a Sea Scout, we did a lot of crab football (which hurt, but made you a stronger man, and whose link ironically redirects to "crab soccer"). 99.5% of the time this disambiguation is not required in articles, but if piped appropriately I see little harm in giving the code of "football" in the opening sentences. The Rambling Man ( talk) 22:37, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
  • The point is specifically not to pipe it, but to call it out visibly, as the question states. -- Trovatore ( talk) 22:38, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
    • Why, though, if the article is unambiguous? Why are we making pointless work for volunteer editors with nil return from it? Black Kite (talk) 22:48, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
      • • A "yes" answer would not require any work from volunteers. It would just establish that this is the way articles ought to be written. Eventually. There is no deadline.
          As for them being unambiguous, that is far from clear. While I understand that if an article about a UK club says "football", it almost certainly means association football, you can't count on that being clear to all readers. Articles on professional American football teams almost always say "American football" at first reference, and I just think American football and association football should be treated the same. -- Trovatore ( talk) 23:11, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
      • Indeed, okay well forget it then. I don't want all the trad association football articles needing to state "association football" when it's not needed. I was already erring towards the common sense argument, if for some reason some individual played in two different codes of "football" then that would need to be addressed but otherwise, it's looking unlikely that we need to do this. The Rambling Man ( talk) 22:52, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
        • I say again. "To me, the word "football" means Australian football, because that's what I was brought up with. Therefore, every time I see the word, I am potentially confused." And I do read widely. (That's why I'm here.) HiLo48 ( talk) 23:41, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
          • I also read widely and am a big Australian football fan and I literally have never come across this potential confusion. It’s pretty clear when an Aussie rules footballer is an Aussie rules footballer on this site. Same with clubs. And you also know any international article is hugely unlikely to be an Aussie rules team. SportingFlyer talk 23:24, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
            • It's your use of qualifying words such as "pretty" and "unlikely" that prove my point. While at a rational level I know differently, over half a century of living somewhere where the word "football" means nothing but Australian football means that it's what my irrational mind automatically tells me the word means every time I see it. HiLo48 ( talk) 23:41, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
• Yes: At a cost of 12 extra characters, it reduces ambiguity for a large number of our readers. It basically costs nothing to make Wikipedia more useful. -- Jayron 32 02:30, 13 April 2018 (UTC)
• Yes. Simple way to avoid any potential confusion with minimal effort. The undisambiguated "football" means different things in different parts of the English-speaking world, so including the specific code only can serve to clarify. oknazevad ( talk) 02:48, 13 April 2018 (UTC)
• Yes. Maybe there's a hint at WP:LEAD which says "A good lead tells the reader the basics in a nutshell". Disambiguating the code is a surely a basic. Moriori ( talk) 03:32, 13 April 2018 (UTC)
• Yes per MOS:ENGVAR, WP:NPOV & the avoidance of ambiguity. Cabayi ( talk) 16:29, 13 April 2018 (UTC)
• No. The survey question says "visibly", and there's generally no need to spell out "association football" in the visible text in the lead of an article. In most countries where "football" would be ambiguous, the article would use "soccer" per ENGVAR. Of course, even for Manchester United F.C., it's useful to link the word "football" to the specific type of football; this is the benefit of being a hypertext encyclopedia. power~enwiki ( π, ν) 00:29, 14 April 2018 (UTC)
  • The thing is, readers may not know in what countries "football" is ambiguous, or what it means in a given article or country. If all our readers were American, we could always say "football" for American football and "soccer" for association football. If they were all British, we could always say "football" for association football and "American football" for American football. But our readers are from all over. We have to assume that articles on English clubs will be read by Americans, articles on American teams will be read by Brits, articles on Australian teams will be read by Canadians. It seems reasonable to give all of them a heads-up as to what the article is talking about. -- Trovatore ( talk) 03:06, 14 April 2018 (UTC)
    • The problem with this logic is we have different guidelines for different countries. If "association football" were called "soccer" everywhere, this would not be a problem, but we already disambiguate the sport based on where the club is located, and it's not really a big concern. I would not mind a guideline for players making "football (soccer)" a disambiguator where a disambiguation would be welcomed, as this to me is strongly preferable to association footballer, which is a ridiculous phrase. SportingFlyer talk 05:41, 14 April 2018 (UTC)
      • So the thing to note here is that WP:ENGVAR includes WP:COMMONALITY. It is perfectly fine for an article to be written in the English variety of an English-speaking country with which it has "strong national ties", but it still needs to be understandable for readers from all varieties. That's why the RfC refers to calling out the code of football at first reference, not for the whole article.
        As for players, though it's a related question, it's not strictly speaking in the scope of this RfC, which is about teams. -- Trovatore ( talk) 06:34, 14 April 2018 (UTC)
• Yes per Black Kite. I don't want to see the clunky intrusion of "association football" in thousands of articles when the vast majority of readers will know that Liverpool F.C. or Ronaldo play that particular code of football. Use the piped version, that way everyone wins. The Rambling Man ( talk) 09:25, 14 April 2018 (UTC)
  • I think you already !voted, but in any case your answer seems to be "no". The RfC is about calling out the code in visible text. Obviously I don't agree that "everyone wins" with the piped version; that's why we're having the discussion. -- Trovatore ( talk)
• No per the confused Rambling Man - piping is enough in the vast majority of cases. Gridiron teams in UK, soccer teams in Australia etc would need to do it. Johnbod ( talk) 19:39, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
  • So just to clarify, you're fine with articles on American football teams dropping the American at first reference, as long as there's a piped link? As I say, that would be another solution, though it seems a slightly Harrison Bergeron type of equality. -- Trovatore ( talk) 20:43, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

