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This is listed as just an essay and it's pretty much stating the obvious - we don't fork articles. But for those editors prone to rules lawyering, is there a policy or guideline that does spell it out? If not, why not paste a policy template on this essay? SchmuckyTheCat 05:05, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
Expanded Wikipedia:Content forking a bit, for example made a connection to wikipedia:summary style which explains a technique how to split, while avoiding content forking. And added an example where POV split was denied by wikipedia community.
Also put the {{ proposed}} template on top, so that the community can assess whether or not to make it a guideline ("policy", as in Category:Wikipedia official policy probably not so suitable IMHO, implicitly it is covered by NPOV policy)
Asking for other guidelines who reflect the no content forking: the wikipedia:naming conventions (people) also indirectly advises to give each person one single article, with the most obvious name, and only use "summary style" type of splits for those so famous that they get more than one page (which, all in all happens not so often, and is as far as I know normally not from a "circumvent NPOV" outset). Whether a similar guideline can be found re. articles not on people I do not know. -- Francis Schonken 21:58, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
It was suggested to merge this project page in the NPOV page. Well, wikipedia:neutral point of view is already a very long page, and this "content forking" page is maybe rather about practical considerations regarding how to avoid POV when splitting content. So I added a "Article splitting" section to wikipedia:NPOV tutorial, where it seems more on its place. That "Article splitting" section is only a short summary of this article (using the {{ main}} template under the section header directing to this page), so it isn't actually a "merge" - such "merge" of the complete content would make the NPOV tutorial too long too.
Considering all that, which I think a workable solution, I remove the "merge" suggestion from the project page, and upgrade this from "proposed" to "guideline", for which there appears to be no opposition (or am I wrong in that?) Provisionally I put it in the "how-to" subcategory of guidelines -- Francis Schonken 08:53, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
A merge with wikipedia:POV fork seems much more logical, so I proposed it myself -- Francis Schonken 08:13, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
The neutrality policy of Wikipedia is a core community value. It's not subject to debate or revision. (Check with Jimbo, if you're not sure about this.)
While whether to comply with NPOV is never subject to a vote, how to comply with NPOV is certainly up for grabs. We should do our best to reach a consensus on how to make any given article neutral.
Some people feel that "points of view" are appropriate only in some articles and should be excluded from others. This attitude crops up most frequently in politically-charged controversies over scientific topics, but also can be found in politics itself, as well as culture, sociology, mental health, religion and many other areas. I have repeatedly dialogued with Jimbo on this point, and as most longterm Wikipedians know, he his always affirmed that any significant view should be included - even when it's a minority and often simply because it's a minority.
There is no grounds whatsoever for excluding a "POV" from a controversial article simply on the grounds that "it's a POV" or that it is "POV text", a "POV explanation", or a biased view of any kind. To say so is either to miss (or maybe to refuse to accept) NPOV policy:
There can be no doubt that US national policy (as in Vietnam, Iraq, and presidential elections) is a controversial topic. So are global warming, the creation-evolution controversy, Macedonians (ethnic group), and hundreds of others.
-- Uncle Ed 18:29, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
Often it is helpful to divide a long controversial article into parts.
The best example is Augusto Pinochet, although there are many other good examples. Contributors were edit warring over several aspects of his political and military career. After a long time, some of realized that his role in the 1973 Chile coup was the main focal point of the squabbling.
When this segment was split off, it became much easier for editors to work together and express the main POVs about the coup - and the respective roles of Pinochet and the United States.
A summary was subsequently put back into the main article, but the "sidebar" or "fork" worked better when left to stand on its own. And no one could predict this, until the fork was made. Uncle Ed 18:29, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
I was going to ask about this too. Currently there is the statement "The sub-articles can each treat a particular aspect - which might reflect a point of view for each of the sub-articles - but these sub-articles should anyhow be linked to the other subarticles and to the main article, for instance by a navigational template." This seems to imply that an individual article can be POV, as long as some ensemble of articles is NPOV. I believe this to be utterly wrong. Every article on Wikipedia must be balanced unto itself, and in fact that's the whole point of this guideline. I'll remove it for now, please comment if you violently diasgree.
Unless I read the article too hastily, it seems to be saying that if the majority of contributors to an article gang up against a lone contributor, who is trying to add a neutral statement about a point of view, then:
I have an e-mail in hand from user:Jimbo Wales which says precisely the opposite of this. I wish you guys would simply agree with Wikipedia because you understand it and support it. Please don't make me drag Jimbo down into this. Uncle Ed 17:29, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
I must admit I have a bit of puzzlement regarding the references to summary-style articles. In the context, I believe it's referring to what happens to some articles after detailed articles have been spun out of them; eventually the original article may become primarily, or wholly, just the summaries of content now located in spinout articles. However, the wording is confusing, so I can't be sure this is what it's saying.
I think it's important to be clear on this, because otherwise people might try to argue that under the letter of the policy, they are entitled to create new POV fork articles, as long as those forks are "summary-style". -- Antaeus Feldspar 20:56, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
There is no "Article_spinouts_which_summarize" section in the Wikipedia:Content_forking guideline. That is to say, at 18:28, 9 December 2005 Ed Poor had created that section header in the "Content forking" guideline [1]. Exactly 8 minutes later someone removed it [2]. Ed was just trying to bend the guideline his way. Which didn't last.Have you read Wikipedia:Content_forking#Article_spinouts_which_summarize?
(See: Wikipedia:No original research#Origin of this policy: the opinion of Wikipedia's founder)An article that makes no new low-level claims, but nonetheless synthesizes work in a non-standard way, is effectively original research that I think we ought not to publish.
anybody know where the name "content forking" originated from? 69.22.224.249 23:58, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
There seemed to be clear consensus for this. I defined a "content fork" as a neutral term for duplication of articles, usually unintentional, and a "POV fork" as a deliberate evasion of NPOV by using a content fork. If this is no good, you know what to do. Stevage 09:43, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
An editor having some trouble understanding what POV forking is and why he's not allowed to do it pointed up a very problematic sentence in the text:
I believe I understand what it's trying to convey: that as part of Wikipedia:Assume good faith, one should not immediately leap to the conclusion that an apparent duplication between articles is a POV fork. However... the sentence is actually saying that even if someone has openly admitted that they created a new article on an already-covered subject because the existing article doesn't say what they want it to say on the subject, we can't call it a POV fork (even though that's exactly what it is) unless there's also been repeated vandalism by the forker? I really am trying to understand; if there's any reason why it shouldn't just stress that Assume Good Faith applies here as elsewhere, please explain it to me... -- Antaeus Feldspar 04:07, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
? If you give an alternate text proposition, that would maybe be easier? -- Francis Schonken 12:54, 17 January 2006 (UTC)Since what qualifies as a "POV fork" is itself based on a POV judgement, do not refer to forks as "POV" — except in extreme cases of repeated vandalism.
Because unlike a link, a redirect can not point to a specific section in an article. It is sometimes desirable to fork out a section into a stand alone article, (even if it only initially duplicates information in the main article,) so that a redirect works properly. As time passes, either the section which has been spun out develops a life of its own, or it gets redirected back into the main article. I think that there should be a mention in this article covering this. An example of where I have considered doing this is for this link Varangian#The Varangian Guard for which the Varangian Guard redirect is not adequate. -- Philip Baird Shearer 02:27, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
In my opinion all such articles should be forked, or at least clearly seperated (in all cases), to historical, archeological and other scientific evidence based pages (or sections) and _(mythology) or _(fiction) variants covering information obtained from mythological, religious or some other fictious literary source. Forked especially if the event or item in question is held as undisputable fact among the practicioners of the religion and generally advocated as true(tm) thus earning a valid NPOV tag.
For example, Jesus: Instead of Historical Jesus it should be Jesus for the historical character and significance of Jesus in other sources (eg. Jesus is important in Christian tradition - See...for more info) and then the religious view of Jesus would be under the articles Jesus (mythology) (or Jesus (religion), Jesus (Bible)) - similarly as is done with Deluge (mythology) and Deluge (a disambiguation page to pre-historic deluges and the mythological Deluge).
Alternatively someone should introduce tags, like {{RELIGION}}, {{MYTH}}, {{TRADITION}}, {{BOOK}}, {{FICTION}}, {{FAD}}, etc.., on top of the page to represent an article which either has more or less fictional and/or uncertain source(s) or discusses the validity of the aforementioned sources (eg. Jesus-myth). - G3, 02:53, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
Re. "...all such articles should be forked..." – irrealistic: the examples used are some high profile articles ("Jesus" of all sorts), for many of the average ones separating the possibly mythological (hagiographic?) elements in a separate article would fail WP:NOTE, or at least be a WP:NPOV trap, see e.g. Louis IX of France#Sources: of course there are some potentially "hagiographic" (etc) elements in the hagiographies: sectioning these off in a separate article would be, imho, ill-advised for this example: the article can be clear about such elements without needing a content fork.
Re. "I would like to know what actual academic historians writing in peer reviewed academic journals (Wikipedia's advertised preferred source) say about the history of "Israel". But all I find in Wikipedia is bible myths." – {{ sofixit}}, Wikipedia:Content forking in its current form is your friend. I see no need to rewrite any part of the guideline for these purposes (note: this talk page is for discussing improvements to the guideline wording). -- Francis Schonken ( talk) 09:43, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
This month is the 2-year anniversary of Chilean coup of 1973, which is (I think) Wikipedia's first successfull spin-off article.
I think that some contributors willfully misunderstand the difference between a POV fork, which is always bad, and a spinoff, which often can be good.
Creating another version of an article, to hide the fact that there is a dispute is dishonest. It's cheating. The policy which forbids this is a good policy.
Spinning off a part of an article, to resolve the dispute, i.e., to describe both sides fairly, is entirely in accordance with Wikipedia:NPOV. -- Uncle Ed 14:26, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
Instead, a sidebar article can be created which focuses entirely on describing each viewpoint fairly (see "spinoff" section below). If nearly everything about a topic is uncontentious, but one part of it leads to contentious edit wars, instead of protecting the article consider creating a sidebar. The first and best example of this is Augusto Pinochet, which came to a screeching halt over the issue of US involvement in the coup against the Allende regime. After the 1973 Chile coup article was created, the edit warring stopped because writers could focus on the sub-topic of what happened in the coup, what were the reasons given for and against the coup, and so on.
There is a difference between a "spinout" (which is good) and a "POV fork" which is bad. My addition to the intro helps to distinguish the two.
If I have have added something which is against Wikipedia policy, please point out the difference between (a) what I said and (b) what policy actually is.
Reverting my changes with terse edit summaries isn't helping clarify anything. -- Uncle Ed 15:40, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
As for what's wrong with your proposed addition? Well, the passage "If nearly everything about a topic is uncontentious, but one part of it leads to contentious edit wars, instead of protecting the article consider creating a spinout (or "spinoff")" weakens the prohibition on POV forks by allowing for any "contentious" material to be shuffled off to a subarticle. Most legitimate criticisms of a subject are going to be objected to by those sympathetic to the topic and viewed as contentious, and thats not even considering contrived, bad faith objections on contentious topics. Shuffling criticisms under the guise of "contentious content" off to a subarticle violates WP:NPOV (which says all significant viewpoints must be covered) and thus a POV fork is created. That's the first problem. Do I really need to go on? FeloniousMonk 16:12, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
PS. Might be accidental, but I see some similarity with a trick previously played by Ed Poor/Uncle Ed, see above #Asking for clarification. -- Francis Schonken 15:28, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
Before you accuse me of playing a trick, wouldn't you rather ask me what I meant? Please assume good faith, at least for a single hour. -- Uncle Ed 15:36, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
The example in the #Asking for clarification section above shows that at that time, long ago, you couldn't be trusted for a minute. You fidgeted with the project page, and within a minute you hade made claims elsewhere that there was content on this project page which had only been there for a minute, planted there by you, i.e. content that was removed another seven minutes later. I don't want to hold that against you, you may have changed your mode of operation after RfC and similar troubles you had to undergo, so please note that I assume good faith, and want to keep these things in the past and not repeat them. But it may provide an explanation of why someone else said in an edit summary reverting you: And you have a history of creating POV forks, Ed -- Francis Schonken 16:01, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
Then when is it a good idea to create a spinout article? Currently, the Cuba article is protected because of an edit war about whether Cuba is "the only non-democracy in the Western hemisphere". Bruce Hallman suggests spinning off (out?) this issue into a separete article.
The spinout would not be for the purpose of creating a biased article. And it wouldn't be a "content fork", because there would not be two different versions, each with its own POV. Rather, the issue of "democracy in Cuba" would be entirely removed from the Cuba article. There would remain only a link (e.g., to Government of Cuba or Democracy in Cuba).
Is what Bruce is proposing (and I am endorsing) a violation of Wikipedia:Content forking policy? Or is it an example of following the policy? -- Uncle Ed 16:13, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps I didn't make myself clear. I propose to do with Cuba precisely what you mentioned (in positive terms?) about the Pinochet/1973 coup example. Which, by the way, I spun off (or out) or forked or whatever you want to call it. I call it a sidebar article, but no one seems to like that term.
We should mention as briefly as possible, in the Cuba article, that there is a dispute over this or that aspect of life in the country. I am suggesting we split off (or spin out?) the controversy over whether it is "non-democratic" (as Adam keeps maintaining). The most neutral title I can think of is Cuba and democracy. The most neutral way I can think of to mention the dispute (at the moment) is "See Cuba and democracy."
Neither the title of the new article, nor the link to it, make any assertion of any point of view. So it would not be a "POV fork". The new article would be developed in accordance with NPOV, while the old article could be unprotected.
Any attempt to "push POV" in the Cuba article could be reverted (or better yet, properly sourced). But if this once again began an edit war, then the disputed text could be moved (not simply deleted) to the sub-article (or sidebar article or spin up down in out off...) to keep an edit war from paralyzing Cuba. -- Uncle Ed 19:29, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
What history? You've made that claim dozens of times and never explained why even ONE spinout I made turned out to violate NPOV.
Consider the spinout I made of Cuba and democracy in May. The initial version states:
Several other contributors joined in over the last 2 1/2 months, and the article is a sub-topic of Politics of Cuba.
Both the intent and the effect were to create a neutral spin-off. Also, to reduce the edit warring over the parent article. Note that neither Politics of Cuba or Cuba and democracy have a {pov} tag on them, so in this case I must have done something right. -- Uncle Ed 15:05, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
It was Antaeus Feldspar who added the following to the policy page nearly one year ago:
There is barely any difference between that section then, and the current version of the policy. It has stood the test of time. So despite what Mel said in the previous section - and which I didn't contradict him about yesterday - I'm not actually trying to change the policy. -- Uncle Ed 13:58, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
Francis wrote in an edit summary:
I don't understand how this justifies the deletion of the text I added to the intro, i.e.,
Did you delete this addition because it contradicts policy, or what? -- Uncle Ed 15:29, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
Francis reverted all changes since April 7 with this edit summary:
I don't see what this has to do with my addition. Is there anything I added which amounts to a rewrite of the guideline? What specifically do you feel I am changing? Please answer before your next revert. I will undo your unexplained reversion only one more time today, because I don't want an edit war. -- Uncle Ed 15:56, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
Above FeloniousMonk falsely accused me of a "history of creating POV forks". I know what he's referring to, but none of the articles I created was in any way a POV fork.
Here is what the guideline says:
I attempted to "isolate controversial aspect" of certain evolution articles, so that "all POVs [would be] represented fairly in the new article". How is this wrong? Only someone who was pushing a POV of their own would object to the creation of a new article in what all POVs are represented fairly. FeloniousMonk is the POV pusher, not me.
My addition to the intro here says only:
I see no way in which this contradicts the content forking guidelines or the NPOV policy. If anyone here sees such a contradiction, please point it out. -- Uncle Ed 16:06, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
@Ed: above you wrote:
Okay, I'll wait until the spinout (or spinoff) from Cuba to " Cuba and democracy" succeeds.
...I keep you to that assertion.