Yes, if they want to, and don't mind risking confusing Hispanic & other global readers. Presumably they do it because they know what the world means by "football", despite the local situation. Johnbod ( talk) 23:09, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

I'm confused by the label Hispanic. HiLo48 ( talk) 08:03, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

So by extension, are you saying you don't mind confusing American readers? -- Trovatore ( talk) 03:56, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

I don't have a problem if a similar football code policy in place in Australia gets implemented to US articles, if it does not already exist, which calls football "football" with a pipe. SportingFlyer talk 04:10, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

I assume you mean "calls American football 'football' with a pipe", correct? That would at least remove my irritation about the disparate treatment of American and association football. But it seems to me it would do it the wrong way. What's wrong with being more specific, rather than less? -- Trovatore ( talk) 06:04, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

• No per Black Kite for teams/players in countries where American, Australian, etc. football forms a very small minority of all references to "football", which is most of the world. Unlike American football, to many people it's probably unclear to what "association football" refers. The first few times I saw this term (and I haven't seen it anywhere outside Wikipedia) I believed it referred to gridiron. Therefore, I believe it's not going to lead to extra clarity for people unaware of the meaning of the term, and those who are probably already know which countries overwhelmingly practice other forms of football (there being about 5-6 of such countries ignoring tiny ones like Samoa). Daß  Wölf 01:11, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

What do you mean by "football"? HiLo48 ( talk) 08:05, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

What are you referring to -- the preferred form of football in my own speech, or is there something ambiguous in what I wrote? Daß  Wölf 00:03, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

It was a kind of rhetorical question, highlighting that you, probably quite innocently, used the word "football" twice in your first sentence, without making it clear what on earth you were talking about. It made your whole post ambiguous. HiLo48 ( talk) 08:04, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

I thought it was obvious what "American, Australian, etc. football" is supposed to signify -- non-soccer. The second time I was referencing the word "football", not any sport. I didn't expect this would need an explanation... Daß  Wölf 17:34, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

On second thought, I suppose it might not be obvious to everyone that I was grouping American, Canadian, Gaelic etc. football, which are all capitalised and named after countries or regions, as opposed to association football, which just has a plain old noun adjuct. Daß  Wölf 23:39, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

• Yes as the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Ireland, where just the term "football" is ambiguous, make up 51.8% of traffic on enwiki. If a simple change can make wikipedia more understandable for over half of our readers, shouldn't we make it? -- Ahecht ( TALK
  PAGE) 16:34, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
• Yes because many readers will not know the context, it will be a service to them. Those that do not already know about the game the team plays will be assisted. Those that know the sport will not be disadvantaged. We should have it as a guideline, although we won't be forcing the soccer fans to make the change to say "association football", we will expect them not to change it back to simply "football". The argument for the non-English speakers is bogus, because they would be preferring their native language name for the game, and they too will be educated by seeing a more specific name of the code played, rather than an ambiguous name, that may be mistakenly disambiguated in the reader's mind. Graeme Bartlett ( talk) 08:16, 17 April 2018 (UTC)
• No per reasoning below, related to numerous policies, guidelines and essays but mostly leaning on what's the problem this solution is fixing? It isn't clearly defined as to how our user base are clamouring for this solution. Hiding T 12:00, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

What? See, Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo. Just because you are all up on buffalo, it's self-referential to expect everyone else in the world to be, and being self-referential in writing an encyclopedia is undoubtedly a problem. Alanscottwalker ( talk) 16:35, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

I would suggest you tone back your own self referentiality. There is no well defined problem here beyond I Don't Like It. I don't see the problem and see the proposal as therefore lacking in utility. Hiding T 17:15, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

What are you referring too? See, football if you don't understand the well defined problem, it's quite well defined. Alanscottwalker ( talk) 17:20, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

This isn't the solution to whatever problem you might have with the football article that you have still not defined. I still don't see the problem we're trying to solve here. Where's the voice of our readers who allegedly have a problem? It isn't here, therefore it is a made up problem and the solution proposed is to fix an I Don't Like It issue. Hiding T 18:55, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

What? It has nothing to do with liking or not liking anything, it has to do with football which has multiple meanings that's just a fact (are you saying you don't like facts) - and distinguishing is the common and ordinary way to fix when a word has multiple meanings. -- Alanscottwalker ( talk) 22:52, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

What? We do distinguish it. It's outlined in the proposal how we currently do it, and it is done in a way the proposer doesn't like, therefore they are suggesting we change it. I am rejecting that change for exactly the same reasons as WereSpielChequers. Hiding T 16:50, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

Hiding - You ask "Where's the voice of our readers who allegedly have a problem?" It's all through this discussion. Have you actually read it all? HiLo48 ( talk) 07:48, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

Yes I have. Can't see it. Only that of editors who Don't Like It as it currently is. Hiding T 15:35, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

• Usually a good idea, but no to mandating it The wording should be simply what is needed to communicate clearly to the reader. If the context makes it obvious, no need, if not, put it in. It's likely that some folks have a second agenda......to promote the idea that one particular style of football has "dibs" on the term by saying that the term with no qualifier automatically means their style. Wherever it may exist, that consideration should be dropped; an encyclopedia is to inform readers. North8000 ( talk) 20:50, 17 April 2018 (UTC)
• Yes, Wikipedia is also for people who do not know the content of the article before reading it. Adding a word to the lead to clarify is totally reasonable. We have readers who do not know the difference between the various types of football so we tell them. · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 17:46, 21 April 2018 (UTC)
• No, because the country is sufficient for almost all readers and piping resolves things for the rest. Of course the occasional American Football team in England along with any other team which plays a game that is unusual in their area should display the code visibly. But spelling out Association football on every team in the UK, that would be a bureaucratic rule, a violation of ENGVAR and a gross disservice to our readers. Ϣere SpielChequers 09:34, 22 April 2018 (UTC)
  • It's not a violation of ENGVAR. ENGVAR actually supports it, in the WP:COMMONALITY subsection. -- Trovatore ( talk) 21:19, 26 April 2018 (UTC)
• No per The Rambling Man - this suggestion just adds to the WP:CREEP while giving nothing of value to the encyclopedia. Iffy★ Chat -- 10:50, 2 May 2018 (UTC)
• Yes - Readers come form multiple countries, and each country has teams of multiple codes. Just saying "football" on first mention is ambiguous. -- NaBUru38 ( talk) 19:39, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

Discussion: Specifying the code of football at first reference

One question I have is whether readers would be more likely to know what "association football" means than understand what "football" means in specific contexts (I have just asked my partner what "association football" was and the answer was "rugby"). I suspect that more readers would be in the latter category than the former, which makes me think that removing the piping would probably be a net hindrance than a benefit. Number 5 7 14:22, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

It's unfortunate that there is no perfect disambiguator for association football. As you say, association is little used "in the wild". Everyone knows what soccer means, I think, but it seems to be actively disliked by association-football fans, so it's probably out, except for American and Canadian clubs.