From Talk:Cuba and democracy it is clear that there are still many problems... I've considered to put a cleanup template on Cuba and democracy... but when I found out I would need 4 or 5 at least (Merge suggestion to Politics of Cuba; insufficient/unchecked/poorly formatted references; uncategorised; general content policy issues...) and many other problems for which there are no specific templates: the page name doesn't cover the topic (currently the topic is limited to: "Cuba and democracy under the Castro regime", as if Cuba (or democracy) didn't exist before Castro's raise to power); various style issues, among which: written in the style of a school essay ( WP:NOT), intro not formatted according to MoS standards, etc.
So I await success... the only reason why the article wasn't listed at AfD yet, appears to be that at Talk:Cuba and democracy people wanted to give it benefit of doubt for a few days... so I'd recommend you to use those days to improve the article... instead of messing around in the Content forking guideline. The fact that you remain bent on changing *something* in the guideline without improving it, only results in us taking a closer look at your so-called success.
As long as the Cuba article remains "protected", there is also no indication that the strategy you propose and implement by starting the subsidiary article on democracy is a true *success* (I mean, with regard to your own goals, and what you wanted to prove).
Further, when there is a success with the Cuba fork we can evaluate:
My personal tentative intuition is that you're trying to evade a NPOV summary in the main article (that is the article from which you started a split), and which is required to be conform to Wikipedia:Content forking#Article spinouts - "Summary style" articles. I understand that the Cuba article is protected, so here are some suggestions:
-- Francis Schonken 17:11, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
I copied and pasted the following from the body of the article into the intro:
If you delete this from the intro, please delete it from the body, too. But please say WHY you feel it violates NPOV policy. -- Uncle Ed 17:42, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
FM reverted this without discussion (other than declaring it "not an improvement").
Wikipedia:Summary style says:
Moreover, sometimes an aspect of an article becomes so contentious that it leads to edit wars. It behooves us (those of us who support NPOV) to facilitate alternatives to edit warring. The best way to do this is to write a separate article about the dispute.
The first time I did this was 2 years ago with Chilean coup of 1973. At first, others resisted (fearing it was a POV fork). But the tactic proved itself, and in fact the article remains as a spin off (or "spinout") of Augusto Pinochet.
Many users, seeing an edit war (especially when it gets personal and nasty) simply avoid editing such a contentious article. The edit war deters users from contributing. A spin-off of just the controversial aspect makes it easier for other contributors to join in.
Sometimes, once the spin-off is complete, it can be reintegrated with the parent topic. It can become a section, and be replaced with a redirect. If not, it can remain separate (a standalone or "sidebar" article). We use the {{ main}} template to indicate the relationship, while providing a summary in the parent article.
There are two topics (both related to science) in which some users have resisted spin-offs, spuriously labeling them " POV forks". I have asked repeatedly on what grounds they call these spin-offs "POV forks", but they never give any reasons. They simply repeat themselves and ofter accuse me of 'having a history of doing this'.
It would be a POV fork, only if the purpose or effect was to evade NPOV policy. That is, if either the parent article or its spin-off became biased as a result of the split. However, leaving behind a neutral account of the dispute (however short) is not adding bias to the article, nor is it "POV editing" as defined by the ArbCom. Nor is creating an article which is only about one controversial aspect, provided it's not a one-sided article.
I request those users who have been claiming a "consensus" to keep biased, slanted articles intact according to their personal notions, to stop doing this. Instead, allow Wikipedia articles to be unbiased by having them describe all points of view fairly. Allow spin-off article to isolate controversial aspects and describe the dispute in detail, leaving behind a neutral summary of the controversial aspect.
This is in accordance with policy, as I'm sure the ArbCom and (if it comes to it) Jimbo Wales would agree. -- Uncle Ed 18:14, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
There was no consensus. Two editors reverted it. Your reasonings above don't establish consensus. They don't follow from the sentence you quote from wikipedia:summary style. You have presented your identical arguments on this page several times, the consensus always being against these always returning proposals of you. 3RR is not a viable excuse for changing the thrust of a guideline, when you know in advance there is currently no consensus for these changes. That's your track record on this issue, and you just made it longer. -- Francis Schonken 18:38, 31 July 2006 (UTC)When editing this page, please ensure that your revision reflects consensus.
Sometimes, in an attempt to preserve bias in an article, some Wikipedians will band together to "vote" that a spin-off is a Wikipedia:POV fork, even when it's not.
Proof that this often happens can be easily found by checking the number of AFD votes which were resolved purely by counting votes rather than by examining the reasons given.
Saying things like "Another POV fork by this user" is not a reason, but an attempt to avoid assuming good faith and avoid giving reasons. I propose the following standard, and I'd like to see a vote made on it (if not here, then in the appropropriate place). -- Uncle Ed 21:04, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
Vote on policy:
Support:
Oppose:
Does this also apply to templates? Should a style template be forked if editors can't agree on the visual style it should have? See Template talk:Cquote#Please restore template. — Omegatron 16:25, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
I appreciate NPOV. However, in one article (likely a lot more than one! :), a religious figure has been accused of everything under the sun by somebody: wife beating (he doesn't even have a wife!), anti-Semitism, anti-American, nepotism, neotony, you name it. An objective reader would have to decide if he really spent any time on religious activities or most of his time conscientiously violating every principal he believed in!
Since the man is dead, pro-editors have to strain a bit to meet the attacks of the media which tend to be so numerous, that they are overwhelming. BTW, that was the general idea of the attacks in the first place. To discredit the founder. So most of the article, rather than accomplishments, is spent explaining the position of the critics which are not terrifically clear, e.g. "This guy beat his wife (which he didn't have) on Sunday, but he never drew blood - except on Wednesday." This is really hard to research for an answer. We can't ask the guy. He's dead! We understandably don't believe the critics. Not all of them seem sincere.
So we have an article where the guy says the rosary ten thousand times (inflated to a couple of paragraphs!) and the rest of the article is devoting to trying to meet "attacks" which don't seem compatible with what supporters know of his life.
He exerted a lot of influence which the media would naturally like to diminish. When one media channel picked up a report, it was repeated in dozens of channels. All the same (often outlandish) report. No new news. No follow-up.
The critics cannot run out of criticsm as fast as supporters can run out of answers! They have the advantage of being able to make theirs up or interviewing people with little standing, or emotional problems. We have scruples and can't do that in rebuttal!
I like NPOV but reporting and answering each and every attack on a religious figure in this day and age really gets out of proportion sometimes. Student7 04:03, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
I reverted Cunado's recent changes, the "edit summary" box was a bit short to explain why in detail:
Well I'm certainly editing in good faith. I thought I was improving the article. I think we're both editing with completely different examples in mind. I'm in the middle of debating how and where to include an obvious sub-article of a main article, which is a completely different subject, and someone keeps using this guideline, which doesn't seem to be written with that in mind, to support an argument. Here's what I did:
Thanks.
Cuñado
-
Talk
20:15, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
From the guideline:
"In line with Wikipedia's semi-policy of assuming good faith, the creator of the new article is probably sincerely convinced that there is so much information about a certain aspect of a subject that it justifies a separate article. There is no consensus whether a "Criticism of .... " article is always a POV fork. At least the "Criticism of ... " article should contain rebuttals if available, and the original article should contain a summary of the "Criticism of ... " article." (emphasis added)
I find this somewhat confusing. This talk page doesn't appear to have archives, so I am not sure how to find information about this lack of consensus. Basically, what I am trying to figure out is the current consensus (or lack thereof) on spinoff articles, where the scope of the spinoff article lends itself to greater coverage of a particular POV.
Above, I saw a discussion of a hypothetical article Foo, which had spinoff articles on Blue Foo, White Foo, and Grey Foo. Suppose the Foo article was balanced, but Blue Foo covered a particular view more thoroughly, while White Foo covered a different view more thoroughly, and Grey Foo was fairly balanced.
Thanks!
Armedblowfish (
talk|
mail)
01:04, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
For all intents and purposes, "Do not create content forks" is hard policy - it's a clear rule which must not be violated. Why is it marked as a guideline? Stevage 11:48, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
Added section based on discussion on Talk:NPOV to clarify an additional situation in which there can legitimately be different articles on different POVs. -- Shirahadasha 22:55, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
This rule has been used to justify biased coverage of Evolution and Global Warming.
Any article created in attempt to clarify the ambiguities exploited by the proponents of theories of evolution or anthropogenic global warming has been branded a POV fork.
We need a Definitions of evolution or Aspects of evolution article which clarifies the sense in which some is using evolution when they say they do or don't believe in it; or they have a theory which explains it; or that "it's a fact, not a theory"; and so forth.
Likewise, we need some clarification about global warming, because every other reference to it - in the press and even some articles here - conflates "any rise in global air temperature" with " anthropogenic global warming theory". And simply redirecting the Anthropogenic global warming page to Global warming doesn't help. The reader gets lost, because the distinctions are buried. -- Uncle Ed 21:33, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
I have proposed merging Aldebaran in fiction into Aldebaran (see discussion). One relevant point seems to be whether it is a valid fork or should be avoided. Input welcome. — AldeBaer 17:59, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
![]() | This page in a nutshell: Wikipedia articles should not be split into multiple articles solely so each can advocate a different stance on the subject. |
Presently above is the wording, however I am proposing one of the below options to clarify its meaning with either the addition of the word "same" or words "a particular".
Can I get some input to this proposal of wording.
![]() | This page in a nutshell: Wikipedia articles should not be split into multiple articles solely so each can advocate a different stance on the same subject. |
![]() | This page in a nutshell: Wikipedia articles should not be split into multiple articles solely so each can advocate a different stance on a particular subject. |
![]() | This page in a nutshell: Wikipedia articles should not be split into multiple articles solely so each can advocate a certain subject that is already treated in an article. |
Sounds good to me. If you want to edit it so, you have my approval -or- if you want to get more consenses. I'll wait until you edit it in.-- Doug talk 15:56, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
I revised the guideline into an Content forking/ownership fork proposal since the content fork guideline seems to try to fit all examples of avoiding consensus through forking as POV forking. If there is discussion agreement that something is WP:original research and should not go into an article, it would seem to be ownership forking to run off with the disputed content and use it to create a new article. In this situation, the primary purpose is not to evade the WP:NPOV policy, rather it is to evade the results of the WP:consensus policy. Also, not all POV forking are to evade the WP:consensus policy. Some contributors create a POV fork so they have plenty of room to include each and every complaint or condemnation about a topic and to overemphasize those complaint/condemnation by not treating all facts and major Points of View on a certain topic in one article. Thus, I think the guideline should clarify these events through POV forking and ownership forking. You can see my proposed changes through this dif. Please review Content forking/ownership fork proposal and comment here. Thanks. -- Jreferee ( Talk) 15:11, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
![]() | This page in a nutshell: Wikipedia articles should not be split into multiple articles solely so each can advocate a certain subject that is already treated in an article. |
The material I edited seemed to be written like a "HOWTO: Spot bad faith editors" which is kind of beside the point, and I think that generally we should not be prescribing that A+B+C = bad faith; this is just inviting editors in disputes to say "AHA! I have PROVEN your bad faith per WP:SPINOUT, you fiend!" which is counterproductive. In any case, I believe that the phrasing "If a statement is inadmissible as unattributed POV at an article [[XYZ]], then it is also inadmissible at a spinout [[Criticism of XYZ]]" encapsulated the issue more effectively. Eleland 15:35, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
I strongly suggest removing the last sentence from the section WP:CFORK#Accidental duplicate articles. This sentence reads:
Sometimes the appropriate fate for a duplicate article, especially if the duplication was inadvertant, is for it to be merged back into the main article. Sometimes, however, the content should not be merged back into the main article, especially if the duplication was deliberate. This sentence, in its current form, gives a POV pusher ammunition to say "Oh, what's that? You mean there was already an article on this subject? Before I created my own article heavily slanted towards the 'correct' POV on the subject? Oh my my my. Well, I guess our only choice is to merge my heavily slanted article into your existing balanced article. That's what WP:CFORK says you have to do." -- 192.250.34.161 14:48, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
"Both content forks and POV forks are undesirable on Wikipedia, as they avoid consensus building and violate one of our most important policies." That sentence from the summary/lead seems somewhat at odds with WP:LENGTH which reads: "If possible, split the content into logically separate articles." MrZaius talk 17:49, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
WP has articles which give only one side of a controversial issue. There are corresponding articles which mention opposing views, but these are presented as "denialism". These are clearly POV forks. If we're going to allow these we should list them as exceptions in WP:POVFORK. Fourtildas ( talk) 06:32, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
A good example is 9/11 : if you look at Talk:September 11, 2001 attacks you will see that anything that disagrees with the official Bush Administration version of events gets dumped into 9/11 conspiracy theories. If the "conspiracy theories" page did not exist the bushies would have a more difficult time suppressing opposing views.
I notice that recently the Wikicracy has imposed Draconian censorship on any discussion of 9/11: "In a 2008 arbitration case, administrators were given the power to impose discretionary sanctions on any editor working on articles concerning the September 11, 2001 attacks." Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/September 11 conspiracy theories.
(Actually this probably won't make much difference since administrators routinely abuse their powers with compete impunity - has any admin even been slapped on the wrist? ) Fourtildas ( talk) 05:15, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
Well, here I am. Over at Wikipedia_Talk:Spoilers there has been a...prolonged...discussion of the practice of using tags to precautioning users about the possibility that they will encounter plot information that might detract from their later enjoyment of a text. One of the proposals that has emerged in this discussion is the idea of creating a 'hide-n-show' system that would allow users to filter specific categories of wikipedia content.
As proposed, the HNS system would only apply to tags, but it is already acknowledged, both by its proponents and its detractors, that such a system could also apply directly to content. For example, users might be given the option of electing to see "spoiler content" or "non-spoiler content", and thus would view a given wikipedia page differently.
This raises issues that are clearly germane to the discussion of content forking, especially around ideological POVs. It is (clearly) technically possible to create a wikipedia that would provide different articles for people with different ideological demands--what I term a "subjective text." This is pretty certaintly a violation of our content-forking policy, but it is not neccesarily obvious that it's a bad idea.
I want to submit this issue to discussion on this page, because there is a general sense that the issues raised are beyond the scope of the spoiler discussion. Thank you. Ethan Mitchell ( talk) 18:46, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
I think this guideline would benefit from a section like "Dealing with POV forks", especially if written by editors who have had to repeatedly deal with this situation in the past. I'm currently dealing with an editor who is creating multiple forks, and though I can definitely "make it up as I go along" in terms of how I deal with them (working through WP:DR and nominating articles for merge/deletion, etc.), it would be helpful to have advice from others who have gone through the same process already. -- El on ka 20:08, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
Articles such as Introduction to special relativity and Introduction to evolution do by their nature duplicate some of the subject matter of the more specialised articles. It has been argued at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Introduction to evolution (2nd nomination) that this guideline necessitates the deletion of such introductory articles, but this did not meet with general agreement. However, it was clear that some people saw a conflict between Wikipedia:Make technical articles accessible and this guideline. Would there be any objection to me adding such articles as one of the examples in the section "What content/POV forking is not"? Tim Vickers ( talk) 23:00, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
Yes, it will certainly be necessary to wait until the AfD discussion has closed, and I was posting here to raise awareness, rather than making an attempt to change a guideline to fit an argument. However, the point raised by the discussion is a valid one. As you note, some "Introduction to..." articles have been accepted and as long as they are one accepted exception, this guideline might be better recognizing them. Anyway, let's see what people think about this idea. Tim Vickers ( talk) 23:28, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
Should we add "List of (topic)" articles to "What content/POV forking is not"? Torc2 ( talk) 19:37, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
How about using subpage to mean a page that is created with article/subpage such as talk:article/archive and using subarticle to refer to a page that is broken off from a larger article in order to reduce the size of the main article, such as Barack Obama, Early life and career of Barack Obama? Someone wanted to use spinout, but that is a very bad name, a word that is normally only used if you are driving on a slippery road and would introduce confusion. SayCheeeeeese ( talk) 13:44, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
Would I be right in saying that Project level forking allows individual projects to create their own Wiki with its own policies and guidelines which may be different from Wikipedia's (For example, having an MOS that makes a set layout mandatory, or an NPOV policy that requires each page to contain two sections of opposing POV, rather than one NPOV section) so long as they comply with Open source regs, but that you would need to host it on your own server, rather than simply using Projectname/pagename on this server?
perfectblue ( talk) 12:08, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
Returning to this issue of preferentially (re)merging all forks, as opposed to deletion [6] ...