But I don't buy the argument that, just because there's no ideal disambiguator, we shouldn't disambiguate at all. If nothing else, if a reader is unfamiliar with the term association football, they at least have notice that there might be something to learn by following the link. If they think they know what football means, why would they bother to click on it? -- Trovatore ( talk) 05:36, 14 April 2018 (UTC)

What do you think "football" means in Sydney, Australia? HiLo48 ( talk) 14:34, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

I don't know, but I also don't really see what that has to do with the point I was trying to make about a blanket usage of "association football" not necessarily being an improvement on using simply "football" where it is pretty obvious from context (perhaps your point is that Sydney is somewhere where it isn't obvious, in which case it might be an improvement, but as I said in the section above, a blanket rule is going too far). Number 5 7 14:47, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

In Sydney, I think it means soccer to many people in the west and footy to the rest. I don't think people confuse it with rugby league unless you start getting really formal or informal. SportingFlyer talk 14:40, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

And what is "footy"? -- Khajidha ( talk) 14:48, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

That'd be Australian rules football, which is a bit like rugby except the players are required to bounce the ball on the ground, like in basketball, while running with it. -- Jayron 32 14:40, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

In Sydney, they have The Footy Show, which is about rugby league. HiLo48 ( talk) 22:41, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

• There's much, much more to the world than Australia, and it only seems to be Australian editors who are pushing this. And indeed, other than Australia or Ireland and US/Canada to a much, much lesser extent, there aren't any countries where 'football' has multiple meanings and so, for the vast majority of readers/editors/articles, there's no ambiguity with codes. 'Football' has one meaning in the UK, for example. Same with France, Germany, China, Peru, Egypt... Giant Snowman 15:57, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

The proposal is from an American, not an Australian. HiLo48 ( talk) 22:44, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

I think this is ultimately what is being ignored: the fact that other non-Anglo countries use the English wikipedia is extremely relevant. Many, and probably most, of these countries do not recognize the term "football" being used to describe anything other than association football. The fact that some readership that is also Anglo may have some confusion doesn't mean that this should be a necessary policy to implement. Jay eyem ( talk) 17:08, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

What? -- just where do you think readers of English live. Alanscottwalker ( talk) 17:11, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

All over the world. See List of countries by English-speaking population. And we need to counter systemic bias even if those people do not use the internet. Jay eyem ( talk) 19:05, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

Since they live all over the world, and all over the English world " football" is used variously, then it would only show bias if you don't write with precision by acknowledging that there is association football and other codes, as the world of football is diverse. Alanscottwalker ( talk) 10:53, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

Well except that it isn't really used variously all over the world. In most non-Anglo countries the word "football" refers only to association football. Pretty much all of Africa and Latin America use "football", as do much of Asia and Europe. Many of those countries would probably not understand what "association football" is, they wouldn't recognize that term. I don't see why that shows bias, if anything it is a common name. For the record I am largely neutral, and only slightly opposed, to these changes being made. What I am largely opposed to is making this policy, which I've discussed below. Jay eyem ( talk) 15:13, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

We are not writing in a non-Anglo language we are writing in English, and in English our football article say Football' is used variously and commonly in a number of ways in English, as does: "Football, any of a number of related games all of which are characterized by two persons or teams attempting to kick, carry, throw, or otherwise propel a ball toward an opponent’s goal.. . .For an explanation of contemporary football sports, see football (soccer); football, gridiron; rugby; Australian rules football; and Gaelic football." [8]. -- Alanscottwalker ( talk) 15:38, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

The vast, vast, vast majority of English-speaking people understand the word "football" to mean "association football" only. Of course there are other uses for the word football in the English language, I'm well aware of it. I grew up in and live in the US. But the way that most people understand the word "football" is singular around the word, whereas rugby (league or union), gaelic, Aussie rules, Canadian, and American are actually exceptions to that rule. Again, and I'm sorry about emphasizing this, my main opposition to the proposal is not that I think it's a bad idea (I'm largely neutral), but that I think it shouldn't be policy. Jay eyem ( talk) 15:51, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

You have a funny definition of "vast vast majority". According to English language, there's roughly 400,000,000 native speakers of English. Given that there are about 237,800,000 native English speakers in the U.S. (per Languages of the United States) and 21,500,000 native speakers in Canada (per Languages of Canada), that means that, of Native English Speakers, roughly 259,300,000/400,000,000 native speakers live in countries where "football" means something other than association football. That's more than 50%, which means your statement isn't even true if you remove the hyperbolid "vast"s. If we just go to "working knowledge of English", that's about 1,100,000,000 speakers, of which some 272,900,000 live in the U.S. and 28,400,000 live in Canada, and while that's no longer a majority, that's still roughly 1/3 of speakers of English who live in countries that would recognize "Football" to mean something other than association football, too large to be insignificant, and again, not a "vast majority" who would know it as only "association football". -- Jayron 32 16:07, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

Yeah you see how I wrote about systemic bias earlier? That would include not biasing towards native English speakers. ALL speakers of English should be taken into account. Jay eyem ( talk) 16:10, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

Right, which is why 1/3rd of them cannot be called a "vast vast vast" minority; that is not insignificant, and alienating 1/3 of your readership to save 12 characters of text is bad policy for any international encyclopedia. It costs nothing to be more precise, detracts nothing from readibility, and allows better understanding for a sizable proportion of the readership. Insistint that we deliberately confuse 1/3 of the readership of the encyclopedia for no gain is beyond silly. -- Jayron 32 16:16, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

You're right, and I will strike out the "vasts" because they are hyperbole, but the majority certainly remains true that most speakers of English only understand "football" to mean "association football", and would not recognize the term "association football." As an Anglo who understands the differences, the changes wouldn't affect me, but it might not represent how people actually understand the word "football". And I don't see how you came to the conclusion that this is done with the intention to "deliberately confuse". It's just as much "deliberately" confusing to force the specific code in the introduction. There is a clear cost in that changing "football" to "association football" is confusing for those that don't understand what the latter term is. Jay eyem ( talk) 16:21, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

It's no more confusing than using terms like "American football" or "Australian rules football" in those contexts. The phrase "American football" is also unused in the U.S.; but we use it here because we have the expectation that some sizable amount of our readership benefits from the elaboration. Likewise, while not a majority, enough of our readership benefits from the elaboration of "association football". -- Jayron 32 16:41, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

I think we've reached an impasse. I appreciate your points and for correcting my error, and I'm interested to see where the rest of the conversation continues and its result. Cheers. Jay eyem ( talk) 16:45, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

(e/c) If there's a cost to learning the phrase " association football", then its no more than the cost of learning (which is provided free),-- providing more knowledge about the world is rather our purpose - as it is a purpose for writing an encyclopedia in the first place ('the sum of all knowledge', as they say). -- Alanscottwalker ( talk) 16:55, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

The exact same thing could be said as an opposing argument i.e. that you can just learn the codes themselves and leave the pages just saying "football." That doesn't address that it isn't how most of the world actually understands the word "football" or how it should be represented on the given pages. Jay eyem ( talk) 00:04, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

I really don't follow this. "Learn the codes themselves"? You mean, the readers are supposed to know all the different things that are called "football"? How is that even close to the "exact same thing" as what Alan is saying, which is that we tell you what kind of football we're talking about? -- Trovatore ( talk) 10:37, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

Because most people don't understand what "association football" is or what "American football" is and instead only understand it as "football". The same could be said for rugby union/league, Aussie rules, Gaelic etc. It's not a huge step to assume that people can just as easily learn all of the codes and where they are referred to as such since it's literally on the football page. Especially if it's not ambiguous, like Chelsea F.C. or the Cincinnati Bengals, you don't need to call out the code because people already understand it. People know that Chelsea is association football and that the Bengals are American football, and most people wouldn't need the disambiguation of the specific code. It would be easier just to pipe it to the specific code and then people could click on a link to that code, specifying the code by writing it out would just make it more confusing for people not understanding the idea of different codes and their specific terminologies. Jay eyem ( talk) 16:15, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