I occasionally see “POV-fork” used as a sufficient criterion for deletion at AfD. I believe that this is bad practice, and that his guideline should be modified so that it does not imply that deletion is, by default, an appropriate remedy.
One reason that it is bad is because “POV-fork” is a very easy allegation to make, can be made from a POV position, and thus a POV battle over content becomes a AfD debate. This guideline therefore legitimises AfD as a POV battle weapon.
Another reason it is bad is that very easily, a POV-fork is also a content-fork. There is sourced material in the forked article that belongs in the other article. Deletion of the fork leads to deleted material (re)appearing in the other article. Whether this is done by direct copying, indirect copying via a contributor’s records, or recreation based on a contributors memory of what was in the now deleted article, GFDL is now violated.
In every non-keep instance I have seen, a merge and redirect has been appropriate. I acknowledge that there may be cases where deletion is appropriate, and so the language used here should be in terms of “preferences” or “by default”.
A case that stirred my interest in this issue is Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Celebrity Big Brother 2007 racism controversy (UK). Note the closing admin’s disregard for GFDL in his suggestion that deleted material may be harvested for continued use.
-- SmokeyJoe ( talk) 00:36, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
Well, no, depends on case, not on "severity"; when deliberately created to avoid WP:CONSENSUS, AfD proceedings may be followed, and indeed "delete" is not a certain outcome in such case. POV warriors might feel too protected by the "preference" to re-insert their POV content in the original article... that's not the way we want this to be working. The rest (i.e. the merging option) is explained in Wikipedia:Content forking#Accidental duplicate articles -- Francis Schonken ( talk) 12:35, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
“As Wikipedia does not view article forking as an acceptable solution to disagreements between contributors, such forks may be nominated for deletion.”
I have reverted an undiscussed change which I see as discouraging the use of summary style articles, by expading the meaning of what will be considered content forks. If that was not the intent, i welcome discussion of the proper wording. DGG ( talk) 03:43, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
See Talk:Judith Butler and Talk:Influence of Judith Butler's concepts. Thanks! Hyacinth ( talk) 04:29, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
Please edit this page to remove this contradiction:
As far as I can tell, "unintentional creation of several separate articles all treating the same subject." and "Accidental duplicate articles" are the same thing. So I am confused at the contradiction when this page tells me that one is a content fork, and the other is not a content fork. How can one thing be both A and also not-A ? -- 68.0.124.33 ( talk) 03:47, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
Hello, those who contribute to Content forking! I have a question about applying this guideline. I am in process of writing/editing some material in my User space that are counterpoints to an Essay in the project space. (This writing is not yet ready for other editors to be invited in to work on, yet.) But in what I've worked on so far, I discovered that it really may be a "counter-essay", if you will.
My material so far might be workable into the essay I'm writing about. However, I have a strong suspicion it would be reverted on sight. (Since the material seems to contradict the essay itself.) Now, this guide for the most part talks about articles in article-space. Yet the first sentence of What Forking Is currently reads, "POV forks usually arise when contributors disagree about the content of an article or other page." (Emphasis mine.)
I'm hoping to see what, if any, consensus there is on how Content Forking applies to Essays on Wikipedia. I did search what's currently on this page, and didn't seem to come up with anything. Would anyone share their thoughts, and/or point me to links that illustrate prior consensus or discussion? Thanks! LaughingVulcan 14:36, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
BTW, apologies for my first sentence.... Obviously, the people who contribute to the Content Forking Guideline generally wouldn't be those who, "contribute to Content forking." ;) Any perceived humor was unintentional - though I laughed when I re-read and saw how it could be interpreted. LaughingVulcan 12:42, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
It's worth noting that Criticism of Christianity, Criticism of Islam, Criticism of Mormonism, Criticisms of communism, and Criticism of Hinduism all sport neutrality disputes, all because either the scope of the article implies that the only discussion of the subject that exists is negative or the scope of the article inherently advocates the negative point of view. Contrast Criticism of Objectivism, which has not been allowed to fork from Objectivist philosophy, which in turn attempts to include all discussion of the (specific area of the) subject, both positive and negative, and is not sporting a neutrality dispute. Uncle G 13:27, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
Technically, criticism-articles like Criticism of George W. Bush or Criticism of Wikipedia fall under this policy as well, don't they? Salaskan 20:58, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
There are many "Criticism of ..." articles in Wikipedia, and they seem to have uneven treatment. I was looking for some guidance on them, and this page gave a bit, but not much. So I consolidated the guidance into a new subsection, and added a couple of notes that seem sensible to me. I hope these consolidated guidelines are useful, and get improved over time. My intention was not to introduce any new rules, but simply consolidate existing rules (and common sense) into one place. Apologies in advance if my "be bold"-ness was ill-advised :-) Noleander 08:40, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
In the section Articles whose subject is a POV, it is suggested that "Criticism of.." articles start as a section in the titular article and be spun off by editor consensus. However, such sections themselves are discouraged. What would be a reasonable thing to improve this? Baccyak4H ( Yak!) 17:30, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
What are the alternative to critism articles which often are coatracks for attacks on a subject? --neon white talk 09:49, 22 October 2008 (UTC)
There was a change to the criticism articles, in a passage that was added 2 years ago [7]:
Original There is no consensus whether a "Criticism of .... " article is always a POV fork. At least the "Criticism of ... " article should contain rebuttals if available, and the original article should contain a neutral summary of the "Criticism of ... " article. |
New There is currently no consensus whether a "Criticism of .... " article is always a POV fork. Any daughter article that deals with opinions about the subject of parent article should include both positive and negative opinions, and/or rebuttals, and the original article should contain a neutral summary of the spunout article. |
What is troubling is this change, from:
to:
...creates a higher bar for criticism articles. Gone is the "if available" modifier.
The editor who made these changes had nominated 3 Criticism articles for deletion, those three were closed the same day Speedy Keep, WP:SNOW and WP:POINT, another was closed "Snowball Keep, Everyone voted to keep" (Scientology controversies), 4 days after this editor was arguing on ANI about the existence of controversy articles.
As the editor mentioned themselves in the ANI, two controversy articles have gone on to become featured articles: Boy Scouts of America membership controversies and 1996 United States campaign finance controversy.
The overwhelming majority of the 15 "criticism" AfDs were closed keep (12), and 1/3 (5) where closed speedy keep, all 15 still have articles now. The criticm articles are actually gaining more accpetance not less. travb ( talk) 21:30, 2 January 2009 (UTC)
This edit is about as faulty as it can get as a summary of NPOV (misguided, misleading, name it...). This has been pointed out before to the editor making that edit (e.g. [8], above,...). WP:Criticism is at least a decent summary of the NPOV stance on the issue, whether it is an essay or whatever (there are several reasons why project pages aren't always guideline or policy: not necessarily because they wouldn't be a decent summary of policy). -- Francis Schonken ( talk) 20:42, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
it just shows a complete failure to understand "npov", and the difference between producing criticism and reporting criticism. The correct way to put it is that "criticism of" articles are always WP:SS sub-articles, created as it was realized there is enough notable criticism to report to justify a standalone article. "international reaction to $EVENT" articles are similar: there will never be an "international reaction to the Siegenthaler incident" article, while an international reaction to 9/11 is perfectly in order. -- dab (𒁳) 22:37, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
See also this diff by Mike Godwin. If anyone knows what NPOV is about, it's him (seeing as he's employed to protect our asses). Sceptre ( talk) 23:52, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
Part of the reason I have been reverting Sceptre's changes is that he either: a) has been very careless, such that he destroyed improvements that had been made to the page just because they were in his way; or b) has some great objection to the idea that useful content from a duplicate page should be merged and doesn't see fit to confide in the rest of us what that objection is before forcing it on the rest of us; and quite frankly whichever it is, it does not inspire confidence in his judgment.
[9] is the edit in question. It is not hard to understand; it is always dangerous to put on a policy or guideline page that a particular situation may be resolved only by one particular process, because then someone who feels they stand to benefit from that process immediately starts trying to engineer that situation. It is particularly dangerous that the page as it stands claims that this particular process must be followed even when the situation has been created in deliberate bad faith. It should not be hard, therefore, to see the merit of changing "the content" to "any useful content", so that the page no longer appears to dictate that any schmuck who deliberately creates a POV fork and stuffs it full of one-sided material can then smugly insist that "the content should be merged back into the main article because WP:POVFORK says you do that no matter what."
Would someone please explain to me why in God's name the people who have consistently, without fail included the change from "any useful content" back to "the content" every time they revert have done so? Is it sheer carelessness? I sure hope it's not an active desire to put loopholes on the page for dishonest editors to use, but the funny thing is, it's hard not to think of such explanations when we get no others. -- 65.78.13.238 ( talk) 00:39, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
[10] -- Francis Schonken ( talk) 14:45, 14 March 2009 (UTC)
OK, I know of a "Criticism of..." article, what do I do with it? If there's a {{ criticism-section}} tag for criticism sections in articles, why can't there be a template that you can use to tag a "Criticism of..." article (AKA POV fork)????? If "Criticism of..." articles are against Wikipedia policy then where is the POV tag to put on them? [| Retro00064| ☎talk| ✍contribs|] 06:15, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
this isn't a problem. "Criticisms of $X" articles aren't actual criticisms any more than "Terrorism attack on $X" are actual terrorist attacks. I really don't see why this is so difficult to grasp. All our articles are encyclopedic articles about notable topics. These topics may include criticism. The criticism is always that found in our sources, not ours. -- dab (𒁳) 19:50, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
This has been tried before, unsuccessfully: Wikipedia:List of POV forks used to be the main tool to enforce it. The page was deleted by what seems like unanimity, see Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:List of POV forks.
Would someone support taking Wikipedia:List of POV forks to WP:DRV? If not, there's clearly no consensus to do away with all Criticism of ... articles as suggested currently, and not in sync with policy, at WP:CFORK. -- Francis Schonken ( talk) 15:28, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
I'd gladly take this to WP:DRV per Wikipedia:Consensus can change - Would you (and others) support? That is the question I'm trying to find an answer for... -- Francis Schonken ( talk) 15:36, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
Sorry, if you're afraid to take the challenge (for fear others might not agree with your position), we'd better keep to the still valid consensus to not do away with all criticism of ... articles.
Of course the old page is old history, but it is prior history to any new attempt to do the same. Why are you afraid? Because the page might contain valid reasoning not to go ahead with this? -- Francis Schonken ( talk) 15:56, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
The consensus is valid, until a new one develops. Jeez you really *do* think there are only three articles in this encyclopedia worth mentioning as an example? All of them accidentally on current top level politicians? There are more Criticism of ... articles than that, some of which were not *challenged* AfD-wise, or are challenged thus periodically and kept. -- Francis Schonken ( talk) 16:13, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
I don't think Criticism of Microsoft (and half a dozen sub-pages) is going anywhere any time soon. So if you want to write guidance on the topic, see it is applicable to all cases the guidance is supposed to be covering. -- Francis Schonken ( talk) 16:16, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
The guidance should not "dictate" anything in that sense. Your interpretation of WP:NPOV is too biased to begin with. Your "predictions" are useless. Next we'd be writing policy based on Sceptre's intuition, because Sceptre "dictates" that his/her intuition can't be challenged... (that is most literally what you're contending above). The current phrasings regarding Criticism of... articles should be removed from WP:CFORK: the paragraph misses the point: the point being that we do what reliable sources do: if there are enough reliable sources treating criticism as a separate topic regarding whatever subject, Wikipedia can do the same, etc.
If you want to convince me of something else, please do. But not the way you're heading this, it is as unconvincing as I can imagine. In a few lines I'm back at what I thought before this edit-warring was started: a general prohibition against Criticism of... articles is pointless, as it is (at least) original research, dictating that no reliable sources should be published that treat criticism as a separate topic, and if they are, Wikipedia should be allowed to ignore the core WP:NPOV policy by not describing such sources equally... So let's get over with this, remove such phrasing and continue to keep them removed, until consensus really changes (and not Sceptre's POV-pushing posing as such). -- Francis Schonken ( talk) 16:50, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
I'd recommend all Involved parties to the Obama articles ArbCom case to stop pushing POVs favouring their stance wrt that case in applicable guidance, and then unprotect the guideline once these edit warriors are gone, awaiting the outcome of that case. -- Francis Schonken ( talk) 16:55, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
Your ignorance regarding NPOV is touching: there's no such reasoning there, nor can it be deduced from that policy. Please stop using ONLY your pet articles as examples, as I already suggested above. -- Francis Schonken ( talk) 17:11, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
Logical fallacy: even if it currently doesn't hold true, not even in a single criticism article, it appears impossible to derive from policy it couldn't. You don't even demonstrate it doesn't hold true in the currently most successful Criticism of... pages. The rest is innuendo, misguided rhetorical questions etc. So please stop it, this POV-pushing to override your opponents in the Obama articles ArbCom case via hammering your POV in guidance until such pages get protected. And leave the floor to others, they might have something sensible to say in this RfC. -- Francis Schonken ( talk) 18:00, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
Really Sceptre, your reasonings are bogus - which leads you to push a POV. Pushing a POV is no blockable offense, let me get that straight, but allow me to not be impressed in the least by the whole setting. Including the logical fallacy you're attempting to build on Mike Godwin's opinion. Please leave some room for others, they might have something interesting to say. -- Francis Schonken ( talk) 18:27, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
PS, this is more or less what the page looked like (courtesy of the Wayback Machine - sorry about the links looking quirky):
Wikipedia:List of POV forks ( version Sep 13, 2006) |
---|
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it. |
One or more wikipedians have alleged that the following articles are <a href= http://en.wikipedia.org:80/wiki/Wikipedia:POV_fork>POV fork</a>s. See <a href= http://en.wikipedia.org:80/wiki/Special:Prefixindex/Criticism_of>Special:Prefixindex/Criticism_of</a> for an automated list.
Recommendations on how to deal with POV forks can be found in:
These are articles with "criticism", "criticisms" or "critique" as part of their name, which may suggest that they cover a single side of a debate. Further investigation is required to determine if that is indeed the case.
Note that some articles titles contain the word "Criticism", "Critique", "Kritik" (etc.) but are not POV forks:
|
-- Francis Schonken ( talk) 19:26, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
moved from project page by this edit
This guideline has issues: It does not deal with distinctions between this rare concept and the more common concepts of necessary article "splitting," and the development of sub-articles from a main article. It also does not deal with the usage of "fork" as a pejorative (opposing legitimate sub-article creation).
-- Gavin Collins ( talk| contribs) 10:37, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
Two articles, Virus and Introduction to viruses seem to be covering identical subject matters, despite the results at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Introduction to viruses and more recently Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Introduction to viruses (2nd nomination). Can the article "Introduction to viruses" be classed as a content fork? -- Gavin Collins ( talk| contribs) 13:35, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
The bottom line is that each of these articles needs community consensus in order to exist. Unlike other articles, there is no excuse for keeping "Introductions" around that aren't well developed and useful. I.e. WP:DEMOLISH doesn't apply here. Users willing to write "Introductions" can develop them in their userspace up to the point that they are useful enough to go live. If there are any "Introductions" around that aren't clearly useful, they should be userified with prejudice.
At present, we have ten of these articles. I am not happy with them, but they are acceptable. It must be clear that these are each a special case with its own justification. I am personally unsure why we should need Introduction to the Global Positioning System, or Introduction to viruses. Virus should be our "introductory" article, and in-depth articles should be linked from there. Any future "introduction to Marxism" or "Introduction to linguistics" (both clearly highly technical and/or complex subjects, but also "soft" subjects which may receive vastly different treatment from different authors) must meet a very high threshold not just of quality but also of utility.