No. They will just be informed, which is our job. Alanscottwalker ( talk) 17:53, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

@ Jay eyem:It's not really "all over the world". We can break it down exactly using https://stats.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/squids/SquidReportPageViewsPerLanguageBreakdown.htm, which lists country of origin for traffic on the English Wikipedia. According to http://www.businessinsider.com/football-vs-soccer-map-2013-12, the term soccer (or varients of it) are used in the US, Canada, Ireland, Japan, the Southern Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa (plus smaller countries like Papua New Guinea, Namibia, Botswana, and Zimbabwe). From the stats, we can see that that makes up 53% of readers of English Wikipedia (plus whatever fraction of "Other" those smaller countries make up). That means that, while your assertion that most of these countries do not recognize the term "football" being used to describe anything other than association football is probably correct, it is not true that most readers of English wikipedia do. In fact, it's pretty close to a 50/50 split. -- Ahecht ( TALK
PAGE) 21:49, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

While I hate to bring it up again, I will again link to WP:SYSTEMIC and specifically the section about those not having internet access. You need to take into account more than just the people using Wikipedia. Using Wikipedia views and readership as a global representation of how the word is used seems like a dishonest representation. Jay eyem ( talk) 00:04, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

I really don't see how users who don't have Internet access (?) can be confused by anything we write here. We want to serve our actual audience. That, by definition, is people who use Wikipedia. That's not bias. Of course we don't want to fail to sufficiently cover people who don't have Internet access, but we don't have to worry about writing for them as readers.

In any case, the demographics are a bit beside the point. We're not deciding who's "right" about the use of the word "football". We do have a desire to accommodate all major English varieties, and that's where failing to visibly specify the code of football falls short. -- Trovatore ( talk) 09:48, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

I completely disagree that there isn't a bias issue here. That's exactly what WP:SYSTEMIC discusses. The goal is to be a representation of a global encyclopedia, not just people who use said encyclopedia. People do not understand these various sports as being associated with their specific code and its specific name, they understand them as "football". I also completely disagree with the notion that failing to specify the code is somehow less representative of a variation in English when people don't even understand the various codes. Nobody refers to the sport with their specific code name in mind in their own country, they just refer to them as "football". Again, I don't see how specifying the code is more helpful than just piping the specific code in question. Jay eyem ( talk) 16:22, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

Oh, there is a bias here, and its in your argument that everyone just understands football. -- Alanscottwalker ( talk) 17:53, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

Then they can learn that the English language uses football for multiple things. Putting the disambiguating term on soccer teams should mean that they would be less confused when they see "football" used elsewhere for something else. -- Khajidha ( talk) 17:14, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

In Canada at least and probably also in the US, "football" does not really have multiple meanings, except for people who are already sports aficionados. Football is the gridiron sport played in the NFL and CFL. Association football is not a thing, it's called soccer, so much so that our top-level league is Major League Soccer, although several teams in the league do call themselves "football clubs". When people from abroad immigrate to our countries and learn English, they learn that the English word for the sport they know from their own countries is "soccer".^{[citation needed]} Yeah, people are generally aware that what we call soccer is called football in other parts of the world, but it's the sort of thing that people point out to be pedantic, or that comes up at trivia. Ivanvector ( ^Talk/ _Edits) 17:36, 12 April 2018 (UTC) -- written from a part of the country where neither football nor soccer predominate

@ Ivanvector: - I only mentioned US/Canada because of NFl v CFL - I'm fully aware that in those countries 'football' is gridiron, just as 'football' in the UK (and most of the world actually) is soccerball. Just goes to show that only Australia/Ireland have this confusion. Giant Snowman 18:44, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

Right, I think we're trying to make the same point. As for CFL vs. NFL, in my experience in Canada "football" refers to either one depending on context, i.e. the Saskatchewan Roughriders and the Buffalo Bills both play football, but it's recognized without needing to be clarified that the two teams play different sports. But really they're just two somewhat different rulesets for the same sport. Ivanvector ( ^Talk/ _Edits) 18:59, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

Indeed, the gameplay and equipment for Canadian Football and American Football are similar enough that most North Americans consider the two to be variants of the same basic sport, in a family along with games like touch football and Arena football. -- Jayron 32 14:42, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

That's not a strong argument why it should be made policy though. For the record I am not opposed to the changes being suggested, I am opposed to the notion that it must be policy. Jay eyem ( talk) 19:05, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

How strictly are you using the word "policy"? I agree it should not be "policy", in the strict WP sense of the term. If the RFC passes, I will propose adding a guideline somewhere, probably in the Manual of Style. (I suppose I could have raised the question specifically at the MoS, but that's a fairly specialized group of editors — the question seems likely to be of interest to people who aren't particularly interested in what kind of dash to use in Mexican–American War or how to capitalize The Who.) -- Trovatore ( talk) 23:23, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

I was in fact interpreting "policy" strictly to refer to the policy of Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines. I'm not 100% clear on what this discussion entails (it's my first time engaging in such a discussion), so I just wanted my personal take, as far as that's relevant, to note that creating a policy would be unreasonable. I'm somewhat neutral on whether or not it needs to be a guideline but I think it unquestionably should not be a policy as outlined at Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines. Cheers. Jay eyem ( talk) 00:04, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

I agree. It wouldn't be a "policy" in the WP-specific sense. It's not the sort of thing that policies deal with.
Note though that this page, Wikipedia:Village pump (policy), is for both policies and guidelines. -- Trovatore ( talk) 00:52, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

I discovered this after posting some of my other comments on this page, but I thank you for directing my attention to it anyway. Cheers! Jay eyem ( talk) 15:03, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

Association football is the title of the article on the sport known commonly in the United Kingdom as football and in the United States as soccer. Due to ENGVAR as well as the sheer volume of articles referencing it, it's for all practical purposes impossible to change that. Piped links (or linking to a redirect) are generally the solution to any problems that may arise. power~enwiki ( π, ν) 00:33, 14 April 2018 (UTC)

The problem is that piped links are not sufficient to establish context. You can't assume people will follow links. The solution is to mention the code of football being discussed, explicitly in visible text, once in each article, at first reference. -- Trovatore ( talk) 03:00, 14 April 2018 (UTC)

I want to make a point here, one that some editors have attacked me for repeating above in a certain style of comment in the Straw Poll section above. So I shall make it once in this section int the hope it gets read by newcomers before they post above. The most recent example of this comment includes the words "In most countries where "football" would be ambiguous, the article would use "soccer"". My point is that Wikipedia is a global encyclopaedia. I, as an Australian, read articles about things and people in many countries, particularly but not only the various European countries from which my ancestors came. That comment rightly acknowledges that "football" could be ambiguous to Australians like me, as it would to Americans, and Canadians, and South Africans, and...? So what happens when someone from one of those countries happens upon an article about a player of "football" from a European nation? Obviously the word is still ambiguous. Fans of Australian football reading this may be surprised to learn from Wikipedia that "Gary Ablett was an English professional footballer". (I certainly was!) Others will almost certainly be surprised to learn that two other people with that name (father and son) have been professional Australian footballers. (Both very successful and famous ones too.) All three have Wikipedia articles. The articles on the two latter gentlemen both say, right at the start, that they are/were Australian rules footballers. The article on the English gentleman just says he was a footballer. So, of course, were the Australians. I have looked at all three articles. I hope all reading this can see that the article on the English gentleman is ambiguous in a global encyclopaedia. HiLo48 ( talk) 03:13, 14 April 2018 (UTC)

• Having come from a similar background, I still disagree with you. Gary Ablett (not Jr. or Sr.) has the title (English footballer) on the title of his page. To me, this is not only obvious, this is enough of a disambiguator. (To those of you not familiar with Aussie rules, Gary Ablett Jr. and Sr. are of the most if not the most famous father/son duo to ever don a footy jumper.) SportingFlyer talk 05:38, 14 April 2018 (UTC)
  • So can I simplify the articles on the two Australians by simply saying they are Australian footballers? No linking/piping, etc? Would it be obvious to all which sport they play? HiLo48 ( talk) 21:00, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
    • Confusing isn't it. "Matildas star Sam Kerr is the Australian football player the rest of the world is talking about right now" Moriori ( talk) 21:53, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
      • It's a good thing it would be off-topic for me to complain about meaningless names for teams too, wouldn't it? HiLo48 ( talk) 07:59, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