My position is that it would be better not to have these (I think this is what wikibooks was intended for), but I can live with them as long as they remain very few in number. -- dab (𒁳) 18:01, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
I am of the view that for many topics we must have these if we are to be of value to a reasonably broader spectrum of readers. It would, of course, be possible to write multi-level articles so as to make this unnecessary, but for any complicated topic, these are simply beyond the abilities of wp at present to handle. We have all we can do getting a good consistent article at a single level. I agree though that this should not be automatic, but I think it might be fairly widely adopted: I think for example that Introduction to Marxism would be a very good idea. Knowing some virology, I'm not sure it wouldn't make sense there either--one article assuming a knowledge of basic molecular biology, and one that does not. Computer related topics might be good candidates also: the people who want to know something about GPS at a consumer level are a different group from those who want to actually know the full technology. I also think that once the need for a particular one is disputed and accepted by consensus, the decision should stand. They're too much effort to be at the whim of repeated afds. DGG ( talk) 23:14, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
I do not think that "simplified" articles and "introduction to ..." articles are the same thing. I think that one of these two is completely fine, and the other is simply useless; to explain which is which, and why, I am going to propose that the following is one of the unformulated principles which has undergirded WP:CFORK for at least as long as it has had a "What content/POV forking is not" section:
If we have Marxism and Marxism (simplified) (assuming, as I will from here on, that all articles are well-written towards their mandate) that serves the purposes of Wikipedia, by giving detailed information to those capable of receiving detailed information, and simple information to those for whom the detailed information is too much.
If we have Marxism and Classical Marxism, that serves the purpose of Wikipedia, by giving detailed information about the large topic of Marxism to readers interested in the whole topic and more detailed information on the sub-topic of classical Marxism to readers interested in that particular sub-topic.
By contrast, if we have Marxism and Introduction to Marxism, what purpose does this serve? At all? I suppose it serves the purposes of someone who really wants the subject to be presented in a particular order but I cannot figure out how it serves Wikipedia's purposes. I wager that any defense of "Introduction to ..." articles will hinge on the presumption that they present a simplified view of the subject, which would seem to suggest that they are actually "simplified" articles under a misleading name. -- 65.78.13.238 ( talk) 01:41, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
If we have Marxism and Marxism (simplified) (assuming, as I will from here on, that all articles are well-written towards their mandate) that serves the purposes of Wikipedia -- no. this is a terribly flawed argument. We already have an entire project dedicated to "simplification", at simple:.
We cannot have duplication. We can only have excerpts, i.e. summaries presented within WP:SS with the main article clearly linked. We cannot have two articles with the same scope. Articles entitled "Introduction to $TOPIC" will properly be about notable Introductions to a certain topic, they will not themselves be introduction. The same way Criticism of Islam isn't itself a criticism of Islam, but a discussion of notable criticisms, and the same way Maps of Switzerland isn't itself a map of Switzerland but a discussion of notable maps of Switzerland, and Cigarette isn't an actual cigarette but an article about cigarettes. The only case where articles namespace are in fact what the title says are list articles. "List of" means the article itself is a list, and not an article about notable lists. These are a special case, and would properly need their own namespace (but do not because the dividing line between lists and full articles is often blurred). -- dab (𒁳) 19:47, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
I am puzzled, because it seems to me that "Introduction to Marxism" and "Marxism (simplified)" to have exactly the same purpose, and should normally contain the same content. Are you confusing this with "Marxism" in the simple Simple Encyclopedia -- which would basically be the Introduction article, rewritten in simpler language. But otherwise, what the difference? Marxism is a complex historically developed social theoretical system, that developed over time , and had multiple tendencies. An introductory article simplifies the history somewhat, and discusses only the major tendencies. It can be useful even to mature readers, as a basic orientation before a full article. Think of it as the introductory chapter of a textbook.And I thin we need this for all complex topics. Sometimes its easy-- a basic article on the overall History of France can serve as an introduction, which the article of specific aspects serving for the more detailed material. But it is difficult to do this with most non-narrative topics. I see no reason why we should not have duplication,or even things presented rom different aspects of the topic. We're not paper, and can have as many articles on a subject as necessary in order to fulfill our purpose, which is providing information to the user.
More, I think that POV branches are sometimes the fairest way of presenting a topic, it lets each side of a complex argument get presented in full, and avoids the fragmentary effect of a point by point rebuttal. It does not matter to me whether these are in one article, or different articles. DGG ( talk) 13:45, 23 March 2009 (UTC)
From project space:
The creator of the new article may be sincerely convinced that there is so much information about a certain aspect of a subject that it justifies a separate article. Any daughter article that deals with opinions about the subject of parent article must include suitably- weighted positive and negative opinions, and/or rebuttals, if available, and the original article should contain a neutral summary of the split article. There is currently no consensus whether a "Criticism of..." article is always a POV fork, but it is a common fault of many articles. If possible, refrain from using "criticism" and instead use neutral terms such as "perception" or "reception"; if the word "criticism" must be used, make sure that such criticism considers both the merits and faults, and is not entirely negative (consider what would happen is a "Praise of..." article was created instead).
I object to "...There is currently no consensus whether ..., but it is a common fault..." - internally inconsistent -- Francis Schonken ( talk) 12:45, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
Just when we thought we had the " Introductions" in check, enter the Outlines". Blatant WP:CFORK on a mind-boggling scale. Apparently, the idea is to reate an "outline" counter-article to every Wikipedia artile ("an all-encompassing outline of the knowledge of humankind (still under development), which also serves as an outline of Wikipedia's contents.") Wth? -- dab (𒁳) 09:45, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
"POV forks usually arise when contributors disagree about the content of an article or other page. Instead of resolving that disagreement by consensus, another version of the article (or another article on the same subject) is created to be developed according to a particular point of view. This second article is known as a "POV fork" of the first, and is inconsistent with Wikipedia policies."
This statement serves two purposes. It gives an explanation of what PoV forking can be, and it says that usually, this is because of a certain scenario. The latter function is entirely useless to anyone but vandals who wish to enact this scenario, and blackens the name of those who make articles according to a scenario I shall outline below, the first two parts, and the last part of which I personally have encountered at least twenty times each. Admittedly, I haven't done enough research to have found the entire scenario either (I have never ever seen anyone say, "I am taking this material to another article, then", and then create a new article), but it is at least plausible that this has happened, or might happen in the future:
"This material doesn't belong in this article" (edit war), "This material belongs in another article" (edit war), Creation of new article (edit war, AfD: "This is a PoV fork") Deletion.
I suggest that either the contrasting scenario be introduced into this section, thusly: "Note that this is not the same as an article created after discussion on a previous page that concluded that content from the previous article would be better off in its own article"
Or better yet, the scenario part of it be removed altogether. Anarchangel ( talk) 03:10, 16 July 2009 (UTC)
Here is the current lead:
I found this slightly confusing -- it took me a while to appreciate that POV forks are the intentional subset of content forks. May I propose this revision:
Andrew Gradman talk/ WP:Hornbook 06:25, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
( edit conflict) I have to take a close look at Transhumanist's input, but here's a realistic revisions of the lead text, and I think it's not inconsistent with these new concerns. Andrew Gradman talk/ WP:Hornbook 03:24, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
"Content Forking" refers to the treatment of one topic in more than one article. Content forks are not necessarily bad, but they should be closely scrutinized, as they can hinder coordination, elude consensus, and lead to inconsistent articles. There should be no more than one article wholly devoted to a given topic; alternate names for the same topic should redirect to a single article. Lengthy sections of lengthy articles may be moved to a standalone article and replaced with a summary. When this is done to violate neutral point of view guidelines and elude the consensus created at another page, the pejorative label Point of view (POV) fork is applied. Spin-off articles may be devoted to discussing a point of view (e.g., "Criticism of X"), but editors must be vigilant that the new article conforms to WP:NPOV guidelines.
I don't think there is agreement on what content forks are as yet, so I will hazard a more explicit statement as to why it needs to be prohibited. Content forking is bad because it is a deliberate, reckless or unintentional violation of WP:NPOV in the sense that an article topic should be the subject of all significant views that have been published by reliable sources about that topic, and forking is basically evasion of this requirement through a process of sub-dividing these sources into seperate content fork articles. An example would be the Terminator content forks: Terminator (franchise), Terminator (character concept), Terminator (character) are all forks from the film The Terminator in the sense that they all share the same subject matter (played by Arnie). You could easily swap all of the sources in these articles around and it would not make any difference to their content. The reason why it is bad is that the sources have been spread amoungst different articles, so that the reader has to search 3 or 4 articles to obtain all the available encyclopedic coverage about the one topic. -- Gavin Collins ( talk| contribs) 10:51, 17 August 2009 (UTC)
Oppose: Dilutes collaborative article building needlessly. It's necessary to address subjects in more than one article, which is different from creating an article that duplicates information of another article. We use summary style, which is distinct from a fork, as a matter of presentation, to fully explore topic aspects without overburdening a longer parent article. – Whitehorse1 12:14, 31 August 2009 (UTC)
Almost six months later, I think I've finally figured this thing out. Check out the new thread at the village pump. Andrew Gradman talk/ WP:Hornbook 21:36, 8 January 2010 (UTC)
Hello, I have a question. Can a subject be considered a POV fork when it clearly shows notability? For example there is the newly created page of History of Falun Gong, now it is argued that the subject of Persecution of Falun Gong who's notability is not disputed, should be part of History of Falun Gong. My opinion, is that this is a move to dilute the subject. Is there a better place to ask this question? Also see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Persecution of Falun Gong. Thank you! -- HappyInGeneral ( talk) 19:17, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
Finalization of the templates and Twinkle functionality of the A10 CSD criteria is done and online! General explanation is at
WP:CSD just like anything else. This most certainly needs a mention in the CFORK section of duplicate articles, being why I'm posting. I tried to add it myself and just could not get the writer perspective done well, nor could I really keep it brief. Basically I'm hoping someone might stop in and note this, though I may try again if I'm feeling a little sharper. So, A10 itself is meant to be used in a very narrow range and shouldn't used at all if even a tiny amount of new and appropriate content could even mistakenly have been deleted by something being A10'd. Merge, in those cases. A10 specifically states it is not to be used for splits and forks, so yes it's rather ironic to post it on this page, but there is a very specific variant of CFORK that sparks from A10. Concept applied here would persons starting new articles of a topic they're convinced should be separate from parent article but didn't remove anything from it because they'd either forgotten or didn't want to look suspicious. Just that there's no actual additions in the copy-split even article version.
These will be very low percentage of edits or new article creations (especially since a lot of the large and notable things with some articles already have a shortcut to somewhere, meaning NPP wouldn't even catch it. I'm starting up things on the talk page of the template as I think there are a few matters of ambiguity yet. If someone could put in the mention at duplication here... yea I'd owe you one. Even if you never do any further reading or don't run into it for a year, the huge point to say on this page the extremely important point to get across being that we're not trying to deleting their work, but showing them where they can use it to improve the encycylpedia. It's pretty much a 99% good faith usage CSD, which is awesome in my view and is in the right direction for the broader current initiative on AGF all around on all levels. ♪ daTheisen (talk) 14:13, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
In the lead is the following.
Whereas, in
WP:NPOV in the section
Point of view and content forks is the following.
Seems like a contradiction. --
Bob K31416 (
talk)
02:09, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
There is a current discussion at the Village Pump: here. Rd232 talk 08:38, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
Can we include templates as well? I haven't read the article, but the nutshell message says articles. Templates should be included. 174.3.98.236 ( talk) 00:51, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
There is currently an ongoing discussion about the future of this and others MoS naming style. Please consider the issues raised in the discussion and vote if you wish GnevinAWB ( talk) 20:51, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
I keep reading this and I just do not get it. What is being described as bad - in the nutshell and elsewhere in the policy - seems to me always to be POV-forking, not content forking. This seems like a confused policy and one we should consider doing away with. I am not saying it has no metrit - but whatever is of merit about what swe shoudn't do seems to be about POV forks, or content forks that are bad because they are also POV forks, either way the problem is POV forks, not content forks.
Wikipedia used to have two policies, one on NPOV forks and one on Content forks. We either need to return to the two distinct policies, or rename this "Forking" and be clear that NPOV forking is discouraged and Content forking is not. Slrubenstein | Talk 01:01, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
I am not sure I agree but I see your reasoning, so for the sake of argument (but I would like to know if Smokey Joe and others agree with you) let's go with your view. For this guideline to make sense, it seems to me that we need to say then that there are three (or more) types of Content Forks: POV, forks, spin-offs, and ... what do we call the others? I do not think it is useful to use the intentional/unintentional distinction to classify different kinds of content forks (this distinction may be helpful to understanding why they happen, but not to identifying different kinds). I just want this guideline to be organized in a clear fashion. If we can agree on appropriate names for the principal types of content forks, I think we would be making a lot of progress to making this guideline more consistent and clear. Slrubenstein | Talk 12:24, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
I agree there are broader issues than POV. Perhaps we should merge this article with SPLIT? Or, if this is a "spin-off" from SPLIT, I'd like to know the rationale for covering splits that contravene NPOV, NAME and OR, but not others. Is this guideline meant to cover ALL splits that are forbidden (or discouraged), or just some? I just want to rationalize the organization of these guidelines. Slrubenstein | Talk 13:06, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
Well, we have identified a "problem." I propose this: let's see if other people who watch this page can review our recent exchange and toss around ideas to develop a real proposal, or two proposals. Then we can go to the talk pages of these other guidelines and present the proposals and get more input. Then, an RfC on whatever proposal seems to have the most support, and then we can do something. SO: other people - please share ideas, proposals... ? Slrubenstein | Talk 17:54, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
Thanks. My recent editsw to this guideline reflcted a not-fully (but well-intentioned) ttempt to provide a logical structure. I know many editors here have tought lot more about these issues than I have. I'd love to see other editors here develop a concrete proposal or two to present to the community. But first, I wonder if all editors here agreee about which things are subordinate to which things. If all agree we can move forward, otherwise we need more discussion. Slrubenstein | Talk 22:59, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
We were forced to fork some material out of an article due to oversizing concerns in the main article. The material forked is referenced only from the original article and one other. So now someone has labeled it an "orphan" article! How do we respond to this? The forking is not controversial, pov or anything else. No one is complaining about the content per se except the "orphan" labeler. Student7 ( talk) 13:44, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
There's a discussion going on at an RFC at WP:ARTICLE TITLES that is arguably as much about content as it is about titles, specifically about separating criticism as a content fork. Since changes pondered there may have an impact here, it seems appropriate to explicitly solicit opinions here as well. SDY ( talk) 00:18, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
I have posted a query at the village pump, on the question of what is the best (long-term) way to handle redundancies among related articles. It relates to content forking, so I thought some of you might have something to say. Cheers! AGradman / underlying article as I saw it / talk 03:40, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
I have a question about a non-controversial fork of contents. It has to do with style, perhaps, and therefore may not belong here as a question.
We had superarticle A. We decided to fork subtopic B to a new article and summarize B in article A. But, before this all happened, we had forked sub-subtopic C from B! Now we have three articles with "C" in it: the original, summarized in article A, the newest fork, in article B, also summarized, and the original article C. When a change is made to C, we now have to consider the two "summaries" in B and A. This is a pain IMO. Don't know quite how to avoid it.
The "elegant" way, of course, is to fork B and leave no residue of C in article A. This, unfortunately, is not possible. And the same can be said of B with C summary imbedded.
This leads me to think that C should never have been a subsection in A at all. But it is classically considered part of A, unfortunately. I see no elegant way to avoid updating two summaries each time we update article C. Student7 ( talk) 12:09, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
POVFORK is far less than the sum of its parts. Too many essays are also poor, useless, and redundant to the guidelines that are their only rationales. But this is a guideline; we should be expecting far more than this illogical mindreading waste of space. It is unnecessary (easily substituted by WP:NPOV + WP:FORK). Where NPOV+FORK is logically quite sound (some of the material is a fork, the rest is POV), POVFORK is logically flawed (no material that is POV can be FORK unless that material from the original article is also POV). It violates WP:AGF ("deliberately created" assumes bad faith). And in service of this last error, it describes in unnecessary detail someone's bad day on WP, where EVIL people did bad things to them. Aww. Ignore all the people protesting that they were editing in good faith who did things similar to its description; they must be guilty or there would not be a rule prohibiting what they did. Anarchangel ( talk) 07:14, 30 March 2011 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 |
This is listed as just an essay and it's pretty much stating the obvious - we don't fork articles. But for those editors prone to rules lawyering, is there a policy or guideline that does spell it out? If not, why not paste a policy template on this essay? SchmuckyTheCat 05:05, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
Expanded Wikipedia:Content forking a bit, for example made a connection to wikipedia:summary style which explains a technique how to split, while avoiding content forking. And added an example where POV split was denied by wikipedia community.
Also put the {{ proposed}} template on top, so that the community can assess whether or not to make it a guideline ("policy", as in Category:Wikipedia official policy probably not so suitable IMHO, implicitly it is covered by NPOV policy)
Asking for other guidelines who reflect the no content forking: the wikipedia:naming conventions (people) also indirectly advises to give each person one single article, with the most obvious name, and only use "summary style" type of splits for those so famous that they get more than one page (which, all in all happens not so often, and is as far as I know normally not from a "circumvent NPOV" outset). Whether a similar guideline can be found re. articles not on people I do not know. -- Francis Schonken 21:58, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
It was suggested to merge this project page in the NPOV page. Well, wikipedia:neutral point of view is already a very long page, and this "content forking" page is maybe rather about practical considerations regarding how to avoid POV when splitting content. So I added a "Article splitting" section to wikipedia:NPOV tutorial, where it seems more on its place. That "Article splitting" section is only a short summary of this article (using the {{ main}} template under the section header directing to this page), so it isn't actually a "merge" - such "merge" of the complete content would make the NPOV tutorial too long too.
Considering all that, which I think a workable solution, I remove the "merge" suggestion from the project page, and upgrade this from "proposed" to "guideline", for which there appears to be no opposition (or am I wrong in that?) Provisionally I put it in the "how-to" subcategory of guidelines -- Francis Schonken 08:53, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
A merge with wikipedia:POV fork seems much more logical, so I proposed it myself -- Francis Schonken 08:13, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
The neutrality policy of Wikipedia is a core community value. It's not subject to debate or revision. (Check with Jimbo, if you're not sure about this.)
While whether to comply with NPOV is never subject to a vote, how to comply with NPOV is certainly up for grabs. We should do our best to reach a consensus on how to make any given article neutral.
Some people feel that "points of view" are appropriate only in some articles and should be excluded from others. This attitude crops up most frequently in politically-charged controversies over scientific topics, but also can be found in politics itself, as well as culture, sociology, mental health, religion and many other areas. I have repeatedly dialogued with Jimbo on this point, and as most longterm Wikipedians know, he his always affirmed that any significant view should be included - even when it's a minority and often simply because it's a minority.
There is no grounds whatsoever for excluding a "POV" from a controversial article simply on the grounds that "it's a POV" or that it is "POV text", a "POV explanation", or a biased view of any kind. To say so is either to miss (or maybe to refuse to accept) NPOV policy:
There can be no doubt that US national policy (as in Vietnam, Iraq, and presidential elections) is a controversial topic. So are global warming, the creation-evolution controversy, Macedonians (ethnic group), and hundreds of others.
-- Uncle Ed 18:29, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
Often it is helpful to divide a long controversial article into parts.
The best example is Augusto Pinochet, although there are many other good examples. Contributors were edit warring over several aspects of his political and military career. After a long time, some of realized that his role in the 1973 Chile coup was the main focal point of the squabbling.
When this segment was split off, it became much easier for editors to work together and express the main POVs about the coup - and the respective roles of Pinochet and the United States.
A summary was subsequently put back into the main article, but the "sidebar" or "fork" worked better when left to stand on its own. And no one could predict this, until the fork was made. Uncle Ed 18:29, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
I was going to ask about this too. Currently there is the statement "The sub-articles can each treat a particular aspect - which might reflect a point of view for each of the sub-articles - but these sub-articles should anyhow be linked to the other subarticles and to the main article, for instance by a navigational template." This seems to imply that an individual article can be POV, as long as some ensemble of articles is NPOV. I believe this to be utterly wrong. Every article on Wikipedia must be balanced unto itself, and in fact that's the whole point of this guideline. I'll remove it for now, please comment if you violently diasgree.
Unless I read the article too hastily, it seems to be saying that if the majority of contributors to an article gang up against a lone contributor, who is trying to add a neutral statement about a point of view, then:
I have an e-mail in hand from user:Jimbo Wales which says precisely the opposite of this. I wish you guys would simply agree with Wikipedia because you understand it and support it. Please don't make me drag Jimbo down into this. Uncle Ed 17:29, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
I must admit I have a bit of puzzlement regarding the references to summary-style articles. In the context, I believe it's referring to what happens to some articles after detailed articles have been spun out of them; eventually the original article may become primarily, or wholly, just the summaries of content now located in spinout articles. However, the wording is confusing, so I can't be sure this is what it's saying.
I think it's important to be clear on this, because otherwise people might try to argue that under the letter of the policy, they are entitled to create new POV fork articles, as long as those forks are "summary-style". -- Antaeus Feldspar 20:56, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
There is no "Article_spinouts_which_summarize" section in the Wikipedia:Content_forking guideline. That is to say, at 18:28, 9 December 2005 Ed Poor had created that section header in the "Content forking" guideline [1]. Exactly 8 minutes later someone removed it [2]. Ed was just trying to bend the guideline his way. Which didn't last.Have you read Wikipedia:Content_forking#Article_spinouts_which_summarize?
(See: Wikipedia:No original research#Origin of this policy: the opinion of Wikipedia's founder)An article that makes no new low-level claims, but nonetheless synthesizes work in a non-standard way, is effectively original research that I think we ought not to publish.
anybody know where the name "content forking" originated from? 69.22.224.249 23:58, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
There seemed to be clear consensus for this. I defined a "content fork" as a neutral term for duplication of articles, usually unintentional, and a "POV fork" as a deliberate evasion of NPOV by using a content fork. If this is no good, you know what to do. Stevage 09:43, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
An editor having some trouble understanding what POV forking is and why he's not allowed to do it pointed up a very problematic sentence in the text:
I believe I understand what it's trying to convey: that as part of Wikipedia:Assume good faith, one should not immediately leap to the conclusion that an apparent duplication between articles is a POV fork. However... the sentence is actually saying that even if someone has openly admitted that they created a new article on an already-covered subject because the existing article doesn't say what they want it to say on the subject, we can't call it a POV fork (even though that's exactly what it is) unless there's also been repeated vandalism by the forker? I really am trying to understand; if there's any reason why it shouldn't just stress that Assume Good Faith applies here as elsewhere, please explain it to me... -- Antaeus Feldspar 04:07, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
? If you give an alternate text proposition, that would maybe be easier? -- Francis Schonken 12:54, 17 January 2006 (UTC)Since what qualifies as a "POV fork" is itself based on a POV judgement, do not refer to forks as "POV" — except in extreme cases of repeated vandalism.
Because unlike a link, a redirect can not point to a specific section in an article. It is sometimes desirable to fork out a section into a stand alone article, (even if it only initially duplicates information in the main article,) so that a redirect works properly. As time passes, either the section which has been spun out develops a life of its own, or it gets redirected back into the main article. I think that there should be a mention in this article covering this. An example of where I have considered doing this is for this link Varangian#The Varangian Guard for which the Varangian Guard redirect is not adequate. -- Philip Baird Shearer 02:27, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
In my opinion all such articles should be forked, or at least clearly seperated (in all cases), to historical, archeological and other scientific evidence based pages (or sections) and _(mythology) or _(fiction) variants covering information obtained from mythological, religious or some other fictious literary source. Forked especially if the event or item in question is held as undisputable fact among the practicioners of the religion and generally advocated as true(tm) thus earning a valid NPOV tag.
For example, Jesus: Instead of Historical Jesus it should be Jesus for the historical character and significance of Jesus in other sources (eg. Jesus is important in Christian tradition - See...for more info) and then the religious view of Jesus would be under the articles Jesus (mythology) (or Jesus (religion), Jesus (Bible)) - similarly as is done with Deluge (mythology) and Deluge (a disambiguation page to pre-historic deluges and the mythological Deluge).
Alternatively someone should introduce tags, like {{RELIGION}}, {{MYTH}}, {{TRADITION}}, {{BOOK}}, {{FICTION}}, {{FAD}}, etc.., on top of the page to represent an article which either has more or less fictional and/or uncertain source(s) or discusses the validity of the aforementioned sources (eg. Jesus-myth). - G3, 02:53, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
Re. "...all such articles should be forked..." – irrealistic: the examples used are some high profile articles ("Jesus" of all sorts), for many of the average ones separating the possibly mythological (hagiographic?) elements in a separate article would fail WP:NOTE, or at least be a WP:NPOV trap, see e.g. Louis IX of France#Sources: of course there are some potentially "hagiographic" (etc) elements in the hagiographies: sectioning these off in a separate article would be, imho, ill-advised for this example: the article can be clear about such elements without needing a content fork.
Re. "I would like to know what actual academic historians writing in peer reviewed academic journals (Wikipedia's advertised preferred source) say about the history of "Israel". But all I find in Wikipedia is bible myths." – {{ sofixit}}, Wikipedia:Content forking in its current form is your friend. I see no need to rewrite any part of the guideline for these purposes (note: this talk page is for discussing improvements to the guideline wording). -- Francis Schonken ( talk) 09:43, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
This month is the 2-year anniversary of Chilean coup of 1973, which is (I think) Wikipedia's first successfull spin-off article.
I think that some contributors willfully misunderstand the difference between a POV fork, which is always bad, and a spinoff, which often can be good.
Creating another version of an article, to hide the fact that there is a dispute is dishonest. It's cheating. The policy which forbids this is a good policy.
Spinning off a part of an article, to resolve the dispute, i.e., to describe both sides fairly, is entirely in accordance with Wikipedia:NPOV. -- Uncle Ed 14:26, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
Instead, a sidebar article can be created which focuses entirely on describing each viewpoint fairly (see "spinoff" section below). If nearly everything about a topic is uncontentious, but one part of it leads to contentious edit wars, instead of protecting the article consider creating a sidebar. The first and best example of this is Augusto Pinochet, which came to a screeching halt over the issue of US involvement in the coup against the Allende regime. After the 1973 Chile coup article was created, the edit warring stopped because writers could focus on the sub-topic of what happened in the coup, what were the reasons given for and against the coup, and so on.
There is a difference between a "spinout" (which is good) and a "POV fork" which is bad. My addition to the intro helps to distinguish the two.
If I have have added something which is against Wikipedia policy, please point out the difference between (a) what I said and (b) what policy actually is.
Reverting my changes with terse edit summaries isn't helping clarify anything. -- Uncle Ed 15:40, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
As for what's wrong with your proposed addition? Well, the passage "If nearly everything about a topic is uncontentious, but one part of it leads to contentious edit wars, instead of protecting the article consider creating a spinout (or "spinoff")" weakens the prohibition on POV forks by allowing for any "contentious" material to be shuffled off to a subarticle. Most legitimate criticisms of a subject are going to be objected to by those sympathetic to the topic and viewed as contentious, and thats not even considering contrived, bad faith objections on contentious topics. Shuffling criticisms under the guise of "contentious content" off to a subarticle violates WP:NPOV (which says all significant viewpoints must be covered) and thus a POV fork is created. That's the first problem. Do I really need to go on? FeloniousMonk 16:12, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
PS. Might be accidental, but I see some similarity with a trick previously played by Ed Poor/Uncle Ed, see above #Asking for clarification. -- Francis Schonken 15:28, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
Before you accuse me of playing a trick, wouldn't you rather ask me what I meant? Please assume good faith, at least for a single hour. -- Uncle Ed 15:36, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
The example in the #Asking for clarification section above shows that at that time, long ago, you couldn't be trusted for a minute. You fidgeted with the project page, and within a minute you hade made claims elsewhere that there was content on this project page which had only been there for a minute, planted there by you, i.e. content that was removed another seven minutes later. I don't want to hold that against you, you may have changed your mode of operation after RfC and similar troubles you had to undergo, so please note that I assume good faith, and want to keep these things in the past and not repeat them. But it may provide an explanation of why someone else said in an edit summary reverting you: And you have a history of creating POV forks, Ed -- Francis Schonken 16:01, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
Then when is it a good idea to create a spinout article? Currently, the Cuba article is protected because of an edit war about whether Cuba is "the only non-democracy in the Western hemisphere". Bruce Hallman suggests spinning off (out?) this issue into a separete article.
The spinout would not be for the purpose of creating a biased article. And it wouldn't be a "content fork", because there would not be two different versions, each with its own POV. Rather, the issue of "democracy in Cuba" would be entirely removed from the Cuba article. There would remain only a link (e.g., to Government of Cuba or Democracy in Cuba).
Is what Bruce is proposing (and I am endorsing) a violation of Wikipedia:Content forking policy? Or is it an example of following the policy? -- Uncle Ed 16:13, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps I didn't make myself clear. I propose to do with Cuba precisely what you mentioned (in positive terms?) about the Pinochet/1973 coup example. Which, by the way, I spun off (or out) or forked or whatever you want to call it. I call it a sidebar article, but no one seems to like that term.
We should mention as briefly as possible, in the Cuba article, that there is a dispute over this or that aspect of life in the country. I am suggesting we split off (or spin out?) the controversy over whether it is "non-democratic" (as Adam keeps maintaining). The most neutral title I can think of is Cuba and democracy. The most neutral way I can think of to mention the dispute (at the moment) is "See Cuba and democracy."
Neither the title of the new article, nor the link to it, make any assertion of any point of view. So it would not be a "POV fork". The new article would be developed in accordance with NPOV, while the old article could be unprotected.
Any attempt to "push POV" in the Cuba article could be reverted (or better yet, properly sourced). But if this once again began an edit war, then the disputed text could be moved (not simply deleted) to the sub-article (or sidebar article or spin up down in out off...) to keep an edit war from paralyzing Cuba. -- Uncle Ed 19:29, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
What history? You've made that claim dozens of times and never explained why even ONE spinout I made turned out to violate NPOV.
Consider the spinout I made of Cuba and democracy in May. The initial version states:
Several other contributors joined in over the last 2 1/2 months, and the article is a sub-topic of Politics of Cuba.
Both the intent and the effect were to create a neutral spin-off. Also, to reduce the edit warring over the parent article. Note that neither Politics of Cuba or Cuba and democracy have a {pov} tag on them, so in this case I must have done something right. -- Uncle Ed 15:05, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
It was Antaeus Feldspar who added the following to the policy page nearly one year ago:
There is barely any difference between that section then, and the current version of the policy. It has stood the test of time. So despite what Mel said in the previous section - and which I didn't contradict him about yesterday - I'm not actually trying to change the policy. -- Uncle Ed 13:58, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
Francis wrote in an edit summary:
I don't understand how this justifies the deletion of the text I added to the intro, i.e.,
Did you delete this addition because it contradicts policy, or what? -- Uncle Ed 15:29, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
Francis reverted all changes since April 7 with this edit summary:
I don't see what this has to do with my addition. Is there anything I added which amounts to a rewrite of the guideline? What specifically do you feel I am changing? Please answer before your next revert. I will undo your unexplained reversion only one more time today, because I don't want an edit war. -- Uncle Ed 15:56, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
Above FeloniousMonk falsely accused me of a "history of creating POV forks". I know what he's referring to, but none of the articles I created was in any way a POV fork.
Here is what the guideline says:
I attempted to "isolate controversial aspect" of certain evolution articles, so that "all POVs [would be] represented fairly in the new article". How is this wrong? Only someone who was pushing a POV of their own would object to the creation of a new article in what all POVs are represented fairly. FeloniousMonk is the POV pusher, not me.
My addition to the intro here says only:
I see no way in which this contradicts the content forking guidelines or the NPOV policy. If anyone here sees such a contradiction, please point it out. -- Uncle Ed 16:06, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
@Ed: above you wrote:
Okay, I'll wait until the spinout (or spinoff) from Cuba to " Cuba and democracy" succeeds.
...I keep you to that assertion.