Can someone make a count how many footballers article, football club article, Football in X country article , national football team article are there in wikipedia? It would probably a single massive change that related to WP:ENGVAR and MOS:COMMONALITY. As i was stated in WP:Football, even in Australia the use of the word "football" and "soccer" for association football were both observed, SBS, a major broadcaster, used just football for their UCL and UEFA Europa League live match, so there is not possible to have Australian assuming football meant Aussie-rule or American football only. Most argument was in fact within WP:ENGVAR, and if people assume German football club meant for code other than association football, it seem more likely to based on their narrow world of view, as most country only had one code of football, association football as well as rugby is called rugby. Those wording difference was solved by automatic word changer in zh-wiki, but until such featured was introduced in en-wiki, both color and colour were used in en-wiki and depends on the article was more likely to associate to UK-English and US-English, those wording difference is existed everywhere in en-wiki. Matthew_hk t c 13:07, 14 April 2018 (UTC)

So, you would have multiple sentences of, 'X is a football . . . .', meaning some different football, and you would rely on how much the reader loves football to grasp the point? Alanscottwalker ( talk) 13:47, 14 April 2018 (UTC)

Leaning heavily to oppose simply based on the wrong version. The argument to change seems to boil down to some people are confused as to what code of football is being referred to in an article. To my mind, if someone can't infer from the context of the article, I'm unclear why using the particular code will help as they won't be able to understand that context either.

There also seen to be a lot of OWN issues on both sides, it reads to me that there's an expectation that all US readers will base their assumptions on outdated comic strips removed from cultural cues that they read in their youth. So I'm not sure our personal habits, opinions and upbringings can be brought to bear, because we can't say to someone you're wrong because you were brought up in the UK, I was brought up in Australia so I'm right.

Is there a problem we need to fix? Are readers confused? Is there a survey or a mass IP editing consensus to suggest this confusion? Or is it one of our making as editors who are over thinking?

I also like the use of statistics, in that 51.8% of Wikipedia readers come from these geographical places. Last I checked consensus needed to be stronger than that, and that presupposes all 51.8% of the population of those places think the same just to get a small majority.

So I guess I think there's no real need to change for the sake of change, no need to make something else a guideline that will bite us in the backside, no need to stir this particular best of wasps, or hornets if you prefer.

My alternate suggestion is to redirect all references to Football like so football. Hiding T 11:47, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

I know there's a lot to read here, and I will forgive you for not having read it all, but saying "Are readers confused"? without having read it all is pretty darned rude. Almost every time I see "football", "football club", "footballer" or "F.C." I am potentially confused, because for all of my longish life I have lived in a place where those terms refer to Australian football. I know there are other forms of football, but my brain automatically thinks Aussie Rules first, just as yours probably thinks soccer first. Once I realise I am reading something in an international context I have to put in extra rational thought to work out which form it might be. I have already written this fact multiple times here, and been growled at for doing so, but comments like yours make it necessary to repeat it again, and again, and again, and again....... I note that it's only soccer fans who insist that no-one will ever be confused, and I really wonder why. HiLo48 ( talk) 07:42, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

Intriguingly you are only potentially confused. That's not actually confused. I'm not going to argue with a potential. I may potentially not be confused, and so may all other readers. Your position, you prove it. I have no burden of proof here. Hiding T 15:37, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

I am confused every time I see the undisambiguated term "football" used in an article that has not previously specified which code is being discussed. I do not know what countries may be primarily soccer, primarily rugby, primarily Gaelic, etc. Or even primarily some variant of football that I am completely unfamiliar with. Nor should we expect our readers to know this. -- Khajidha ( talk) 15:55, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

THIS! With the added hurdle that, in my dialect, "footballer" is nonsensical ("Football's a verb now?" "How does one football?") and F.C. is basically unknown. -- Khajidha ( talk) 11:13, 18 April 2018 (UTC)