From Talk:Cuba and democracy it is clear that there are still many problems... I've considered to put a cleanup template on Cuba and democracy... but when I found out I would need 4 or 5 at least (Merge suggestion to Politics of Cuba; insufficient/unchecked/poorly formatted references; uncategorised; general content policy issues...) and many other problems for which there are no specific templates: the page name doesn't cover the topic (currently the topic is limited to: "Cuba and democracy under the Castro regime", as if Cuba (or democracy) didn't exist before Castro's raise to power); various style issues, among which: written in the style of a school essay ( WP:NOT), intro not formatted according to MoS standards, etc.
So I await success... the only reason why the article wasn't listed at AfD yet, appears to be that at Talk:Cuba and democracy people wanted to give it benefit of doubt for a few days... so I'd recommend you to use those days to improve the article... instead of messing around in the Content forking guideline. The fact that you remain bent on changing *something* in the guideline without improving it, only results in us taking a closer look at your so-called success.
As long as the Cuba article remains "protected", there is also no indication that the strategy you propose and implement by starting the subsidiary article on democracy is a true *success* (I mean, with regard to your own goals, and what you wanted to prove).
Further, when there is a success with the Cuba fork we can evaluate:
My personal tentative intuition is that you're trying to evade a NPOV summary in the main article (that is the article from which you started a split), and which is required to be conform to Wikipedia:Content forking#Article spinouts - "Summary style" articles. I understand that the Cuba article is protected, so here are some suggestions:
-- Francis Schonken 17:11, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
I copied and pasted the following from the body of the article into the intro:
If you delete this from the intro, please delete it from the body, too. But please say WHY you feel it violates NPOV policy. -- Uncle Ed 17:42, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
FM reverted this without discussion (other than declaring it "not an improvement").
Wikipedia:Summary style says:
Moreover, sometimes an aspect of an article becomes so contentious that it leads to edit wars. It behooves us (those of us who support NPOV) to facilitate alternatives to edit warring. The best way to do this is to write a separate article about the dispute.
The first time I did this was 2 years ago with Chilean coup of 1973. At first, others resisted (fearing it was a POV fork). But the tactic proved itself, and in fact the article remains as a spin off (or "spinout") of Augusto Pinochet.
Many users, seeing an edit war (especially when it gets personal and nasty) simply avoid editing such a contentious article. The edit war deters users from contributing. A spin-off of just the controversial aspect makes it easier for other contributors to join in.
Sometimes, once the spin-off is complete, it can be reintegrated with the parent topic. It can become a section, and be replaced with a redirect. If not, it can remain separate (a standalone or "sidebar" article). We use the {{ main}} template to indicate the relationship, while providing a summary in the parent article.
There are two topics (both related to science) in which some users have resisted spin-offs, spuriously labeling them " POV forks". I have asked repeatedly on what grounds they call these spin-offs "POV forks", but they never give any reasons. They simply repeat themselves and ofter accuse me of 'having a history of doing this'.
It would be a POV fork, only if the purpose or effect was to evade NPOV policy. That is, if either the parent article or its spin-off became biased as a result of the split. However, leaving behind a neutral account of the dispute (however short) is not adding bias to the article, nor is it "POV editing" as defined by the ArbCom. Nor is creating an article which is only about one controversial aspect, provided it's not a one-sided article.
I request those users who have been claiming a "consensus" to keep biased, slanted articles intact according to their personal notions, to stop doing this. Instead, allow Wikipedia articles to be unbiased by having them describe all points of view fairly. Allow spin-off article to isolate controversial aspects and describe the dispute in detail, leaving behind a neutral summary of the controversial aspect.
This is in accordance with policy, as I'm sure the ArbCom and (if it comes to it) Jimbo Wales would agree. -- Uncle Ed 18:14, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
There was no consensus. Two editors reverted it. Your reasonings above don't establish consensus. They don't follow from the sentence you quote from wikipedia:summary style. You have presented your identical arguments on this page several times, the consensus always being against these always returning proposals of you. 3RR is not a viable excuse for changing the thrust of a guideline, when you know in advance there is currently no consensus for these changes. That's your track record on this issue, and you just made it longer. -- Francis Schonken 18:38, 31 July 2006 (UTC)When editing this page, please ensure that your revision reflects consensus.
Sometimes, in an attempt to preserve bias in an article, some Wikipedians will band together to "vote" that a spin-off is a Wikipedia:POV fork, even when it's not.
Proof that this often happens can be easily found by checking the number of AFD votes which were resolved purely by counting votes rather than by examining the reasons given.
Saying things like "Another POV fork by this user" is not a reason, but an attempt to avoid assuming good faith and avoid giving reasons. I propose the following standard, and I'd like to see a vote made on it (if not here, then in the appropropriate place). -- Uncle Ed 21:04, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
Vote on policy:
Support:
Oppose:
Does this also apply to templates? Should a style template be forked if editors can't agree on the visual style it should have? See Template talk:Cquote#Please restore template. — Omegatron 16:25, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
I appreciate NPOV. However, in one article (likely a lot more than one! :), a religious figure has been accused of everything under the sun by somebody: wife beating (he doesn't even have a wife!), anti-Semitism, anti-American, nepotism, neotony, you name it. An objective reader would have to decide if he really spent any time on religious activities or most of his time conscientiously violating every principal he believed in!
Since the man is dead, pro-editors have to strain a bit to meet the attacks of the media which tend to be so numerous, that they are overwhelming. BTW, that was the general idea of the attacks in the first place. To discredit the founder. So most of the article, rather than accomplishments, is spent explaining the position of the critics which are not terrifically clear, e.g. "This guy beat his wife (which he didn't have) on Sunday, but he never drew blood - except on Wednesday." This is really hard to research for an answer. We can't ask the guy. He's dead! We understandably don't believe the critics. Not all of them seem sincere.
So we have an article where the guy says the rosary ten thousand times (inflated to a couple of paragraphs!) and the rest of the article is devoting to trying to meet "attacks" which don't seem compatible with what supporters know of his life.
He exerted a lot of influence which the media would naturally like to diminish. When one media channel picked up a report, it was repeated in dozens of channels. All the same (often outlandish) report. No new news. No follow-up.
The critics cannot run out of criticsm as fast as supporters can run out of answers! They have the advantage of being able to make theirs up or interviewing people with little standing, or emotional problems. We have scruples and can't do that in rebuttal!
I like NPOV but reporting and answering each and every attack on a religious figure in this day and age really gets out of proportion sometimes. Student7 04:03, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
I reverted Cunado's recent changes, the "edit summary" box was a bit short to explain why in detail:
Well I'm certainly editing in good faith. I thought I was improving the article. I think we're both editing with completely different examples in mind. I'm in the middle of debating how and where to include an obvious sub-article of a main article, which is a completely different subject, and someone keeps using this guideline, which doesn't seem to be written with that in mind, to support an argument. Here's what I did:
Thanks.
Cuñado
-
Talk
20:15, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
From the guideline:
"In line with Wikipedia's semi-policy of assuming good faith, the creator of the new article is probably sincerely convinced that there is so much information about a certain aspect of a subject that it justifies a separate article. There is no consensus whether a "Criticism of .... " article is always a POV fork. At least the "Criticism of ... " article should contain rebuttals if available, and the original article should contain a summary of the "Criticism of ... " article." (emphasis added)
I find this somewhat confusing. This talk page doesn't appear to have archives, so I am not sure how to find information about this lack of consensus. Basically, what I am trying to figure out is the current consensus (or lack thereof) on spinoff articles, where the scope of the spinoff article lends itself to greater coverage of a particular POV.
Above, I saw a discussion of a hypothetical article Foo, which had spinoff articles on Blue Foo, White Foo, and Grey Foo. Suppose the Foo article was balanced, but Blue Foo covered a particular view more thoroughly, while White Foo covered a different view more thoroughly, and Grey Foo was fairly balanced.
Thanks!
Armedblowfish (
talk|
mail)
01:04, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
For all intents and purposes, "Do not create content forks" is hard policy - it's a clear rule which must not be violated. Why is it marked as a guideline? Stevage 11:48, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
Added section based on discussion on Talk:NPOV to clarify an additional situation in which there can legitimately be different articles on different POVs. -- Shirahadasha 22:55, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
This rule has been used to justify biased coverage of Evolution and Global Warming.
Any article created in attempt to clarify the ambiguities exploited by the proponents of theories of evolution or anthropogenic global warming has been branded a POV fork.
We need a Definitions of evolution or Aspects of evolution article which clarifies the sense in which some is using evolution when they say they do or don't believe in it; or they have a theory which explains it; or that "it's a fact, not a theory"; and so forth.
Likewise, we need some clarification about global warming, because every other reference to it - in the press and even some articles here - conflates "any rise in global air temperature" with " anthropogenic global warming theory". And simply redirecting the Anthropogenic global warming page to Global warming doesn't help. The reader gets lost, because the distinctions are buried. -- Uncle Ed 21:33, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
I have proposed merging Aldebaran in fiction into Aldebaran (see discussion). One relevant point seems to be whether it is a valid fork or should be avoided. Input welcome. — AldeBaer 17:59, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
![]() | This page in a nutshell: Wikipedia articles should not be split into multiple articles solely so each can advocate a different stance on the subject. |
Presently above is the wording, however I am proposing one of the below options to clarify its meaning with either the addition of the word "same" or words "a particular".
Can I get some input to this proposal of wording.
![]() | This page in a nutshell: Wikipedia articles should not be split into multiple articles solely so each can advocate a different stance on the same subject. |
![]() | This page in a nutshell: Wikipedia articles should not be split into multiple articles solely so each can advocate a different stance on a particular subject. |
![]() | This page in a nutshell: Wikipedia articles should not be split into multiple articles solely so each can advocate a certain subject that is already treated in an article. |
Sounds good to me. If you want to edit it so, you have my approval -or- if you want to get more consenses. I'll wait until you edit it in.-- Doug talk 15:56, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
I revised the guideline into an Content forking/ownership fork proposal since the content fork guideline seems to try to fit all examples of avoiding consensus through forking as POV forking. If there is discussion agreement that something is WP:original research and should not go into an article, it would seem to be ownership forking to run off with the disputed content and use it to create a new article. In this situation, the primary purpose is not to evade the WP:NPOV policy, rather it is to evade the results of the WP:consensus policy. Also, not all POV forking are to evade the WP:consensus policy. Some contributors create a POV fork so they have plenty of room to include each and every complaint or condemnation about a topic and to overemphasize those complaint/condemnation by not treating all facts and major Points of View on a certain topic in one article. Thus, I think the guideline should clarify these events through POV forking and ownership forking. You can see my proposed changes through this dif. Please review Content forking/ownership fork proposal and comment here. Thanks. -- Jreferee ( Talk) 15:11, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
![]() | This page in a nutshell: Wikipedia articles should not be split into multiple articles solely so each can advocate a certain subject that is already treated in an article. |
The material I edited seemed to be written like a "HOWTO: Spot bad faith editors" which is kind of beside the point, and I think that generally we should not be prescribing that A+B+C = bad faith; this is just inviting editors in disputes to say "AHA! I have PROVEN your bad faith per WP:SPINOUT, you fiend!" which is counterproductive. In any case, I believe that the phrasing "If a statement is inadmissible as unattributed POV at an article [[XYZ]], then it is also inadmissible at a spinout [[Criticism of XYZ]]" encapsulated the issue more effectively. Eleland 15:35, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
I strongly suggest removing the last sentence from the section WP:CFORK#Accidental duplicate articles. This sentence reads:
Sometimes the appropriate fate for a duplicate article, especially if the duplication was inadvertant, is for it to be merged back into the main article. Sometimes, however, the content should not be merged back into the main article, especially if the duplication was deliberate. This sentence, in its current form, gives a POV pusher ammunition to say "Oh, what's that? You mean there was already an article on this subject? Before I created my own article heavily slanted towards the 'correct' POV on the subject? Oh my my my. Well, I guess our only choice is to merge my heavily slanted article into your existing balanced article. That's what WP:CFORK says you have to do." -- 192.250.34.161 14:48, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
"Both content forks and POV forks are undesirable on Wikipedia, as they avoid consensus building and violate one of our most important policies." That sentence from the summary/lead seems somewhat at odds with WP:LENGTH which reads: "If possible, split the content into logically separate articles." MrZaius talk 17:49, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
WP has articles which give only one side of a controversial issue. There are corresponding articles which mention opposing views, but these are presented as "denialism". These are clearly POV forks. If we're going to allow these we should list them as exceptions in WP:POVFORK. Fourtildas ( talk) 06:32, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
A good example is 9/11 : if you look at Talk:September 11, 2001 attacks you will see that anything that disagrees with the official Bush Administration version of events gets dumped into 9/11 conspiracy theories. If the "conspiracy theories" page did not exist the bushies would have a more difficult time suppressing opposing views.
I notice that recently the Wikicracy has imposed Draconian censorship on any discussion of 9/11: "In a 2008 arbitration case, administrators were given the power to impose discretionary sanctions on any editor working on articles concerning the September 11, 2001 attacks." Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/September 11 conspiracy theories.
(Actually this probably won't make much difference since administrators routinely abuse their powers with compete impunity - has any admin even been slapped on the wrist? ) Fourtildas ( talk) 05:15, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
Well, here I am. Over at Wikipedia_Talk:Spoilers there has been a...prolonged...discussion of the practice of using tags to precautioning users about the possibility that they will encounter plot information that might detract from their later enjoyment of a text. One of the proposals that has emerged in this discussion is the idea of creating a 'hide-n-show' system that would allow users to filter specific categories of wikipedia content.
As proposed, the HNS system would only apply to tags, but it is already acknowledged, both by its proponents and its detractors, that such a system could also apply directly to content. For example, users might be given the option of electing to see "spoiler content" or "non-spoiler content", and thus would view a given wikipedia page differently.
This raises issues that are clearly germane to the discussion of content forking, especially around ideological POVs. It is (clearly) technically possible to create a wikipedia that would provide different articles for people with different ideological demands--what I term a "subjective text." This is pretty certaintly a violation of our content-forking policy, but it is not neccesarily obvious that it's a bad idea.
I want to submit this issue to discussion on this page, because there is a general sense that the issues raised are beyond the scope of the spoiler discussion. Thank you. Ethan Mitchell ( talk) 18:46, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
I think this guideline would benefit from a section like "Dealing with POV forks", especially if written by editors who have had to repeatedly deal with this situation in the past. I'm currently dealing with an editor who is creating multiple forks, and though I can definitely "make it up as I go along" in terms of how I deal with them (working through WP:DR and nominating articles for merge/deletion, etc.), it would be helpful to have advice from others who have gone through the same process already. -- El on ka 20:08, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
Articles such as Introduction to special relativity and Introduction to evolution do by their nature duplicate some of the subject matter of the more specialised articles. It has been argued at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Introduction to evolution (2nd nomination) that this guideline necessitates the deletion of such introductory articles, but this did not meet with general agreement. However, it was clear that some people saw a conflict between Wikipedia:Make technical articles accessible and this guideline. Would there be any objection to me adding such articles as one of the examples in the section "What content/POV forking is not"? Tim Vickers ( talk) 23:00, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
Yes, it will certainly be necessary to wait until the AfD discussion has closed, and I was posting here to raise awareness, rather than making an attempt to change a guideline to fit an argument. However, the point raised by the discussion is a valid one. As you note, some "Introduction to..." articles have been accepted and as long as they are one accepted exception, this guideline might be better recognizing them. Anyway, let's see what people think about this idea. Tim Vickers ( talk) 23:28, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
Should we add "List of (topic)" articles to "What content/POV forking is not"? Torc2 ( talk) 19:37, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
How about using subpage to mean a page that is created with article/subpage such as talk:article/archive and using subarticle to refer to a page that is broken off from a larger article in order to reduce the size of the main article, such as Barack Obama, Early life and career of Barack Obama? Someone wanted to use spinout, but that is a very bad name, a word that is normally only used if you are driving on a slippery road and would introduce confusion. SayCheeeeeese ( talk) 13:44, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
Would I be right in saying that Project level forking allows individual projects to create their own Wiki with its own policies and guidelines which may be different from Wikipedia's (For example, having an MOS that makes a set layout mandatory, or an NPOV policy that requires each page to contain two sections of opposing POV, rather than one NPOV section) so long as they comply with Open source regs, but that you would need to host it on your own server, rather than simply using Projectname/pagename on this server?
perfectblue ( talk) 12:08, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
Returning to this issue of preferentially (re)merging all forks, as opposed to deletion [6] ...
I occasionally see “POV-fork” used as a sufficient criterion for deletion at AfD. I believe that this is bad practice, and that his guideline should be modified so that it does not imply that deletion is, by default, an appropriate remedy.
One reason that it is bad is because “POV-fork” is a very easy allegation to make, can be made from a POV position, and thus a POV battle over content becomes a AfD debate. This guideline therefore legitimises AfD as a POV battle weapon.
Another reason it is bad is that very easily, a POV-fork is also a content-fork. There is sourced material in the forked article that belongs in the other article. Deletion of the fork leads to deleted material (re)appearing in the other article. Whether this is done by direct copying, indirect copying via a contributor’s records, or recreation based on a contributors memory of what was in the now deleted article, GFDL is now violated.
In every non-keep instance I have seen, a merge and redirect has been appropriate. I acknowledge that there may be cases where deletion is appropriate, and so the language used here should be in terms of “preferences” or “by default”.
A case that stirred my interest in this issue is Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Celebrity Big Brother 2007 racism controversy (UK). Note the closing admin’s disregard for GFDL in his suggestion that deleted material may be harvested for continued use.
-- SmokeyJoe ( talk) 00:36, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
Well, no, depends on case, not on "severity"; when deliberately created to avoid WP:CONSENSUS, AfD proceedings may be followed, and indeed "delete" is not a certain outcome in such case. POV warriors might feel too protected by the "preference" to re-insert their POV content in the original article... that's not the way we want this to be working. The rest (i.e. the merging option) is explained in Wikipedia:Content forking#Accidental duplicate articles -- Francis Schonken ( talk) 12:35, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
“As Wikipedia does not view article forking as an acceptable solution to disagreements between contributors, such forks may be nominated for deletion.”
I have reverted an undiscussed change which I see as discouraging the use of summary style articles, by expading the meaning of what will be considered content forks. If that was not the intent, i welcome discussion of the proper wording. DGG ( talk) 03:43, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
See Talk:Judith Butler and Talk:Influence of Judith Butler's concepts. Thanks! Hyacinth ( talk) 04:29, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
Please edit this page to remove this contradiction:
As far as I can tell, "unintentional creation of several separate articles all treating the same subject." and "Accidental duplicate articles" are the same thing. So I am confused at the contradiction when this page tells me that one is a content fork, and the other is not a content fork. How can one thing be both A and also not-A ? -- 68.0.124.33 ( talk) 03:47, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
Hello, those who contribute to Content forking! I have a question about applying this guideline. I am in process of writing/editing some material in my User space that are counterpoints to an Essay in the project space. (This writing is not yet ready for other editors to be invited in to work on, yet.) But in what I've worked on so far, I discovered that it really may be a "counter-essay", if you will.
My material so far might be workable into the essay I'm writing about. However, I have a strong suspicion it would be reverted on sight. (Since the material seems to contradict the essay itself.) Now, this guide for the most part talks about articles in article-space. Yet the first sentence of What Forking Is currently reads, "POV forks usually arise when contributors disagree about the content of an article or other page." (Emphasis mine.)
I'm hoping to see what, if any, consensus there is on how Content Forking applies to Essays on Wikipedia. I did search what's currently on this page, and didn't seem to come up with anything. Would anyone share their thoughts, and/or point me to links that illustrate prior consensus or discussion? Thanks! LaughingVulcan 14:36, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
BTW, apologies for my first sentence.... Obviously, the people who contribute to the Content Forking Guideline generally wouldn't be those who, "contribute to Content forking." ;) Any perceived humor was unintentional - though I laughed when I re-read and saw how it could be interpreted. LaughingVulcan 12:42, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
It's worth noting that Criticism of Christianity, Criticism of Islam, Criticism of Mormonism, Criticisms of communism, and Criticism of Hinduism all sport neutrality disputes, all because either the scope of the article implies that the only discussion of the subject that exists is negative or the scope of the article inherently advocates the negative point of view. Contrast Criticism of Objectivism, which has not been allowed to fork from Objectivist philosophy, which in turn attempts to include all discussion of the (specific area of the) subject, both positive and negative, and is not sporting a neutrality dispute. Uncle G 13:27, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
Technically, criticism-articles like Criticism of George W. Bush or Criticism of Wikipedia fall under this policy as well, don't they? Salaskan 20:58, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
There are many "Criticism of ..." articles in Wikipedia, and they seem to have uneven treatment. I was looking for some guidance on them, and this page gave a bit, but not much. So I consolidated the guidance into a new subsection, and added a couple of notes that seem sensible to me. I hope these consolidated guidelines are useful, and get improved over time. My intention was not to introduce any new rules, but simply consolidate existing rules (and common sense) into one place. Apologies in advance if my "be bold"-ness was ill-advised :-) Noleander 08:40, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
In the section Articles whose subject is a POV, it is suggested that "Criticism of.." articles start as a section in the titular article and be spun off by editor consensus. However, such sections themselves are discouraged. What would be a reasonable thing to improve this? Baccyak4H ( Yak!) 17:30, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
What are the alternative to critism articles which often are coatracks for attacks on a subject? --neon white talk 09:49, 22 October 2008 (UTC)
There was a change to the criticism articles, in a passage that was added 2 years ago [7]:
Original There is no consensus whether a "Criticism of .... " article is always a POV fork. At least the "Criticism of ... " article should contain rebuttals if available, and the original article should contain a neutral summary of the "Criticism of ... " article. |
New There is currently no consensus whether a "Criticism of .... " article is always a POV fork. Any daughter article that deals with opinions about the subject of parent article should include both positive and negative opinions, and/or rebuttals, and the original article should contain a neutral summary of the spunout article. |
What is troubling is this change, from:
to:
...creates a higher bar for criticism articles. Gone is the "if available" modifier.
The editor who made these changes had nominated 3 Criticism articles for deletion, those three were closed the same day Speedy Keep, WP:SNOW and WP:POINT, another was closed "Snowball Keep, Everyone voted to keep" (Scientology controversies), 4 days after this editor was arguing on ANI about the existence of controversy articles.
As the editor mentioned themselves in the ANI, two controversy articles have gone on to become featured articles: Boy Scouts of America membership controversies and 1996 United States campaign finance controversy.
The overwhelming majority of the 15 "criticism" AfDs were closed keep (12), and 1/3 (5) where closed speedy keep, all 15 still have articles now. The criticm articles are actually gaining more accpetance not less. travb ( talk) 21:30, 2 January 2009 (UTC)
This edit is about as faulty as it can get as a summary of NPOV (misguided, misleading, name it...). This has been pointed out before to the editor making that edit (e.g. [8], above,...). WP:Criticism is at least a decent summary of the NPOV stance on the issue, whether it is an essay or whatever (there are several reasons why project pages aren't always guideline or policy: not necessarily because they wouldn't be a decent summary of policy). -- Francis Schonken ( talk) 20:42, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
it just shows a complete failure to understand "npov", and the difference between producing criticism and reporting criticism. The correct way to put it is that "criticism of" articles are always WP:SS sub-articles, created as it was realized there is enough notable criticism to report to justify a standalone article. "international reaction to $EVENT" articles are similar: there will never be an "international reaction to the Siegenthaler incident" article, while an international reaction to 9/11 is perfectly in order. -- dab (𒁳) 22:37, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
See also this diff by Mike Godwin. If anyone knows what NPOV is about, it's him (seeing as he's employed to protect our asses). Sceptre ( talk) 23:52, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
Part of the reason I have been reverting Sceptre's changes is that he either: a) has been very careless, such that he destroyed improvements that had been made to the page just because they were in his way; or b) has some great objection to the idea that useful content from a duplicate page should be merged and doesn't see fit to confide in the rest of us what that objection is before forcing it on the rest of us; and quite frankly whichever it is, it does not inspire confidence in his judgment.
[9] is the edit in question. It is not hard to understand; it is always dangerous to put on a policy or guideline page that a particular situation may be resolved only by one particular process, because then someone who feels they stand to benefit from that process immediately starts trying to engineer that situation. It is particularly dangerous that the page as it stands claims that this particular process must be followed even when the situation has been created in deliberate bad faith. It should not be hard, therefore, to see the merit of changing "the content" to "any useful content", so that the page no longer appears to dictate that any schmuck who deliberately creates a POV fork and stuffs it full of one-sided material can then smugly insist that "the content should be merged back into the main article because WP:POVFORK says you do that no matter what."
Would someone please explain to me why in God's name the people who have consistently, without fail included the change from "any useful content" back to "the content" every time they revert have done so? Is it sheer carelessness? I sure hope it's not an active desire to put loopholes on the page for dishonest editors to use, but the funny thing is, it's hard not to think of such explanations when we get no others. -- 65.78.13.238 ( talk) 00:39, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
[10] -- Francis Schonken ( talk) 14:45, 14 March 2009 (UTC)
OK, I know of a "Criticism of..." article, what do I do with it? If there's a {{ criticism-section}} tag for criticism sections in articles, why can't there be a template that you can use to tag a "Criticism of..." article (AKA POV fork)????? If "Criticism of..." articles are against Wikipedia policy then where is the POV tag to put on them? [| Retro00064| ☎talk| ✍contribs|] 06:15, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
this isn't a problem. "Criticisms of $X" articles aren't actual criticisms any more than "Terrorism attack on $X" are actual terrorist attacks. I really don't see why this is so difficult to grasp. All our articles are encyclopedic articles about notable topics. These topics may include criticism. The criticism is always that found in our sources, not ours. -- dab (𒁳) 19:50, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
This has been tried before, unsuccessfully: Wikipedia:List of POV forks used to be the main tool to enforce it. The page was deleted by what seems like unanimity, see Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:List of POV forks.
Would someone support taking Wikipedia:List of POV forks to WP:DRV? If not, there's clearly no consensus to do away with all Criticism of ... articles as suggested currently, and not in sync with policy, at WP:CFORK. -- Francis Schonken ( talk) 15:28, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
I'd gladly take this to WP:DRV per Wikipedia:Consensus can change - Would you (and others) support? That is the question I'm trying to find an answer for... -- Francis Schonken ( talk) 15:36, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
Sorry, if you're afraid to take the challenge (for fear others might not agree with your position), we'd better keep to the still valid consensus to not do away with all criticism of ... articles.
Of course the old page is old history, but it is prior history to any new attempt to do the same. Why are you afraid? Because the page might contain valid reasoning not to go ahead with this? -- Francis Schonken ( talk) 15:56, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
The consensus is valid, until a new one develops. Jeez you really *do* think there are only three articles in this encyclopedia worth mentioning as an example? All of them accidentally on current top level politicians? There are more Criticism of ... articles than that, some of which were not *challenged* AfD-wise, or are challenged thus periodically and kept. -- Francis Schonken ( talk) 16:13, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
I don't think Criticism of Microsoft (and half a dozen sub-pages) is going anywhere any time soon. So if you want to write guidance on the topic, see it is applicable to all cases the guidance is supposed to be covering. -- Francis Schonken ( talk) 16:16, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
The guidance should not "dictate" anything in that sense. Your interpretation of WP:NPOV is too biased to begin with. Your "predictions" are useless. Next we'd be writing policy based on Sceptre's intuition, because Sceptre "dictates" that his/her intuition can't be challenged... (that is most literally what you're contending above). The current phrasings regarding Criticism of... articles should be removed from WP:CFORK: the paragraph misses the point: the point being that we do what reliable sources do: if there are enough reliable sources treating criticism as a separate topic regarding whatever subject, Wikipedia can do the same, etc.
If you want to convince me of something else, please do. But not the way you're heading this, it is as unconvincing as I can imagine. In a few lines I'm back at what I thought before this edit-warring was started: a general prohibition against Criticism of... articles is pointless, as it is (at least) original research, dictating that no reliable sources should be published that treat criticism as a separate topic, and if they are, Wikipedia should be allowed to ignore the core WP:NPOV policy by not describing such sources equally... So let's get over with this, remove such phrasing and continue to keep them removed, until consensus really changes (and not Sceptre's POV-pushing posing as such). -- Francis Schonken ( talk) 16:50, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
I'd recommend all Involved parties to the Obama articles ArbCom case to stop pushing POVs favouring their stance wrt that case in applicable guidance, and then unprotect the guideline once these edit warriors are gone, awaiting the outcome of that case. -- Francis Schonken ( talk) 16:55, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
Your ignorance regarding NPOV is touching: there's no such reasoning there, nor can it be deduced from that policy. Please stop using ONLY your pet articles as examples, as I already suggested above. -- Francis Schonken ( talk) 17:11, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
Logical fallacy: even if it currently doesn't hold true, not even in a single criticism article, it appears impossible to derive from policy it couldn't. You don't even demonstrate it doesn't hold true in the currently most successful Criticism of... pages. The rest is innuendo, misguided rhetorical questions etc. So please stop it, this POV-pushing to override your opponents in the Obama articles ArbCom case via hammering your POV in guidance until such pages get protected. And leave the floor to others, they might have something sensible to say in this RfC. -- Francis Schonken ( talk) 18:00, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
Really Sceptre, your reasonings are bogus - which leads you to push a POV. Pushing a POV is no blockable offense, let me get that straight, but allow me to not be impressed in the least by the whole setting. Including the logical fallacy you're attempting to build on Mike Godwin's opinion. Please leave some room for others, they might have something interesting to say. -- Francis Schonken ( talk) 18:27, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
PS, this is more or less what the page looked like (courtesy of the Wayback Machine - sorry about the links looking quirky):
Wikipedia:List of POV forks ( version Sep 13, 2006) |
---|
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it. |
One or more wikipedians have alleged that the following articles are <a href= http://en.wikipedia.org:80/wiki/Wikipedia:POV_fork>POV fork</a>s. See <a href= http://en.wikipedia.org:80/wiki/Special:Prefixindex/Criticism_of>Special:Prefixindex/Criticism_of</a> for an automated list.
Recommendations on how to deal with POV forks can be found in:
These are articles with "criticism", "criticisms" or "critique" as part of their name, which may suggest that they cover a single side of a debate. Further investigation is required to determine if that is indeed the case.
Note that some articles titles contain the word "Criticism", "Critique", "Kritik" (etc.) but are not POV forks:
|
-- Francis Schonken ( talk) 19:26, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
moved from project page by this edit
This guideline has issues: It does not deal with distinctions between this rare concept and the more common concepts of necessary article "splitting," and the development of sub-articles from a main article. It also does not deal with the usage of "fork" as a pejorative (opposing legitimate sub-article creation).
-- Gavin Collins ( talk| contribs) 10:37, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
Two articles, Virus and Introduction to viruses seem to be covering identical subject matters, despite the results at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Introduction to viruses and more recently Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Introduction to viruses (2nd nomination). Can the article "Introduction to viruses" be classed as a content fork? -- Gavin Collins ( talk| contribs) 13:35, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
The bottom line is that each of these articles needs community consensus in order to exist. Unlike other articles, there is no excuse for keeping "Introductions" around that aren't well developed and useful. I.e. WP:DEMOLISH doesn't apply here. Users willing to write "Introductions" can develop them in their userspace up to the point that they are useful enough to go live. If there are any "Introductions" around that aren't clearly useful, they should be userified with prejudice.
At present, we have ten of these articles. I am not happy with them, but they are acceptable. It must be clear that these are each a special case with its own justification. I am personally unsure why we should need Introduction to the Global Positioning System, or Introduction to viruses. Virus should be our "introductory" article, and in-depth articles should be linked from there. Any future "introduction to Marxism" or "Introduction to linguistics" (both clearly highly technical and/or complex subjects, but also "soft" subjects which may receive vastly different treatment from different authors) must meet a very high threshold not just of quality but also of utility.
My position is that it would be better not to have these (I think this is what wikibooks was intended for), but I can live with them as long as they remain very few in number. -- dab (𒁳) 18:01, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
I am of the view that for many topics we must have these if we are to be of value to a reasonably broader spectrum of readers. It would, of course, be possible to write multi-level articles so as to make this unnecessary, but for any complicated topic, these are simply beyond the abilities of wp at present to handle. We have all we can do getting a good consistent article at a single level. I agree though that this should not be automatic, but I think it might be fairly widely adopted: I think for example that Introduction to Marxism would be a very good idea. Knowing some virology, I'm not sure it wouldn't make sense there either--one article assuming a knowledge of basic molecular biology, and one that does not. Computer related topics might be good candidates also: the people who want to know something about GPS at a consumer level are a different group from those who want to actually know the full technology. I also think that once the need for a particular one is disputed and accepted by consensus, the decision should stand. They're too much effort to be at the whim of repeated afds. DGG ( talk) 23:14, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
I do not think that "simplified" articles and "introduction to ..." articles are the same thing. I think that one of these two is completely fine, and the other is simply useless; to explain which is which, and why, I am going to propose that the following is one of the unformulated principles which has undergirded WP:CFORK for at least as long as it has had a "What content/POV forking is not" section:
If we have Marxism and Marxism (simplified) (assuming, as I will from here on, that all articles are well-written towards their mandate) that serves the purposes of Wikipedia, by giving detailed information to those capable of receiving detailed information, and simple information to those for whom the detailed information is too much.
If we have Marxism and Classical Marxism, that serves the purpose of Wikipedia, by giving detailed information about the large topic of Marxism to readers interested in the whole topic and more detailed information on the sub-topic of classical Marxism to readers interested in that particular sub-topic.
By contrast, if we have Marxism and Introduction to Marxism, what purpose does this serve? At all? I suppose it serves the purposes of someone who really wants the subject to be presented in a particular order but I cannot figure out how it serves Wikipedia's purposes. I wager that any defense of "Introduction to ..." articles will hinge on the presumption that they present a simplified view of the subject, which would seem to suggest that they are actually "simplified" articles under a misleading name. -- 65.78.13.238 ( talk) 01:41, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
If we have Marxism and Marxism (simplified) (assuming, as I will from here on, that all articles are well-written towards their mandate) that serves the purposes of Wikipedia -- no. this is a terribly flawed argument. We already have an entire project dedicated to "simplification", at simple:.
We cannot have duplication. We can only have excerpts, i.e. summaries presented within WP:SS with the main article clearly linked. We cannot have two articles with the same scope. Articles entitled "Introduction to $TOPIC" will properly be about notable Introductions to a certain topic, they will not themselves be introduction. The same way Criticism of Islam isn't itself a criticism of Islam, but a discussion of notable criticisms, and the same way Maps of Switzerland isn't itself a map of Switzerland but a discussion of notable maps of Switzerland, and Cigarette isn't an actual cigarette but an article about cigarettes. The only case where articles namespace are in fact what the title says are list articles. "List of" means the article itself is a list, and not an article about notable lists. These are a special case, and would properly need their own namespace (but do not because the dividing line between lists and full articles is often blurred). -- dab (𒁳) 19:47, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
I am puzzled, because it seems to me that "Introduction to Marxism" and "Marxism (simplified)" to have exactly the same purpose, and should normally contain the same content. Are you confusing this with "Marxism" in the simple Simple Encyclopedia -- which would basically be the Introduction article, rewritten in simpler language. But otherwise, what the difference? Marxism is a complex historically developed social theoretical system, that developed over time , and had multiple tendencies. An introductory article simplifies the history somewhat, and discusses only the major tendencies. It can be useful even to mature readers, as a basic orientation before a full article. Think of it as the introductory chapter of a textbook.And I thin we need this for all complex topics. Sometimes its easy-- a basic article on the overall History of France can serve as an introduction, which the article of specific aspects serving for the more detailed material. But it is difficult to do this with most non-narrative topics. I see no reason why we should not have duplication,or even things presented rom different aspects of the topic. We're not paper, and can have as many articles on a subject as necessary in order to fulfill our purpose, which is providing information to the user.
More, I think that POV branches are sometimes the fairest way of presenting a topic, it lets each side of a complex argument get presented in full, and avoids the fragmentary effect of a point by point rebuttal. It does not matter to me whether these are in one article, or different articles. DGG ( talk) 13:45, 23 March 2009 (UTC)
From project space:
The creator of the new article may be sincerely convinced that there is so much information about a certain aspect of a subject that it justifies a separate article. Any daughter article that deals with opinions about the subject of parent article must include suitably- weighted positive and negative opinions, and/or rebuttals, if available, and the original article should contain a neutral summary of the split article. There is currently no consensus whether a "Criticism of..." article is always a POV fork, but it is a common fault of many articles. If possible, refrain from using "criticism" and instead use neutral terms such as "perception" or "reception"; if the word "criticism" must be used, make sure that such criticism considers both the merits and faults, and is not entirely negative (consider what would happen is a "Praise of..." article was created instead).
I object to "...There is currently no consensus whether ..., but it is a common fault..." - internally inconsistent -- Francis Schonken ( talk) 12:45, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
Just when we thought we had the " Introductions" in check, enter the Outlines". Blatant WP:CFORK on a mind-boggling scale. Apparently, the idea is to reate an "outline" counter-article to every Wikipedia artile ("an all-encompassing outline of the knowledge of humankind (still under development), which also serves as an outline of Wikipedia's contents.") Wth? -- dab (𒁳) 09:45, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
"POV forks usually arise when contributors disagree about the content of an article or other page. Instead of resolving that disagreement by consensus, another version of the article (or another article on the same subject) is created to be developed according to a particular point of view. This second article is known as a "POV fork" of the first, and is inconsistent with Wikipedia policies."
This statement serves two purposes. It gives an explanation of what PoV forking can be, and it says that usually, this is because of a certain scenario. The latter function is entirely useless to anyone but vandals who wish to enact this scenario, and blackens the name of those who make articles according to a scenario I shall outline below, the first two parts, and the last part of which I personally have encountered at least twenty times each. Admittedly, I haven't done enough research to have found the entire scenario either (I have never ever seen anyone say, "I am taking this material to another article, then", and then create a new article), but it is at least plausible that this has happened, or might happen in the future:
"This material doesn't belong in this article" (edit war), "This material belongs in another article" (edit war), Creation of new article (edit war, AfD: "This is a PoV fork") Deletion.
I suggest that either the contrasting scenario be introduced into this section, thusly: "Note that this is not the same as an article created after discussion on a previous page that concluded that content from the previous article would be better off in its own article"
Or better yet, the scenario part of it be removed altogether. Anarchangel ( talk) 03:10, 16 July 2009 (UTC)
Here is the current lead:
I found this slightly confusing -- it took me a while to appreciate that POV forks are the intentional subset of content forks. May I propose this revision:
Andrew Gradman talk/ WP:Hornbook 06:25, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
( edit conflict) I have to take a close look at Transhumanist's input, but here's a realistic revisions of the lead text, and I think it's not inconsistent with these new concerns. Andrew Gradman talk/ WP:Hornbook 03:24, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
"Content Forking" refers to the treatment of one topic in more than one article. Content forks are not necessarily bad, but they should be closely scrutinized, as they can hinder coordination, elude consensus, and lead to inconsistent articles. There should be no more than one article wholly devoted to a given topic; alternate names for the same topic should redirect to a single article. Lengthy sections of lengthy articles may be moved to a standalone article and replaced with a summary. When this is done to violate neutral point of view guidelines and elude the consensus created at another page, the pejorative label Point of view (POV) fork is applied. Spin-off articles may be devoted to discussing a point of view (e.g., "Criticism of X"), but editors must be vigilant that the new article conforms to WP:NPOV guidelines.
I don't think there is agreement on what content forks are as yet, so I will hazard a more explicit statement as to why it needs to be prohibited. Content forking is bad because it is a deliberate, reckless or unintentional violation of WP:NPOV in the sense that an article topic should be the subject of all significant views that have been published by reliable sources about that topic, and forking is basically evasion of this requirement through a process of sub-dividing these sources into seperate content fork articles. An example would be the Terminator content forks: Terminator (franchise), Terminator (character concept), Terminator (character) are all forks from the film The Terminator in the sense that they all share the same subject matter (played by Arnie). You could easily swap all of the sources in these articles around and it would not make any difference to their content. The reason why it is bad is that the sources have been spread amoungst different articles, so that the reader has to search 3 or 4 articles to obtain all the available encyclopedic coverage about the one topic. -- Gavin Collins ( talk| contribs) 10:51, 17 August 2009 (UTC)
Oppose: Dilutes collaborative article building needlessly. It's necessary to address subjects in more than one article, which is different from creating an article that duplicates information of another article. We use summary style, which is distinct from a fork, as a matter of presentation, to fully explore topic aspects without overburdening a longer parent article. – Whitehorse1 12:14, 31 August 2009 (UTC)
Almost six months later, I think I've finally figured this thing out. Check out the new thread at the village pump. Andrew Gradman talk/ WP:Hornbook 21:36, 8 January 2010 (UTC)
Hello, I have a question. Can a subject be considered a POV fork when it clearly shows notability? For example there is the newly created page of History of Falun Gong, now it is argued that the subject of Persecution of Falun Gong who's notability is not disputed, should be part of History of Falun Gong. My opinion, is that this is a move to dilute the subject. Is there a better place to ask this question? Also see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Persecution of Falun Gong. Thank you! -- HappyInGeneral ( talk) 19:17, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
Finalization of the templates and Twinkle functionality of the A10 CSD criteria is done and online! General explanation is at
WP:CSD just like anything else. This most certainly needs a mention in the CFORK section of duplicate articles, being why I'm posting. I tried to add it myself and just could not get the writer perspective done well, nor could I really keep it brief. Basically I'm hoping someone might stop in and note this, though I may try again if I'm feeling a little sharper. So, A10 itself is meant to be used in a very narrow range and shouldn't used at all if even a tiny amount of new and appropriate content could even mistakenly have been deleted by something being A10'd. Merge, in those cases. A10 specifically states it is not to be used for splits and forks, so yes it's rather ironic to post it on this page, but there is a very specific variant of CFORK that sparks from A10. Concept applied here would persons starting new articles of a topic they're convinced should be separate from parent article but didn't remove anything from it because they'd either forgotten or didn't want to look suspicious. Just that there's no actual additions in the copy-split even article version.
These will be very low percentage of edits or new article creations (especially since a lot of the large and notable things with some articles already have a shortcut to somewhere, meaning NPP wouldn't even catch it. I'm starting up things on the talk page of the template as I think there are a few matters of ambiguity yet. If someone could put in the mention at duplication here... yea I'd owe you one. Even if you never do any further reading or don't run into it for a year, the huge point to say on this page the extremely important point to get across being that we're not trying to deleting their work, but showing them where they can use it to improve the encycylpedia. It's pretty much a 99% good faith usage CSD, which is awesome in my view and is in the right direction for the broader current initiative on AGF all around on all levels. ♪ daTheisen (talk) 14:13, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
In the lead is the following.
Whereas, in
WP:NPOV in the section
Point of view and content forks is the following.
Seems like a contradiction. --
Bob K31416 (
talk)
02:09, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
There is a current discussion at the Village Pump: here. Rd232 talk 08:38, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
Can we include templates as well? I haven't read the article, but the nutshell message says articles. Templates should be included. 174.3.98.236 ( talk) 00:51, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
There is currently an ongoing discussion about the future of this and others MoS naming style. Please consider the issues raised in the discussion and vote if you wish GnevinAWB ( talk) 20:51, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
I keep reading this and I just do not get it. What is being described as bad - in the nutshell and elsewhere in the policy - seems to me always to be POV-forking, not content forking. This seems like a confused policy and one we should consider doing away with. I am not saying it has no metrit - but whatever is of merit about what swe shoudn't do seems to be about POV forks, or content forks that are bad because they are also POV forks, either way the problem is POV forks, not content forks.
Wikipedia used to have two policies, one on NPOV forks and one on Content forks. We either need to return to the two distinct policies, or rename this "Forking" and be clear that NPOV forking is discouraged and Content forking is not. Slrubenstein | Talk 01:01, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
I am not sure I agree but I see your reasoning, so for the sake of argument (but I would like to know if Smokey Joe and others agree with you) let's go with your view. For this guideline to make sense, it seems to me that we need to say then that there are three (or more) types of Content Forks: POV, forks, spin-offs, and ... what do we call the others? I do not think it is useful to use the intentional/unintentional distinction to classify different kinds of content forks (this distinction may be helpful to understanding why they happen, but not to identifying different kinds). I just want this guideline to be organized in a clear fashion. If we can agree on appropriate names for the principal types of content forks, I think we would be making a lot of progress to making this guideline more consistent and clear. Slrubenstein | Talk 12:24, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
I agree there are broader issues than POV. Perhaps we should merge this article with SPLIT? Or, if this is a "spin-off" from SPLIT, I'd like to know the rationale for covering splits that contravene NPOV, NAME and OR, but not others. Is this guideline meant to cover ALL splits that are forbidden (or discouraged), or just some? I just want to rationalize the organization of these guidelines. Slrubenstein | Talk 13:06, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
Well, we have identified a "problem." I propose this: let's see if other people who watch this page can review our recent exchange and toss around ideas to develop a real proposal, or two proposals. Then we can go to the talk pages of these other guidelines and present the proposals and get more input. Then, an RfC on whatever proposal seems to have the most support, and then we can do something. SO: other people - please share ideas, proposals... ? Slrubenstein | Talk 17:54, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
Thanks. My recent editsw to this guideline reflcted a not-fully (but well-intentioned) ttempt to provide a logical structure. I know many editors here have tought lot more about these issues than I have. I'd love to see other editors here develop a concrete proposal or two to present to the community. But first, I wonder if all editors here agreee about which things are subordinate to which things. If all agree we can move forward, otherwise we need more discussion. Slrubenstein | Talk 22:59, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
We were forced to fork some material out of an article due to oversizing concerns in the main article. The material forked is referenced only from the original article and one other. So now someone has labeled it an "orphan" article! How do we respond to this? The forking is not controversial, pov or anything else. No one is complaining about the content per se except the "orphan" labeler. Student7 ( talk) 13:44, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
There's a discussion going on at an RFC at WP:ARTICLE TITLES that is arguably as much about content as it is about titles, specifically about separating criticism as a content fork. Since changes pondered there may have an impact here, it seems appropriate to explicitly solicit opinions here as well. SDY ( talk) 00:18, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
I have posted a query at the village pump, on the question of what is the best (long-term) way to handle redundancies among related articles. It relates to content forking, so I thought some of you might have something to say. Cheers! AGradman / underlying article as I saw it / talk 03:40, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
I have a question about a non-controversial fork of contents. It has to do with style, perhaps, and therefore may not belong here as a question.
We had superarticle A. We decided to fork subtopic B to a new article and summarize B in article A. But, before this all happened, we had forked sub-subtopic C from B! Now we have three articles with "C" in it: the original, summarized in article A, the newest fork, in article B, also summarized, and the original article C. When a change is made to C, we now have to consider the two "summaries" in B and A. This is a pain IMO. Don't know quite how to avoid it.
The "elegant" way, of course, is to fork B and leave no residue of C in article A. This, unfortunately, is not possible. And the same can be said of B with C summary imbedded.
This leads me to think that C should never have been a subsection in A at all. But it is classically considered part of A, unfortunately. I see no elegant way to avoid updating two summaries each time we update article C. Student7 ( talk) 12:09, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
POVFORK is far less than the sum of its parts. Too many essays are also poor, useless, and redundant to the guidelines that are their only rationales. But this is a guideline; we should be expecting far more than this illogical mindreading waste of space. It is unnecessary (easily substituted by WP:NPOV + WP:FORK). Where NPOV+FORK is logically quite sound (some of the material is a fork, the rest is POV), POVFORK is logically flawed (no material that is POV can be FORK unless that material from the original article is also POV). It violates WP:AGF ("deliberately created" assumes bad faith). And in service of this last error, it describes in unnecessary detail someone's bad day on WP, where EVIL people did bad things to them. Aww. Ignore all the people protesting that they were editing in good faith who did things similar to its description; they must be guilty or there would not be a rule prohibiting what they did. Anarchangel ( talk) 07:14, 30 March 2011 (UTC)